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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2011 - 10:56am PT
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You mean This Ken Haapala?
"Executive Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
-Contributor to Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) reports -Contributor to The Week That Was, a weekly SEPP update on climate news, with a “News You Can Use” section highlighting articles and papers written by climate skeptics.
Ken Haapala is executive vice president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, compiler of "The Week That Was," and a contributer to the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change, a group invented by climate deniers to counter the IPCC."
From the Exxon Secrets site:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1355
Here's an article that addresses Ken's piece for the NIPCC, which includes a debate were Ken responds and others counter his views:
The NIPCC report: don’t be fooled
blahblah, if "intellectual content" means attacking scientific findings with opinions not backed up with data, then I guess yeah, it does contain that.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 19, 2011 - 12:24pm PT
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Ed,
Let me prop up a specific point in the quoted piece. I am curious to know your response to his more specific disagreement.
An appendix to the main body of the AR4 gives the levels of understanding for sixteen variables considered to influence temperatures (many important variables are not considered). The levels of understanding for five of these influences are rated as very low. The levels of understanding for ten for the remaining eleven are rated as low to medium. Yet the SPM states a high level of confidence in results of its work. One cannot have high confidence in the results, when starting with a poor understanding of critical variables.
This is a one of many ways in which the IPCC’s claims seem to be lacking, and by their own admission. Is his claim true, taken out of context, misapplied to something? I would love to hear a strong rebuttal.
Oh and as an aside, thank you for pointing out that I misspelled the word impugn. It was a nice subtle way of insulting me.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2011 - 01:59pm PT
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justin01,
I've read through sections of AR4, but I could not find any appendix that references "sixteen variables considered to influence temperatures."
To shed light on this claim, I believe we need to know upon what the author of the statement bases their claim.
Perhaps you can show us where in AR4 is the claim about 16 variables, I certainly could not find it.
To help out, here's a link to AR4:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
Certainly you know that people can make all sorts claims. However, without knowing the basis for a claim, it is difficult to respond in a meaningful way to the claim.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 19, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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k-man, your are being entirely fair.
I will take a look.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Jul 19, 2011 - 02:58pm PT
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By the way, anyone got any ideas what to do with all them millions and millions of toxic batteries that are driving all them Hybrids and Elect cars when they are cooked and no longer any good?
Toyota and Honda place decals with a toll-free number on their hybrid battery packs. Toyota offers a $200 bounty to ensure that every battery comes back to the company. In a press release, Toyota states, "Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled."
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Jul 19, 2011 - 11:25pm PT
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Are forest fires considered part of the climate? Sort of a transient thing
but the smoke does create cooling of the ground -away from the fire.
Check out the Mt Whitney web cam from yesterday as the smoke from the LION fire in the Little Kern comes in thick as pea soup. Pity all the hikers up there deep breathing that gunk.
http://www.whitneyportalstore.com/webcam/2011_07_18/daily.htm
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 02:17am PT
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Ed,
I appreciate you research. I was doing a bit of it myself, but you put it together nicely. Your integrated weblinks are quite useful. I must admit, I was a bit disappointed when reading the appendices myself, because my quoted author took more editorial license than I expected...C'est la vie.
I think the portion on aerosols does illustrate his overarching point well, despite his license taken. While weeding through the technical jargon, I came away thinking there were lots of phrases relying heavily on approximations and assumptions. I will admit I was not familiar with many of the theorems and equations spoken of, so that does not help my position. But to me, someone who has read many research papers regarding engineering topics but not intimately aware of the minutia of climate science, the piece does not inspire confidence. I would be surprised if you came away feeling differently. The more I read the technical basis of the models, the more I am left feeling like things it is all a house built of cards. Yet somehow, this house is still not subject to falsification.
Cheers.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 20, 2011 - 10:34am PT
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From the Ken Haapala excerpt:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and laboratory experiments show that a doubling of CO2, absent of feedbacks, will increase temperatures by about 1.2 deg C. The SPM assumes positive feedbacks amplify this small warming. Yet, nowhere in AR4 are these positive feedbacks tested against physical observations . . . .
