Um, the geese are migrating kinda early

[stormdog74]

What exactly is your profession since you brought it up?

Great post Anna!!!

I am a mathematician - usually that elicits two responses: people are impressed (a very small group) or horrified (the vast majority!). And I can usually see the horror on their faces - no joke.

[stormdog74]

After thinking about it, I decided to clarify something about the IPCC and how it works.

The IPCC do have scientist-members (but their selection criteria is a whole other issue(. The process starts with IPCC staff members culling all the available literature about climate change, summarizing and organizing the results, and then writing the first draft. The draft is accessible to scientists worldwide who are invited to comment and submit suggestions for improvement. Each of the suggestions are considered and are either included or not in the final report. The lead scientist in each chapter, however, tend to use his research as the basis for the report itself (i.e. Mann and the hockey stick in 2001).

What we've been seeing generally, though, are the management "summaries for policy-makers." These summaries are written by bureaucrats, not so much by the scientists, and where there are careful language in the heart of the reports expressing uncertainty, the summaries favor absolutes. In earlier IPCC reports, the summaries and the scientific reports tend to show a huge disconnect. The UN "fixed" this by having the non-scientists write the conclusions in the management summaries first, and then telling the authors of the individual chapters of the report to conform their writing and science to the summary. Thus the Fourth IPCC summary came out in February this year, at least half-a-year ahead of the real report.

I can not find a well-respected climate scientist who is willing to sign his name to the current IPCC report. I am actually waiting for the final report to come out because the IPCC promised to name the scientists who peer-reviewed the reports. There have been several former scientist-members of the IPCC, however, who have openly criticized the process recently.

Lastly, the IPCC's rules make it possible for representatives of member-governments to negotiate the summary line by line and word for word.

That's why I'm very critical of the IPCC and do not regard it as a credible source of scientific knowledge.

Then why is there so much support for what they have done?

From: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../306/5702/1686

Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.


In particular, from the National Academy of Sciences (I think they are somewhat respected...), et al.:

From: http://www.nap.edu/html/climatechange/summary.html

[stormdog74]

Rand, you have to read this. I believe you are referring to the famous picture of the polar bears stranded on a thin ice cap in the "middle of the ocean."

It turns out that the picture was shot in August, 2004, "when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming." They were also not far from the coast (polar bears are great swimmers) and didn't seem to be in much danger at all.

By the way, the polar bear population appears to be increasing.

One thing that concerns me, Anna, is that the links you give seem to go to conservative blogs and/or newspapers. If I am not mistaken, the Telegraph is pretty far to the right (I believe their nickname is "The Torygraph" - a reference to the conservative party in Britain). You can see the bias in the story quite clearly - especially the headline. Here is another take from what I would consider a more reputable source - certainly more scientific:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1337/

Just reading some of these blogs and articles makes me think that there are a lot of people with financial stakes in the matter trying to cast doubts on GW. Really, Anna, the guy in the article on polar bears was paid by the polar bear hunters! Talk about bias! While I do believe GW exists, if I had a difficult time deciding what to believe I would have to ask myself: Which side is motivated by financial gain (or fear of financial loss)? For those who support GW (the theory, not the actual thing!) there is little to gain personally except attacks from the other side. If there wasn't something there, I think they could find something else to study...

[cgallery]

For those who support GW (the theory, not the actual thing!) there is little to gain personally except attacks from the other side. If there wasn't something there, I think they could find something else to study...

Not sure that is true. Last night I watched an episode of Nova on "global dimming." I won't go into "global dimming," but one of the scientists commenting on it said she was concerned about funding for GW research given some recent revelations about global "dimming."

So they have their livelihoods (funding research). Also, companies involved in alternative power generation, etc., are very pro global warming.

Lots of financial incentives on both sides.

[stormdog74]

While I will grant you that there are probably some who support GW who have a financial incentive, I think there are far more who don't. A great number of Nobel laureates believe in GW and their salary does not depend on what they do anymore. Universities are happy to pay high salaries just to say they have Nobel laureates on their faculty.

[Anna]

While I will grant you that there are probably some who support GW who have a financial incentive, I think there are far more who don't. A great number of Nobel laureates believe in GW and their salary does not depend on what they do anymore. Universities are happy to pay high salaries just to say they have Nobel laureates on their faculty.

