Consensus Science 43

[zdas04]

We hear a lot right now that "97% of climate scientist agree that climate change is human caused". Always 97%. Ten different "independent" studies all find 97% of the climate scientists agree. I've done experiments with a far narrower band of uncertainty than a poll of scientists and gotten a range of answers that mostly fell within the error band of the instrument being used. Polls of people tend to have an error band upwards of +/-5%, but these studies keep finding 97%. An independent study in Michigan looked at 1200 peer-reviewed papers and contacted the authors and found that 97% agreed. In East Anglica an independent evaluation found the same thing. In Pittsburgh, still 97%. And on. And on.

If we go back into history we find that in the 1500's approximately 97% of the scientists vilified Johannes Kepler for applying the tools of physics (a branch of "natural philosophy") to astronomy (a branch of mathematics within liberal arts). This work was widely reviled and the giants of the time like Tycho Brahe (who had been his mentor) refused to even consider his heresy when first published. 97% of the scientists accepted Astrology as science and rejected astronomy. Consensus is simply not proof of anything.

Tycho Brahe published extensively on "Geocentrism". 97% of the contemporary scientists agreed. Copernicus and Kepler were reviled for the concept of heliocentrism at the time. Today's consensus is that the sun doesn't really revolve around the earth. Bet those 97% would be embarrassed that today's consensus is that the sun is moving in space and that the earth is revolving around it. Galileo was forced to spend much of his life under house arrest after the Inquisition found him "vehemently suspect of heresy" for supporting this theory. The consensus was against him.

97% of the worlds "intellectuals" once embraced the horror of eugenics. To the point where scholarly texts were cited in support of the morality of the Nazi death camps.

These are vivid examples of possible errors in "consensus science". There are many others. Today 97% of physicists find cold fusion to be a hoax. The best of them say that because it thus far has not been presented in a repeatable, verifiable protocol--fair assessment. The worst of them say it is "impossible" and turn their backs. I have a great deal of confidence that one day, an individual will develop that "repeatable, verifiable" protocol and the world will have control of fusion in some form, maybe even cold fusion. This proof will come from the mind of an individual, not from some stinking "consensus". Consensus is stagnation. Consensus is generating a representation of pi to a few thousand more decimal places.

That leads me back to "Climate Science". I could say that the "peers" who do "peer review" reject any paper with a thesis outside of the consensus, so interviewing "published climate scientists" is kind of a study in masturbation. I could say that the "proof" of AGW is bundled in self-fulfilling prophesies that are very reminiscent of the children's story "The Emperor's New Clothes" where everyone complemented the Emperor on his garments while he was parading naked until a child disagreed with the consensus and shouted that the Emperor was actually without clothing.

AGW us a theory based on an hypotheses. Nothing wrong with that. All scientific advances in the history of mankind have started with an hypotheses. Then they developed into theories that could be tested. Tests started out crude to show gross-level indications of the value of the theory. Over time the tests became more refined and allowed subtle evaluations and the new tests either supported (not proved) the theory or disproved it. We skipped a few of those steps with AGW. The hypotheses was postulated that certain gases seemed to be long-lived in the atmosphere and that these gases tended to insulate the heat on the earth from radiating into space. Very crude small scale experiments were designed that did not disprove the hypotheses. The next step should have been to larger scale, more subtle experiments, but instead we jumped to computational fluid dynamics to build climate models. Of course, without any physical controls, the models supported the hypotheses (it couldn't do anything else, a model can't be anything more than a reflection of the mind of its author). Things like urban heating (the so-called "heat island effect") and ocean currents couldn't be reconciled in the models so they became fudge factors that could be tweaked to force the models into compliance with the theory. By this time the media had latched onto this sound-byte theory and were stirring up fear and superstition among the masses. That led to government funding of climate science at unprecedented levels. After a few years of this ocean of funding going exclusively to people who showed results that seemed to be in support of the consensus hypotheses, people who's work did not support the hypotheses didn't get published anymore. They failed to get tenure. They found other ways to make a living. They left the 97%.

