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Dikran Marsupial at 20:17 PM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Harry Twinotter - Prof. Curry doesn't understand the fundamental principles of risk management if she thinks that uncertainty is a justification for taking no action. The principle of minimum risk decision making says that you compute a weighted sum (more accurately an integral) over all possible outcomes weighted by their probability of ocurrence and pick the strategy with the lowest expected risk. If there is high uncertainty, this integral is likely to be dominated by outcomes in the tails of the distribution (i.e. unlikely but severe impact). The possibility of those events justify action to mitigate them.
On the other hand, if there were less uncertainty, and we could rule out the possibility of these "unlikely but severe impact", we might then have a justification for doing nothing.
Uncertainty is not our friend.
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Harry Twinotter at 19:00 PM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
John Cook,
taking Judith Curry's quote out of context, then introducing Risk Management cartoons like the above appears to be presenting a straw man argument against her. I think it is clear from the 2007 comment that Judith Curry does understand the "fundamental principles of risk management". I don't know about her "fellow contrarians" because you have not provided any evidence that they misunderstand risk management.
In Judith Curry's case I think the best thing would be to focus on why she feels the evidence for Global Warming is so uncertain. -
Bernard J. at 17:25 PM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Aside from the impacts of climate change that nearly all professional scientists agree will manifest, there are other reasons for action:
1) mitigation of the social upheaval that will follow the declining availability of fossil fuels,
2) mitigation of the social upheaval that will follow when geopolitical conflicts arise as a result of the declining availability of fossil fuels,
3) mitigation of the effects of losing the non-energy industrial feedstock benefits of fossil carbon,
4) mitigation of the polluting effects of the extraction and use of fossil carbon.
Only an insane person would advocate business as usual in buring fossil carbon, given the inevitable brick wall of consequences toward which humanity is rushing.
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TonyW at 17:00 PM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Marcia McNutt's attempt to paint herself as a champion of reduced emissions is certainly pathetic. She explicitly ("I drive a Prius") acknowledges that she supports a society and civilisation that is ruining the life of future generations (and probably existing ones). I strongly suspect that most of her lifestyle choices negate the small things she thinks she's doing to contribute to a reasonable response the crisis of our time. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 14:44 PM on 5 March 2014Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr
And in the end Pielke's repetition of one sentence that conveyed what he wanted to say while including the counter point in a footnote is simply a case of Plausible Deniability. He can give one message, his preferred one, in the full expectation that most readers/listeners will only take in that fact (how many of the senators are actually likely to read every footnote in the written text; how many will actually read the written submission).
Then if someone calls him out on it as Holdren did he can splutter indignantly and say 'see, see I did say that as well!'
Perfect, textbook Plausible Deniability at work.
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Tom Curtis at 13:26 PM on 5 March 2014Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr
Further to my post above, here are Pielke Jr's tweets in response to
"Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
1/3 John Holdren vs. IPCC on droughtRoger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
2/3 Holdren: "we are seeing droughts in drought-prone regions becoming more frequent, more severe and longer" http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/obama-climate-fund-103524.html#ixzz2tIoTzL8v …Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
3/3 IPCC 2013: "not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought"Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
IPCC on drought "low-confidence" vs. Holdren "one of the better-understood dimensions" Paging IPCC authors, climate scis .... anyone care?Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
US Govt report "droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent and cover a smaller portion of the US over the last century"Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
Nature paper 2012 "Little change in global drought over the past 60 years" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/nature11575.html …Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
Holdren: "global climate change is increasing the intensity and the frequency and the life of drought" http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/obama-climate-fund-103524.html …Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
If climate scientists want more credibility they are going to have to look at wrong things said by their political friends, not just enemiesRoger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
OK, enough on the drought nonsense, did you hear about those fancy skate suits? http://leastthing.blogspot.com/2014/02/its-drag-those-usa-skating-suits.html …Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr Feb 14
@andersbolling That's right, thanks. The zombies will always be with us. But it is brazen for zombie science to show up in the White House!"It should be noted that these are in response to Holdren's comments on Feb 14th to the press, not his testimony before Congress. Consequently, the comments Pielke addresses have not made any reference to Pielke. Further, they explicitly address the issue of drought in the SW of the US, and specifically California. Despite this, Pielke's favourite sentence from the CCSP (2008) pops up yet again, with no reference to the following sentence which explicitly addresses the region Holdren was referring to.
Further, he quotes the IPCC on global trends, but the IPCC SREX says regarding trends:
"Global-scale trends in a specific extreme may be either more reliable (e.g., for temperature extremes) or less reliable (e.g., for droughts) than some regional-scale trends, depending on the geographical uniformity of the trends in the specific extreme."
