Following my post on the Royal Meteorological Society’s evidence to the AR5 inquiry, Doug McNeall and I had a long and interesting exchange on Twitter. Although he arrived at his point somewhat elliptically, Doug appeared to want to suggest that although in Ed Hawkins’ graph the observations are on the cusp of falling outside the envelope described by 90% of model runs, this did not actually represent falsification. In his view, the test was too harsh.
The precise determination of when the observations should be seen as inconsistent with the models is one for the statisticians, and I know that Lucia, for one, disagrees with Doug’s view (and I feel pretty sure that Doug Keenan will say that they are both wrong). However, this is not actually germane to my original point, which is that the poor performance of the models to date - as represented by Ed’s graph - needs to be communicated to policymakers. We are without doubt less confident than we were that the model ensemble captures the true behaviour of the Earth, even if we are not (in Doug M’s view at least) absolutely certain that it does not.
So returning to the Royal Meteorological Society’s evidence, I asked Doug why they made the following unqualified statement of confidence in the models (my emphasis):
The Report devotes Chapter 9 to a comprehensive, balanced and realistic evaluation of climate models which is based on the published literature and draws extensively on the results of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). As stated in the report (Chapter 9, final draft) climate models are based on physical principles, and they reproduce many important aspects of observed climate. We agree with the report when it states that both these aspects contribute to a “confidence in the models’ suitability for their application in detection and attribution studies and for quantitative future predictions and projections”, and when it notes that “whereas weather and seasonal climate predictions can be regularly verified, climate projections spanning a century or more cannot. This is particularly the case as anthropogenic forcing is driving the climate system toward conditions not previously observed in the instrumental record, and it will always be a limitation.”
I was rather taken aback by Doug’s response:
You call that unqualified!? Ha!
To me, the part that I have highlighted seems absolutely to represent a statement of unqualified support for the models. The remainder the merely says that scientists can’t say whether they are any good in the very long term. I can only assume that Doug’s response is based on a narrow reading of the text - in other words that they are only saying that the basis in physics and the hindcasting ability contribute to a “suitability for prediction”, not that such suitability has been achieved. If so I would say that the Royal Meterological Society has grossly misled the inquiry.
But even if this is the case, we know that the models run too hot over the medium term and the short term. We know that they incorporate the wrong value for aerosol forcing, so we would expect them to run too hot anyway. We know that scientists are now theorising that heat is currently being transported into the deep ocean by a process as yet undetermined and entirely unrepresented in the models.
So even if Doug’s position is “the models are not yet falsified”, we have to ask where is the communication of the known problems with the models. Why has the Royal Meterological Society not explained the situation to politicians?
Climate change experts no more likely to be right than dart throwing monkeys
Despite admitting that predicting climate change in not possible, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continues to propagate the likelihood of climate “catastrophe” and is demanding that nations take drastic action to mitigate it.
The actual evidence, however, suggests that the climate is undergoing natural cyclical change and that the “man-made” impacts are small. But this isn’t stopping policy makers from acting on models and scenarios, culled from “experts”, which remain unsupported by compelling “real world” evidence.
In fact, the expert “consensus” position is based on the selective use of evidence, some of it from peer reviewed journals and some not, and expert group-think. Psychologists understand this phenomenon and have developed a thorough understanding of just how wrong experts can be.
Phillip Tetlock author of Expert Political Judgement[1] and a Professor of Psychology at Penn State University, provides strong empirical evidence for just how bad we are at predicting. He conducted a long-running experiment by asking nearly 300 political experts to make a variety of forecasts about dozens of countries around the world. After tracking the accuracy of about 80,000 predictions over the course of 20 years, Tetlock found:
“… experts thought they knew more than they knew. That there was a systematic gap between subjective probabilities that experts were assigning to possible futures and the objective likelihoods of those futures materializing… With respect to how they did relative to, say, a baseline group of Berkeley undergraduates making predictions, they did somewhat better than that. How did they do relative to purely random guessing strategy? Well, they did a little bit better than that, but not as much as you might hope…
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision-making, has looked at the issue of “experts” and why they often get things wrong. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow[2], he points to several aspects of their psychology as factors, but highlights two in particular: the illusion of understanding and the illusion of validity. These are primary causes of experts getting it wrong.
The illusion of understanding refers to the idea that the world is more knowable than it actually is. In particular, experts believe that they have an in-depth and insightful understanding of the past and this enables them to better understand the future. They use what Kahneman refers to as the WYSIATI rule - “what you see is all that there is” and this provides the basis for their confidence.
