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Comments 104501 to 104550:

104501. HumanityRules at 00:42 AM on 16 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Response to 4.Argus In an attempt to refute Argus' accusation of guilt by association you immediately repeat the idea. "Her point is that the people who are skepticial towards AGW are the same people who used the same arguments against other areas of scientific consensus." You cannot right off all skeptics as Fred Singers, you lose credibility by suggesting such a thing. It would be like me suggesting all climate scientist have the same agenda driven position as James Hansen. Taking the details here at face value Singer essentially seems to be an anti-state libitarian who is oppposed to regulation against industry, it seems like the only thing that links all these issues. Not all skeptics are coming from this position, I know this for a fact. Even if this is true it's still only right that Singers ideas are engaged, it shouldn't be so difficult if "AGW is true". People ultimately have the right to dissent no matter how unpleasant (or pleasant) they are. But then I'm an old-fashioned democrat. "AGW isn't true because the skeptic arguments are similar to skeptic arguments against DDT, etc." There seems to be no logic in this comment. What have clouds got to do with DDT? Guilt by association??? (BTW Argus you seem to be falling for the same fallacy with your linking of Nazism and Communism. These are both historically specific movements, both require critiques independant of each other.)
104502. Daniel Bailey at 00:25 AM on 16 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Re: Maarten Ambaum Thank you for taking the time to shed some light on your paper. It's appreciated. The Yooper
104503. Maarten Ambaum at 00:16 AM on 16 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Dear Dikran (Re post 39) Perhaps I misunderstand you and Tamino, but a low p-value cannot objectively be used to reject a null-hypothesis; it simply does not contain the required information to do so. I formalize this in my paper, if you like to know more. On the other hand, a high p-value indicates that the presented evidence is easily consistent with the null hypothesis. This is not evidence that the null-hypothesis is true; the evidence could also be consistent with the alternative hypothesis. A significance test simply contains no information either way. Using Occam's razor we can then conclude that there is no evidence for our hypothesis, so we better stick with the null-hypothesis. It is Occam's razor that makes the argument here, not the significance test. Maarten
104504. Dikran Marsupial at 00:01 AM on 16 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        The terminology used in reporting the results of statistical tests is indeed a thorny issue. Taminos comment that "it merely negates the null hypothesis.", would have been O.K. if he had instead written "is enough for us to reject the null hypothesis". The difference, while subtle, is very important; "negating" the null hypothesis is a statement that the null hypothesis is false, while "rejecting" the null hypothesis is merely a statement that we have made a subjective (if perhaps very reasonable) choice not to believe the null hypothesis based on the evidence - but stops well short of saying that it is false. Essentially it is only a convention that we "reject" the null hypothesis if the p-value falls below some critical value (which is also a subjective choice) - nothing more. The two phrases we should use would be something along the lines of "we can reject the null hypothesis" or "we are unable to reject the null hypothesis" - the frequentist test doesn't really give a basis to make any statement about the alternative hypothesis (note the alternative hypothesis doesn't actually appear in the frequentist test - so perhaps that isn't surprising!).
104505. Alexandre at 23:58 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Very good topic, btw. About time.
104506. Alexandre at 23:57 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Ok, now a derogatory comment on my own country, Brazil. Back-of-the-envelope bill: stop deforestation now, effectively cutting down 1994 emissions by some 20-30% immediately, with very marginal impacts to national GDP (logging in the Amazon is about 0.07% of the national GDP). Here's our emission inventory. Unfortunately in Portuguese, but the wrap-up graph on the last page is understandable with minimal google translating work.
104507. The Skeptical Chymist at 23:54 PM on 15 November 2010
        Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
        Thanks for a well explained post Robert. Solving these sorts of "mysteries" is part of the reason us science geeks enjoy science.
104508. CBDunkerson at 23:20 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Argus, I think the larger argument is that just as these efforts at attacking science and confusing the public had some success in past incidents (tobacco, asbestos, evolution, et cetera) so to are they in part responsible for the 'debate' over global warming. This site includes dozens of examples of 'skeptic' arguments which are provably clearly false... doubt has been created by the same deceptive tactics used in the past attacks on science Oreskes and Conway identify. No, that does not mean that all 'skeptics' are being deliberately deceptive or that all 'skeptic' arguments are wrong. However, it does mean that the discussion has been poisoned by deliberate misinformation. Which logically should lead everyone interested in the truth to want to identify provably false arguments and shut them out so we can deal with these issues from a foundation of reality.