So though he puts himself forward as championing the IPCC position, he ignores the IPCC's statements of the relative importance of global vs regional trends when it comes to understanding drought.
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Tom Curtis at 11:47 AM on 5 March 2014Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr
I note with surprise that the link to Pielke's response to this article that had been provided by Russ R has been deleted. Here it is again.
Pielke makes the issue all about him. He makes the first, and foremost issue the fact that Holdren, under questioning in his testimony before Congress says, "The first few people you quoted [ie, Spencer and Pielke Jr] are not representative of the mainstream scientific opinion on this point". In his response, Pielke writes:
"To accuse an academic of holding views that lie outside the scientific mainstream is the sort of delegitimizing talk that is of course common on blogs in the climate wars. But it is rare for political appointee in any capacity -- the president's science advisor no less -- to accuse an individual academic of holding views are are not simply wrong, but in fact scientifically illegitimate. Very strong stuff."This claim is, however, complete nonsense. To be outside the mainstream is simply to hold a distinctly minority view. All sorts of scientists have held distinctly minority views in the past, including Einstein with respect to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Nobody thinks that Einstein was a worse scientist for that. Others who have held views distinctly outside the mainstream include Darwin, Wegener, and Hansen (who is outside the mainstream on the potential rate of future sea level rise, and on the possibility of runaway global warming). I certainly do not think less of any of those scientists for daring to be different. What matters is not whether or not you agree or disagree with the mainstream, but how you go about doing so.
In fact, Pielke, if taken seriously has just condemned Spencer, Christie, Singer, Salby, Pielke Snr, and so on (in a distressingly long list) who are definitely outside the mainstream on climate science "...of holding views are are not simply wrong, but in fact scientifically illegitimate". In some cases, I would agree with that assessment, but that is based on how they defend their views, not on the nature of the views themselves. Inconstrast, according to Pielke, having a distinctly minority opinion in science means your views are "wrong" and "scientifically illegitimate". As I said, complete nonsense.
Pielke's own words, however, contrast with Pielke's extreme sensitivity to Holdren's comments. In particular, in response to Holdren's original testimony, Pielke tweeted:"That's right, thanks. The zombies will always be with us. But it is brazen for zombie science to show up in the White House!"
I am not sure what is meant by "zombie science", but the term is clearly not meant to be flattering. It would appear in fact to be an attempt at "...the sort of delegitimizing talk that is of course common on blogs in the climate wars" (to quote Pielke). As seems often to be the case, Pielke appears to be hypocritical on this point. He is happy to do to others what he will not tolerate the slightest appearance of others doing to him.
Pielke also spends some time defending the claim that he left out vital information on the basis that he included it in a footnote. That is an odd defense. What he is charged with is not agreeing that there has been a trend towards droughts in the South West of the US. The evidence is that when he quoted CCSP report, he left out the second sentence which explicitly discusses situation in the SW US (see OP).
On this issue, I am first going to make a very technical point. Holdren says:
"[Any] reference to the CCSP 2008 report in this context should include not just the sentence highlighted in Dr. Pielke’s testimony but also the sentence that follows immediately in the relevant passage from that document and which relates specifically to the American West."
The point here is that he did not say (contrary to Pielke) that Pielke did not include the crucial sentence in the report. He said that any reference should include both. Crucially, a reference is an individual act of refering to some source. If you have a ten page report, and refer to Bloggs et al (1880) in the first page, and again on the tenth, that is two seperate references to Bloggs et al. In like maner, if you refer to Bloggs et al in the text, and then in a footnote, that is two seperate references to Bloggs et .The reason it is two seperate references is that, in the text you will have made some comment on the quote or reference. You will have indicated agreement, disagreement, or that it only expresses the opinion of Bloggs et al, etc. These comments do not apply the quotation or reference in the footnote. That is a crucial point.
In his published testimony (later quoted by Senator Sessions), Pielke wrote:
"Drought
What the IPCC SREX (2012) says:
“There is medium confidence that since the 1950s some regions of the world have experienced a trend to more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia.”
For the US the CCSP (2008)20 says: “droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U. S. over the last century.”21
What the data says:8. Drought has “for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U. S. over the last century.”"
(Emphasis in original)Earlier, in his "take home points", he had written:
'Drought has “for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U. S. over the last century.”'
He liked that clause so much that he repeated it three times, once in bold. That is three seperate references to the same sentence in CCSP (2008). In the final one, he prefaces the quote by saying that it is "What the data says". There can be no doubt in anybodies mind that Pielke not only agreed with this claim, but thought it a crucial claim that needed to be hammered home.
