It would be a lot better for everyone — including the planet — if we left off the tribalism and the excommunications and went back to actually talking about the science: messy, imprecise and always open for well-grounded debate.
Read the whole thing. I am, like McArdle, reminded of macroeconometrics when I see statements based on climate models. Which is why I am a skeptic.
I read a lot of news or aggregator sites with a ‘science’ or ‘sci/tech’ section which I often check. It had been years since a single day has gone by without there always being at least one alarmist climate change article, increasing in number and anxiety level even as the latest satellite temperature evidence from ‘the pause’ should be moderating the estimates of the likelihood of catastrophe and lowering the expected value of and justification for extreme policy interventions.
That’s always a good sign that a field of inquiry is ideologically and politically loaded beyond any hope of reasonable redemption.
The pause was caused by climate change. It is even worse than we thought!
The ‘pause’ disappeared with better data. While worst case has been reduced, expected case is worsening. CO2 now highest in 4 million years.
And still any damage is speculative. It is remarkably impotent, yet people pretend it is a catastrophe. Nuclear, solar, carbon sequestration.
How is this possible? The measuring systems rely on devices with a much higher accurate measurement range than is needed to cover the most extreme daily temperatures (hot or cold), were continuously calibrated per documented standards and the data treatment protocols to produce averages were also well-documented and under continuous observation. It is a huge mistake to believe any data from such a system if you think that some data was inaccurate. The chemistry of the warming feed backs are totally plausible, but saying “better data” is a giant red-flag if you also assert that the data systems did detect warming for many years.
These are the 3 big elements of troubleshooting. Is the device the right one for the task (range, installation, environment (water, pressure, acidity, vibration, etc.))? Has it been properly calibrated? Is the data captured and processed as intended? I am not familiar with the data, but NOAA has an established reputation for engineering competence. It is exceptionally unlikely that any of these kinds of errors could have persisted even 30 days.
The whole idea was selective point sampling of one very high year and a low year and natural variability is more than large enough for this occur. It requires data integration on a global basis and is why it took 20 years to definitively tell in the first place even though anticipated all that while. Meanwhile net CO2 has a 400yr half life in the atmosphere. Going solar will be great, but it can’t happen soon enough.
She sets up straw men and knocks them down. There are many, many climate scientists who will engage Meyer on the science. The problem is that Meyer is just flat out wrong on many of his assertions. Things that you can check and find out in a few minutes. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should get his basic facts correct. Having said that, he is correct about a lot of the policy. Ethanol from corn is a bad idea. Everyone knows that. Of course he implies it is something being advocated by climate scientists, when we really know it is because Iowa has the first “primary”.
Steve
Please quote the assertion of Meyer’s you believe to be the most inaccurate.
Corn has been advocated by environmentalists. I have no idea about climate types, because it has nothing to do with it, but I would bet so. All you are saying is that politics corrupts science policy and thus science. That is all I ever say, too. I don’t know this Meyer cat, so this is strawman upon strawman. McArdle’s next post was Mann attacking her (sans any discussion of science)and blocking her on twitter, etc., ironically proving her point.
Now, I’m sure people like Mann gets tired of nay sayers, but like Krugman, I’ve never seen him try. Science is not consensus, but even if it were, consensus isn’t coerced by threats and bullying.
I think it is more accurate to say that something like a consensus among experts can indeed be coerced into existence by threats and bullying. Also insular, reciprocally-promoting social networks and prestige-based influence by which one can expect to lose social status and get excommunicated by the gatekeepers of respectability by failing to toe the line.
However, it takes some chutzpah to then turn around and try to use that socially manufactured and mob-enforced ‘consensus’ to bolster an argumentum ad verecundiam, as if there was genuine free entry into the field of inquiry without any biasing selection effects, or favoritism in hiring, promotion, and grant awarding, or the soft corruption of various professional and social pressures and incentives. As if the absence of a large number of respectable heretics willing to argue their heresy in public was evidence of the falseness of the heresy, instead of the its ruthless suppression.
“Consensus” would be more persuasive in the absence of the kind of response McArdle reported. It would be even more persuasive if the proponents of the consensus each paid a very high social and personal price and yet still persisted in their claims. But since they hold the whip hand, and the cat seems to be perpetually out of the bag these days (in the old Naval sense of the idiom), one is justified in being unswayed by such a ‘consensus’.
“The pause”
Why is it that when some people talk about global warming they pay no attention to what global means?