104509. Argus at 22:53 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Thanks, tobyjoice: "What can you deduce from the foregoing?: - Most likely that I should not trust Mr X, and now I do not have to read that book. But are all "the people who are skeptical" wrong because Mr X (and Y and Z) is wrong? And are all "the people who are skepticial towards AGW" today, "the same people who used the same arguments against other areas of scientific consensus" ?
104510. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 22:44 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        I haven't read the book yet, but listened to Dr Oreskes on the ABC today. One of the points she made was that this tiny group of people appeared to be in it for ideological reasons rather than for monetary gain. They appear to be some sort of anarchists (my interpretation not Oreskes) and against any government guidance let alone intergovernmental cooperation or intervention. The other point was that they used their scientific qualifications and position of influence to try to boost their credibility. However none of them are specialists in the areas they criticised. In effect they are just Joe Bloggs. In fact it's worse, because they are peddling falsehoods, whereas Joe Bloggs knows that smoking tobacco carries high health risks, the earth is warming and the climate is changing.
104511. Maarten Ambaum at 22:38 PM on 15 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        PS: I would like to highlight Tom Dayton's excellent contribution (no 16, above - I don't know how to include internal links - sorry). I agree very much with what he says. But may I just add that significance tests are perhaps not as innocent as he makes them out to be. Indeed, they are usually only a small part of the evidence, but I have been involved in discussions where an important part of the argument was whether a certain link, as measured by linear correlation, was "significant" (in the statistical meaning). This was very much an instance of explorative data analysis, where some link was posited, with only tenuous indications this link should be there, and where significance tests were an important part of the argument. Interestingly, that claimed link has now become part of mainstream climate literature (I am referring to "annular modes" which appear to indicate a connection between Atlantic and Pacific pressure patterns) and a large number of people have by now stopped to worry whether this implied link is really present. This is a feature of significance tests in general: perhaps many people do not mean to say that a low p-value is evidence for their hypothesis, but by publishing the low p-value along with phrases such as, "this or that effect is significant at the 95% level" certainly seems to imply that that want to use these statistics as positive evidence at face value.
104512. Dikran Marsupial at 22:26 PM on 15 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Eric L @ 18 I strongly disagree that scientists should not bother with Bayesian statistics, especially in the case of statistical significance tests. There is rather more to Bayesianism than Bayes rule (which is a fundamental law of probability whether Bayesian or frequentist); the very definition of what a probability actually is, is an argument in favour of the Bayesian framework in this case. The problem with frequentist approach to statistical significance tests is that they fundamentally cannot assign a probability to the truth of a hypothesis, because a hypothesis is either true or it isn't, its truth is not a random variable and has no long run frequency (the frequentist definition of a probability). Unfortunately the probability of the alternative hypothesis being true is exactly what we want to know! Fortunately the Bayesian definition of probability is based on the state of knowledge regarding the truth of a proposition, so the Bayesian framework can directly assign a probability to the truth of a hypothesis. Generally in science it is best to carefully formulate the question you want to ask, and then choose a method that is capable of giving a direct answer to that question. As such the Bayesian approach is perfectly respectable, if not preferable. The frequentist approach can only give an indirect answer, telling you the likelihood of the observations assuming the null hypothesis is true, and leaving it up to you to decide what to conclude from that. Most of the problems with frequentist statistical tests lie in mistaking the indirect answer to the key question for a direct (Bayesian) one. The Bayesian approach is more than a means of aggregating evidence; one of the most important benefits of the Bayesian approach is that it gives mechanism to properly incorporate the fact that you know you don't know something, by assigning a non- or minimally-informative prior on it and marginalising it out of the analysis. For instance, if you want to model the impacts of climate change, it is incorrect to assume we know the exact value of climate sensitivity (for instance by picking the maximum likelihood value), instead we should integrate it out by computing an average of the impacts for each value of climate sensitivity weighted by its plausibility according to what we do know. "When do Bayesian statistics matter? When the prior probability is extreme (very likely or very unlikely). So if the chance of a woman your age has breast cancer is 1 in 1000, and mammograms have a 1 in 100 false positive rate, and you had one done as part of a routine checkup and it came back positive, Bayesian