In constrast, the immediately following sentence is confined to a single footnote. The footnote reads:
'CCSP (2008) notes that “the main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where increased temperature has led to rising drought trends.”'
So, whereas we are told by Pielke that the lack of an overall US trend is a "take home point", and "What the data says"; it is merely footnoted that the CCSP notes the trends in the Southwest of the US. I should not need to mention that merely noting that somebody says something does not also note your agreement. It is not legitimate to infer Pielke's agreement with the CCSP from his footnote.
More importantly, it was not possible from Pielke's footnote to determine the relative importance accorded by the CCSP to the two sentences quoted by Pielke. Orphaning the second sentence in a footnote deprives it of context, underplaying it. More crucially, it deprives the preceding sentence of context, over emphasising it. As though that was not enough, Pielke then hammered the point three times.
From this, it is clear that Pielke did not include the second sentence in any reference to the first, as suggested by Holdren. On the contrary, he referenced the first sentence three times, without including the second sentence - but then included a fourth reference to the CCSP (2008), ie, on to the second sentence in a footnote. As a result, he massively distorted the relative importance of the two sentences in the CCSP, to the point that his practise represents blatant quotation out of context. As a further result, it was not possible from his testimony to determine that he even agreed with the second sentence, and has not been possible until his response to Holdren.
This post is long enough as is, so I will not discuss the further points at issue between Holdren and Pielke, which SFAICT, depend largely on Pielke misinterpreting Holdren, in part by ignoring the fact that Holdren's article was not just a response to Pielke, but primarilly a response to Senator Sessions.
Moderator Response:[RH] Russ' post was deleted based on the "no link only posts" rule. No problems with citing Pielke's link in the context of some discussion.
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Bert from Eltham at 10:16 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
In Australia we have a Government that is in total denial of the science that proves AGW.
I can see the hypocrisy in their eyes as they placate drought affected farmers with yet another inadequate support plan. They know that we know that they know that it is all a sham.
This IS the new normal. And yet they ignore the science and act as if everything was the OLD normal.
Do not judge by what they say. Judge by what they do! Bert
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sustainable future at 09:19 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Great stuff. you could do a simialr cartoon for the contrarian guide to science. Age of the universe, evolution, continental drift, etc - there are probably a small percentage of people with some science training who are creationsist (I worked with a geneticist once who did not accept evolution), and this could be used to argue there wasn't consensus.
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KR at 08:41 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
I would agree with Climate Bobs comment - the few and the loud make up the majority of pseudoskeptics. Reddit recently starting blocking deniers on their climate threads, and moderator Nathan Allen said that:
...We discovered that the disruptive faction that bombarded climate change posts was actually substantially smaller than it had seemed. Just a small handful of people ran all of the most offensive accounts. What looked like a substantial group of objective skeptics to the outside observer was actually just a few bitter and biased posters with more opinions then evidence...
More opinions than evidence, more time than apparent sense. It doesn't take a lot of people to generate obfuscating noise.
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Albatross at 08:13 AM on 5 March 2014Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr
Pielke junior's rhetoric really does appeal to the anti-science crowd and right-wing ideologues out there. Here are some exmaples of the sort of comments Pielke junior permitted on his blog post about Holdren:
"Holdren has been a nutcase since the 1970s, when he was promoting a scientifically lunatic theory of 'thermal pollution'..."
"If John Holdren was someone you had just met socially, and he expressed the views he has held for the past thirty years, you would immediatly conclude that he is a lunatic. "
Nice crowd ;) Not only did Pielke let those comments stand, but he did not even challenge them. Tacit agreement then?
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Dennis at 07:27 AM on 5 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 3
I'm a professional database developer/administrator and this is major reason why I have always used stored procedures to build queries. I also prefer to make sure that the public user accounts can only reference SQL views based on the tables and not the tables themselves (and one never creates a view with private data in it). Finally, any and every free text field in a stored procedure is searched before the query is contructed, and if the search returns any positives for SQL keywords (e.g. SELECT, INSERT, UNION) in a position where they could construct a query, I exit the procedure and have the system email me an alert with the IP address where the text originated from. It's a lot of energy, but it works!
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BaerbelW at 07:26 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Greg Craven - aka wonderingmind42 - put together a couple of videos about risk management and how it pertains to climate science for his "How it all ends" Youtube video series. They are well worth watching (again).
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Doug Bostrom at 06:58 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Strictly against site policy to block quote but Knaugle's remark bears repeating:
A biology teacher once pointed out that it may take, say, 300 generations of bacteria to overwhelm a petri dish and then collapse. Yet by the 299th generation, the dish may only be half full. When crises come, they often come harder and faster than can be handled.