Mr. Ed's response:
Put up or shut up, what's your specific beef with the science?
If you are saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas then you are a century late to the game.
Great reading comprehension there Ed. Nice try using "if" so you can try to weasel out when you're caught, but it was a little too blatant to give you much credit.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 20, 2011 - 11:24am PT
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A number of teams are studying connections between climate change and fires. In Alaska and Russia the impacts have been quite noticeable. Here's a recent article from Nature Geoscience (emphasis added):
Recent acceleration of biomass burning and carbon losses in Alaskan forests and peatlands
Merritt R. Turetsky, Evan S. Kane, Jennifer W. Harden, Roger D. Ottmar, Kristen L. Manies, Elizabeth Hoy & Eric S. Kasischke
Nature Geoscience Volume: 4,Pages:27–31, Year published: (2011)
Climate change has increased the area affected by forest fires each year in boreal North America1, 2. Increases in burned area and fire frequency are expected to stimulate boreal carbon losses3, 4, 5. However, the impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is also affected by the severity of burning. How climate change influences the severity of biomass burning has proved difficult to assess. Here, we examined the depth of ground-layer combustion in 178 sites dominated by black spruce in Alaska, using data collected from 31 fire events between 1983 and 2005. We show that the depth of burning increased as the fire season progressed when the annual area burned was small. However, deep burning occurred throughout the fire season when the annual area burned was large. Depth of burning increased late in the fire season in upland forests, but not in peatland and permafrost sites. Simulations of wildfire-induced carbon losses from Alaskan black spruce stands over the past 60 years suggest that ground-layer combustion has accelerated regional carbon losses over the past decade, owing to increases in burn area and late-season burning. As a result, soils in these black spruce stands have become a net source of carbon to the atmosphere, with carbon emissions far exceeding decadal uptake.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 20, 2011 - 12:08pm PT
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Great reading comprehension there Ed.
Posts by blahblah on science read like pure distilled essence of Dunning-Kruger effect.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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Ed's too polite to post a summary conclusion, and you kind of have to read between the lines to fully understand what he's saying.
Just sayin'.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
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Wait...which is it. You were either pointing out spelling errors for my personal betterment, or you were trying to look as though you were smarter than everyone while putting down my intellect (granted done in a somewhat passive aggressive fashion).
sorry I don't meet blahblah's metric of civility, if you all ask a question, instead of "cutting-and-pasting" in some other blog, without even reading the source material referred to (in this case, the IPCC WGI AR4 report, which I have posted links to many times up thread) I will not be polite.
After looking through the report for the alleged phrasing in "an appendix to the body of the report" and finding nothing, I feel somewhat justified.
Back to the subject matter. I mentioned aerosols specifically, because in reading the appendix titled "Methods Used to Estimate Climate Sensitivity and
Aerosol Forcing" I was left feeling underwhelmed by their confidence in the subject.
I am trying to be as honest and humble in this regard as possible. But I was left with a general sense of bullshit in reading the piece. Let me do some highlighting to a snippet of Appendix 9.B to better illustrate what I mean.
The prior distribution p(q) that is used in this calculation is chosen to reflect prior knowledge and uncertainty (either subjective or objective) about plausible parameter values, and in fact, is often simply a wide uniform distribution. Such a prior indicates that little is known, a priori, about the parameters of interest except that they are bounded below and above. Even so, the choice of prior bounds can be subjective. In the case of climate sensitivity, a uniform prior with a lower bound of 0°C and an upper bound between 10°C and 20°C has often been used (see Table 9.3). However, observable properties of the climate system do not necessarily scale with equilibrium climate sensitivity (Frame et al., 2005). Imposing a flat prior on an observable property, such as the climate feedback or transient climate response, is equivalent to imposing a highly skewed prior on the equilibrium climate sensitivity, and therefore results in narrower posterior likelihood ranges on the climate sensitivity that exclude very high sensitivities. Alternatively, expert opinion can also be used to construct priors (Forest et al., 2002; 2006). Note, however, that expert opinion may be overconfident (Risbey and Kandlikar, 2002) and if this is the case, the posterior distribution may be too narrow. Also, the information used to derive the expert prior needs to be independent from the information that is used to estimate the likelihood function. However, prior belief about the climate system tends to be shaped by observations of that system, and thus it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to develop truly independent prior distributions.