The only thing that I find less capable of predicting the future than computer models is polls of human beings. The only thing that I'm certain of is that some distant future historian (say in the year 2513) will look at this period in human history and write a footnote that one side or the other in this discussion was so obviously wrong headed that it is amazing that the race survived. One side says that the earth is warming and that actions by mankind both caused the warming and can reverse it via their actions. The other side says the climate is changing, the climate has always changed, and the climate will always change and the causes and effects have not been proven, nor are those causes and effects particularly relevant (because if the change is not one thing then it must be some other thing, i.e., if mankind isn't causing the change then it might be cosmic rays, sunspots, or volcanism).

My Engineering mentor once told me that a bit of work that I had done was very much like "lacquering a turd, you've made it all pretty and shiny, gotten rid of the worst of the odor, but it is still a piece of shit". I contend that the vast majority of work in climate science is exactly the same category of effort. There are no circumstances where I will accept a computer model as "proof" of anything. I use computer models to help me predict the outcome of experiments, not in lieu of experimentation.





David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[beej67]

Much of Europe may be leaving the "consensus.."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterfe...l-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/2/

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[2dye4]

" The basic data came from a mercury thermometer read in bright sunlight on a moving surface. I've tried to do that and got an error bar wider than 0.5 C
"
What was the mean value of the error?? that is all that matters..

" Most of the data points did not include wind velocity or ship's movement so the effect of wind on the evaporation component must be assumed to be a constant 4 m/s (about 8 mph). I've been to sea and found both the wind and the vessel speed relative to the wind to be anything but constant. This velocity makes a huge difference to the "natural evaporation" calculation. Far more than 0.5 C
"

This would depend on the amount of time exposed, it would take time for the water temp to change. In some instances the water warmed and in some it cooled, depending on where it was taken and the time of year. They did include air temp corrections in the SST estimates, again is the error average decidedly positive or negative.

" There are no records of how long the bucket was outside of the ocean before the thermometer was read. This is a case where the act of observing has a profound impact on the observed conditions
"

Yes this one is a serious problem, but then again sometimes the water warmed and sometimes it cooled, the average of the error is the important factor.

" The actual location fix was questionable so "little" things like the boundary between the Japanese Current or the Gulf Stream and the rest of the ocean (for example) or the impact of tidal flats and deltas gets kind of blurry
"

This one is hard to correct admittedly, however it is only in certain geographical locations where the SST gradient is high and again was the net average error positive or negative.

This is a good post zdas, actual consideration of errors.

Watssupwith article has mostly only 'suggestive phrases' and misleading quotes without context.

Here is one of the quotes with the following sentences restored for clarity.
{How do we know that these corrections are trustworthy? The agreement of SST anomalies with largely independently corrected NMAT anomalies (Section 7 and Figure 7) is the strongest support to the results, and suggests that the impacts of future refinements and reduction of uncertainties in this area will be small. On a global decadal average, error bars of the systematic corrections do not appear to exceed 0.1 °C (Figure 7), and are much smaller than the 0.5 °C climate signal.}

My point is that the presentation at wattsupwithat is selective and incomplete and designed to incite opinion one way.

 

[cranky108]

All I see out of this "My dad can beat up your dad" squabling is the goverment wants more of my money to give the so called climate science.

Have you noticed that goverments rarely develop solutions that don't involve money changing hands. That simple solutions seem to elude goverment tirates.

 

[JohnRBaker]

This topic has resulted in yet ANOTHER 100+ post thread and which appears to have changed no one's mind or even lessened the rhetoric on either side. I suspect that there's a message here which may have to be left to more unbiased minds to unravel. Twenty years from now graduate students will be writing their doctoral thesis not on the effects of 'Global Warming' or even 'Climate Change' but rather on the vitriol of the public utterances made by the protagonists in this Kabuki Play that had been going on these past several years.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TomDOT]

I'm surprised nobody has commented on this one:

"The models assume that the freely evaporating water in an uninsulated canvas bucket with an open-top water surface is kept agitated and so has uniform temperature."

It's in the preamble to the corrections from the paper quoted above, rather than listed as a correction factor - but assuming the bucket was "kept agitated" every time is just flat wrong, something self-evident to anyone who has spent time in a paint shop where they apply zinc based primer.

