Posted by Tim Lambert on October 7, 2007 Tim Ball and Tom Harris tell us:
The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998 and a growing number of climate experts expect this trend to continue until at least 2030.
Do you think that Ball or Harris or any of these “growing number” of climate experts would be willing to bet on cooling?
I have a warmer, but I don’t turn it on until November, and then only under the desk near the window. It’s Canada, but not a really cold part. What is “J.C.” talking about? Is He trying to coin a phrase?
Sorry, sorry. It just hit me that He (J.C.) wants us to call him “cooler”. I’m a little slow.
Nice guy you are Brian. Did you ask Ball if you could divulge the discussion contained in the email correpondence on various websites (not your own) or at the very least indicate your intention?
Here, I thought about somthing else relating to the Nigerian letter you could create… How’s this:
Hello
My name is Brian Schmidt the 17th son of Harry Schmidt the former Nigerian finance minister. Several years ago my father died and left US35,000,0000 in a Swiss deposit box that can only be opened with a code and a safe deposit key which are not in my possession
Brian, fill in the rest…. Somehow you have to insert some storyline about the bet. That is, you need the money in order to make the bet and get the code and key. I racked my brains trying to figure ways to make that part of the scam sound legit. See if you can and simply add to the story. Let’s call it a work in progress we’re both working on.
Dan,
stop it! This is the second keyboard I have ruined by spitting coffee out laughing. I can’t afford a third keyboard so stop the humor.
What you’re possibly finding, brian is that they think your a nutball or a spammer who managed to get through.
i do not know, how they would come to this conclusion about Brian. we all came to this conclusion about you. spot the difference?
Nice guy you are Brian. Did you ask Ball if you could divulge the discussion contained in the email correpondence on various websites (not your own) or at the very least indicate your intention?
the guy we are talking about wrote an ARTICLE about global cooling. he was asked wether he would bet on his article beeing true and denied. yes, that is of “public interest”, though i doubt that you understand that term.
Brian by the wy is talking about the topic at hand. you still are not on topic and keep just uttering nonsense again!
I don’t understand the resistance to calling them coolers – after all, they approach science as though they were top-full of beer like their namesakes.
I’ve put the fun dialogue between Tim Ball and myself here:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/10/cheap-tawdry-and-useless-tim-ball-wins_08.html
I especially liked his second response.
Serendipity. These very interesting comments on the issue just popped up:
http://allpoliticsnow.com/content/view/29/1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×1995602
Jc: “I just think you are perpetrating a pathetic fraud.”
As if Jc cares about frauds. (Or maybe “The world is cooling” isn’t a fraud.) What a laugh.
Anyone who really wants to demonstrate their certainty, either way, about climate change needn’t engage in betting.
Simply enter into a futures contract for carbon emissions on the European Climate Exchange.
Chris
I think the terms were first used by james annnan- i think -to indicate where people stood. it was never meant as a slight – just an abbrevating descrption. I think it’s a good way of doing things rather than paint sceptics as deniers similar to holocaust deniers.
Good point Ian:
But futures have their uses and so do straight out bets. You have to finance margin calls etc. in the futres markets whereas you don’t with bets.
Ian, it looks to me like ECX futures markets expire in 2012 so they’re too short to be a useful proxy for climate predictions:
http://www.europeanclimateexchange.com/uploads/documents/GettingStarted(7).pdf
see page 4.
Also, the markets will reflect the consensus position that human-caused warming is happening, so there’s no arbitrage margin for those of us who also support the consensus position. If the futures had extended out far enough, say 20 years, there would be a margin that denialists could bet against – if they actually believed what they’re saying.
Whenever I hear sceptics, possibly unmoveable (a.k.a. deniers) complaining about being compared with holocaust deniers, I remember the story below, reprinted in Canada Free Press, and others like it. Climatology and science-based policy are “creeping fascism”, and “Nazi-like”? Hmmm, fascists and nazis… isn’t that a step worse than a holocaust denier? Maybe we could all whine the same name-calling complaint.
///
The Creeping Fascism of Global Warming Hysteria:
Man-made orthodoxy is a dogma of coercion, bias, and junk science
By Paul Joseph Watson
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/watsonglobalwarmingfascismhysteria15feb07.shtml
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
“The hoax of the doctrine of man-made global warming that is being foisted upon the world by decree, and the junk science that is manipulated to support it, represents a creeping fascism whose agenda to stifle open debate betrays the fact that climate change hysteria is a farce intended to crush freedoms and further centralize global power….”
Previous URL: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/watson021307.htm
The part that gets me is. “Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon.” What am I, a loser? I got none of that moolah.
“If there’s a Republican in the White House, there’ll most likely be some face-saving cosmetic changes to let them proclaim victory over the evil forces of the Jew bankers (sorry, the international socialists)”
Since when do the repubs have problems with Jews, Bankers or Jew Bankers? I think you mistook republicans for the A-holes on Kos, if that’s possible.