Emphasis mine. Like Knaugle I too think we fail to appreciate how everything can appear to be normal until we collide with the wall of system limits. All too often this is not an approach but an impact. -
Pete Wirfs at 06:42 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Climate Bob's observations intrigue me. I've always felt that a contributing factor to the different proportions on the internet is that people who feel they understand the science and believe what the majority of the scientists are telling us don't see any reason to 'debate' the issue, so they don't waste their time! In my local newspaper blogs the pattern seems to be just a few deniers that TALK LOUDLY AND FREQUENTLY, while the general population will post "what planet are you coming from?" types of responses and move on...
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Climate Bob at 05:53 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
I give talks on climate change and find that deniers make up only 1 or 2% of the audiance who are mostly older white male business men. When I go on the internet the proportion goes up tp 50% and they are simply repeating a small number of tired old attitudes which have no basis in fact. From this pattern I deduce that the internet deniers are nearly all paid proffesionals. There are not that many climate change sites so it would be easy to swamp them with a relatively small number of people. But how many? I am not a mathmatician but it should not be hard to calculate how many there are bu the relative proportion of deniers compaered to the number of people on the site, The Huffington Post has a big readership and the proportion is relatively low while the Gaurdian gets ahigher proportion.
Could somebody do a calculation and work out how many there are? I think it would be somewhere between 50 and 100.
As an interesting sideline The Daily Caller has 98% deniers which shows that they have almost no natural readership at all and the journalists have to fill the comments section to make it look as though they have an active readership.
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william5331 at 05:39 AM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Marcie McNutt. Talk about nominative determinism. I can't count the number of people I know that are named Fisser, Fisher, Pike and so forth who are in fisheries research. Must be something in it.
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Albatross at 05:21 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
John Cook and Dana highlight a very salient and important tactic that is being used by dismissives and obstructionists like Curry.
Think about it, if Curry truly believed what she tells he fellow obstructionists, then she would not have house insurance, would not wear her seatbelt, would not wear a life jacket in a boat and would smoke a pack a day. So Curry's contrived rhetoric is really just a ruse to misinform and confuse and feed fodder to radicals and obstructionists.
If Curry truly believed her own words, if she were sincere in her public statements and courageous, she would say what she really believes, which is for the USA and others to not take meaningful action to reduce our GHG emisssions. Instead we are left with her word salad.Curry should also know that in reality uncertainty cuts both ways, yet she has foolishly convinced herself that uncertainty acts only in the direction of least risk and impacts.
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localis at 05:15 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Even the most ardent ACW denier would still benefit from trying to use fossil fuel more efficiently so "doing nothing" might be seen as doubly foolish.
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knaugle at 04:36 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
My question to Dr. Curry would be:
At what point would you conclude something needs to be done?
The point is that when it is utterly obvious we are in trouble, isn't that a bit late? Yet I have little doubt that is exactly the path that will be taken because it is a consistent horizon effect. That is you push the bad news far enough into the future that it no longer seems a problem. Unfortunately, the problem you can't see just keeps getting bigger and bigger 5 miles down the road until it absolutely can't be ignored, and likely can no longer be addressed.Another similar issue is population. A biology teacher once pointed out that it may take, say, 300 generations of bacteria to overwhelm a petri dish and then collapse. Yet by the 299th generation, the dish may only be half full. When crises come, they often come harder and faster than can be handled. But not to worry, this whole AGW climate change thing is a hoax, right?!
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dana1981 at 04:34 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Russ R @3 - perhaps you missed this in the above post:
Doing nothing is betting the farm on a very low probability scenario. It's an incredibly high-risk path that fails to reduce the threats posed by the worst case or even most likely case scenarios.
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Composer99 at 04:31 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Russ R:
It must be said that assessments of mitigation measures, and of likely risks/impacts from climate change/global warming have already been done.
Examples:
IPCC AR4 Working Groups 2 (Impacts) & 3 (Mitigation)
The Stern Review
These reviews are, of course, several years old (the WG2 and 3 reports for IPCC AR5 ought to be out soon, I imagine) and have likely been overtaken by events (such as the precipitous decline in Arctic sea ice). Perhaps there are more recent reviews, but as it is these are both, to my knowledge, both comprehensive and conservative.
IIRC they both indicate some mixture of mitigation efforts is superior to do-nothing business as usual.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:27 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Central estimates of CS combined with a BAU emissions path is already bad enough. The fact that there is a potential for higher CS should be downright frightening to everyone. Including Dr Curry.