Stormdog, I respect your opinions, but there are a few things:

1. What does a Nobel prize in physics, chemistry or medicine have anything to do with global warming? Not to mention the peace prize and economics? One of these Nobel laureates, Crutzen, who won the Nobel for his ozone layer studies, actually proposed to counteract global warming by injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to deflect solar radiation and cause global cooling. Never mind all the other problems that would cause, as long as it solves global warming, right? And besides, he's a Nobel prize winner so he must be right.

2. You cited an article written by Naomi Oreskes in 2004. What she did was to survey research papers on climate change from 1993 to 2003 (928 abstracts). She found a majority supported the "consensus view" which is that humans were having at least some effect on global warming. Another researcher recently did the same thing: used the same database and search terms as Oreskes, and he examined all papers from 2004 to 2007 (528 papers). His conclusions are that 48% of the papers are "neutral" - refusing to accept or reject the anthropogenic hypothesis - and 6% outrightly reject it. Only one paper makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. That is hardly a consensus.

The other interesting point, of course, is what is exactly meant by "consensus" in this context. It does not require that man is the primary cause of global warming, only that he is a proximate cause. So papers that implicitly implicate humans are counted among those supporting the consensus.

3. Which brings me to my third point: You of all people should know that consensus has no meaning in science. Science is not a democracy, nor is it a popularity contest. We don't go around polling the scientists and say, "Those who agree with anthropogenic global warming, please raise your hand." We go with what can be proven experimentally.

Show me one paper that actually has hard science in it. You have a background in physics, so you know what a good science experiment is. It's not just about digging ice cores and postulating what happened, but to turn that postulate into a theory and show it experimentally to be true or false. Then you move to the next theory, whether it is a new one, or an extension of the old. Extrapolating a lab experiment with controlled variables and say, "CO2 absorbs heat, ergo in the general environment where there are many unaccountable variables, the same thing holds true," is just bad bad bad science. Even the Laws of Thermodynamics are really just theories, and we don't take it as an absolute law of nature, even after countless supporting evidence. And we think that these so-called scientific studies of the environment and climate somehow gives us absolute certainty?

Isn't it funny that the same people who can not write a model that's accurate enough to predict the weather in three days somehow gain credibility when they claim to be able to predict the weather in 100 years? If we extrapolated the graphs from the 1930s, we would have no glaciers left by the 60s and 70s. Instead we had global cooling. But we're willing to extrapolate similar graphs from the last 20 years well into the next 100. I'll call that, generously, highly suspect.

To quote one Nobel prize winner who actually won it for his modeling work, albeit in Economics:

"We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions." - Wassily Leontief

I'm tired and I think I'm rambling. But I hope I'm making some sense. And sorry for the tone of frustration. The issue of "consensus in science" is one of my pet peeves.

[Anna]

For those who support GW (the theory, not the actual thing!) there is little to gain personally except attacks from the other side. If there wasn't something there, I think they could find something else to study...

You're kidding, right? Why do you think that the liberals and environmentalists support global warming?

Answering that question will take too long, but you're a smart boy. You can figure it out. Why would socialists, who like to tell us what to eat, how to speak, what to think and how we may get our healthcare, and environmentalists and tree-huggers who love animals and nature more than they do humans, want to believe that anthropogenic global warming is real? Not to mention the many industries that have sprung around this impending catastrophe. And yes, that includes Al Gore's carbon-offset centered business.

And if we're talking about scientists, see above about the "lack of consensus" in this area for now.

One last thing: I don't see the relevance of whether the blogs and news articles I link to are conservative or not (for the record, Coyoteblog is libertarian and is equally disdainful of conservatives and liberals). I can equally say that most of the other papers are liberal. Just because an opposing point of view is presented does not make it necessarily suspect. If anything, go through their arguments and by inference (or some other method) prove them wrong, but don't just dismiss them.

[Slik Geek]

my dismay is for those seven day forecasts, which any true meteorologist should know are of very little use due to the chaotic nature of day to day weather.

I don't understand the discontinuity. With the existing climatic toolset, we can fairly accurately predict climactic events (which we call "weather" in the immediated term) for the next six, twelve, perhaps 24 hours. As the time span increases, the predictions become far less accurate, to the point that they are generally useless. The supposition made by GW climatologists, apparently supported by you, is that as the time period extends into years, perhaps decades, the predictions become more accurate again, to the point that these scientists put a great deal of confidence in their conclusions. (They use words in the August 2007 Scientific American article such as: "climate models have become ever more reliable" - p65; "we can now confidently estimate the total human-induced component" - p66).