statistics tells us that chances are you don't have cancer." In this case, the Bayesian result exactly coincides with that from the frequentist approach. The only difference is that the Bayesian approach allows you to formulate the question in terms of an individual patient, rather than a randomly selected member of some population with the same test results. "Bayesian statistics that combining your result with the prior gives you 99% confidence and, presto! a statistically significant publishable result! Of course not." Indeed not! Bayesian conclusions are only as strong as the priors used, if you could show the priors were unreasonable then you could reject the result of the test (and the paper). If you can't question the prior, you are logically forced to accept the result of the test. The good thing about the Bayesian approach is that the priors are explicitly stated. If you disagree with the use of priors on the hypothesis, you could always use a "significance test" based on Bayes factors instead, where the priors (on the hypotheses) do not appear in the analysis. "And if someone else finds further evidence and publishes a paper showing P(M5|N), well now that Bayesian analysis you did in your paper to get P(N|M1..M4) is out of date." That is equally true of any frequentist analysis - if your information changes, your view on the truth of the hypothesis should also change, whatever form of analysis you choose. "But that calculation of P(M4|N) stands, and will forever be useful as a piece of the evidence used to assess P(N)." That is only correct if M4 is independent of M1-M3 & M5 (otherwise it is the so-called Naive Bayes approach), which in the case of climate change is rather unlikely as rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are posited to be a causal factor for a great many phenomena. "And in this analogy we can't perfectly do the Bayesian calculation because we don't really know what fraction of the population has cancer" This is incorrect, the whole point of the Bayesian formulation is that it allows your to deal rationally with the fact that you don't know something, or that you have imperfect knowledge of somthing. You choose a prior distribution that captures what you do and don't know about it and marginalise. The perfect Bayesian calculation reflects the consequences of that uncertainty. ", except for what we infer through these tests." This is incorrect, the operational priors are estimated from epidemiological studies, not just from diagnostic tests followed by biopsies. "But you don't subject patients to tests that tell 1 in 5 healthy people they have cancer" Neither a competent Bayesian nor frequentist statisticians would do so. Eric L. @19: I agree there, however given sufficient data it is similarly virtually always possible to get a statistically significant result even if the effect size is negligible, which is the flip side to the same coin. A common criticism of frequentist statistical tests is that we almost always know from prior knowledge that the null hypothesis is false from the outset. For instance with temperature trends, do we really think the trend is actually exactly zero? Anyway the differences between the two frameworks is a fascinating topic in its own right, you need a really solid understanding of both frameworks to know which tool to use for which job.
104513. Maarten Ambaum at 22:17 PM on 15 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Dear All, Thank you all for your reactions to my post. I hope you don't mind it if stick my oar in in some of the topics you raised. If I have overlooked something, please let me know. Sorry for the somewhat rambling response here ... Re post 1, and the pirate-global mean temperature correlation: Alexandre is of course right to say that we need statistics and physics to make any progress. What I am highlighting, though, is not that specific issue (which is serious and important in itself). I am highlighting that significance tests are used to give certain statistical results higher "credibility" than others, based on a largely spurious test. So it is the selection of statistical results that I am objecting to, not the statistical results per se. Some posts (specifically Steve L) refer to the frequentist vs Bayesian discussion. This is interesting in itself, but in my paper I am simply applying Bayes' equation, which also a frequentists would accept as indisputable. The difference comes in the interpretation of the meaning of these probabilities. Indeed, significance tests have a clear frequentist flavour, while hypothesis tests have a much more Bayesian flavour. I think it is hard to escape that scientific hypotheses naturally fit a Bayesian framework. Nonetheless, I think the distinction between Bayesian and frequentist interpretations is largely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Several posts point out that scientists should know about this and also that climate science should not be singled out. Indeed, in my paper I point to more general references which highlight the misuse of significance tests in a wide spectrum of fields (medicine, economics, sociology, psychology, biology, ...) In fact, I suspect that your average research psychologist knows more about the pitfalls of significance tests than the climate scientist. In those more "softer" fields, people have had to mainly rely on statistics from the start and therefore needed to know how to use statistics from day one. In those fields, many people have pointed this problem out (and it still seems to persist). Climate science has always