For example, it must be the case that high levels of government indebtedness (levels of debt to GDP ratio above 90 per cent is the most recent version of this[3]) stifle the economy and reduce investor and entrepreneurial confidence according to some notable economists. Or it is obvious that human generated C02 is the major cause of climate change according to some climatologists. Both of these understandings are based on a particular view of historical data and “facts” and an extrapolation of these views into the future.
The views exist independently of the evidence to support them. Just as financial advisers are confident that they are successful in predicting the future behaviour of stocks, so macro-economists are confident that their views of austerity have the weight of history behind them. Those committed to the view that human produced CO2 is the primary cause of climate change are not deterred by evidence that it may not be or that climate change has stalled for the last 17 years.
Experts are sustained in their beliefs by a professional culture that supports them. Austerians (those who believe that austerity is the only way) have their own network of support, as do the Keynesians who oppose them. Anthroprocene climatologists who believe that man is the primary cause of global warming have their own network of support among climate change researchers and politicians while the skeptical climate scientists also have their support networks. All remain ignorant of their ignorance and are sustained in their belief systems by selected use of evidence and by the support of stalwarts. These supportive networks and environments help sustain the illusion of validity. It is an illusion because evidence which demonstrates contrary views to those of the “experts” are dismissed and denied - the expert position, whatever it may be, is valid simply because they are expert.
Indeed, using Isaiah Berlin’s 1953 work on Tolstoy (The Hedgehog and the Fox), Austerians and anthropocenes are “hedgehogs” they know one big thing, they know what they know within a coherent framework, they bristle with impatience towards those who don’t see things their way and they are exceptionally focused on their forecasts.
For these experts, a “failed prediction” is an issue of timing, the kind of evidence being adduced and so on, it is never due to the fact that their prediction is wrong. Austerians who look at the failure of their policies in Europe, for example, suggest that the austerity did not go far enough; anthroprocene climatologists see the lack of warming over the last 17 years as proof that they are right, it is just that the timing is a little off.
Even the climatologist trapped in thick ice in the Antarctic in December 2013 who set out to study the thinning ice-cap claims he just went to the wrong place - “climate change is happening and the ice is melting” he says, as he was lifted off the thick ice by helicopter.
Tetlock’s work, cited above, is a powerful testimony to these two illusions, understanding and validity. His results are devastating for the notion of “the expert”. According to Kahneman, “people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart throwing monkeys”.
Tetlock observes that “experts in demand were more overconfident that those who eked our existences far from the limelight”. We can see this in spades in both economics and climate change. James Hanson, recently retired from NASA and seen to be one of the world’s leading anthroprocene climatologists, makes predictions and claims that cannot be supported by the evidence he himself collected and was responsible for. For example, he suggested that “in the last decade it’s warmed only about a 10th of a degree as compared to about two tenths of a degree in the preceding decade” - a claim not supported by his own data set. This overconfidence and arrogance comes from being regarded as one of the leading climate scientists in the world - evidence is not as important as the claim or the person making it. Hanson suffers from the illusion of skill.
Kahneman recognizes people like Hansen. He suggests
“...overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.”
There are other psychological features of the expert that are worthy of reflection. For example, how “group think” starts to permeate a discipline such that those outside the group cannot be heard as rational or meaningful. They are referred to as “deniers” or “outsiders”, reflecting the power of group think. The power of a group (they will claim consensus as if this ends scientific debate) to close ranks and limit the scope of conversation or act as gatekeepers for the conversation. Irving Janis documented the characteristics of group think in his 1982 study of policy disasters and fiascoes[4]. He suggests these features:
Illusion of invulnerability - Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks. We can see this in the relentless pursuit of austerity throughout Europe.
Collective rationalization - Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. We see this in relation to both climate change and austerity economics.
Belief in inherent morality - Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions. Austerians appear to willfully ignore the level of unemployment and the idea of a lost generation of youth workers, especially in Greece and Spain. Anthropecene climate researchers generally present themselves as morally superior.
Stereotyped views of out-groups -Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Climate “deniers” commonly face suggestions that they be prosecuted or punished in some way[5].
Direct pressure on dissenters - Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. This has occurred in the climate change research community, since grants appear to favour those who adopt the view that man-made CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.
Self-censorship - Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
Illusion of unanimity - The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous. This is especially the case in “consensus” (sic) climate change science and amongst austerians.
Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ - Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.
All of these characteristics can be seen to be in play in the two examples used throughout essay - economics of austerity and man-made global warming.
There is also the issue of the focusing illusion. Kahneman sums this up in a single statement: “nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it”. “Government debt is the most important economic challenge facing society today” says a well-known economist, or “climate change is a life and death issue” says U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry. Neither of these statements is true for anyone unless they are obsessive.
