McIntyre: Climate policy crippled by pointless feel-good gestures Leading climate blogger Steve McIntyre says policy makers are failing to prepare the public for climate change and have become obsessed with "petty acts of virtuous behaviour" instead. He also told The Register that computer scientists should form "tiger teams" to produce engineering-grade analysis of climate models, to counter …
While the distinction between weather and climate has become a common place, it is worth remembering that climate is an _inferred_ property of long-term weather patterns. When someone asserts that there is a "climate trend," they are making that assertion based upon an analysis of weather data. It is actually reasonable to argue that climate is nothing BUT weather. Arguing that CO2 will affect the "climate" is really simply saying that it will alter the day-to-day patterns of the weather in some fashion and to some degree. Arguing that atmospheric CO2 will affect the "global" climate assumes many points of information that have not been proven or are at best equivocally supported. Is H2O a source for heating or cooling for instance. Or could it be both? How would that be modeled?
As the article pointed out, models are only as good as our understanding. While we might well understand the individual lawsof radiative physics and thermodynamics that rule the system, how those rules interact and what emergent properties that may ensue from those interactions in a complex system are where the entire situation gets all boggy, "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" or not.
No, he's recognizing that an individual not competent at making short term predictions about weather is probably not an individual capable of producing reliable long term predictions using far fewer known quantities, many more variables and vastly more unknown quantities and feedbacks.
Like a grade schooler struggling to add fractions will probably not give you the right answer to a calculus problem.
If he can't do the (comparatively) simple, he's got no business attempting the more complex.
> long term predictions
That is still weather, not climate.
The OP seems to be suggesting that anyone working for the Met Office cannot be trusted to have a useful opinion on anything, because he does not find their short-term weather forecasts useful.
And what has that to do with the price of fish?
@ UglyAmerican
When it's hot we're told it's man made global warming. When it's cold we're told it's just weather or maybe ' climate disruption' caused by man. When there's a drought we're told it's man-made climate change. A flood? Another extreme caused by man-made climate change. Is there any natural weather phenomenon that these money grubbing scaremongerers don't blame on man-made CO2? Time to face facts buddy: global average temperatures have't increased this century. Your religion is dying.
It's summer in England. Tomorrow is likely to be warmer than a day in January. Can you say >exactly< what the temperature tomorrow will be? Because you can't, does that mean you also can't make a reasonable case it'll likely be colder in January?
Please, come up with something more original.
Steve McIntyre is a remarkable man doing a remarkable job. I hope that one day he'll receive the widespread recognition that he deserves for the time and effort he's put into his examination of paleo-climate research and demonstrating how shoddily *some* of it had been done.
As was mentioned in the article, he's not some sort of denier, but he does want to see the science done properly and openly. Which, I'd have thought would be what everyone would want....
"...he's not some sort of denier..."
It depends how you define 'denier'. The word was initially used in climate science, not to refer to someone who refuses to listen to evidence, but to anyone who did not believe in the IPCC/NOAA/NISS standard hypothesis - in other words, that catastrophic warming driven entirely by CO2 concentrations would shortly engulf mankind.
Steve McIntyre IS a 'denier' according to the latter definition - even though his position is scrupulously correct in simply pointing out the egregious errors (amounting to fraud) in the current hypothesis. Simply to ask for data is enough to be labeled a 'denier'.
Incidentally, Steve McIntyre has now spent a fair proportion of his life fighting for the proper application of the scientific method against overwhelming establishment abuse, smears and rejection. I reckon that , for someone who has defended science in this manner, a Nobel prize is the least we could offer him...
"If resources are limited, then expenditures on acts of petty virtue - that may make microscope changes, that have no impact on climate - should be put under the microscope to see if they make best use of social resources compared to adaptation"
Solid common sense. This is essentially what some so-called sceptics have been saying for years, including Nigel Lawson in his book, and AFAIR, Bjørn Lomborg. Sadly Gordon Brown, together with much of the HoC, completely failed to grasp this, and so we're stuck with the millstone of the Climate Change Act 2008.
I think you'll find that Tony Blair was adamant that the Carbon reduction target was for *all* UK energy use, not just electricity generation.
