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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 6:16:36 GMT
Page 46+ Additional findings, not mentioned by Johnston and Fuller, include Dr. Roy Spencer's more recent satellite analysis, which supports negative, not positive, feedback:Spencer, Ph.D., Roy W. “Strong Negative Feedback from the Latest CERES Radiation Budget Measurements Over the Global Oceans.” Scientific Blog. Global Warming (drroyspencer.com), May 7, 2010. www.drroyspencer.com/2010/05/strong-negative-feedback-from-the-latest-ceres-radiation-budget-measurements-over-the-global-oceans/
"A net feedback of 6 operating on the warming caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 late in this century would correspond to only about 0.5 deg. C of warming. This is well below the 3.0 deg. C best estimate of the IPCC, and even below the lower limit of 1.5 deg. C of warming that the IPCC claims to be 90% certain of." (Note: the units of "net feedback of 6" used above are "Watts / sq meter / degree K", not the customary fraction.)) ... Conclusion: "And the above results show that not one of the IPCC climate models behaves like the real climate system does when it comes to feedbacks during interannual climate variations…and feedbacks are what determine how serious manmade global warming will be." Page 46 4. Direct Evidence on Feedback EffectsSatellite temperature measurements have been available since the middle 1980's (ERBE: Earth Radiation Budget Experiment). "Even taking account of the known uncertainty in the ERBE data, Lindzen and Choi find that the ERBE show a net negative feedback as SST rose during their study period, primarily due to increased reflection of solar radiation....Given this negative feedback, the implied temperature increase from a doubling of CO2 – which as discussed earlier is referred to as climate sensitivity – is, according to Lindzen and Choi, about .5 degrees Celsius. Given that climate models generate a sensitivity of between 1.5 and 5 degrees Celsius, the ERBE data would seem to indicate that the climate models used by the IPCC vastly overstate climate sensitivity. The reason they do so, as explained earlier, is because they assume large positive feedbacks. The results reported by Lindzen and Choi would seem to suggest that the fundamental assumption in climate models used by the IPCC – of large positive feedbacks – indeed the assumption that by itself is responsible for potentially catastrophic large temperature increases – is strongly disconfirmed by the existing evidence."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 6:28:21 GMT
Page 47, 48 The matter of "detection and attribution", or, what makes the IPCC so sure that CO2 is the culprit?On the one hand, the IPCC / EPA says: "... it is 'extremely unlikely' that warming over the past 50 years 'can be explained without external forcing,' and 'it is very likely that these natural forcings alone cannot account for the observed warming.'" On the other hand, they say: "…uncertainties remain in estimates of natural internal variability…internal variability is difficult to estimate from available observational records since these are influenced by external forcing, and because records are not long enough in the case of instrumental data, or precise enough in the case of proxy reconstructions, to provide complete descriptions of variability on decadal and longer time scales.” In brief, the IPCC / EPA say it is almost certain warming must be externally forced, even though natural variability is influenced by other things that we cannot measure long enough or precisely enough.
There are problems with this:
It is an argument from ignorance (a classic fallacy), Jones, Phil. “BBC News - Q&A: Professor Phil Jones.” Interview by Roger Harrabin, February 13, 2010. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm "H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?" Jones: "The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D. " (I.e., "We can't think of anything else it could be.")And There is the evidence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Now that the infamous "Hockey Stick" has been invalidated, temperatures are no longer "unprecedented". Natural warming and cooling of similar magnitude has happened before. "Even the partial survey of the literature that follows immediately below seems to suggest that the observed changes in global average surface temperature are quite possibly due to internal variability." And "That forces other than increases in atmospheric CO 2 may have contributed to the observed late 20th century warming of global surface temperatures is strongly suggested by recent improved data on temperature trends in the troposphere." Here they cite a non-technical article by Lindzen: Richard S. Lindzen, Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously, 18 Energy & Env. 937 (2007). This article asserts that surface temperature escapes through convection (up) and global circulation (sideways) and escapes to space. The tropospheric warming trends from CO 2-driven climate models are not supported by observations, leading to the conclusion "This implies that only about 1/3 of the observed surface warming is due to greenhouse gases."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 6:42:45 GMT
Page 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 1. Atmospheric Circulation and Climate Change Detection, Attribution and Regional Climate Change Predictions
"The detection and attribution of anthropogenic forcing (greenhouse gas emissions) as the global warming culprit is based on comparing spatio-temporal temperature observations (temperature by geography and time) – rather than just a temperature time series -- with modeled patterns. Yet recent work suggests that just as they manage to reproduce past temperature time series despite failing to agree at all on climate sensitivity, so too do the ensemble of models used by the IPCC manage to reproduce the spatio-temporal pattern of global temperature despite fundamental disagreement over how global warming will alter global atmospheric circulation patterns. "The general circulation of the earth’s atmosphere is driven by two primary forces: the heating of the low latitudes (e.g.,tropics) relative to higher latitudes (e.g., poles), and the rotation of the earth on its axis". (a.k.a., Coriolis effect)
A summary of how this works, and its climate consequences, is given on pages 49 - 51.