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KR at 04:06 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Russ R. - Curry also stated, in rather stark contrast to the science as summarized in IPCC AR4 WG2, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability:
"I don't know how concerned I should be about it — on what time scale that might happen, whether that's 100 or 200 years, what societies will be like, what other things are going on with the natural climate," Curry says. "I just don't know what the next hundred or 200 years will hold, and whether this will be regarded as an important issue. I just don't know." [Emphasis added]
A climate contrarian, indeed. Even the moderate impacts are large enough to be an issue, and that is the very low end of estimates - a realistic risk estimate will be much higher. Curry seems to think that the precautionary principle used in all other aspects of life just doesn't apply here.
Now, as to the evaluation of proposed solutions, the evidence indicates that mitigation is several times to perhaps an order of magnitude less expensive than "do nothing" adaptation. Again, Curry fails to use the precautionary principle.
Inaction, "business as usual", is a choice as much as any other policy, something frequently missed in these discussions. The mass of evidence indicates that "business as usual" is perhaps the most expensive option we have. And yet Curry (now, although not in 2007) continues to suggest that we "do nothing"...
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:04 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
RussR, if you expand the context even further, by reading the whole article, you will find that Prof. Curry's position is essentially that there is so much uncertainty about the science that we cannot justify action on that basis. So she has already assumed that doing nothing is as good an approach as any, i.e. the "if" is more or less taken for granted.
However the point of the cartoon is (rather obviously) that this uncertainty does not justify doing nothing by showing other examples where positive action is justified even where there is high uncertainty of a negative impact, because the cost associated with being wrong in taking no action is much higher than the cost of taking action needlessly. This is the whole point of insurance - we don't buy it because we think our houses will brun down, be we buy it because we cannot bear the cost if it did burn down. Likewise it is worth taking action to mitigate against climate change because we cannot bear the costs associated with the upper tail of the uncertainty, even if we think this is unlikely to actually happen.
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PluviAL at 03:44 AM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Good summary of a complex topic. It seems Science was not sufficiently castigated a) for getting the net effect of the science and economics wrong, b) for taking a political stand if not for the purpose of correct scientific consideration. If you are going to take a position representing science, it better be overwhelmingly correct.
On the other hand it seems that science, and the scientific mind are less than perfect. It seems a lot of the traditions of science are myopic in the effort to remain disciplined. It is easy to be disciplined if one stays in an scientifically intellectual rut. That is the situation of the environmental mentality. It seems the "can do" attitude is missing. Yes, the title and objective of this website is to be skeptical, but does that mean completely blind to alternate solutions?
Sadly it seems to be. I am so frustrated that a genuine (hypothetical) solution like Pluvinergy have received so little support, or even consideration from this community. The real objective of correcting the denialist community should be to offer real solutions, not just preventing them from denying reality. The way to fight is defend, run, or attack. We need to attack. Wind and PV are not real alternatives. Effeciency can go a heck of a long way to slove the problem, but it is not the solution either. Having an economics background, I full favor a strong carbon tax, but that is just a good start. The reason we are developing the tar-sands despite their awful economics and environmental effects is that wind and PV are not that much better. Check the numbers. This is why they need subsidy. The rest of the solutions are also imptent, we must lowe the price of energy by orders of magnitude, while repairing the biosphere at the same time. We can do it, if we try.
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jja at 03:28 AM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Land Use Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Conventional Oil Production and Oil Sands
Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 8766–8772
energy source ------------net carbon/GHG changes (year 1 to 150)
------------------------------------(tonne CO2e/ha)
oil sands - mining---------------------3596 (953-6201)
% of total fuel life cycle emissions----------4 (.9-11)Data used in Congressional Research Analysis of Canadian Tar Sands
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42537.pdfoil sands - miningc,d,e,f
Moderator Response:[RH] Hotlinked URL.
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Russ R. at 02:50 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
dana1981 and John Cook,
First, to set the record straight, you omitted the first half of Judith Curry's comment:
""All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions," she says. If that means doing nothing, "I can't say myself that that isn't the best solution."
Note the word "if", which is rather important to the context of the quotation.
Second, "doing nothing" can absolutely be the best (i.e. most rational) solution, if the expected costs of taking action exceed the discounted present value of the uncertain future net benefits that would result from the action. Again, note the word "if".
Lastly, this never was a binary question of "do something" or "do nothing". There are countless actions which could be taken, each of which has its own expected costs, projected future benefits, probability of success, and uncertainties around each of these. Each action has to be evaluated on its own merits, and not all actions are mutually exclusive. Some actions will rank higher than others, and the "do nothing" option will rank somewhere in that continuum.