been a subfield of physics, where significance tests are largely irrelevant. I bet that most physicists (by training, I am a theoretical physicist myself) didn't get a stats course in their curriculum! However, these days more and more geographical thinking seems to enter the field of climate science with the resulting lack of rigour and physical underpinning. Many climate scientists have become geographers of their model worlds! Also, the point I am making is not new: many people are aware of the problems with significance tests, and many people have pointed it out before (although most practitioners probably believe that climate scientists would know better). It boggles the mind that the error keeps on being propagated - surely an interesting question for a psychologist or sociologist to get their teeth into. I do have an opinion about why this may be, but that would make this post even longer. Regarding the somewhat rambling posts about 75% of papers being misleading in part. I claim that 75% of papers (in my own paper I clearly state that this is based just 1 (one) sample and make no claim regarding its statistical significance!) make a technical misuse of significance tests: they use it to select or highlight certain statistical results in favour of others. Perhaps I should write a post where I discuss what significance tests can be used for (largely for debunking fake hypotheses, but even this is an application with its own pitfalls). However, this is generally not how significance tests are presented in the literature. The latter of course follows from the fact that very few scientists would publish negative results (in fact, they would probably have a hard time to get it past the reviewers). Some people, including John Cook himself, pointed me to a post by Tamino. Tamino also highlights some further points from my original paper. Let me just add two little comments to Tamino's interesting post: Tamino states that "I’ve certainly struggled to emphasize to colleagues that a highly significant statistical result does not prove that one’s hypothesis is true, it merely negates the null hypothesis." This is again the error of the transposed conditional: a low p-value does not negate the null-hypothesis, it just indicates that our statistical result would be unlikely in case the null-hypothesis were true. It is remarkable how easily we can stray into this error. Tamino also seems to indicate that the p-value does provide useful quantitative information. I cannot find any evidence in his post of this. Yes, the p-value is quantitative, but its usefulness is never really made clear. The p-value is perhaps an indication of the signal-to-noise ratio; a high p-value means that it will be difficult to see any evidence of any claimed effect. A low p-value indicates very little really: we want to study the validity of some hypothesis assuming it is false; some attempt at a reductio ad absurdum proof of your hypothesis - unfortunately it is not quite that ...
104514. RSVP at 22:12 PM on 15 November 2010
        Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
        archiesteel #144 I said, "which is in turn tied directly to natural chemical energy." then you said, "So is Religion. So is making stuff up. So it trolling. What is your point? " The point is clear. If something itnt profitable, it will ultimately affect the bottom line. Get the bottom line low enough and you wont have chemicals (food) to even get out of bed. Or do you run on batteries? Actually, even that would be chemical.
104515. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 22:04 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        @Dana Thanks for your efforts. You might be interested in reading the report from the Danish Climate Commission (it is also in English). www.klimakommissionen.dk
104516. RSVP at 22:03 PM on 15 November 2010
        Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
        Actually Thoughtful #147 "How many of us are using renewable energy right now?" I just threw another log in the fireplace.
104517. Berényi Péter at 21:37 PM on 15 November 2010
        Ice-Free Arctic
        #17 Camburn at 05:16 AM on 8 November, 2010 And not least, is the tremendous amount of soot that China spews that lands in the Arctic. Yes. Here is an intercomparison of Annual total number of hours of Reduced Visibility observed at the Hong Kong Observatory and Annual Minimum Sea Ice Extent in the Arctic (reversed scale). The teleconnection between Chinese soot and Arctic melt is undeniable. Let me note it is possible to burn coal with no soot output while it is impossible to burn it without producing CO₂. Eliminating black carbon emissions is not even prohibitively expensive. It is routinely done in Europe and to a somewhat lesser extent in the US of A. Some background material: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 110, D04204, 2005 doi:10.1029/2004JD005296 Distant origins of Arctic black carbon: A Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE experiment Dorothy Koch and James Hansen "The (former) Soviet Union (FSU) was implicated as a major source of Arctic haze in many studies. Novakov et al. [2003] found that black carbon emissions from the FSU in the late 1990s was less than 1/4 their peak levels of 1980. European emissions are also about 1/3 their levels in the 1970s. However China and India have doubled their BC emissions since the late 1970s. Thus BC emissions are more heavily weighted toward south Asia than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the Arctic haze studies took place."
