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IlyaShpitser comments on [QUESTION]: What are your views on climate change, and how did you form them? - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: VipulNaik 08 July 2014 02:52PM

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Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 08 July 2014 05:43:25PM *  7 points [-]

I am extremely skeptical of AGW alarmism. Here are some reasons:

  • I am intrinsically contrarian.
  • My understanding of AGW is superior to the large majority of people of I talk to about it. For example, very few people understand basic concepts of temperature, blackbody radiation, and Wien's law. Very few people understand why C02 molecules are worse than 02, N2 or CO molecules for warming, or why methane molecules are much worse (the reason is that C02 has many rotational degrees of freedom, which allow it to absorb IR radiation emitted by the Earth). The small minority of people who understand it better than me tend to be extremely cautious (anti-alarmist) in their statements.
  • Simple arguments are morely likely to be true than complex ones. A simple environmentalist argument is: species are disappearing because of the destruction of wilderness habitats. Therefore, we should act to preserve wilderness habitats. I fully endorse this argument and would be happy to sacrifice large amounts of money on its basis. The argument for AGW action is more complex by many orders of magnitude: the world is warming (true), C02 emissions are the cause (probably true), increased temperatures are going to be bad (not at all obvious), and the increase in temperature is going to be large (untrue and unscientific in my view).
  • Building on the above point, if half of contemporary research results are wrong, then the likelihood that the complex multipart AGW argument is wrong is very high.
  • Climate scientists have never made a public falsifiable prediction.
  • Climate alarmists constantly depict their opponents as "shills" or tools of the oil/automotive/etc industries, as a strategy for undermining their legitimacy. I consider this offensive, but more relevantly, as a misreading of the socioeconomic forces at play. The only industry that should really be strongly opposed to AGW advocacy is the coal industry. Oil is cleaner than coal, so if C02 emissions are restricted, the oil industry will probably benefit. The nuclear industry will benefit significantly, as will the natural gas industry. The automotive industry might have to do some work to improve efficiency, but they can just pass those costs along to the customers.
Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 06:25:08PM *  6 points [-]

I'm skeptical of various parts of AGW (e.g., Climategate) but I believe the reaction to the field has become a hate death spiral. (Hence, considering it in its separate parts rather than a single phenomenon.)

Accordingly, I find some of your reasons unconvincing.

Building on the above point, if half of contemporary research results are wrong, then the likelihood that the complex multipart AGW argument is wrong is very high.

Fully general counterargument.

Climate scientists have never made a public falsifiable prediction.

IPCC Scientific Assessment

Regarding the confirmation of the second and third assessments (that is, they failed to be falsified, which implies that they were in fact falsifiable):

"Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011"

In conclusion, the rise in CO2 concentration and global temperature has continued to closely match the projections over the past five years, while sea level continues to rise faster than anticipated.

You don't find any falsifiable predictions if you never look for them.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 July 2014 06:50:29PM 2 points [-]

"Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011"

There seem to be problems with that paper.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 06:54:07PM *  1 point [-]

I believe you'll find the peach line (the non-adjusted data) in figure one still tracks with the projections. As far as I can tell your link is only concerned with the adjustments, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: At most, I believe we're reduced to debating the meaningfulness of the word "closely".

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 08 July 2014 09:16:14PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I don't have time to dig through the mound of literature. Could you please just state what the falsifiable prediction is? Please be as precise as possible.

Comment author: jbay 09 July 2014 06:46:11AM *  2 points [-]

I am intrinsically contrarian.

Is this a reason, or a bias?

Climate scientists have never made a public falsifiable prediction.

How would you update your beliefs if you learned that this statement is false?

Oil is cleaner than coal, so if C02 emissions are restricted, the oil industry will probably benefit.

Would you therefore like to offer me the odds on a prediction that, if we investigated the funding sources of various pro- and anti- AGW campaigns and think tanks, we would find that oil companies are predominantly sponsoring pro-AGW think tanks and stronger emissions legislation?

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 July 2014 08:31:27AM 0 points [-]

Is this a reason, or a bias?

