Wednesday, December 09, 2009
On Being Right. Again
I received some criticism for saying 'Actually, er, bollocks' about Nigel Lawson's interesting thoughts on recent global temperature trends. It is true, I was somewhat disrespectful to a former Chancellor of the Exchequer. But, on the other hand, actually, er, bollocks.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Bollocks is a mighty big word for something so small. Everyone agrees that we've been coming out of the Little Ice Age since the 1600s. So of course the last decade is the warmest since apparently reliable temperature records began around 1860. It's the smallness and insignificance of the warming that should be centre stage, in any rational discussion. See the graphic 15 minutes into this presentation last month. If it catches your interest the whole hour is helpful. The quote from Eisenhower in 1961, about the potential for corruption of science (not just the famous 'military-industrial complex' bit) was new to me. But just the graph at 15:00 is enough. The rise is ridiculously small. And we've no solid proof that CO2 had anything to do with it. What a malarkey.
ReplyDeleteFor those into cool graphs and open software to explain them, check out 'replicating the trick' at my new blog. That's where the real action is at present: through a 'surprise release' of data and code from East Anglia, being able for the first time to reproduce the wonderful fictions we've been fed all these years. It'll take a hundred years more I would have thought for 'climate science' to regain any respect at all from anyone with even a modicum of understanding.
I assume the whole cap and trade stuff will fall apart as well, starting this week. But it has always been a separable thing - being about making money the easy way, the cartel way. Even so, I would have thought it's dead in the water too. Which is a wonderful thing.
Lovely article Bryan (the original), better than any other single article I have read I think. I have had little doubt about this for at least 20 years. Where to start: there is a major geopolitical scrap for the arctic oil, which until quite recently was assumed to be inaccessible; one could go on and on, or you could just read your article. I have found that 'sceptics' never settle on any consistent line of criticism but bodge together stupid philosophy of science, retarded statistical arguments, wild conspiracy theories, etc. I have given up taking them seriously.
ReplyDeleteYou said that getting economists involved is a bad idea -- I disagree. They are used to dealing with complicated systems; economists often explain this well and the economic angle is important in mapping a solution.
I thought this was a relatively comprehensible & reasonable summary of the story so far:
ReplyDeletehttp://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
Made in 2006 but still a decent overview.
"You said that getting economists involved is a bad idea -- I disagree. They are used to dealing with complicated systems; economists often explain this well and the economic angle is important in mapping a solution."
ReplyDeleteErrrr ......
No
You are being spun a,little bit Bryan. It may be the warmest decade on record, but it hasn't been getting warmer over that decade despite tha mammoth increase in emissions over the same period. Every model claims it should have, as far as I am aware.
ReplyDelete