Where "do nothing" ranks is currently unknown. I think it's a low probability that "do nothing" ranks highest, but that probability does exist.
If the evidence and an objective evaluation of proposed solutions shows that "do nothing" is indeed the best option, then I'd be in favour of doing nothing (which is exactly what Curry said). Why wouldn't you?
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Composer99 at 02:35 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
The Dr Judith Curry "What-Me-Worry" Climate Policy™ also, IMO, omits the fact that the most effective means of attenuating or moderating the risks of climate change is mitigating climate change, rather than simply hoping for the best. A worst-case scenario depending on business-as-usual carbon emissions isn't going to happen if we avoid business-as-usual emissions.
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Composer99 at 02:25 AM on 5 March 2014Skeptical Science now an Android app
Just wanted to note this app is available from Google Play store.
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Doug Bostrom at 02:19 AM on 5 March 2014Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk
Nice!
It's true: contrarians bang on about the costs of dealing with climate risk but are perfectly happy to pay insurance for payoffs they dearly hope they'll never have to receive.
The world as a whole spends several trillion dollars per year on insurance, all of which money we each individually hope is ultimately wasted, never to be seen or heard from again in our own lives.
Our minds are more than a bit of a mess when it comes to dealing with hazards and risk.
Looking at the intersection between people paying for insurance versus those with non-functioning or absent smoke alarms in their homes is an interesting perspective on human psychology: paying to protect property computes in our squishy wetware, paying or experiencing minor inconvenience to save lives does not.
W/climate change we see an enormous hazard that is beginning to quantify into dismal risk numbers but it's just so darned inconvenient to deal with. Let's think of something else instead.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:51 AM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
As a follow-up. The attitude of 'pursuing the best way to help others, particularly future generations', needs to be more popular than 'the pursuit of personal benefit'. There should be competition but it should be restricted to the development of the best understanding of what is going on and the most rapid development of a sustainable better future for all. Any unsustainable or damaging activity should only be allowed if it is clearly only an emergency short-term use with all benefit clearly going toward the development of a sustainable better future for all. And enjoying life and having fun is important, but it should never be done in a way that harms others (or the environment), or is done in a way that everyone else, especially all future generations, could not also do if they wished to.
Anyone who does not share that attitude should only have one clear choice, changing their mind.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:14 AM on 5 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
These 'discussions', 'debates' or 'arguments' cannot be allowed to occur without ensuring it is understood that developing a sustainable economy is essential and is fundamentally threatened by people getting away with benefiting from unsustainable and damaging activities.
When you evaluate the merit of this pipeline from a perspective of sustaining the economy any clear thinking person concerned about developing sustained economic growth would quickly conclude that burning fossil fuels is a threat because it is a fundamentally unsustainable activity. All of humanity cannot develop to benefit from it. And even just a few most fortunate humans would not be able to continue to benefit from it for very much of the hundreds of millions of years humanity should be developing toward enjoying on this amazing planet. Its prevalence and persistence in the economy would clearly be seen as a problem. And the popularity and profitability of it would be seen as clear indications of fatal flaws in the way societies and economies have been set up by humans. It would become clear that people who only care about their own maximum short term benefit any way they can get away with have been winning and creating damaging desires among the population to be like them. And that desire leads to horrible conflicts between the undeserving rich and power over the limited opportunity they all want the most benefit form. And like the way they became rich and powerful they personally suffer very little in their battles. Others suffer the consequences, including future generations. And it would be clear that much of the current population is not clear thinking, but has the cloudy mind of the deluded, a mind that is unwilling to better understand what contradicts the delusion they are immersed in, unwilling to realize how harmful and unsustainable the activity they desire to benefit form really is.
When you add to that clear reality the clear understanding of all the different damage caused by the unsustainable actions related to burning fossil fuels, not just the consequences of excess CO2, the unacceptability of prolonging the burning of fossil fuels for any purpose other than the rapid development of truly sustainable activity becomes crystal clear.
And that clear headed caring and considerate understanding cannot be denied once it is realized. And it is a massive reality. The truth is most of the current rich and powerful do not deserve the wealth and power they have, and they are not interested in rapidly developing a sustainable better future for all. The reality is they will fight viciously to maintain the delusion among the population that protects them. They do not want it understood that 'their wealth' is undeserved.
That leads to the clear understanding that this is not a debate about a pipeline. It needs to be approached as a fight to create clear thinking minds in as many people as possible, because the undeservingly wealthy are fighting to maintain the popular beliefs that are so profitable for them. And their actions ware clear in the Bush Presidency and the Harper days in Canada. When the Conservative Movement are able to get control of government they shut down any research that would contradict their interests and silence any reporting of government research that contradicts their interest and promote the desire among the population for 'a job, any job'.
