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On a pedantic point, I have to disagree with you David. Numbers do not have the power to arbitrate and discriminate; only people have those powers. Numbers can also defeat habits of discrimination — even those of good scientists like Ross Garnaut, it seems — by creating an impression of discovery and precision (’conclusiveness’) where neither exists. This, I think, is the important contribution that you and Lucia Liljegren have made to the debate about Dr Rahmstorff’s paper.
Prof. Garnaut’s Interim Review has rather uncritically adopted the Rahmstorff et. al. conclusions that recent trends surprise by overshooting IPCC projection. Accordingly, the Review proposes to build, at public expense, on this shaky foundation a huge edifice of carbon mitigation. This is asking for trouble.
Good policy practice, even in the case of ‘precautionary’ action demands proportionality between the apprehension of a threat and the cost of the avoidance measures. The technical criticisms you make of the Rahmstorff et. al. methods tend to reinforce the naive view that there is nothing in post-1998 temperature trends that even remotely resembles an “overshooting” of the IPCC projections(0.2 deg. per decade). Prof. Garnaut should at a minimum take up Ian Castles’ challenge to defend the Rahmstorff contention, or find another fulcrum for his proposed radical policy levers.
Comment by Peter Gallagher — April 23, 2008 @ 10:18 am
It would be useful if critical analyses of climate science citations made by Garnaut be submitted to the Henry Thornton web site - Garnaut is one of the contributors and I suspect Henry will be willing to add another opinion to that published there.
Bear in mind that Henry Thornton is essentially an economics web page that is read my many in the Australian Government, so material like is is best put there.
I have had politically incorrect articles publishe