"Tanaka et al. conclude that both past reproductions and future projections of these key tropical circulation patterns have a “high degree of model-dependent sensitivity,” and GCM models have a “poor capability of reproducing and predicting the topical circulation.”
"As explained above, to account for global circulation patterns, GCM models would need to accurately account for both tropical Hadley cell circulation as well as higher latitude stationary and transient eddy fluxes. Recent work by Caballero, however, demonstrates enormous intermodal variation – with ranges exceeding 50% -- in simulated 20th century Hadley cell and tropical eddy flux. ... Caballero shows that there is a strong correlation between a model’s simulated Hadley cell strength and its simulated stationary eddy stress, so that bias in one implies bias in both and hence a “significant bias in tropical temperature and humidity.” "“If it turns out that tropical biases are in fact mostly forced from the extratropics, then ‘tuning’ of model parameterisations (sic) locally in the tropics will, at best, give the right climate for the wrong reasons.”
"Hence when one takes the time to really look at the climate science literature, one finds that the highly publicized projection that global warming will make the southwestern U.S. much more drought-prone depends upon projected changes in global circulation patterns. But that literature also reveals that climate models fail to reproduce most of the important observed global circulation patterns – especially in the tropics – and that there is enormous disagreement across models.... climate model projections of changes in global circulation patterns that are surrounded by such fundamental uncertainty."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 6:50:48 GMT
Page 54-57: Internal Variability, or Chaotic Climate."What climate scientists seem to be very certain about is that changes in tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures have a major impact on global climate, and that major climatic regime shifts have occurred in the 1920’s, the 1940’s and the late 1970’s. It has been shown that these periods of very rapid and major climate regime shifts have been times when the decadal and multi-decadal Pacific cycles synchronized and interacted. Significant cooling was observed in regions of North America, Canada and Alaska observed in the 1940’s, and significant warming observed over those places after the 1970’s regime shift." "Lean and Rind conclude that no natural forces (e.g., ENSO) account for overall 20th century warming. McLean asserts that a difference in the (observational) data sets used by Lean and Rind caused to underestimate temperatures in one El Nino event and overstate temperatures of a La Nina event. "But it is crucial to understand that if further research reveals that ENSO or other cycles that are intrinsic to the global climate system are indeed a primary driver of global climate cycles, then the utility of climate models may be very limited. This is succinctly but comprehensively explained by climate scientist Richard Lindzen: Lindzen (pgs 56-57): “There are, in fact, numerous phenomena that current models fail to replicate at anywhere near the magnitudes observed. These range from the Intraseasonal Oscillations in the tropics (sometimes referred to as Madden-Julian Oscillation, and having time scales on the order of 40-60 days) to El Nino (involving time scales of several years) to the Quasi-biennial Oscillation of the tropic stratosphere to longer time scale phenomena of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period (involving centuries). Under the circumstances, it seems reasonable to suppose that some things must exist that account for these model failures …There is, in fact, no reason to suppose current models are treating such matters adequately…the current models fail to describe many known climate changes, and…therefore, the models’ failure to account for the recent warming (largely confined to the period 1976-1995) hardly requires the invocation of anthropogenic forcing."