104518. tobyjoyce at 21:34 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Argus, #4 The book goes more like this: X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition M X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition N X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition O M could be "acid rain", N could be "nuclear winter", O could be "tobacco smoking increases cancer risk" or "the ozone hole" ... And so on ... X has been demonstrated to be wrong in each case, but the use of argument A and tactic B have been invaluable in confusing the public, influencing key politicians and delaying corrective action. This has been worth $billions to important interests. X has been handsomely remunerated for his/ her work in propagating argument A and using tactic B. Now, X is using argument A and tactic B against P, which is global warming. What can you deduce from the foregoing?
104519. JMurphy at 21:30 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        I hope I may be allowed to make an observation on Camburn's posts above. If he/she wants to take it further, I suggest moving the discussion to Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming. Camburn wrote : "Russian heat wave: Black Swan Event not related to GAWG. So says Dr. Martin P. Hoerling of NOAA." As usual, things are not quite as simple as some would have us believe : As we learn from our 2010 experience what a sustained heat wave of +5ºC to+10ºC implies for human health, water resources, and agricultural productivity, a more meaningful appreciation for the potential consequences of the projected climate changes will emerge. It is clear that the random occurrence of a summertime block in the presence of the projected changes in future surface temperature would produce heat waves materially more severe than the 2010 event. The Russian Heat Wave of 2010 - Dr. Martin Hoerling As for Camburn's second link (HERE in translation), it is a collection of stories and reports, without any comparative data whatsover. Would anyone rely on this rather than something like the previous NOAA report ?
104520. tobyjoyce at 21:23 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        I read both books this year. Schneider's modelling predicted a "nuclear autumn" that was somewhat less disastrous than the "nuclear winter" predictions. Schneider (and many others - Oreskes quotes Kerry Emanuel in her book) thought Sagan had jumped a gun by going public with the "nuclear winter" scenario in news publications before the science was fully tested. Oreskes does not deal with Schneider's part in the controversy, but is critical of Sagan for "violating scientific norms". Her presentation has the dispute on two levels - firstly, the science, and then, how it was publicized. On the science, she emphasizes that "scientists broadly agreed that a nuclear war would lead to significant secondary climatic effects". It was at the conclusion that deniers took aim.
104521. Argus at 21:13 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Her book appears to be an example of using the method: 'Guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy' (wikipedia): If you are skeptic towards the AGW hypothesis, you are just like those people who did not believe that acid rain, DDT, CFCs and smoking was dangerous. Also, because the arguments used in global warming skepticism look similar to those false ones used against DDT or whatever, consequently AGW must be true. Quote: ''Guilt by association can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy, if the argument attacks a person because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument. This form of the argument is as follows: A makes claim P. Bs also make claim P. Therefore, A is a B. Example I: Social justice is a philosophy shared by Nazis and Communists, therefore churches that teach social justice are equivalent to Marxists and Fascists.''
        Response: You probably should read the book before posting such criticisms. Her book doesn't make that argument at all. Her point is that the people who are skepticial towards AGW are the same people who used the same arguments against other areas of scientific consensus. It's not 'Guilt by association' if you're talking about the same person.
        
        AGW isn't true because the skeptic arguments are similar to skeptic arguments against DDT, etc. AGW is true because of the multiple lines of evidence. Scientists built a consensus on smoking, acid rain and ozone depletion by gradually accumulating multiple lines of evidence painting a single, consistent picture. Similarly, scientists have built up many lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming. And when the evidence is so strong, the only way to refute it is the diversional and rhetorical techniques employed by the Merchants of Doubt.
        
        But Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain it a lot better than I do and in much greater detail, so I'd recommend reading their book.