This is not a debate about a pipeline. It needs to be seen as a battle in the war for the future of humanity, because that is what it really is. Those fighting for the development of caring and considerate civil society, and protection of consumers from harmful pursuits of profit, and all others fighting for environmental protection are fighting the same war. The delusion that the focus on the pursuit of personal benefit will actually result in any meaningful legitimate benefit for humanity must end.
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dhogaza at 12:42 PM on 4 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 3
Bob Lacatena - thanks for letting us know you guys know about the quote escaping trick. I assume you guys know you can quote any input value from users, i.e. that standard SQL allows:
select * from foo where foo_int_column = '123'
as well as
select * from foo where foo_int_column = 123
?
This puts an end to any 123 union select blah blah nonsense for non-string input as well.
As you point out, you need to be sure to escape any apostrophe in the user's input as well as quoting their input. Doing both puts an end to sql injection mischief.
Something that helps is to have tools to process query variables that are always used. Back when I managed the now-obscure OpenACS project, each page declared query variable names and types, and type validation and quoting/escaping were done automatically. A programmer would have to do real work to avoid using the simple declarative syntax (i:integer etc) and after this approach was adopted more than a decade ago, AFAIK no site using the toolkit ever suffered from a successful sql injection attack.
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Andy Skuce at 10:29 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Mike@1 I agree that carbon pricing is the best solution, however it is off the table, politically speaking, in the US and Canada. Using KXL approval as a bribe to get the approval of the Republican Party or Canada's Conservatives for carbon pricing does not seem feasible to me. I would love to be persuaded that I am wrong on this.
Perhaps I should have emphasized carbon pricing more here, but, in my defence, I have written SkS articles on carbon taxes, in which I did not mention pipelines at all.
As for the idea that arguing against is a distraction from campaigning for carbon taxes or against coal, I would counter that with the observation that two of the most vocal campaigners against KXL, James Hansen and Bill McKibben, are hardly slouches when it comes to arguing for new policies or for the pressing need to stop burning coal. If only those who worry about activists being distracted did half as much as them.
davidnewell@4. Perhaps "inconsequential" was too strong, but I do object to somebody claiming that making a few relatively painless gestures means that they are doing their part, as if no more were required. When they then go on to shrug off the climate consequences of building a big new piece of fossil fuel infrastructure, the contrast is worth noting, I think. If anything is gratuitous, it is in starting out an editorial in a science journal by giving yourself a big, green pat on the back, as Marcia McNutt did.
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ianw01 at 09:18 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Nice summary, Andy.
That "Summary for Policy Makers" chart really needs more airtime. It clearly shows how it is only a question of when, not if, there will be very serious global effects of our addiction to CO2 from any source, unless we can halt the climb by following something like RCP2.6. (Yeah, right.)
Unfortunately the biggest uncertainty about climate change is merely which generation will get the really short straw.
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tylab at 09:08 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
As much as I agree with many points in this article, I think this is ultimately a meaningless battle to fight. Whether or not the Keystone XL pipeline is built will not significantly affect how much oil is taken out of the ground and produced worldwide. It will just mean some other oil company in some other country will pick up the slack. Your argument that if Obama says no to the Keystone XL it will send a strong message to oil companies.. well I'm not so sure about that when simultaneously U.S. oil and gas production has skyrocketed from the U.S.'s speedy adoption of fracking. Symbolic victories bedamned, what matters is the impact we have on saving our environment and I'm totally unconvinced this will keep any oil from being burned in the end
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scaddenp at 08:59 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
As with Tom, ditto for me. My post @41 has one possible outline that could be considerably expanded.
Moderator Response:[DB] Multiple authors can be credited, for those wishing to help write the post.
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Tom Dayton at 08:57 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
I'm game to at least review drafts of an OP. I might be able to provide some raw material, too. You can tell what my perspective is from reading my comments on this thread.
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Composer99 at 08:11 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
Re: John Hartz's call for volunteers to write up an OP, I'd be willing to give it a shot, if no one with better scientific qualifications (read: any qualifications at all) steps up.
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davidnewell at 07:50 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
"Nero fiddled", and sure enough, I hear the sound of violins.
Are the glaciers melting?
It's taken 150 years to ignorantly get ourselves into this peril: it will take 150 years of directed response to reverse the trend: isn't it time to move into "response" and let the late-adapters fogure it out?