"The question instead is whether any person who is even somewhat informed about this literature and the shortcomings of climate models in capturing intrinsic variability could possibly accept the IPCC’s recent summary statement that “[t]here is also increased confidence that natural internal variability cannot account for the observed changes, due in part to improved studies that warming occurred in both oceans and atmosphere, together with observed ice mass losses.” I believe that the answer to this question is clearly “no”...."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 6:58:54 GMT
Page 57, 58, 59 Solar Variation
Given that Solar Activity is at a low not seen for almost a century, the earth's magnetic shield is also at low levels (Ap index), and the PDO is inclining toward its negative phase, the possibility for an extended cold period arises. Total Solar Irradiance, or TSI, the measure of Electromagnetic Radiation (light) from the sun at the top of the atmosphere. Nearly equivalent to SSI (Solar Spectral Irradiance). The variation over the short solar cycle is generally held too small to affect climate (< 0.5%). However, the energy from TSI over several cycles may accumulate in the oceans. Ocean temperature variability (warm and cool phases) is not well understood in climate models. Also, "But, as we have seen with several other crucial issues in climate science, the debate in fact has continued because a number of prominent climate scientists question whether the IPCC was looking at the right data. Scafetta and Wilson have recently argued for the superior accuracy of one of the two primary measurements total solar irradiance (TSI), and their preferred dataset shows that rather than falling or remaining constant, TSI increased significantly over the period 1986-1996. Lief Svalgaard, on the other hand, suggests TSI has a "floor" in intensity. "Two other mechanisms have been posited: first, that much larger variations in solar ultraviolet irradiance indirectly influence the troposphere (and climate) via their influence on the stratosphere. Although the total energy of UV is less than TSI, it varies ~10X that of TSI. It also interacts with ozone, destroying it and producing heat. and, " econd, that air ions generated by (fluctuating) cosmic rays alter cloud production." Svensmark has put forth an idea that could increase aerosols and the (low, cooling) clouds that form around the resulting cloud condensation nucei. The concept has been demonstrated by the SKY experiment (an initial probe) and is now (2010) the subject of a controlled experiment (CLOUD) at CERN. This is a work in progress, and not without dissenting voices. Svensmark, Henrick. “Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges.” Wiley InterScience :: JOURNALS :: Astronomy & Geophysics (n.d.). www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117980230/abstract
Abstract: "Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earth's cloudiness. A recent experiment has shown how electrons liberated by cosmic rays assist in making aerosols, the building blocks of cloud condensation nuclei, while anomalous climatic trends in Antarctica confirm the role of clouds in helping to drive climate change. Variations in the cosmic-ray influx due to solar magnetic activity (accompanying Solar Wind) account well for climatic fluctuations on decadal, centennial and millennial timescales. Over longer intervals, the changing galactic environment of the solar system has had dramatic consequences, including Snowball Earth episodes (Shaviv and Vizer, 2003). A new contribution to the faint young Sun paradox is also on offer." Note, however, Lief Svalgaard has found little evidence of cosmic ray modulation during the Maunder minimum. Re: Sunspot Magnetism---Livingston & Penn « Reply #400 on Jul 4, 2010, 12:04am »solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=855&page=27#49894
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:08:02 GMT
Page 59, 60, 61, 62 Black Carbon (Soot)
"Recalling that the IPCC had given an estimate for black carbon forcing of only .3-.4 W/m2 in its 2007 AR (see pages 59 - 61), it seems that in that 2007 AR, the IPCC had chosen what was in fact the lowest value in work published over the preceding decade for the estimated contribution of black carbon to global warming. Moreover, unmentioned by the IPCC’s 2007 AR was the enormous fraction of highly publicized arctic warming that was by then estimated to have been caused not by CO2, but by garden-variety industrial soot, or black carbon. Since the IPCC’s own 2007 estimate for CO2 – induced warming was only 1.66 W/m2, if the 2008 estimate for warming due to black carbon of .9W/m2 is correct, then the IPCC’s 2007 report may well have downplayed a factor – black carbon – that was in fact a very substantial contributor to 20th century warming, and an even more important – indeed the most important – factor in 20th century arctic warming.