I take them at their word. They are not very confident in their understanding of aerosol forcing. I appreciate their candor (veiled in jargon of course). I honed in on this appendix in particular because it illustrates the point I was trying to make quite well.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 02:42pm PT
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Weschrist...you should spend some time reading Nassim Taleb. The Black swan would be a good place to start.
It is important to first understand the bounds of your knowledge.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
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It is an absolute favorite of mine. Filled with all sorts of fallacies...ones that will get your head spinning. It will make you believe everyone, including yourself is full of it.
He is a self absorbed new yorker type though, so you may have to get used to his style. fuggetaboutit!
This book and its points apply to both sides of the argument, above all though it fosters a very healthy skepticism in nearly every facet of your life.
To quote will rogers.
"The problem ain't what people know. It's what people know that ain't so that's the problem."
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2011 - 05:05pm PT
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justin01. Certainly I am not a scientist, and more certainly I'm not a Climate Scientist. But, if I highlight your quoted piece a little differently, you might find a different focus than what you project:
The prior distribution p(q) that is used in this calculation is chosen to reflect prior knowledge and uncertainty (either subjective or objective) about plausible parameter values, and in fact, is often simply a wide uniform distribution. Such a prior indicates that little is known, a priori, about the parameters of interest except that they are bounded below and above. Even so, the choice of prior bounds can be subjective. In the case of climate sensitivity, a uniform prior with a lower bound of 0°C and an upper bound between 10°C and 20°C has often been used (see Table 9.3). However, observable properties of the climate system do not necessarily scale with equilibrium climate sensitivity (Frame et al., 2005). Imposing a flat prior on an observable property, such as the climate feedback or transient climate response, is equivalent to imposing a highly skewed prior on the equilibrium climate sensitivity, and therefore results in narrower posterior likelihood ranges on the climate sensitivity that exclude very high sensitivities. Alternatively, expert opinion can also be used to construct priors (Forest et al., 2002; 2006). Note, however, that expert opinion may be overconfident (Risbey and Kandlikar, 2002) and if this is the case, the posterior distribution may be too narrow. Also, the information used to derive the expert prior needs to be independent from the information that is used to estimate the likelihood function. However, prior belief about the climate system tends to be shaped by observations of that system, and thus it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to develop truly independent prior distributions.
The way I read this, they are calling out the uncertainties and showing how they account for them.
The last piece, after the "Alternatively," shows that you could also use this alternate method, but they show why they do not.
Looks good to me, but I suppose you'll wait for Ed to chime in.
Addendum
"I appreciate their candor (veiled in jargon of course). I honed in on this appendix in particular because it illustrates the point I was trying to make quite well." -- justin01
One other point. These sentences of yours are quite smug, and a little passive-aggressive in and of themselves.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 20, 2011 - 05:53pm PT
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It is an absolute favorite of mine. Filled with all sorts of fallacies...ones that will get your head spinning. It will make you believe everyone, including yourself is full of it.
I read Fooled by Randomness first--then was a little disappointed in The Black Swan, as it's largely a prolix recapitulation of the key ideas. But they're both good.
The parallels between the so-called "scientists" who come up with the global warming "models" and the economists who engineered the recent economic crises are certainly worth noting.
A quick anecdote--Taleb likes to express his disdain for MBAs (even though he is one) ad nauseam, and points out that MBAs also delight in that, always thinking that Taleb is describing other MBAs. Chiloe's reference to me in his "Dunning-Kruger effect" comment made my day--I'm not the one who spends hours posting grade-school style graphs and going around thinking that I'm a "scientist"!