Society faces a great many challenges. Much will depend on our own preoccupations and what focus you take for the concerns you have. Some are more concerned about the future of their local sports team than they are about debt, deficits or climate change. The illusion is that one person’s focus is, by definition, better than another is simply because they are expert in this field.
Nassim Taleb makes a very compelling argument against forecasting in several of his books, most notably in The Black Swan[6]. He explains that we can make use of very short-term guesses or predictions, but long-term forecasts are nothing more than pure guesswork. We are guilty of ascribing far too much predictability to the truly unpredictable. It is very common for our human brains to believe we are recognizing patterns that are only a random sequence of events. Experts have tried to overcome our human fallacies with tools such as quantitative modeling.
However, even these models play only on our biases. We believe that models that have accurately predicted the future in the past are likely to predict the future going forward. But that is no more true than believing me when I tell you that a coin will land heads up just because I accurately predicted it would do so the last 10 times.
So beware of predictions, especially those made by experts. New Year’s Eve and day are the prime season for prediction. Be warned.
[1] Tetlock, P. E(2006) Expert Political Judgment - How Good is It? How Can we Know? New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
[2] Kahneman, D (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow. Toronto: Doubelday Canada
[3] Reinhart, C. and Rogoff, K. (2013) This Time Its Different - Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
[4] See Janis, Irving L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.Second Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
[5] It has been suggested that those who deny climate change is caused by human activity should be put to death. See
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
To those of us who have dared to question on scientific and economic grounds the official story on global warming, it is a continuing surprise that there is so little concern about whether or not that story is objectively true among the many who have swallowed it hook, Party Line and sinker.
For the true-believers, the Party Line is socially convenient, politically expedient, and financially profitable. Above all, it is the Party Line. For those who think as herds or hives, it is safe. It is a grimy security blanket. It is the dismal safety in numbers that is the hallmark of the unreasoning mob.
But is it true? The herd and the hive do not care. Or, rather, they do care. They care very much if anyone dares to ask the question “But is it true?” They are offended, shocked, outraged. They vent their venom and their spleen and their fury on those of us who ask, however politely, “But is it true?”
Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.
The question arises: can science function properly or at all in the absence of true religion and of its insistence upon morality? For science, in searching for the truth, is pursuing what is - or very much ought to be - a profoundly moral quest.
Yet what if a handful of bad scientists wilfully tamper with data, fabricate results, and demand assent to assertions for which there is no real scientific justification? And what if the vast majority of their colleagues cravenly look the other way and do nothing about their bent colleagues? What you get is the global warming scare.
As every theologian knows, the simplest and usually the clearest of all tests for the presence of a moral sense is whether or not the truth is being told. The true-believers in the New Superstition are not telling the truth. On any objective test, they are lying, and are profiteering by lying, and are doing so at your expense and mine, and are bidding fair to bring down the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, flinging us back into the dumb, inspissate cheerlessness of a new Dark Age.
Nothing is done about the many lies, of course, because the many lies are the Party Line, and no one ever went to jail who safely parroted the Party Line.
“The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus! A 97.1% Consensus! Doubters Are As Bad As Holocaust Deniers! Global Temperature Is Rising Dangerously! It Is Warmer Now Than For 1400 Years! Well, 400 Years, Anyway! Tree-Rings Reliably Tell Us So! The Rate Of Global Warming Is Getting Ever Faster! Global Warming Caused Superstorm Sandy! And Typhoon Haiyan! And 1000 Other Disasters! Arctic Sea Ice Will All Be Gone By 2013! OK, By 2015! Or Maybe 2030! Santa Claus Will Have Nowhere To Live! Cuddly Polar Bears Are Facing Extinction! Starving Polar Bears Will Start Eating Penguins! Himalayan Glaciers Will All Melt By 2035! Er, Make That 2350! Millions Of Species Will Become Extinct! Well, Dozens, Anyway! Sea Level Is Rising Dangerously! It Will Rise 3 Feet! No, 20 Feet! No, 246 Feet! There Will Be 50 Million Climate Refugees From Rising Seas By 2010! OK, Make That 2020! The Oceans Will Acidify! Corals Will Die! Global Warming Kills! There Is A One In Ten Chance Global Warming Will End The World By 2100! We Know What We’re Talking About! We Know Best! We Are The Experts! You Can Trust Us! Our Computer Models Are Correct! The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus!”
And so, round and round, ad nauseam, ad ignorantiam, ad infinitum.
Every one of those exclamatory, declamatory statements about the climate is in substance untrue. Most were first uttered by scientists working for once-respected universities and government bodies. For instance, the notion that there is a 1 in 10 chance the world will end by 2100 is the fundamentally fatuous assumption in Lord Stern’s 2006 report on climate economics, written by a team at the U.K. Treasury for the then Socialist Government, which got the answer it wanted but did not get the truth, for it did not want the truth.