The metallic zinc in the primer is much denser than the binder and solvent, and it tends to settle out rather rapidly - so much so, that most of the manufacturers ship the zinc separately as powder to be mixed in. Otherwise, it settles hard in the bottom and is difficult to redisperse.

Virtually all the specifications and manufacturer instructions require continuous agitation of the zinc primer during application. There are specialized paint pots to do so, and you also generally also have a higher powered mixer for the initial combining of the zinc powder with the paint liquids. For the specialized pot, all the painters have to do is put the lid on the bucket and turn a small air valve. Easy.

Despite having two different methods for agitating, specification requirements to do so, internal fab QC plans requiring verification of it, manufacturer data sheets requiring it and previous discussions about needing to fulfil the requirements: When I check out the paint side at a steel fab - more often than not, the primer is not getting continuous agitation. The same thing happens with field painting all the darn time as well.

I just cannot fathom a random sailor on a ship already juggling a canvas bucket, thermometer, log book and writing utensil in a moving deck finding something to efficiently agitate the bucket of water using his 4th hand and routinely doing so every time. He doesn't even have a QC watching him daily, plus a customer's inspector checking him periodically.

 

[2dye4]

John

I agree, the fascinating thing is how people form their opinions.

Obviously an individual cannot see climate change at this point because the effect is masked by weather and it is only observable when large averages are constructed to average out weather. So the issue is one of the first to put society in a rather helpless position of trusting a scientific body. Clearly at this point it isn't going well.
A significant portion of the population believes in UN conspiracies, colluding dishonest scientists..etc.
Then again what to expect from a public where a large portion of the population believes the Earth is less than 10k years old.


Fascinating to me are engineers opinion on the issue. Many of them want to believe climate science is a hoax and look just far enough into it for 'evidence' that can fulfill their wish. Usually engineers are very logical and thorough professionals but the positions taken WRT climate science that i have seen are truly amazing. All that logical procession from cause to effect is just thrown out the window and they are willing to form their opinions based on wattsupwithat provided talking points. Just look at TGS4 berate me for not accepting the copied material from wattsup.
"It is a statement of exactly WHAT they did"
Yes but what about the judgement of 'WHAT they did' ????
It seems to TGS4 that the clipped text is wholly proof of something without any support.
I truly hope we can emit millions of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere without any serious consequences but that question is not settled completely, although one would think that merely high probabilities of serious consequences would suffice for action to curb consumption of a limited resource. It seems win-win unless you are in the carbon fuel supply business.

 

[TGS4]

A significant portion of the population believes in UN conspiracies, colluding dishonest scientists..etc.

Do you happen to have a citation for that opinion?

Then again what to expect from a public where a large portion of the population believes the Earth is less than 10k years old.

Citation? Quantification?

Just look at TGS4 berate me for not accepting the copied material from wattsup.
"It is a statement of exactly WHAT they did"
Yes but what about the judgement of 'WHAT they did' ????
It seems to TGS4 that the clipped text is wholly proof of something without any support.

2dye4 - you still don't get it, do you. That quotation from racookepe1978 is not from the wattsupwiththat.com article, it is a quotation from the ACTUAL PAPER that did the "corrections", and it was a statement of what they ACTUALLY did. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I offered no opinion on the quotation, all I asked was questions of you to see if you would critically evaluate what was done. Apparently you were unable to do so on your own.

 

[TGS4]

JohnRBaker - I submit that the reason for the vitriol is the use, by one side of the argument, to use logical fallacies to shut down debate. "The Science Is Settled" kind of stuff.

Science is NEVER settled. There are more questions than answers. And some find even the answers given to be lacking. I'm all for having a robust discussion of the science. That can likely be done. I have already stated that I am open to the possibility of the CAGW hypothesis being right, provided the evidence/observations answer more questions than they raise. Are you willing to state the opposite - that you are open to the possibility that the CAGW hypothesis is wrong?

 

[JohnRBaker]

As I said, I suspect that this will be a hot topic for future doctorial research, the only question being, will this be coming from the school of Political Science or Phycology?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TGS4]

Likely both. Too bad there aren't any doctoral student in Philosophy of Science.

I sure hope it is not Social Psychology...