He wanted a really *big* line in the sand.
The fact that he was leaving office, would have *no* involvement in making it happen and it would stuff Gordon Brown's entire time in office (however long that would be) were not his problem.
Stick it on the list with ID cards and the Data Communications Act V 1.0.
I can't believe I agree with a sentence, and even the title of an Orlowski article on climate change. But the comment about pointless feel-good gestures does resonate. 10% Bioethanol in my car doesn't significantly change the environmental impact of my car and the abundance of solar cells in Germany also doesn't inspire too much hope. (If we would donate the corresponding money to Spain or Greece, we might have the double-good feeling of saving the environment while relieving an economic collapse!)
Oil and coal will be burned while it's easily available. If we want to accelerate the transition to other forms of energy, we should tax the fuels to make them more expensive -- and leave it to the market to think about alternatives.
Too bad about the alpine glaciers though. No matter what you like to believe about hockey sticks, they just vanish.
"Oil and coal will be burned while it's easily available. If we want to accelerate the transition to other forms of energy, we should tax the fuels to make them more expensive -- and leave it to the market to think about alternatives."
You want to make the poor even poorer by dramatically increasing energy prices? How about we take all the money we waste on wind-farm and solar panel subsidies and invest it into research of genuine high energy, low carbon tech. If it's cheaper than fossil fuels (which will only increase in price) good old capitalism will sort out the transition without any extra taxes.
This is really location - dependent, it's all to do with the underlying geology, in many instances you have to drill deep, which is costly. In addition to this the water that's used to generate steam picks up dissolved minerals which end up forming scaling. It isn't particularly sustainable either, as it leads to localised cooling, and it's difficult to determine the amount of energy you can extract because you can't work out when it's going to run out. It seems like an obvious solution but it doesn't come without its problems. Although if you're in Iceland or New Zealand (ie on fault zones) it makes pretty good sense.
"...policy makers should accept the base IPCC scenarios. Why believe a word [the IPCC] says, asked several questioners? 'Until it mends its ways, policy makers are stuck with it,' said McIntyre."
This is not persuasive reasoning. If the IPCC is so bad - and it is - then you'd have to assume that policy built on the IPCC studies would be wrong - in the sense of being ineffective if not actually harmful - too. The idea that thoroughly corrupted research will lead to effective policy is not encouraging.
One can only think that McIntyre is hoping that there will be some effort to clean out the Augean stables of the IPCC. Personally, I can not see that happening. And you know, even if this were to happen, I would have no confidence in the replacement organization unless it reached conclusions opposite of those the IPCC now fabricates. And I doubt that I am alone in this: I would expect that if the replacement organization were to completely refute the IPCC fabrications, then those people who currently support the IPCC will consider the *new* conclusions to be fraudulent - thereby giving each side in the debate an authority to support and a conflicting authority to call "mercenary, venal, dishonest, driven by ideology and self-interest, etc etc".
I do not see how the solution to the problem of basing public policy on research conditioned by the political motivation of the participants in the IPCC is going to be found in the formation of another panel just as easily accused of having a political agenda.
It's perfectly reasonable for the policy makers to follow the advice of the IPCC. When making decisions about something you're not an expert, it makes sense to take the advice of the experts in the field. Without the relevant scientific knowledge the policy makers cannot question the advice of the IPCC, so must take it as truth. In this way the IPCC effectively defines policy with its conclusions. This is dangerous if the report isn't entirely unbiased, as some claim.
You're right that forming another panel isn't the way to go. It would be really obvious political maneuver in an attempt to change the result of the science. Science is supposed to be the driver of policy, not the other way around, but it shouldn't seek to define that policy - that's the job of politics. The real answer is for the current panel to be more transparent and amenable to criticism. There is evidence that what makes up the IPCC report isn't entirely unbiased. They don't appear to mind where the results come from as long as it looks like the right answer and keeps the report "on message". (See GlacierGate for a good example). I think that the attempts by members of the IPCC to define policy rather than just present an honest picture of the science is a great deal of what Climate Audit is all about.