Why are the predictive abilities strong in the immediate term, and in the long term, but not in the near term to medium term? (Pardon my terminology). The discontinuity strikes me as an excuse for failures in moderately short term experiments, where the predictive models don't achieve high enough accuracy to back up their claims of confidence.

Again, these statements are irrelevant - so, someone predicts something that doesn't come true; does that automatically mean there is nothing to the whole idea?

Isn't that the basis of the scientific method? One formulates a theory, makes a prediction based upon that theory, then performs an experiment. If the experimental outcome doesn't match the predicted outcome, the theory is toast (after investigation for flaws in the experiment).

GW scientists have made predictions that haven't come true, but that doesn't seem to dull their enthusiasm for their conclusions. Where is the science?

[Slik Geek]

Yes, and I suppose this is why that bridge in Minnesota collapsed, or the one in Tacoma (here is some good engineering for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mclp9QmCGs), or why the Hubble was screwed up, or why the Space Shuttle blew up (by the way, from a very simple mathematical mistake - they used very poor judgement in probabilities), or.... these mistakes were all made by engineers.

This statement really should have received a bit more of a response. The implication seems to be that engineers make mistakes, but scientists don't. The fact is that all humans make mistakes, regardless of their credentials and education.

The I-35 bridge in Minnesota collapsed after 40 years of service. It doesn't seem like the primary reason for the collapse was a design mistake by engineers. It had significant rust and was in need of structural repair or replacement. Also keep in mind that it collapsed while carrying well below its maximum load (half the lanes were closed). Clearly something had deteriorated or had been compromised.


The Hubble mirror flaw wasn't discovered because of a cost-reduction in the manufacturing process. The original engineering plan would likely have discovered the problem, allowing it to be corrected, but the inspection process was cost-reduced by using the same apparatus as was used in its manufacture. Compromises due to scheduling or cost pressures frequently lead to "mistakes".


The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion would not have happened if the engineer's attempt to abort the launch had not been over-ridden by management. (Also, the engineers were not allowed to make design improvements to known flaws in the O-rings due to scheduling pressures).

The O-ring design had flaws, they were known and the analysis had shown (previous to the disaster) that cold-weather launches were not advisable. Worse than the O-ring design was the testing process which actually pushed at least one of the O-rings out of position, allowing combustion gases to bypass the seal at engine ignition.


The Tacoma Narrows bridge was structurally sound. The science of aerodynamic effects on bridges was not appreciated until the bridge's failure.

[Slik Geek]

the error in 1998 being the hottest on record, but ignores that this error has little to do with the overall issue. Yes, they made a mistake (gotcha!), but one year makes little difference and the error has little effect on the overall trend, which is much more important. No one said 1998 was really cool, and even if it was, who cares

Don't you find it ironic that we are told to trust the complex simulation models, when simple calculations on temperature data missed discovery by scientific peer review? If the simple calculations have errors, how many errors haven't been discovered in the complex calculations? Are we really confident enough to make significant societal decisions based upon these results?

Back to the August 2007 SA article I have cited repeatedly (because it so comprehensively illustrates the shaky basis - that's my opinion - for human-induced global warming):

After an exhaustive description of the simulations that form the basis of their conclusions, the authors declare on page 66 "we can now confidently estimate the total human-induced component" (to global warming). To back their claims, they continue a couple paragraphs later on the same page: "Observational records indicate that 11 of the past 12 years are the warmest since reliable records began around 1850. The odds of such warm years happening in sequence purely by chance are exceedingly small".

This evidence certainly appears compelling. But now that the flaw in the GISS data has been corrected, their confidence-boosting claim falls flat.

It turns out that the 11 warmest years were not during the past 12 years. They are distributed among the following decades: Four: 1930s. Three: 1990s. Two: 1950s. One so far: This decade. One: 1920s. In fact, three of the five hottest years on record were prior to 1935, long before human-induced global warming began "ravaging" the earth.

If the authors of the article had the benefit of this revised data when it was written, you can be sure that they would not have mentioned the 11 warmest years, lest it dilute their point.