 

[2dye4]

"" I offered no opinion on the quotation, all I asked was questions of you to see if you would critically evaluate what was done. Apparently you were unable to do so on your own""

You did put up several opinions
"" The early measurements were, in no way, scientific. Trying to make adjustments to crappy data still results in crappy data.""

""The corrections are dubious, and not based on any sound engineering or scientific basis""

You did NOT ask me to critically evaluate anything, if so point it out.

""it was a statement of what they ACTUALLY did""

It is a statement of 'some' of what they ACTUALLY did, and yes i know the source is the paper but the selection is from wattsup.


As far as evaluating what they did I really don't have the expertise to do so, after all I am only an engineer.
I will leave that to climate scientists.

You have issues opinions without anything to back them up, see my previous post.

"logical fallacies" ??
such as requiring evidence to back up opinions??

 

[TomDOT]

Science is never settled.

Believing "the science is settled" is ipso facto proof that you do not understand Science.

Progress in science is rarely a matter of agreeing with the consensus.

Who are the big scientific names in history? Why are they big? Because they upset conventional understanding.

Copernicus - who went against the geocentric theory of the universe and put together the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Totally bucked convention. His degree was "doctor of canon law."

Newton - whose "laws" (theories) of motion revolutionized industrial production and are the basis (along with calculus) for a hell of a lot of engineering? Upset a lot of conventional wisdom.

Einstein - who set Newton's theories on their ear with special relativity. Failed his college entrance exams the first time around and had to take remedial courses. Worked first as a patent examiner after college. Did actually have a PhD in his subject of study.

Faraday - who apprenticed as a bookbinder at age 14, upset scientific convention hugely with his theories on electricity and magnetism, electromagnetic rotation (basis for the electric motor) and basically organizing centuries (milennia?) of groping. "Laws" of electrolysis. Huge variety of chemical discoveries. Created the first material to be repelled by a magnet (impossible!) Basis for another huge chunk of engineering. Bookbinder's apprentice who read a lot.

Darwin - whose theory of evolution so upset the consensus, that we STILL have plenty of people fighting over the whole concept. Had issues in medical school, so took up taxidermy instead.

 

[TGS4]

As far as evaluating what they did I really don't have the expertise to do so, after all I am only an engineer.
I will leave that to climate scientists.

You are welcome to abdicate your responsibility to the Climate Scientists™. However, we have, in this eng-tips community, a wealth of people with a wide range of education and experiences. I prefer to hear from them, too, before rendering my verdict. Based on what I read from the Climategate files (not what others have read and provided opinions, but what I read myself), my trust level for the Climate Scientists is pretty low...

Climate Science is one of those fields of study that is so wide and diverse, that it is sometimes difficult to put a demarcation around it. It involves: physics, radiation physics, high-energy physics, high-temperature physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, meteorology, geology, remote sensing, statistics, heat transfer, thermodynamics, biology, biochemistry, vulcanology, glaciology, solar physics, numerical methods, metrology, to name just a few. Take the last one, as an example: metrology, the science of measurement - if you're going to defer to experts, is it going to be a Climate Scientist, or perhaps an expert in metrology? Take as another example: statistics - if you're going to defer to experts, is it going to be a Climate Scientist or an expert Statistician?

 

[Maui]

Tom, those are good examples of scientific pioneers whose efforts and insight changed our understanding and perception of the universe we live in. But as brilliant as they all were, in some ways the theories that they proposed were not all completely correct, even though they are largely accepted as foundations of scientific knowledge today. Take for example Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity. They each have impressive predictive capabilities, and there is a tremendous amount of historical evidence to support them both. Based on Newton's law of gravity, perturbations that were detected in the orbit of the planet Uranus lead Urbain Joseph Le Verrier (and independently John Couch Adams) to predict the existence of the planet Neptune. Based on his analysis, Le Verrier was able to approximate the location of this new planet. And in 1846 at the Berlin Observatory Johann Galle observed Neptune orbiting in close proximity to the predicted location. So Newton's theory of gravity correctly led to the prediction of the existence of a planet that had not yet been discovered. Pretty impressive. When Newton's law was found to be inadequate to explain the observed precession of mercury's perihelion advance, Einstein's theory of gravity came to the rescue. Both theories can explain a tremendous amount of observed phenomena. And they are largely accepted by physicists the world over as proven scientific theories. Scientists are mainly satisfied that they are right. But like all theories, they have limitations (as Einstein demonstrated regarding Newton's law of gravity for example).

