Howard Marks and useful models

"If you’re asking me, I’ll go with the climate peer-reviewed scientific studies of this phenomenon

The climate alarm community usually dismisses Richard Linden of MIT. One claim is that he was once funded by Exxon and is therefore not to be trusted and or credible (wrong incentives).

He presents a paper here in which he emphasizes that scientists/politicians/media/public continually obsess about CO2 as the one driving factor in climate, when in fact there are a myriad of other factors.

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/131570/13360_…

"Most people here will understand incentives, and in academia the incentives to get published and get funding are very powerful. Most people like to keep their job!

From the Lindzen paper above:

"Between 1988 and 1994, things changed radically. In the US, funding for climate increased by about a factor of 15. This led to a great increase in the number of people interested in working as ‘climate scientists’, and the new climate scientists understood that the reason for the funding was the ‘global warming’ alarm.

Munger: “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the results.”

Lindzen on why global mean temperature anomaly record can be misleading:

"At the center of most discussions of global warming is the record of the global mean surface temperature anomaly—often somewhat misleadingly referred to as the global mean temperature record. This paper addresses two aspects of this record. First, we note that this record is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions. Second, we explore the implications of the way the record is constructed and presented, and show why the record is misleading.

This is because the record is often treated as a kind of single, direct instrumental measurement. However, as the late Stan Grotch of the Laurence Livermore Laboratory pointed out 30 years ago, it is really the average of widely scattered station data, where the actual data points are almost evenly spread between large positive and negative values.

The average is simply the small difference of these positive and negative excursions, with the usual problem associated with small differences of large numbers: at least thus far, the one degree Celsius increase in the global mean since 1900 is swamped by the normal variations at individual stations, and so bears little relation to what is actually going on at a particular one."

https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publica…

Lindzen has reported that some of his graduate students couldn’t land jobs at prestigious academic institutions following graduation because they had done research questioning various aspects of the global warming hysteria. And understandably so, “the science is settled” so why question it.

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“When facing possible catastrophe, isn’t it wise to try anything guided by science (best known method so far) that may avoid or alleviate the result?”

Agree. Isn’t this a bit like Pascal’s wager?

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The climate is definitely going to get hotter overall in the decades to come…

It seemed like such an innocent, uncontentious comment.
Call me naive, but gosh I’m startled to find there are physics deniers out there.

Yes, Virginia, this planet is going to get warmer on trend in the decades to come.
The statement is not a matter of opinion any more the existence of sunlight is a matter of opinion.

That’s because the radiative balance has changed materially.
Unless and until that changes back (certainly possible, but nothing currently foreseen),
the average planetary temperature will continue to rise for a very long time.
As does any rock that’s absorbing more energy than it’s giving off…it’s pretty basic stuff.

Jim

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“When facing possible catastrophe, isn’t it wise to try anything guided by science (best known method so far) that may avoid or alleviate the result?”

What is the catastrophe we are facing related to increased CO2 emissions?

Note there is an immediate catastrophe emerging in Europe and other parts of the world as a result of a well intentioned, but premature, transition away from reliable fossil fuels towards (low carbon) and intermittent renewables.

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As consequential as it to get the question of climate-change right, it won’t be accomplished here. Hopefully, the discussion was of some use, but let’s agree to disagree.

That xkcd 20,000 year timeline is amazing!

So… we (humans) have basically had the time of our lives so far with an average temperature rise of about 5 C since we started out. Dare I say, despite a few meter of ocean level rise, this 5 C increase seems to have at worst been neutral for humans and it seems more than likely it has been a good thing for us.

So why exactly are we so afraid of the next 5 C? It certainly isn’t because the last 5 C was a disaster, which it wasn’t. Surely we have some good reason and not just a knee jerk bias towards the status quo, as brief as it might actually be?

R:

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In an excellent post dwerme states:
One of the key issues in climate science is determining how much change is natural vs how much is anthropogenic.

Yes this is an issue in science, but that is because science is basically curiosity and doesn’t concern itself with HOW the truth’s it figures out should be applied to our plans.

If your goal is assigning blame or figuring out how things went south, then indeed, anthropogenic or not is an important question.

If your goal is setting human policy and solving problems, then it is completely irrelevant whether the problem you are solving is anthropogenic or not. You need to accurately characterize the problem in terms of the physics of it. As part of that, you need to have some analysis of the cost of that problem. Then you can consider potential solutions and their costs and come up with solutions that have a good chance of doing more good than harm.

Whether CO2 rise and warming are anthropogenic doesn’t matter, what does matter is do they pose a grave threat or not. If they pose a grave threat, they should be addressed, if they don’t pose a grave threat than why should you care.

We HAVE the technology to drastically reduce our reliance on buried carbon for energy, and have had it for pushing 70 years. It is called nuclear energy and its ACTUAL record is orders of magnitude better than that of fossil fuels or renewables. But in an innumerate view, you can wind up with people who would rather pretend they will use wind and sun rather than actually using nuclear, just as innumerate people would rather drive long distances than fly commercially because driving FEELS safer even though it isn’t.

Further, we have lots of choices for fixing global warming other than shutting down the energy economy which is pretty clearly necessary to avoid mass starvation of humans. There are a broad range of geoengineering solutions proposed which would cost orders of magnitude less than moving away from buried carbon, since we have already been too stupid to put in place the non-carbon energy technologies available to us for the last 70 years.