BTW: Don't take my word for it, my analysis in this posting has not been reviewed by anyone. Look at the data yourself and make your own decision.

Regarding the "little effect on the overall trend" statement at the start of this post. The temperature data from 1910 to 1940 shows a significant global warming trend, similar to the trend between 1970 and the present. From 1940 to 1970, there was a significant global cooling trend of similar magnitude to the other warming trends. How is it that the previous cycles are "natural", but the latest one is "clearly human-induced global warming"?

Honest, objective science would address these facts and provide a plausible explanation. Can anyone cite scientific articles that consider these trends?

[stormdog74]

1. What does a Nobel prize in physics, chemistry or medicine have anything to do with global warming?

You missed my point – maybe that is my fault – but the point was that I believe that many (not all, of course) who support GW do not have significant financial interests and I used the Nobel laureates as an example – you would have to admit though that they would be qualified to recognize good science as the VAST majority of them are actually scientists. Sure, there are companies who would profit from GW, but you really don’t think they can match dollars with the oil companies, et al., do you?

That said, forget about the Nobel laureates if you like, you seem to have ignored that none other than the National Academy of Sciences, among others, has supported the IPCC - see my earlier post.

2. You cited an article written by Naomi Oreskes in 2004. What she did was to survey research papers on climate change from 1993 to 2003 (928 abstracts). She found a majority supported the "consensus view" which is that humans were having at least some effect on global warming. Another researcher recently did the same thing: used the same database and search terms as Oreskes, and he examined all papers from 2004 to 2007 (528 papers). His conclusions are that 48% of the papers are "neutral" - refusing to accept or reject the anthropogenic hypothesis - and 6% outrightly reject it. Only one paper makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. That is hardly a consensus.

Really, Anna, with your background you should know better than this – no one has seen this (except the blog you referenced) and the only journal this has been submitted to is the Journal of Energy and Environment, which is well known as the place to go when you can’t get your paper into a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. It is pretty close to a diploma mill kind of place and is only carried in 25 libraries in the WORLD and is not even listed in Journal Citation Reports, which lists the top 6000 peer-reviewed journals. Neither of us has any idea what kind of papers are in this study - the study could be packed with papers paid for by the energy companies for all we know.

The other interesting point, of course, is what is exactly meant by "consensus" in this context.

Well, we can argue the meaning of consensus indefinitely, but it is a common trick used by extremists to introduce a few people (often paid off) who oppose something and say there is doubt. This is almost the exact script that was followed by the tobacco companies (if you recall, they found plenty of people who would support them). I mentioned earlier the guy who thinks it is fine to post online where to find little girls – with this kind of reasoning we could argue that there is no consensus about child molestation as there are a lot of perverts out there who think otherwise.

you know what a good science experiment is. It's not just about digging ice cores and postulating what happened, but to turn that postulate into a theory and show it experimentally to be true or false.

For the most part, I agree with you, but not in this case. The problem with what you are proposing is that when GW is “proved” to most GW opponents it will be too late. When the idea of second hand smoke being harmful came about, should we have waited for it to be proved before we protected our children?

Even the Laws of Thermodynamics are really just theories, and we don't take it as an absolute law of nature, even after countless supporting evidence.

Now you’re kidding, right? By this reasoning we shouldn’t believe anything outside of a mathematical proof.

Isn't it funny that the same people who can not write a model that's accurate enough to predict the weather in three days somehow gain credibility when they claim to be able to predict the weather in 100 years? If we extrapolated the graphs from the 1930s, we would have no glaciers left by the 60s and 70s. Instead we had global cooling. But we're willing to extrapolate similar graphs from the last 20 years well into the next 100. I'll call that, generously, highly suspect.

While we cannot predict what the stock market will do in the next few days, we can predict, not with certainty, of course, that it will be higher in 100 years – how high we don’t know. So, I am not expecting the weather to be precise a 100 years out, but if they are even somewhat correct, we are in trouble. I hope you are right and we are not, but I am not willing to wait and see.

If we extrapolated the graphs from the 1930s, we would have no glaciers left by the 60s and 70s. Instead we had global cooling. But we're willing to extrapolate similar graphs from the last 20 years well into the next 100. I'll call that, generously, highly suspect.

Again, for the third time, I will bring up that global cooling was a conjecture with little scientific support whereas GW is a conjecture with a great deal of support. This is another extremist method – keep saying something regardless of fact and people will begin to believe there is truth to it.