104522. Alec Cowan at 21:05 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        #6 @Robert Way Whatever you had in mind when you asked, costs in terms of relinquished GDP growth are in table 1. As the initial "and" let you deduct, my answer was intended for Camburn (#1) who seems to be arguing "something must be done but not in this very moment" by comparing something recurrent -annual- with some one time cost depicted as abruptly incurred. This new argument is the way to get a new ten-year delay and it is the expected response to this site's 'moving into solutions' new approach. So, I expect more of this kind: A comparing a function and it's derivative in an argument, B pointing that fact and C asking B 'so, what's the function then?'.
104523. Dan Olner at 20:10 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        "When scientists calculated that nuclear war would cause a devastating nuclear winter, the same group of scientists sought to cast doubt not only on the science but on the entire scientific establishment." Just an aside: Steve Schneider, in his 'Science as a Contact Sport', argues that Sagan's case for a nuclear winter wasn't as scientifically certain as Sagan was making out. He also points out you hardly need the nuclear winter argument to conclude that global nuclear war is a bad idea. He bought it up in the book to make clear that we have to follow the science at all costs. I haven't read Merchants of Doubt, so I don't know what Oreskes argues (or indeed if Sagan is the 'nuclear winter' proponent) but thought it worth mentioning.
104524. tobyjoyce at 19:39 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Read the book. Highly recommended. There are several videos on You Tube featuring Naomi Oreskes e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
104525. adelady at 19:36 PM on 15 November 2010
        CO2 limits will harm the economy
        Not much of a problem. Massive new bureaucracy? I don't think so. Taxes are one thing modern governments have lots of experience with - income taxes, goods & services, excise, import duties - all well established, ho-hum, routine procedures. Hand over the legislation and the public servants will just do the same as they've always done. Heavy industry, light industry, any industry? All you have to do is organise import duties to match homegrown production taxes so that it won't matter where the stuff is produced, the same imposts will go on.
104526. adelady at 19:29 PM on 15 November 2010
        Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
        Rats. Adelaide's fully booked. Someone'd better do a video.
        Response: Hmm, I didn't even think to book, I was just going to turn up (slaps forehead). Thanks for the tip!
104527. cloa513 at 18:07 PM on 15 November 2010
        CO2 limits will harm the economy
        Do these analysis consider the global industry transfer- it may destroy the last bit of heavy industry in the US and send it somewhere they have no problem polluting much more- let alone other effects of that ? How about the cost the massive new bureacracy for this tax- I admit less than that for a carbon trading scheme? Even more disasterous for somewhere like Australia and no net benefit on carbon dioxide output.
104528. Daniel Bailey at 17:20 PM on 15 November 2010
        Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
        Thanks for the hard work, Robert! Will take me a while to digest and internalize. The Yooper
104529. Daniel Bailey at 17:12 PM on 15 November 2010
        Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
        Re: Camburn (30, 32) One more thing: Robert Way takes a very insightful look into the GRACE issue here. Topical, timely, worth the read. The Yooper
104530. Phil263 at 16:58 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Dana "Economic impacts of carbon pricing" Hmmm! I thought that discussing the paradign used to assess these impacts would be relevant...Any way It doesn't matter. If you've got a chance, I suggest the following: Daly, H 1997: Beyond growth, the economics of sustainable development Jackson T 2009, Prosperity without Growth: economics for a finite planet
104531. Marcus at 16:55 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        The problem, TOP, is that the people are making these decisions based largely on falsehoods. Simple actions like improvements in fuel & energy efficiency will not only reduce CO2 emissions (by as much as 20% or more) but also reduce people's energy & fuel bills. Yet if you even suggest that to most people (especially those who listen to the mainstream press too much) they look at you like you're some kind of *Communist*! As to planting trees, TOP, well that's all well & good but-where do you suggest? Our global population grows in leaps & bounds-& forests are usually the first to go in our desire for living space. When you can convince the Economic Fundamentalists that forests are more important than more population growth, then you'll really have achieved something!
104532. TOP at 16:49 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        One little flaw in all this. What if the people don't want it? I mean, just hypothetically, what if they vote out the politicians who favor this kind of legislation? @renewable guy To move the average temperature down you have to remove carbon, and you have to do it now. Cap and Trade won't do that. Planting trees will.
104533. dana1981 at 16:48 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Mike - I provided links to the studies and models where possible. Phil263 - your second question is beyond the scope of this discussion. Camburn - by itself, a single country's cap and trade system would not have a significant impact on global temperatures. But we don't act in a vacuum. If the USA enacts serious climate legislation, other countries will follow suit. If we don't, they'll use our inaction as an excuse for their own (i.e. see Australia and Canada).