"Finally, since climate models omit black carbon, recent work showing black carbon to be a very strong agent of global warming adds weight to the belief that if climate models are explaining 20th century warming trends as due solely to increases in CO2, then they must be vastly overestimating the sensitivity of climate to increases in CO2."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:12:28 GMT
Page 62, 63, 64, 65 Glossing over Serious and Deepening Controversies Over Methodological Validity: e.g., Species LossAGW has been cited as risking future species loss (see penguins, polar bears, etc.). Unfortunately, the source was modelling, once again. (Coincidently, the polar bears and penguins are doing well.)Claim: "In its April, 2007 “Summary for Policymakers,” the IPCC Working Group on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability proclaimed that “ pproximately 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed thus far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global temperature exceed 1.5 – 2.5°C.” The supporting report was not made available immediately.
"But finally, in July of 2007, the IPCC Working Group II did release its full report. That report explains that the IPCC prediction of a 20-30% decline in species is based on “correlative models that “use knowledge of the spatial distribution of species to derive functions…or algorithms…that relate the probability of their occurrence to climatic and other factors. The report observes that these methods have been criticized for: 1) assuming equilibrium between species and current climate; 2) being unable to account for species interactions; 3) failing to specify a physiological mechanism explaining the dependence of species on climate; and, 4) failing to take account of population dynamics and species migration. To a layperson, these sound like pretty serious problems, but IPCC Report assures the reader that these “correlative methods nonetheless “provide a pragmatic first-cut assessment of risk to species decline and extinction.”
"In support of its assertion that the statistical correlation between species and climate provides a “pragmatic first-cut assessment of risk to species decline and extinction,” the IPCC Report cites (only) a single study."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:15:34 GMT
Page 65, 66, 67, 68 Exaggerate in the Name of Caution: Sea Level Scare Stories versus the Accumulating Evidence"Of all the potential negative consequences from global warming, sea level rise has been perhaps the most dramatically advertised. In a review essay entitled “ The Threat to the Planet,” climate scientist and NASA Goddard Institute Director Jim Hansen— perhaps the most publicly visible climate scientist and certainly the one most often quoted by the popular press – opined that of all the threats from climate change, the “greatest” is the potential melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and the consequent increase in global sea level." "According to Hansen, the ice core data also show that the last time that the Earth was five degrees warmer than now (three million years ago), sea level was about eighty feet higher." Hansen describes various disasters under the assumed sea level."Hansen’s eighty foot increase in sea level is not without technical support, but that support comes from data on the impact on sea level of the melting of the last great deglaciation." It appears that most of the meltwater from the last great glaciation is already in the oceans, and that the continental icesheets (that gave rise to the sea level) are gone with two exceptions. Per satellite data, Greenland ice sheets are gaining mass inland as is eastern Antarctica. Western Antarctica (the smaller of the two areas) is losing mass."As for sea level rise, in its 2007 Assessment Report, the IPCC endorsed studies estimating that over the past 50 years, global sea level has been rising at a rate of about 1.8mm/year, and at a rate of 3 mm/year since 1993. Even under relatively pessimistic assumptions about continuing increases in ghg’s, assumptions that eventually generate an annual sea level increase of 4 mm/year, the IPCC’s 2007 AR projected an increase in global sea level of at most .44 meters, or about a foot and a half, by 2090." "Since then, a number of studies have appeared that tend to show that the IPCC may not have been as conservative as it claimed: Holgate estimated that the sea level rise during the early twentieth century was 2.0 mm/year, much larger than the 1.45 mm/year estimate he found for the latter half of the twentieth century; Jevrejeva et al. find evidence that the sea level increase began over 200 years ago; Woppleman et al. find that sea level as measured at one stable tide gauge location has been increasing at constant rate for the last 100 years; using a wide variety of different sea level measures, Wunsch et al. come up with an estimate of an increase of 1.6 mm/year over the period 1993-2004 (versus the 3 mm/year estimate used by the IPCC in 2007). Perhaps most important is Wunsch et al.’s conclusion: “At best, the determination and attribution of global-mean sea level change lies at the very edge of knowledge and technology. The most urgent job would appear to be the accurate determination of the smallest temperature and salinity changes that can be determined with statistical significance, given the realities of both the observation base and modeling approximations. …It remains possible that the database is insufficient to compute mean sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to discuss the impact of global warming – as disappointing as this conclusion may be.” As for Hansen's scenario, I submit that it is as scary as being told that something is drooling under the bed.