Why would socialists, who like to tell us what to eat, how to speak, what to think and how we may get our healthcare, and environmentalists and tree-huggers who love animals and nature more than they do humans, want to believe that anthropogenic global warming is real?

I don't see the relevance of whether the blogs and news articles I link to are conservative or not. If anything, go through their arguments and by inference (or some other method) prove them wrong, but don't just dismiss them.

Statements like this one about the socialists are why I think it is relevant what you are linking to. By the way, I would feel the same if you were linking to liberal sites to make a point. When I read through many (not all) of your links I got that feeling I get when I read people like Cal Thomas or Maureen Dowd – something a bit on the nauseous side. I am not just dismissing their arguments either. As I already mentioned, the polar bear article was run in “The Torygraph” and the study was funded by polar bear hunters – I countered with an actual scientific paper. Oreskes' (a professor at one of our best science universities - UC San Diego) paper was published in a highly regarded journal. The one from the blog you linked to? No one has even seen this yet, and it has been submitted to a third rate “journal”. I’m sorry, but you talk about good science and then you make these kinds of references? This is why it is relevant.

Also, you are referring to extremists when you talk about socialists. I do find it interesting that you only refer to liberal attempts to tell us what we can do. The extreme conservatives are just the same – they claim otherwise, but the evidence says differently. They speak out against the government invading private lives and then do the opposite when it suits them (or have you forgotten Terry Schiavo). They rail against homosexuals and then get caught in airport restrooms or having sex with underage male pages. They speak about individual responsibility and then try to control what gets on your TV (claiming it is to protect the children – hmm, I thought that was a parent’s job). There was even a show on our soldiers in Iraq that was held back because of the fear that showing them swearing on TV would draw a fine from this government! So, our soldiers who are dying for this country are, in a way, being told what they can and cannot say on TV!

I think most Americans don’t care what you eat, think, say, etc. I, for one, believe in a person’s right to hunt and own guns, but not to drive a species to extinction or own a bazooka (you don’t really want your neighbor to have one of those, do you?). For the most part, I think people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. If you want to smoke, fine, but don’t do it around me or come to the government to pay your medical bills when you are dying from cancer.

I'm tired and I think I'm rambling. But I hope I'm making some sense. And sorry for the tone of frustration. The issue of "consensus in science" is one of my pet peeves.

Now I am tired and rambling - even more than you!

[stormdog74]

I don't understand the discontinuity. With the existing climatic toolset, we can fairly accurately predict climactic events (which we call "weather" in the immediated term) for the next six, twelve, perhaps 24 hours. As the time span increases, the predictions become far less accurate, to the point that they are generally useless. The supposition made by GW climatologists, apparently supported by you, is that as the time period extends into years, perhaps decades, the predictions become more accurate again, to the point that these scientists put a great deal of confidence in their conclusions. (They use words in the August 2007 Scientific American article such as: "climate models have become ever more reliable" - p65; "we can now confidently estimate the total human-induced component" - p66).

Why are the predictive abilities strong in the immediate term, and in the long term, but not in the near term to medium term? (Pardon my terminology). The discontinuity strikes me as an excuse for failures in moderately short term experiments, where the predictive models don't achieve high enough accuracy to back up their claims of confidence.



Isn't that the basis of the scientific method? One formulates a theory, makes a prediction based upon that theory, then performs an experiment. If the experimental outcome doesn't match the predicted outcome, the theory is toast (after investigation for flaws in the experiment).

GW scientists have made predictions that haven't come true, but that doesn't seem to dull their enthusiasm for their conclusions. Where is the science?

See my responses to Anna above.

[stormdog74]

This statement really should have received a bit more of a response. The implication seems to be that engineers make mistakes, but scientists don't. The fact is that all humans make mistakes, regardless of their credentials and education.

You are taking my statement out of context. If you look back you will see that I was responding to the joke, from an engineer I believe, that engineers have judgment while mathematicians and scientists do not. My point was actually the same as yours – we all make mistakes. To put it on the record, I have great respect for engineers – to quote the cliché, some of my best friends are engineers!

That said, I feel the need to respond to your critique of my examples – not sure why, but I am sure my wife could tell you!