104534. renewable guy at 16:31 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Camburn: ******************************************************************* According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree? ****************************************************************** Moving the average earth temperature downward is a win and cap and trade can acheive that. And do so at a profit. When businesses get the economic signal from cap and trade, they will look at their bottom line and look for the way to acheive the carbon goals in the most efficient way. Cap and trade frees up the businesses to acheive the goals in the cheapest, most timely fashion. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085 The site above does a nice job of tieing the financial incentives with reducing carbon emissions.
104535. Phil263 at 16:24 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Dana Even though you mentioned other variables, GDP IS your headline indicator. I also note that "utility bills" "Gasoline prices" and "household costs" are all sub-variables that will come somewhere under the GDP calculation. What about costs such as: loss of clean air and clean water due to economic activity, loss of species,loss of pristine landscapes such as the Great Barrier Reef.... I know hard to quantify, but real nonetheless! And...you haven't addressed my second objection: IS ongoing economic growth (measured by GDP) sustainable and desirable? Can we keep using non-renewable resources as infinitum? Can we exploit renewable resources below replacement capacity? Reducing our carbon emissions is urgent, but the debate about human economic activities should be far broader.
104536. renewable guy at 16:14 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Camburn: Cap and trade is about investing our way out of a serious problem. It seems that this 200 billion for the United States for instance in oil imports would be a really good target for the US to work on as well as other countries. Strategic investment while pulling ourselves out of a slump. The government being the stimulus to move in a more self sufficient direction. The market will kick in its stimulus a little too late when we are already at the point of panic. To prepare for the problems down the road eases the magnitude of crisis. For instance cap and trade will accelerate us towards the solution for Peak Oil.
104537. Marcus at 16:14 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        I find it odd though, Mike, that some people accept the word of economists as Gospel Truth in matters relating to Privatization & De-regulation; yet they're suddenly not to be trusted the moment they start modeling the potential impacts of CO2 mitigation. For the record, a number of Economists *did* see the recent GFC coming, but their calls for action were largely ignored by a Republican Dominated Congress.
104538. Marcus at 16:11 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Mike, that coal is almost certainly going to run out one day-the faster we use it, the faster it will disappear. When it runs out, so too will the jobs & the money. So we have a choice: accept the need to switch to *sustainable* jobs before the source of your regions prosperity runs dry, or wait until after the coal is gone, & watch the whole area go the way of a host of Rust Belt Towns.
104539. John Chapman at 16:11 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        I'm suspicious about any economist who predicts the GDP in 40 years time to a precision of 0.01%! ("The main exception is the IGEM analysis, which finds a 2.15% reduction in GDP for the Lieberman-Warner by bill by 2030, and a 3.59% reduction by 2050").
104540. robert way at 16:10 PM on 15 November 2010
        Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
        Good Catch.
104541. Camburn at 16:06 PM on 15 November 2010
        Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
        Thank you Yooper.
104542. Camburn at 16:02 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Response to moderator: http://therese-phil.livejournal.com/171196.html Google translator will tranlate the link of historical Russian heat waves. This is off topic for this discussion and I will not comment on Russia again.
104543. KeenOn350 at 16:00 PM on 15 November 2010
        Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
        Robert - Typo in para 5? as a first attempt but [not?] THE definitive
104544. Camburn at 15:51 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        dana1981: I really wish that the current economic distress will be temporary. However, economic history shows that this is far from a temporary condition. The void of leadership in the USA fortells of more floundering, rather than solutions to the debt crisis presented and acted upon. A rise in sea levels of 5 meters will not happen overnight, if it happens at all. According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree?