If global warming is a problem it doesn’t matter whether it is anthropogenic or not. If it is not a problem, it doesn’t matter whether it is anthropogenic or not. What matters are solutions that are economically vetted, which means solutions that have a chance of doing more good than harm.

R:

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When facing possible catastrophe, isn’t it wise to try anything guided by science (best known method so far) that may avoid or alleviate the result?

No. It is gigantically foolish to try “anything guided by science that may avoid or alleviate the result.”

What is smart is carefully determining the costs of what is going on, and carefully determining the costs of the proposed “solutions”, and only trying things with favorable cost-benefit relationships.

Which leads me to at least suggestion the more worried of you look into Bjorn Lomborg’s approach, which consists of gathering as good information as humans have about both the costs and the proposed solutions. A reasonably comprehensive economic approach to the situation leads Lomborg to the conclusion that, at least if you care about starvation and disease and suffering of humans, climate change is far down the list of things we can address in an economically beneficial way towards improving human life on earth.

Of course if you have joined a pseudo-scientific religion that fetishizes the “earth” over humans and their lives on earth, you may reach very different conclusions than he does about the best things to do. Failing that religious conversion, I don’t see how you could fault Lomborg’s approach, or responsibly advocate for another approach without understanding how Lomborg might have gone wrong.

R:

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That xkcd 20,000 year timeline is amazing!

So why exactly are we so afraid of the next 5 C?

He has another one of his that tries to put that specific question in context
https://xkcd.com/1379/

: )
Jim

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It’s amusing to see the whole ‘climategate’ hacked email FUD is still roaring along strong 13 years later, at least among some segment of the population.

dwerme expressed alarm and concern about what some climate scientists wrote in private emails, leading him to believe that climate science was corrupt. He quoted:

"
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

—Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit,
"

Spoiler alert … he, Trenberth and other scientists involved did actually include those papers in the IPCC report he referenced!!! Funny how when that quote gets rolled out, the actual reality of what happened is never mentioned. Jones was just griping to a friend about what he considered to be some sub-par scientific papers … that griping didn’t actually reflect corrupt science, just normal human behavior like exaggeration and sarcasm among friends who thought they were corresponding in private.

I got so interested in climate science in the wake of the email hacking and release, in no small part due to debating it here on the Fool, that I proceeded to take enough meteorology, climatology and stats courses, both graduate and undergraduate that I was very close to getting a second Bachelors in atmospheric science, and did get a MLA with a focus on climate science and writing.

The science is strong, built on physics going back well over 100 years.

As Jim said, the Earth will be warming in coming decades, with some caveats: a series of huge volcanos could throw enough particulates in the air to cause temporary global cooling, as could a significant meteor impact. We don’t have a great handle on what causes variations in solar output associated with the sunspot cycle, and it’s possible we could go into an extended minimum that could offset warming for a couple decades.

The apparent ‘pause’ in global warming in the early to mid 2000s is well explained: Start from a huge and extremely strong El Nino, which warms the surface of the seas, combined with being fairly high in the solar cycle, then finish with a couple years of strong La Nina’s, which cool the ocean surface, combined with the lowest solar minimum in ~100 years … Voila, you have ‘offset’ ~17 years of the human warming trend, though as those cooling conditions reversed, we saw the warming revert right back to trend.

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I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

—Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit,
"
… just normal human behavior like exaggeration and sarcasm among friends who thought they were corresponding in private.

Yeah, just “normal peer review”, sort of like January 6th in Washington DC was “normal political discourse”.

I hoped this thread would die, but since you cited me by name, I’ll reply. Perhaps you have not served as a reviewer for a scientific journal. I have. In every case, I have been asked to refrain from discussing my opinion with other reviewers. Do you disagree with that policy? To me, there is no place for collaborative gate keeping in peer review, yet it happens to an alarming degree in climate. The “pal review system” has even been demonstrated statistically.

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, there is a lot of ugly behavior in climate science. I got involved with a case in which a university I had been affiliated with selectively blocked archived data from certain internationally known researchers who were trying to duplicate published results. The individuals had to to access the data anonymously from a public library, and the blockages mysteriously vanished when I brought them to the attention of upper level administrators.

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Perhaps you have not served as a reviewer for a scientific journal. I have. In every case, I have been asked to refrain from discussing my opinion with other reviewers. Do you disagree with that policy?

I have not served as a reviewer for a scientific journal. Kudos to your for achieving the professional recognition to play that role. I do not disagree with that policy.

I will point out though, that Jones was not acting as a reviewer of the papers in question for a scientific journal. Instead he was acting as the Coordinating Lead Author for a chapter in an IPCC report, which chapter reviewed all of climate science on ‘Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change’. Are you suggesting that he should have refrained from discussing every single paper in his field of expertise for the couple of years he worked on that IPCC report chapter? Even while collaborating with other authors to write it? Obviously that is impossible.

And again I’ll mention that Jones and his co-authors did include a neutral mention of the papers in that Chapter. Isn’t that what’s important, rather than rash words in a private email?

I quite sure that there has been infighting and poor behavior among climate scientists at times … as there are in every large-ish group of people. It is still science, and in response to the brouhaha over the hacked emails, climate science became markedly more transparent, and virtually every criticism I saw raised was addressed and addressed again, i.e. with 100% transparent global surface temperature estimates from Berkeley Earth: http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

The hacked email scandal was a tempest in a teapot, but the uproar did lead to beneficial changes in how climate science was conducted and reported. I respectfully suggest it’s well past time to move on: dig into the latest IPCC report and see what’s been going on lately, instead of reporting long-outdated criticisms.

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