A prior ;)

Comment author: AlexMennen 08 July 2014 06:49:00PM 4 points [-]

The small minority of people who understand it better than me tend to be extremely cautious (anti-alarmist) in their statements.

No, the people with the strongest background in climate science are climate scientists themselves, who are often quite alarmist.

half of contemporary research results are wrong, then the likelihood that the complex multipart AGW argument is wrong is very high.

Half of published research results are wrong, but consensuses of scientific fields have a much better track record.

The automotive industry might have to do some work to improve efficiency, but they can just pass those costs along to the customers.

Economics does not work that way.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 July 2014 07:26:34PM *  3 points [-]

No, the people with the strongest background in climate science are climate scientists themselves, who are often quite alarmist.

I'm no expert, but I've read the IPCC reports, and they're (to their credit) about as dry and anti-alarmist as it's possible to be while making the predictions they do. Are you talking about informal predictions? If so, which?

Comment author: Dustin 08 July 2014 09:25:45PM *  2 points [-]

I believe he means that the IPCC reports are in agreement with some people who you may classify as "alarmist". Or you can read it to mean that while the tone of the reports is not alarming, the actual contents are.

edit: That'll teach me to reply to a post without refreshing the page.

Comment author: AlexMennen 08 July 2014 07:43:58PM 2 points [-]

By "alarmist", I meant making dire predictions, not sounding panicked when they do or something like that. I assumed Daniel_Burfoot meant the same.

Comment author: jbay 09 July 2014 04:12:27AM *  0 points [-]

By "alarmist", I meant making dire predictions, not sounding panicked when they do

If you don't mind, I would like to probe your usage of this term...

What distinction do you draw between "alarmist" and "alarming"?

If the hypothetical situation is such that the truth really is properly dire, are accurate reports of this dire truth best classified as "alarmist"?

How should you react when, one night in the laboratory, you make an alarming discovery with fairly high confidence? After having them independently verified, would you consider yourself an "alarmist" for reporting your own findings?

Comment author: AlexMennen 09 July 2014 05:32:36AM 2 points [-]

Maybe I should have avoided the term "alarmist" in that context, since it often implies unjustified predictions of danger, which I obviously did not mean to imply. I'm not interested in arguing over definitions.

Comment author: jbay 09 July 2014 06:26:35AM *  1 point [-]

Good, I just wanted to be clear. In my experience that "alarmist" usually does strongly imply that the predictions of danger are unjustified, and that interpretation (which I presume most readers default to) risks changing the intended meaning of your statement that "climate scientists[...] are often quite alarmist."

Now that I re-read your top-level post knowing what you meant, I think I understand much better what you are saying.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 July 2014 06:15:22PM 1 point [-]

Climate scientists have never made a public falsifiable prediction.

Oh, they have made falsifiable predictions which mostly got falsified, at which point everyone (prominently including the media) got a severe case of amnesia :-/

An example would be the Trenberth's claim about the increasing strength of hurricanes around 2005.

Comment author: VipulNaik 08 July 2014 06:30:26PM 6 points [-]

I think it's better to make forecasts that are later proved wrong, then acknowledge that they are wrong, make new forecasts and appropriately calibrate the new forecasts based on the lesson learned in humility from the first wrong forecast.

Trenberth in particular seems to be a fairly honest and open climate scientist, in that he made an explicit forecast, then later admitted a change of mind. He's also the person who admitted (within an email leaked by Climategate) that there was a problem with balancing the energy budget, and he later publicly noted the same, and tried to come up with an explanation.

The problem isn't with people making wrong forecasts, it's with people (a) refusing to make forecasts while still implicity doing so by claiming near-certainty about the future and seeking action based on that, or (b) making forecasts and insisting on the forecasts being treated as correct without an external test of validity or a past record of forecasting expertise.

See also:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/05/the_bettors_oat.html

Comment author: Lumifer 08 July 2014 08:25:29PM 3 points [-]

Yes, of course it's better to try and fail, and try again, and fail better...

people (a) refusing to make forecasts while still implicity doing so by claiming near-certainty about the future and seeking action based on that

The situation with global warming reminds me very much of a recent Yvain post on his blog about the "motte-and-bailey doctrine". I think the AGW proponents use this technique extensively.

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