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:17:05 GMT
Page 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 G. A Theory That Cannot be Disconfirmed: Sea Level Scare Stories and The Continuing Off-Model Private Prognostications of Climate Change Scientist/Advocates Describes the use of popular advocacy articles by climate scientists that may depart from even IPCC average projections, and which are defended as "opinion". E.g., - Sea Levels
- Abrupt Ice Sheet Collapse
- Arctic Sea Ice extent minimum in 2007 (since recovered)
The marketing plan, "RulesOfTheGame.pdf", is contained within the ClimateGate FOI2009.zip file. junkscience.com/FOIA/documents/RulesOfTheGame.pdfWatts, Anthony. “Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released.” Scientific. Watts Up With That?, November 19, 2009. See the comments for discussion of its origin and content. wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:18:06 GMT
Page 72, 73, 74,75 II. Behind the Rhetoric: Apparent Uncertainties and Questions ... A. Feedbacks This note is a summary: "A. Climate Model Projections: It’s all about the feedbacks Perhaps the most fundamental and policy-relevant projection supplied by climate models is what is called the “sensitivity” -- the projected future temperature increase from a doubling of CO2 of global mean surface temperature. It is the possibility of high climate sensitivity that triggers the need for action, and the higher is the projected temperature increase, the more worrisome is human-induced climate change."
However, "... the establishment climate story virtually ignores the systematic importance of feedback effects to climate model projections. None of the IPCC documents intended to influence the media, policymakers or even scientists generally even mentions feedback effects."
"While both Farber and Weitzman are to be praised for actually looking closely at climate science before discussing its policy implications, their discussion of the “fat tail" – or positive probability of very high climate sensitivity – problem suffers from a number of problems. First, both Farber and Weitzman discuss the standard range of climate sensitivity – as between about 1.5 and 4.5 degrees centigrade – without once mentioning that the range itself is due entirely to presumed net positive feedbacks." ... "because climate models assume the predominance of positive feedbacks, they essentially assume the fat tail problem."
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:19:14 GMT
Page 75 II. Behind the Rhetoric: Apparent Uncertainties and Questions ... B. Past Climate
B. The Ability of Climate Models to Explain Past Climate
"The IPCC and the climate establishment have vastly oversold climate models by declaring that such models are able to quite accurately reproduce past climates, including most importantly the warming climate of the late twentieth century. ... If policymakers were told that this is not so, that ability to reproduce past temperatures indicates only that a particular pairing of assumptions about climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing allowed the reproduction of past temperatures, then the logical question would be: which model gets the correct pairing of sensitivity and aerosol forcing?"
In Pooh's opinion, model reproduction of past climate is an artifact of model "tuning". The IPCC should be required to print the same warning that appears in a prospectus:
"Past performance is no guarantee of future results".
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:20:31 GMT
Page 75, 76 II. Behind the Rhetoric: Apparent Uncertainties and Questions ... C. Alternative ExplanationsC. The Existence of Significant Alternative Explanations for Twentieth Century WarmingThis section is a summary (note that the alternatives, including Greenhouse Gases, do not need to be mutually exclusive):- Solar Activity
- Questionable datasets
- Climate cycles, including the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)
- Soot
"More precisely, what is ideally in hand for the design of climate policy is an empirically testable model that can separately identify the influence of the sun, natural climate variation, ghg emissions and other human forcings." (Such as Urban Heat Island effects and land use.)
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:21:08 GMT
Page 76, 77 II. Behind the Rhetoric: Apparent Uncertainties and Questions ... D. Questionable Methodology
D. Questionable methodology underlying highly publicized projected impacts of global warming
This section mentions species loss, but not sea level rise, spread of malaria, melting glaciers, Amazonian droughts, the use of non-peer reviewed sources, ignoring peer-reviewed conflicting evidence, etc.