104545. Eric L at 15:33 PM on 15 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Humanity Rules, In the post you seemed to object to, I was referring to making claims based on statistical insignificance, as when many climate deniers misunderstood Phil Jones' remarks about warming since 1995 not being statistically significant as evidence that warming has stopped. A statistically insignificant warming trend isn't evidence either way. This is not the sort of error Dr. Ambaum is talking about. Are you aware of instances where climate scientists have made this error? TOP, Be sure you are not misinterpreting the author as saying climate scientists should be making weaker claims or that they are publishing "statistically significant" results that if tested the way the author thinks they should be would be insignificant. Chances are climate scientists would use Bayesian statistics to show that they can make even stronger claims of confidence. For example, because the physics of climate lead you to believe it should be warming with high probability, you can combine this prior probability with your analysis of the temperature data to give an even stronger confidence in the existence of a warming trend than you would have otherwise. If Phil Jones had followed Dr. Anbaum's advice when calculating statistical significance, he would have said something far less useful to those trying to cast doubt on warming. But I think he was right not to do it that way, as I mentioned above. And I should qualify that by saying I haven't read the paper, only this post, so maybe I don't understand what it is Dr. Anbaum thinks they should be doing when analyzing data.
104546. Tom Dayton at 15:32 PM on 15 November 2010
        How significance tests are misused in climate science
        Dikran Marsupial posted an excellent explanation of the topic of this post, on Tamino's Open Mind blog. He made similar points to the ones I was trying to make here and here.
104547. mitcher at 15:30 PM on 15 November 2010
        Hockey stick is broken
        My comment to part of this article is in relation to the section which says that the McIntyre(2004) publication says that "the hockey stick shape was the inevitable result of the statistical method used (principal components analysis). They also claimed temperatures over the 15th Century were derived from one bristlecone pine proxy record." I do not believe this is a correct interpretation of the aricle - i think the article claims that the hockey stick shape was a results of using an incorrect "scaling" of the time series by using only the last part of the entire time series - the 20th century only. He claims this overly weights the data and results in the hockey stick affect and the hockey stick is not actually resident in the data without this scaling (at least not as a PC1 component). In addition I do not think he claims that the data temperatures where from one bristlecone but that the bristlecone data is not necessarily reliable as it exagerates the true temparuture due to the species magnified growth in a higher C02 environment. This is evident in the article written in 2005 by McKitrick to the APEC Study group titled "what is the Hockey Stick Debate about?"
104548. dana1981 at 15:19 PM on 15 November 2010
        Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
        Camburn, please make up your mind. First you say these analyses could not forsee the economic problems which were already underway when they were done. Then you say the analyses ignored the current economic distress because they assumed it would be temporary - which is obviously true! I certainly hope you don't think the recession is permanent. Bern @ #10 is referencing the Stern Report (5-20% of GDP spent on mitigation). Your suggestion that mitigation will be cheap because sea level won't rise 5 meters is just a wee bit ridiculously oversimplified and wrong. Phil263 #9 - you may have noticed that GDP was only one of many economic factors analyzed here.
104549. Daniel Bailey at 15:05 PM on 15 November 2010
        Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
        Re: Camburn (30) You might be better served with investigating yourself the intricacies of both satellite altimetry and microwave sounding unit platforms: Here's an Open Mind piece Tamino did on the overall history and data corrections performed on orbital MSU platforms (rescued from Internet cache files), as well as a Skeptical Science piece on MSU satellite platforms. As far as Jason/Topex/Poseidon, a Skeptical Science piece on that can be found here, as well as one on sea level rise. Documentation on Jason/Topex/Poseidon corrections can be found here. Global altimetry data can be found here, if you're inclined to poke under the hood yourself. Geoid differences can play havoc with expectations surrounding sea levels. Hope that helps, The Yooper
104550. Bern at 14:57 PM on 15 November 2010
        Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
        Ah, BP, so you're saying we should put our immediate efforts toward improving energy efficiency of homes? Replacing thin walls/roofs with the thermal equivalent of your "2 feet thick brick walls"? I agree, there is much to be saved there, and in improving the efficiency of other wasteful forms of energy use. One minor example: when I lived in the US for a while, about 10 years back, I was absolutely astounded by the fact that you had 200-watt standard light globes. I'd never seen anything more than a 100w globe here in Australia (I'm talking standard globes, obviously spotlights and other lights have higher ratings). The thing that I found sad and amusing at the same time, was that, even using higher powered lights than a typical Aussie home, the American homes I saw were much, much darker inside - primarily because most American lights had very dark, heavy lampshades, designed to 'hide' the light, where most Australian fittings seem to be designed to spread light (frosted glass covers being very common here).

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