Очередная отрыжка консенсуса

[ny_quant]

Вышел в свет рожденный в тяжких муках очередной пятый отчет IPCC об ужасах глобального потепления. Бойцы за светлое будущее наших правнуков произвели на свет 32-томный труд о 2610 страницах плюс summary еще на 49.

"Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. "We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated."

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was "high" and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, "very high," and colors it deep purple.

Как известно, планета ни на сколько не потеплела не только с 2007, но и с 1998 года, но, как говорится, let’s not let fact be in the way of a good theory.

С другой стороны, уровень бесстыдства конкурирует с таковым путинской администрации.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/global-warming-dials-our-risks-un-report-says

 

Comments

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to say that between what you write about global warming and what I learn from other sources I tend to trust other sources much more, and I tend to think that if we search for preestablished opinions, even though we do find many on both sides, only the side of nonbelievers seems to completely lack objectively inclined scientists.
Global warming is reality. Its link to human activity has not been firmly established, but is quite plausible, and seems to be a good null hypothesis. The presence of politically-inspired agruments on the side of those believing in the reality of the phenomenon does not in any way mean that that reality is unreal.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

No problem, I don't take it personally. I know tens of people like you, including some of my personal friends, who get brainwashed by their media sources (and I don't mean left only) even though they have enough brains to analyze the facts and the arguments and figure it out for themselves.

Yes, GW is real and I never said otherwise but the reasons are very much in doubt. You don't need to deny facts to understand the uncertainty of the future. You don't need to be conservative to agree that discounting is a valid approach to analysis of cost effectiveness.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

Most importantly, you don't need anything but common sense to understand that a good null hypothesis is not nearly enough to call the world to drastic and immediate action.

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

Most importantly, to incorporate the choice of null hypothesis into a decision, you must multiply the probability or an erroneous hypothesis choice by the cost. And here the result becomes quite different from what you preach.

Moreover, the probability itself is in my opinion greater than one usually stipulates. The models do not really take into account the dynamical-system nature of the climate. A dynamical system is usually characterized by a big number of basins of attraction, serving more or less as quasi-stationary states. To push the system out of one of them into another one may not necessitate big energy, provided the effort is directed correctly. It is more like a system with control buttons than a potential system. What made me think that the ecological alarmists are right was not their arguments. I think the situation can be more correctly described as a horde of monkeys in the command room of a submarine or a spaceship, busily pushing buttons. One needn't know which button controls what to fear a disaster. If one has the means to make the buttons more difficult to push, one should do exactly that.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

Au contraire - I don’t have to do anything. But I feel I have the right to request a proof of necessity and examine the scientific evidence before the government takes my tax money to use it for any given allegedly urgent issue. Thus it’s not me but them (and you with them) carry the burden of proof. You must multiply the probability or an erroneous hypothesis choice by the cost, not me. So it’s a good idea to start with probability.

Invoking the concept of null hypothesis in a decision making context implies probabilistic uncertainty of the outcome (vs. unknown or unknowable). In fact you’re using the word “probability yourself. But if you read the climate literature you’ll find that the climate scientists consider climate predictable even though climate is the average of admittedly chaotic weather. While it’s perfectly possible that climate is indeed predictable (at least on relatively short time scales, say of order century) nobody ever proved it. Thus you have a dilemma: if the climate is predictable then you cannot use the concept probability; if it’s chaotic and unpredictable then one should stop pointless attempt to forecast the warming but instead generate a probability distribution. Which poison do you choose?

Whatever the answer, you would probably notice the absence of probabilistic argument in the climate discourse. They (the consensus crowd) just use the word “risk” to scare the common people but you will probably agree that unquantifiable risk is just a word. They will admit to uncertainty due to our imperfect knowledge (as expressed in a huge scatter of model predictions) but no more than that.

Personally, I don’t stipulate any probability at all and I am completely agnostic on the subject of climate system predictability. Thus this objection is completely off the mark. You are entitledhave your own private estimate of probability but I don’t see why I (or anyone else) should care. Your opinion is as good as any. But we are not doing an opinion poll: this is a scientific matter. Either you can calculate it or not. Personally, I’m not imposing my opinion as I simply don’t have any. I’m just asking for a solid proof as I believe I am entitled. And I’m pointing out that it has yet to exist. That's all I preach.

The models do not really take into account the dynamical-system nature of the climate.

Climate models solve a system of PDEs that describe dynamics an thermodynamics of the climate system. They are essentially extensions of weather models. It is a dynamical system with very large number of dimensions. If you are thinking in terms of Lorenz system then you won’t be the first but nobody so far succeeded in getting this sort of behavior in a climate model. We know for a fact that climate can undergo very large oscillations (e.g. ice age) but we cannot reproduce them in a model. We don’t even know why ice ages suddenly began a few million years ago.

Given this state of the science I remain very much unmoved by the calls to immediate and drastic action. First – the hard science, then the action. I think it’s only fair.