Previously, you could count on getting nothing but the truth from the men in white coats with leaky Biros in the front pocket. Now, particularly if the subject is global warming, you can count on getting little but profitable nonsense from your friendly local university science lab. They make the profits: you get the nonsense.
The central reason why what Professor Niklas Morner has called “the greatest lie ever told” is damaging to civilization arises not from the staggering cost, soon to be $1 billion a day worldwide. Not from the direct threat to the West posed by the avowedly anti-democratic, anti-libertarian policies of the UN, the IPCC, and the costly alphabet-soup of unelected busybody agencies of predatory government that live off the taxpayer’s involuntary generosity. Not from the dire environmental damage caused by windmills and other equally medieval measures intended to make non-existent global warming go away.
The damage caused by the Great Lie arises from the fact that just about the entire global governing class has found it expedient or convenient or profitable to adopt the Great Lie, to peddle it, to parade it, to parrot it, to pass it on, regardless of whether anything that it says on the subject of the climate has any truth in it whatsoever.
The fundamental principle upon which Aristotle built the art and science of Logic is that every individual truth is consistent with every other individual truth. The truth is a seamless robe. Religion or at any rate the Catholic presentation to which I inadequately subscribe (practicing but not perfect) is also built upon that fundamental principle of the oneness of all truth.
Science, too or at any rate the classical scientific method adumbrated by Thales of Miletus and Al-Haytham and brought to fruition by Newton, Huxley, Einstein, and Popper was also rooted in the understanding that there is only one truth, only one physical law, and that, therefore, every truth unearthed by the diligence of the curious and hard-working empiricist or theoretician must, if it be truly true, be consistent at every point and in every particular with every truth that had ever been discovered before, and with every truth yet to be discovered.
It is in the understanding of that central principle of the remarkable oneness and self-consistency of all truth that men of true religion and of true science ought to have become united. For there is an awesome beauty in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all.”
The beauty of the truth is sullied, the seamless robe rent in sunder, if not merely a few individual scientists but the entire classe politique not merely of a single nation but of the planet advantages itself, enriches the already rich and impoverishes the already poor by lying and lying and lying again in the name of Saving The Planet by offering costly and environmentally destructive non-solutions to what is proving to be a non-problem.
The very fabric of the Universe is distorted by so monstrous and so sullenly persistent a lie. Those scientists who have been caught out trampling the truth, and those universities in which it has become near-universally agreed that the best thing to keep the cash flowing is to say nothing about the Great Lie, are by their actions or inactions repudiating the very justification and raison-d’etre of science: to seek the truth, to find it, to expound it, to expand it, and so to bring us all closer to answering the greatest of all questions: how came we and all around us to be here?
We who are not only men of science but also men of religion believe that the Answer to that question lay 2000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem. The very human face of the very Divine was “perfectly God and perfectly Man”, as the Council of Chalcedon beautifully put it.
We cannot prove that a Nazarene made the Universe, or that any Divine agency takes the slightest interest in whether we tell the truth. But, for as long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe it. And it is in our freedom to believe that which has not been proven false that the value of true religion to true science may yet come to be discerned. For our religion teaches us that truthfulness is right and willful falsehood wrong. We cannot prove that that is so, but we believe it nonetheless.
Science, though, is not a matter of belief (unless you belong to Greenpeace or some other Marxist front organization masquerading as an environmental group). It is a matter of disciplined observation, careful theoretical deduction, and cautious expression of results. The true scientist does not say, “I believe”: but he ought, if there is any curiosity and awe in his soul, to say “I wonder...”. Those two words are the foundation of all genuine scientific enquiry.
Yet the global warming scare has shown how very dangerous is science without morality. The scientist, who takes no one’s word for anything (nullius in verba), does not accept a priori that there is any objectively valuable moral code. He does not necessarily consider himself under any moral obligation either to seek the truth or, once he has found it, to speak it.
Science, therefore, in too carelessly or callously rejecting any value in religion and in the great code of morality in which men of religion believe and which at least they try however stumblingly to follow, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Yea, truth faileth (Isaiah, 59:15). The Great Lie persists precisely because too many of the scientists who utter it no longer live in accordance with the moral yardstick that Christianity once provided, or any moral yardstick, so that they do not consider they have any moral obligation to tell the truth.
That being so, we should no longer consider ourselves as laboring under any obligation, moral or other, to pay any particular heed to scientists seeking to meddle in politics unless and until they have shown themselves once more willing to be what al-Haytham said they should be: seekers after truth.
Two hundred and forty-six feet of sea-level rise, Dr. Hansen? Oh, come off it!
A merry Christmas an’ a roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.