When it was discovered that the stars in spiral galaxies do not rotate about the galactic centers in the way that Newton and Einstein predicted (i.e. flat rotation curves), the concept of dark matter was born. It was proposed to account for the discrepancies that were observed. Decades after it was first proposed, there has still not been any independent scientific evidence to support the existence of dark matter. None at all. Yet there appears to be a preponderance of physicists who steadfastly adhere to this concept because they are unwilling to modify or abandon the existing theories of gravity that have served them well. While some scientists have proposed alternative theories to account for the behavior that has been observed on these grand scales, these efforts have been largely ignored by the majority of their peers. The consensus claims that Newton and Einstein are exactly right, and that the proposed alternative theories are wrong, period. And there is no political agenda behind the scenes that I am aware of here. Just a fundamental disagreement on the interpretation of what is being observed. It seems blatantly obvious to me that our laws of gravity need to be modified in order to properly account for these new observations. But I appear to be in the minority, and may remain there for a long time given the scientific climate today.

One problem of recent origin that reminds me of the AGW discussion is the Pioneer anomaly. It involves the two Pioneer spacecraft that were launched in the early 1970s. After several decades in deep space, a curious observation was made by the scientists who were monitoring the movement of these spacecraft. They were not where they were supposed to be. They were closer to the sun than what was predicted by Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity. Many theoretical explanations were proposed to account for the discrepancy, but the one that has taken hold is the theory of asymmetrical heat dissipation by the spacecraft's thermonuclear generators. And this conclusion was based on a series of computer simulations where scientists used many unproven approximations and "fudge factors" to make the models agree as closely as possible to the already known data sets. And where this data disagreed with their models, they suggested that the data itself was wrong. How's that for scientific reasoning? The bad science associated with AGW is not limited to that topic alone. I see it in various forms in lots of different places. And it brings me to a larger question regarding the quality of the training that scientists today receive. I also question their motivations and the biases that they may have as a result of their funding.

Truly valid theories stand the test of time. And the ones that don't fall by the wayside. AGW will be no different.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[cranky108]

What if we quit questioning the data, and ask how can we trust the model predictions if the results can't be verified? How do we know any of the proposels being offered at the point of a tax collecter, will have any effect?

The question that should be asked is what will it cost, and what effect it will have? If the answer to either of these is we are unsure of the ballpark (I don't believe we can be exact), then the answer to any responce should be "do nothing". If you can't calculate it, you can't engineer it.

But what we hear from the news sources is "the sky is falling". That just dosen't work for many of us.

 

[zdas04]

JohnRBaker,
We have disagreed on just about every aspect of this discussion, but finally find an area that we can totally agree on.

Twenty years from now graduate students will be writing their doctoral thesis not on the effects of 'Global Warming' or even 'Climate Change' but rather on the vitriol of the public utterances made by the protagonists in this Kabuki Play that had been going on these past several years.

May not take 20 years, but the best theses will be in that time period.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[TheTick]

Lots of Einstein factoids being bandied about, some more true than others. One thing is true: Einstein arrived at his conclusions about relativity because he trusted the data and dismissed the people who dismissed the data.

 

[Maui]

Since he was a patent clerk Einstein had the opportunity to ponder and perfect his special theory of relativity without any of the pressure associated with maintaining an academic position (i.e. the publish or perish syndrome). That type of freedom in academic pursuits is a rarity today.

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[TenPenny]

I put the same faith in computer models of the global climate as I do in the computer models that allowed people to put a factor on the risk of a bunch of worthless mortgages all bundled together, and call it a good investment.

That said, I still believe that man's activity has SOME effect on the earth, it's inconceivable that it has no effect whatsoever.

 

[zdas04]

That effect can be significant in micro-climates like the LA Basin, the East River, London, or Shanghai. It is the theory that man's activities are driving a change in world climate direction that I can't see support for.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"