The I-35 bridge in Minnesota collapsed after 40 years of service. It doesn't seem like the primary reason for the collapse was a design mistake by engineers. It had significant rust and was in need of structural repair or replacement. Also keep in mind that it collapsed while carrying well below its maximum load (half the lanes were closed). Clearly something had deteriorated or had been compromised.

On that part I agree, but I was referring to the inspections, which are also done by engineers.

The Hubble mirror flaw wasn't discovered because of a cost-reduction in the manufacturing process. The original engineering plan would likely have discovered the problem, allowing it to be corrected, but the inspection process was cost-reduced by using the same apparatus as was used in its manufacture. Compromises due to scheduling or cost pressures frequently lead to "mistakes".

True, but my point remains valid – they made the mistake. Again, this is not an indictment of engineers – as you said, we all make mistakes - keep in mind I was responding to the argument that engineers have judgment and scientists do not.

The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion would not have happened if the engineer's attempt to abort the launch had not been over-ridden by management. (Also, the engineers were not allowed to make design improvements to known flaws in the O-rings due to scheduling pressures).

The O-ring design had flaws, they were known and the analysis had shown (previous to the disaster) that cold-weather launches were not advisable. Worse than the O-ring design was the testing process which actually pushed at least one of the O-rings out of position, allowing combustion gases to bypass the seal at engine ignition.

I don’t deny any of your points, but that is not what I was referring to. The mistakes I am talking about had to do with simple probability. This has become a classic problem in freshman statistics classes. One of the mistakes was so bad that a decent first year student would have caught it. To the best of my recollection, the mistake had to do with the field joints – I believe that the probability of one failing was about 2%, but there were six of them and all six had to function; this changes the probability of failure to around 12%. There was also the mistake of assuming the o-rings were independent, which would have lowered the probability of failure to around 0.04%, assuming the original 2% was correct. So, they were looking at a 0.04% chance of failure when it was actually 12%, and I think it would have helped their argument against launching if they had that right.

The Tacoma Narrows bridge was structurally sound. The science of aerodynamic effects on bridges was not appreciated until the bridge's failure.

I’ll give you this one – this is another classic textbook problem in elementary differential equations classes. It was once believed that resonance was a significant cause although that theory has faded. As I said, I was just, somewhat defensively, responding to the perceived attack on mathematicians and my response was not meant as an attack on engineers, but rather to point out that engineers make mistakes too.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

[stormdog74]

Don't you find it ironic that we are told to trust the complex simulation models, when simple calculations on temperature data missed discovery by scientific peer review? If the simple calculations have errors, how many errors haven't been discovered in the complex calculations? Are we really confident enough to make significant societal decisions based upon these results?

Sure, maybe there are mistakes, but if I go to many experts and they all tell me I need an operation, but I eventually find one that says I can just meditate and hope for the best, what should I do? This is all just risk analysis, and, at this point, I think we should start reacting.
This does not mean that we should necessarily do drastic things, but don’t you think we are better off regardless if we start seriously looking for alternate energies? There is great debate on how much oil is left, but I don't think anyone is arguing for an infinite amount. Also, should we be dependent on countries who hate us for our energy? Seems like a good thing to do regardless.

I think both sides have a fear of extremes - that is how this country works, I am afraid. Just look at Congress and our legal system! I think there is something to GW, but I also think that it will not be as bad as some say. So, do we do nothing and hope our grandchildren will be okay (like we're doing with the debt), or should we do something in the hopes of ensuring a good future for them?

Okay, I am tired and I have said more than enough tonight!

[Anna]

Stormdog,

1. First, let me address the science part. You said, in reply to my statement about the laws of thermodynamics:

"By this reasoning we shouldn’t believe anything outside of a mathematical proof."

I did not say any such thing. If anything, I'm an experimentalist. Mathematical proofs are sexy; real-world proofs and applications are even better. To me, there's nothing more exciting than a well-designed experiment. There are many things that can be scientifically supported without having to know the mathematical proof first. The steam engine had been around a while before Carnot explained to us how it actually worked.

The laws of thermo are scientific theories. They happen to be supported experimentally, and consistently at that. We are convinced that they are inviolable, but if someone comes up with an experiment or proof that there are limits to these laws, the scientists will not lynch this guy for heresy (that is so 17th century), but probably award him the much-touted Nobel prize. After enough tests on reproducibility have been made of course.