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John Hartz at 07:36 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
We need a volunteer to write an OP for this comment thread.
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davidnewell at 07:34 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
I agree that Ms McNutt drew the wrong conclusion, but I think that saying:
"The Editor-in-Chief of the one of the world's most prestigious science journals should know that doing her part for minimizing global warming requires more than a few gestures which, although they set a good example, are inconsequential in terms of solving the problem.."
is also an incorrect and/or gratuitous statement.
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John Hartz at 07:34 AM on 4 March 2014Global warming theory isn't falsifiable
All: PanicBusiness has been banned from further posting on the SkS website. The person behind the PanicBusiness screen is the same person the was behind the Elephant In The Room screen. Sock puppetry is strictly prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Persons engaging in sock puppetry automatically lose their posting privileges.
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John Hartz at 07:30 AM on 4 March 2014Models are unreliable
All: PanicBusiness has been banned from further posting on the SkS website. The person behind the PanicBusiness screen is the same person the was behind the Elephant In The Room screen. Sock puppetry is strictly prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Persons engaging in sock puppetry automatically lose their posting privileges,
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David Lewis at 06:07 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
The US is increasing its own oil production faster than at any time in its history. (See: WSJ article). The increased production is due to implementation of new techniques, i.e. horizontal drilling and fracking.
In this context, its hard to see how US political activists can single out Canadian tar sand oil production as something that, if expanded, means it is "game over" for the climate, while they remain basically silent about their own soaring oil and gas production.
Stopping Keystone XL can be seen as a trade issue, i.e. the US is attempting to limit the ability of Canada to trade in a commodity the US is expanding its own production of.
The Keystone XL campaign seems to have originated in the ideas of Jim Hansen, who came up with the its "game over" slogan. In "Thoughts on Keystone XL", I wrote an analysis of Hansen's political ideas, by comparing the Hansen position to that of Stephen Chu. Chu, when he was head of the US DOE supported Keystone.
In "Rethinking Keystone XL" I argued that Obama was actually looking for something significant and meaningful to do when he raised the topic of climate change in his 2nd Inaugural Address. I suggested that the "movement" could, and should, tell him what that something is.
US activists could call on Obama, who still claims he is very interested in leaving a meaningful legacy on the climate issue, to implement regulation that would affect the price of all activities that emit carbon to the atmosphere that are engaged in on US soil.
PS. In "Keystone XL, One Head of the Hydra" I attempted to show how the pipeline industry can work around a cancellation of the part of the Keystone XL activists are calling on Obama to stop. It is a very flexible and fast moving industry.
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John Hartz at 03:10 AM on 4 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #9
Steve L & Phillipe Chanteau:
Your concerns are duly noted.
The sentence, "Some scientists got caught fudging data!" is clearly being made by the climate denier sitting atop the North Pole.
If folks in Deniersville draw attention to this particular toon, the more people will see it and will have a good chuckle.
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mbryson at 02:44 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
Thanks for this, from a Canadian and Albertan -- an excellent summation, revealling just how untenable our national and provincial position has become. As one of the wealthiest nations and regions in the world, we must become part of the solution, not a determined outpost of bitterly destructive and short-sighted policies. Our governments' utter determination to serve the interests of one industry to the exclusion of any other considerations will not be changed from inside Canada (opposition parties across the board support pipelines and continued development of the tar sands). Those of us who see the endgame a little more clearly know that the sooner long-term economic and trade consequences of this obsession become clear, the better the chance that we and the world will manage to change direction and avoid catastrophic consequences.
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Mike3267 at 02:36 AM on 4 March 2014The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL
I think Andy Skuce has the politics backwards. If Obama says he'll approve the pipeline if Canada agrees to X, and Canada says no to X, then the pipeline won't be built and the blame will shift to the Canadaian government.
But more importantly, this is just the wrong battle. If you are opposing jobs, profits and market forces generally, you are more likely than not to lose. Skuce acknowledges that "blocking the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure is an imperfect way of keeping carbon in the ground." This should be central stategic point, not just a tangental remark. We need a price on GHG emissions, and that should be our central focus. Obama could say to the House GOP that he will support Keystone if they lower carporate taxes and add a carbon tax. This starts to shift the focus of the debate.
See, for example:
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/11/271537401/economist-says-best-climate-fix-a-tough-sell-but-worth-it
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/699c1f18-8d79-11e2-a0fd-00144feabdc0.html
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:12 AM on 4 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #9
Agree with Steve L. I can see the usual deniers claiming "SkS confesses that scientists fudged data" in big headlines and linking to the cartoon as a "source." That would be fit perfectly with their standard methods...
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