What people seem to not realise is that policy makers have no reason to do anything about the climate. After all they won´t be in office when the effects are seen. No democratic country will be able to take any effective measures to change anything on the long term. That is why there are all those feel-good projects. So that policy makers can stand before their pet project and get a nice picture. In short we are doomed. Well provided that CO2 is going to be a problem.
"Simple methods are all that is required to extract signals. If you have to use methods that are trickier than that - then in the hands of inexperienced or opportunistic scientists you can get results don't make a whole lot of sense."
Yeah. If you happen to have a bird's-eye view of the Arctic and you see that year-on-year ice in the Arctic is diminishing, you simply conclude that ice there is melting because the Arctic is getting warmer. No need to resort to tortured cycles of ice expansion, retreat, etc.
Ice melts when it warms above 0. Doesn't get any simpler.
The basic problem is that so called 'green energy' (god how that term makes me want to puke) is for the image of the commisioning politician only
"Vote for me, I care about the planet.. I built this wind mill to power the community"
Sadly said community goes powerless for 30% of the year unless you build a dirty great big gas power station to back it up.
Which costs money
And emits CO2 too
So lets cut out all this CO2 green energy bollocks and say this
Global temps are going up, CO2 concentrations are going up, therefore the UK government has decided to reduce CO2 emissions by
1 Building nuclear power stations
2. mandating greater fuel efficency from car manufacturers
3, mandating less power and water use from domestic appliance manufacturers
Sadly this will cost money, but will enable the UK to meet its emission targets and set us as a leading example to the world of how a low carbon economy should be run.
But the ideal world of mine will not happen as the payback time on these projects is greater than the 4 yr election
cycle we are locked into.. plus most politicians wouldn't know their arse from their elbow without a civil servant or focus group to tell them
"Sadly said community goes powerless for 30% of the year unless you build a dirty great big gas power station to back it up."
It's worse than that. 30% is the design *target* that offshore wind turbines are expected to cover. It's 70% *not* covered by the turbines.
1 seems to be sort of happening.
You might try to get UK water companies (well the UK arms of the French and German multinational groups that actually own *most* of the UK water industry) to try to stop wasting as much water per household as they supply to the household (IE 50% lost in leaks).
I think that would require OFWAT to grow a pair and the *poor* water companies might not make so much profit.
"The entire rationale of policy in US and Europe has been to ignore what's happening in China and India and hope that petty acts of virtuous behaviour in both countries will cure the problem,"
Any man who thinks that Europe is a country is hard to listen to on anything else!!
What is your point exactly?
Here are two:
O’Donnell, Ryan, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon, 2011: Improved Methods for PCA-Based Reconstructions: Case Study Using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic Temperature Reconstruction. J. Climate, 24, 2099–2115. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1
Hockey sticks, principal components and spurious significance. Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L03710, 5 PP., 2005 doi:10.1029/2004GL021750 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021750.shtml
Which is precisely? Well no one knows, not even the politicians who seem to know everything.
One thing is sure: that coal base technology is cheap and the only way to make anything cheaper is to make coal more expensive. Yes! Tax carbon.
The only snag with this is that it will increase the price of production (note I said price not cost). And that will knock a countries trading position compared to other countries with untaxed energy costs. Could we do this unilaterally? Yes, but we need to have in place energy tax on imports and rebates on exports. To some this might look like an old fashioned trade war; as our trade balance is so poor this might not be a bad thing.
When it comes to saving the world, who is going to blink first?
Oil is already starting to get expensive, pretty much of its own accord; and coal is going to do the same thing sooner or later. Renewables are generally getting cheaper, or at least, not getting more expensive at the same rate as fossil fuels.
Of course, there might be a tiny problem with simply waiting for things to fix themselves .....
In Roman times it was warm enough to grow grapes near Hadrians wall, in Victorian times it was cold enough for the Thames to freeze.
Each volcano eruption kicks out more plantfood(CO2) than mankind has released in it's history
Carbon credits are just a way of redistributing the non-elites wealth
Here is a link to an article from yesterday's (20/VIII/2012) New York Times. It will be very interesting to see what kind of plans and policies AGW supporters will propose to deal with the matter (and if it will be possible for them to come up with any kind of even semi-realistic plan at all.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/sunday-review/air-conditioning-is-an-environmental-quandary.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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