A more mundane example is Newton's 2nd Law which applies to systems well under the speed of light. I'm sure that to the 18th and 19th century folks, that looked like an immutable law of nature. Until we learned about atoms and quantum mechanics and relativity. We didn't throw Newton's laws away, we just recognized the contraints under which the laws are still valid.

2. Global cooling in the 70s was clearly demonstrable by a cooling trend starting in the 1940s. If you haven't yet, look at the temperature graphs that are littering the internet.

The science, however, is as much a conjecture as it is now. Steven Schneider - climatologist from Stanford, member of the IPCC in 2001, global warming advocate - wrote in 1971 (in Science, nonetheless):

However, it is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection... should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 °C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

He was, of course, using a model looking at the effects of aerosol (cooling) and CO2 (warming). Unfortunately, he also said this:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989, see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.

But then he had no financial incentive to lie, did he? For true believers, money is not the biggest incentive. It's the desire to make the world a "better" place.

As for researchers and their biases, how about this: Even papers that do not support AGW have to add a disclaimer to show that AGW is still a possibility. For example, a study by the Institute of Astronomy in Zurich says that "the sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1000 years," suggesting that solar activity is influencing the global climate. This was presented in a conference in Hamburg, Germany. The paper, however, included the statement that the research "... is still in full agreement with the idea that CO2 plays, through its greenhouse effect, a key role in amplifying the initial orbital forcing ...." Isn't it strange that a research that has nothing to do with CO2 (they were studying sun spots) has to mention it anyway?

Another study, funded by the NOAA, concludes that the strength and frequency of hurricanes may decrease because of global warming. And in the end, they included that "[t]his study does not, in any way, undermine the widespread consensus in the scientific community about the reality of global warming."

If I'm going to doubt the bias of global warming studies, I'll think that they are more inclined to support it because of peer pressure than go against it and do true science.

3. As for the consensus, that you are having such a difficult time giving up on, why was it okay when the consensus was pointing one way (they were non-financially incentivized, honest scientists), but not the other way (greedy scientists paid off by the oil companies)? I can also go with a conspiracy theory: It's hard to get research funding and get published if you don't toe the anthropogenic global warming line. But wait. If the anti-GW are in charge now (they're getting more papers published), then a friendly paper like the research I mentioned proving there is no consensus should be getting major support, right? But it's not, that's why it's being published in a third rate journal.... Of course it can also just mean it's a third rate paper.

The problem with that is: the data is there. It's just data-mining. Anyone who has access to the database can easily reproduce the results. It's one of those things that can be easily verified. I haven't had the time to do this myself, but with the assiduousness that many people have been exhibiting with regards to this subject, you'll have to doubt the sanity of this guy if he fudged his data because it can be easily exposed.

And I'd also like to point out that Oreskes' piece, although it was published in Science, was more of an editorial piece rather than peer-reviewed article. She did not submit it as a science paper but as a position paper. It was an Essay on Science and Society. You'll be proud to know that she is in the esteemed company of other unassailable pieces such as "Opening Doors to Science in Tunisia" and "Teaching Evolution in Mexico." And, since she is such an expert on the topic, you will not be surprised to know that she is a professor of history and science studies in UC San Diego. Her PhD, which makes her such an expert in global warming, is on Geological Research and History of Science.

And for the record, I was arguing the definition of "consensus" based on Oreskes methodology herself. Like I said, any paper that concludes with something resembling "human activity may have contributing effects" is counted among the consensus pieces. The two papers I mentioned above - on solar spots and hurricanes - would have been counted to be in consensus with AGW.



Yes, I'm sarcastic and I'm done with this topic. Your reaction to arguments against AGW are not counter-arguments, but ad hominem attacks. They're not published in good enough journals! It's not real! (in reference to the mid-century cooling.) They're being paid off by oil companies! They're like tobacco companies! It's a small mistake, does not mean anything! (the fact that no climate models have been proven to be accurate by any degree).

I asked you to show us a scientific paper with hard science in it, and you don't come up with anything. Oh, by the way, Scientific American hardly counts as a refereed science journal either.

If you want to change your way of life, go ahead, that's your business. But please don't think that we should ALL go jump in the lake because some of us are scared witless.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. So pardon me but it will take more than just shrill screaming that the sky is falling before I jump inside the fox's den. At least not with further proof that it is actually falling.