Niche Modeling

19
Jan
Disproving Global Warming
Posted by David Stockwell in Climate, Statistics

Table of contents for Disproving

Disproving Global Warming
Disproving Global Warming II

JoNova noticed a Canberra Times article that the Tasmanian drought may not be due to global warming after all.

Are there any predictions of global warming that have proven true? WUWT has a list of spectacular failures, and is calling on readers to add more. All of the successful ‘predictions’ I have seen have been ex post facto — after the fact.

The string of failed AGW predictions points to the “expert problem” as described by Nassim Taleb in economics. Substitute Mr Takatoshi for Penny Wong, and Obama for Rudd, and you have the Australian AGW situation.

I told the audience that the next time someone from the IMF shows you projections for some dates in the future, to show us what they PROJECTED for 2008 and 2009 in 2004, 2005, …, and 2007. They would then verify that Mr. Takatoshi and his colleagues provide a prime illustration to the “expert problem”: they serve as experts while offering the scientific reliability of astrologers. Anyone relying on them is a turkey.

His solution?

This allowed me to show the urgency of my idea of robustness. We cannot get rid of charlatans. My point is that we need to build a society robust to charlatanism and expert-error, one in which Mr. Takatoshi and his staff can be as incompetent as they want without endangering the general public. We need less reliance on these people and the Obama administration has been making us more dependent on the “expert problem”.

Climate experts show a stunning lack of concern with evidence and model validation. The solution is to only attend to methods exposed to professional engineering standards.

Next in series

Tagged as:
Published by David Stockwell in: Climate Statistics
If you like this blog please take a second from your precious time and subscribe to my rss feed!

Romanoz

There was an article in the Harvard Business Review many years ago about astrology, forecasting and strategic planning. The author made the observation that the main point about these methods was not the accuracy of their predictions but that they provided an illusion of certainty which induces people to act in an environment of uncertainity. In most situations it doesnt matter what one does, its important that one acts. Dr Who flipping a coin to decide which way to go is my best image of this. Then it becomes a process of step-wise refinement or muddling through.
I disagree with Taleb who believes that we appear to have become addicts of casuality, finding causation everywhere. I believe our problem is that we have become hyper-active, at least the left side of politics have, and therefore appear to have this need to "do" something therefore Howard was a "do nothing" PM, the Republicans are "nihilists" - opposed to the hyperactive Obama - "Yes we can". Yes we can do what? It doesnt appear to matter, he promises to do.

davids99us

You raise a lot of good points. On Taleb, I find nothing novel, but
his warnings that confirmation bias, the expert problem, epistemic
certainty etc are dangerous, and we need to be calling it out when we
see it, is a refreshing influence.

Nick Stokes

David,
If you want to start listing failed predictions, the first thing to do is to show that someone actually predicted them. Do you have a claim by a scientist that the Tasmanian drought is due to global warming?

John M

"Predictions" tend to be for time frames that are untestable, usually around 40 years out. Close enough to be scary, but to far out for anyone to be held accountable. Occasionally, someone is fool enough to cut the prediction short a bit, like Hansen's "scenarios". In that case, the argument resorts to "the science has advanced" or "but the error bars, consider the error bars!"

But anyway, as David says, ex post facto seems to work too.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/10/drought-i...

"David Jones, the head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the drought affecting south-west Western Australia, south-east South Australia, Victoria and northern Tasmania “is now very severe and without historical precedent”."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/t...

"Jones argues that "it is very difficult to make a case that this is just simply a run of bad luck driven by a natural cycle and that a return to more normal rainfall is inevitable"."

http://globalclimatechangeaction.org/node/50

""Climate change is real, its effects are happening now in many forms," visiting expert Stuart Rosewarne, senior lecturer in economics at Sydney University, said yesterday.

Dr Rosewarne said many effects were already having an impact on Tasmania and yesterday's seminar heard the more populated areas and major agricultural and farming regions would be hardest hit.

"The drought that is being experienced in Tasmania at the moment is very much shaped by global warming," he said."

davids99us

Thanks for the research John.

davids99us

My impression is that the southern drought was ex post facto.

sherro

The BOM climate statement for 2009 has a graph showing rainfall by decade since 1900. The decade ending 2009 has the secongd higest rainfall. So Australia was wet for a decade, but some parts had drought. Has it not always been thus?

The backing away by CSIRO might recognise that climate prediction is not good on the global scale, let alone national, and especially with small regions like East Tasmania. Is there a computer big enough to model with such resolution? Seems doubtful, even if the inputs and algorithms are correct.

Sign up/in

Authors

Abouts

Blogroll

Literature

Disproving Global Warming

Table of contents for Disproving

archives

tag cloud

Copyright © 2008 - 2010 Niche Modeling

Britney's Online Dating Websites