I wonder how many climate "scientists" are willing to accept Taleb's verdict on the value of econometrics, without ever taking a good look in a mirror.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2011 - 05:56pm PT
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He reached rock bottom.
And started to dig.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 06:09pm PT
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blahblah, you pretty much took the words right out of my mouth. I too came away seeing parallel lines. I don't know if I would go so far as to accuse them of being hypocritical in their view of economics/derivatives trading. I really doubt most have much of an opinion on something like MBA schools or derivatives.
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justin01
Trad climber
sacramento
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Jul 20, 2011 - 06:17pm PT
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Addendum
"I appreciate their candor (veiled in jargon of course). I honed in on this appendix in particular because it illustrates the point I was trying to make quite well." -- justin01
One other point. These sentences of yours are quite smug, and a little passive-aggressive in and of themselves.
That was not my intention, but I could see how my parenthetical statement could be treated that way. I do not see how my second sentence could be construed as smug though. I was responded to Ed's request for why I focused on aerosols.
I would like to also point out that I am trying to be civil towards the contributors here, but it seems to me that quoted authors are not afforded the same respect by anyone. With that said, I have no criticism of the authors from this section of the AR4, they are just communicating their understanding of the subject. Their degree of understanding of aerosols does seem to undermine the certainty of the whole, at least in part, but that is not their problem.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 21, 2011 - 12:45am PT
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so blahblah what about Taleb's argument do you think is applicable to science?
as I read that book, he basically said that no one can know what the market will do, I totally agree with that as the projections of the market are based on the extrapolation of a time series into the future, with no understanding about what creates that time series.
Ed--did you read The Black Swan (and/or Fooled by Randomness)? I ask because if you read The Black Swan (in particular), you would not need to ask me about what part of Taleb's argument I think is applicable to science. Taleb discusses it throughout The Black Swan, including in regards to climate change! (although climate change discussion is a miniscule part of the book).
See, for example, the discussion on pp. 315-16 (I have the paperback, 2nd edition). Without me writing a book review, he expresses skepticism as to climate change models because nonlinear effects cause magnifications of errors so that, as he puts it, "small changes in input, coming from measurement error, can lead to massively divergent projections--and that assumes we have the right equations." (There's the clear implication that that assumption may not be warranted, which he makes explicit in the next quote.)
He repeats essentially the same point at p. 345:
"Such minutely small uncertainty, at the level of the slightest parameter, might, because of nonlinearities, percolate to a huge uncertainty at the level of the output of the model. Climate models, for instance, suffer from such nonlinearities, and even if we had the right model (which we, of course, don't), a small change in one of the parameters, called calibration, can entirely reverse the conclusions."
To really evaluate what he's saying, you'd need the context surrounding the quotes, but that's exceeding my typing skills. Read the book if you're interested.
Other parts of The Black Swan that don't explicitly discuss climate change are probably at least as relevant. See for example, his discussion of Poincare and the "three body problem" related to predicting planetary orbits when more than two bodies are in play (Pp. 176-179). He gives another example: to compute the trajectory of billiard balls after multiple impacts, after the first few strikes, you'd need to include the effect of the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table. After a large number of strikes, you'd need to include the layout of the universe. It's effectively incalculable. (Whether this is actually true, I have no idea.)
One more quote (from the same section)
"In a dynamical system, . . . Poincare proposed that we can only work with qualitative matters--some property of systems can be discussed, but not computed. You can think rigorously, but you cannot use numbers."
Big picture: Taleb's got a lot to say about science. Feel free to agree or disagree or even ignore, but don't pretend that I'm somehow making something up by noting that!
(In fairness, and as anyone who has read the book may point out, it would not at all be accurate to say that Taleb concludes that society shouldn't take action to prevent or reduce the effects of climate change. It's actually the opposite, although that's in more of an off hand comment than anything else.)
You may disagree, but I don't think Taleb would see much of a difference between climate change models and economic models, at least as regards the confidence we should have in them.
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