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:24:03 GMT
Page 77, 78, 79 III. Conclusion: Questioning the Established Science, and Developing a Suitably Skeptical Rather than Faith-based Climate PolicyRhetorical invocation of the "Precautionary Principal: "After all, such a reader might argue, CO 2 is a ghg, and if we continue to increase CO 2, then it seems clear that despite whatever uncertainty there may be about how much temperatures will increase as a consequence of increasing CO 2 in the atmosphere, and about the impacts of such rising temperatures, there is no doubt that temperatures will increase with increasing CO 2, and that at some point, such rising temperatures will cause harm, so that one way or another, at one time or another, we simply have to reduce our emissions of CO 2." Response: "However beguiling, such an argument not only oversimplifies the policy questions raised by human ghg emissions, it is also misunderstands the significance of the scientific questions ...." - "Because of the system’s complexity and non-linearity, without a quite detailed understanding of the system, scientists cannot provide useful guidance regarding the impact on climate of increases in atmospheric ghg concentration.
- "...the earth’s climate system is not linear, but is instead a highly complex, non-linear system made up of sub-systems – such as the ENSO, and the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the various circulating systems of the oceans – that are themselves highly non-linear. Among other things, such non-linearity means that it may be extremely difficult to separately identify the impact of an external shock to the system – such as what climate scientists call anthropogenic CO2 forcing – from changes that are simply due to natural cycles, or due to other external natural and anthropogenic forces, such as solar variation and human land use changes.
- "As a large number of climate scientists have stressed, such an understanding will come about only if theoretical and model-driven predictions are tested against actual observational evidence.
- "...evidence tending to disconfirm various predictions or assumptions of the establishment view that increases in CO2 explain virtually all recent climate change.
- "...more often than not rely upon completely different observational datasets which they say confirm (or at least don’t disconfirm) climate model predictions.
- "...Rather, in every important case, the establishment response is to question the reliability of the disconfirming evidence and then to find other evidence that is consistent with model predictions.
- "...Without such convergence, the predictions of climate models (and climate change theories more generally) cannot be subject to empirical testing, ...."
"...the models are to be taken on faith, and the stories and photos as evidence of the models’ truth. Policy carrying potential costs in the trillions of dollars ought not to be based on stories and photos confirming faith in models, but rather on precise and replicable testing of the models’ predictions against solid observational data." (see Note Page 77, 78, 79 III. References: Precautionary Principal)
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Post by Pooh on Jul 24, 2010 7:24:32 GMT
Page 77, 78, 79 III. References: Precautionary PrincipalSunstein, Cass R. Beyond The Precautionary Principle. Working Paper #38. Public Law and Legal Theory. University of Chicago, January 2003. www.law.uchicago.edu/academics/publiclaw/resources/38.crs.precautionary.pl-lt.pdf- Availability Heuristic: "making some risks seem especially likely to come to fruition whether or not they actually are;"
- Probability Neglect: "...leading people to focus on the worst case, even if it is highly improbable:"
- Loss Aversion "... making people dislike losses from the status quo;"
- Benevolence of Nature: "a belief in the benevolence of nature, making man-made decisions and processes seem especially suspect;"
- System Neglect:"... understood as a inability to see that risks are part of systems, and that interventions into those systems can create risks of their own."
If you can not find this (Winston Smith again), email me and I'll post a copy as an attachment.———. Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. See above 1 - 5 Sunstein, Cass R. “ Throwing precaution to the wind: Why the 'safe' choice can be dangerous.” boston.com - The Boston Globe, July 13, 2008. www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/13/throwing_precaution_to_the_windMain point: "Yet the precautionary principle, for all its rhetorical appeal, is deeply incoherent. It is of course true that we should take precautions against some speculative dangers. But there are always risks on both sides of a decision; inaction can bring danger, but so can action. Precautions, in other words, themselves create risks - and hence the principle bans what it simultaneously requires."
... "In the context of climate change, precautions are certainly a good idea. But what kinds of precautions? A high tax on carbon emissions would impose real risks - including increased hardship for people who can least afford it and very possibly increases in unemployment and hence poverty. A sensible climate change policy balances the costs and benefits of emissions reductions. If the policy includes costly (and hence risk-creating) precautions, it is because those precautions are justified by their benefits.
"The nations of the world should take precautions, certainly. But they should not adopt the precautionary principle."
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