Skeptics versus deniers versus denialists
Skepticism is an honorable term, and certainly most scientists are skeptics (in the sense of being data driven and being willing to look hard at theories and weight evidence).
I’d offer two questions for quickly whether someone is a legitimate skeptic in the classic sense, and has legitimate doubts, but just needs more information, or is a denier. [In my terminology, a denialist is someone who really propagates dinsinformation to deniers to keep them that way, and to skeptics to turn them into deniers, i.e., like a Fred Singer.]
A real skeptic should be able to say:
- I have some estimate of the likelihood of AGW being true (anywhere from 0-1), and my reservations are due to the following: A, B, C… and if those were resolved, my estimate for AGW being true would get much more likely.
For instance, it was quite legitimate a few year ago to say:
satellites seem to disagree with the ground stations, and that’s a worry, but either the ground stations are wrong, or the satellites are wrong, or somewhere in between. That got resolved.
Question 1:
OK, what are your top 5-10 reasons for disagreeing with the consensus? And if convincing evidence disspells those, would you change your mind?
A studious skeptic should have a list, and be able to answer yes to the second part. If they are an honest skeptic, you can usually send them off to a set of web pages once you figure out their level of knowledge.
Or even simpler:
Question 2: What evidence would change your mind?
I once asked that of someone and she got very tense, said she didn’t know, but would know when she saw it… Uh-oh.
Q: Have you talked to real climate scientists?
A: I’ve studied it carefully.
Q: That isn’t what I asked, do you actually know any climate scientists?
A: (Angry): look, I’ve studied this carefully and I keep up with it.
Uh-huh.
Anyway, if someone wants to claim they’re a legitimate skeptic trying to learn, ask them to list their top 5-10 concerns.
Otherwise, they remind me of working at a computer company (MIPS) that finally got big enough that IBM noticed our existence. Our lawyer asked for help, as he got the letter from IBM that said:
We’ve noticed you make computers. Therefore, you infringe our patents. Here’s the list of the first 50. If you don’t think you infringe those, we’ll send you the next 50 … and the next 50 …
Talk to us about licensing.
(We didn’t infringe the first, which claimed that because we shipped UNIX troff (which had an indent command), we therefore infringed a Selectric(TM) typewriter patent in which they’d invented indents…:-))
The second was similarly nuts, but we did a cross-license, because it was clear that we could never convince them we weren’t infringing something.
“it was never meant as a slight”
Err, so what?
> Skepticism is an honorable term, and certainly most scientists are skeptics (in the sense of being data driven and being willing to look hard at theories and weight evidence).
That’s a very optimistic view of scientists. Any evidence to back it up? I would suggest that like most people, scientists are politics driven, and being willing to examine new theories or face unpleasant evidence only as a last resort.
Firstly, Ben, I was referring to the various conspiracy theories about the “international socialists” supposedly promulgating belief in climate change.
These claims are just as imbecilic as the Nazi “international Jewish banking conspiracy” theories and deserve to be compared to them.
I get a similar rise out of anti-free trade “liberals” when I make the make comparison to their denunciations of globalisation.
Oh and as to Republicans not having a problem with Jews or Bankers, google George Soros’ name some time.
Hold on. Ball (since he is the example denier in this discussion) has written a number of opinion news articles on how it is indeed warming, but that warming is better (this was some time after he had written that apparent warming was a figment of bad satellite data). Now he says it is cooling. So, does his current article claiming that it is cooling mean he is now in the “doom and gloom” camp, which the previously cheery deniers despised? Warming is “better”, but now doom is coming through cooling.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=aeb40fd9-f370-4057-8335-bc7345bf2e10
Historical footnote of interest.
An early use of the word “warmers” is here, in this deleted but archived “envirotruth” website (one of the articles that denied global warming, that they say they never did).
“The Envirotruth: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20020803013613/www.envirotruth.org/globalwarming.cfm
For years these websites said “Sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research”, but one day they were all deleted.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020812142152/www.envirotruth.org/big_chill.cfm
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.envirotruth.org/drball.cfm
32, no wait, 28, no, 12, no, 8, etc.
Maybe Harris and Ball (“growing list of climate experts” believe the world is cooling) and Avery and Singer (“500 scientists endorse unstoppable global warming”) should get together and decide what the effect of solar activity and cosmic rays is on the asphalt of Mars and Pluto. Then they’ll decide if we’re at war with Eurasia or Eastasia.
gouldie
I googled Uncle George.
What I mostly found was varoius links starting out with…….. Hungarian born George Soros, blah, blah, blah.
What’s worse in your book, Ian? Disliking Uncle George because of his politics or hating Israel because it defends its people and kids from the clutches of barbarian fascist thugs who would kill every last Jew in Israel given the chance? And who exactly supports the barbaarians in various tacit ways? Take a wild guess!
Make the call Ian.
When the Arabs controlled Israel, they they didn’t “kill every last Jew” despite centuries of “opportunity.”
#117 Sortition (Yoram Gat) says:
me: Skepticism is an honorable term, and certainly most scientists are skeptics (in the sense of being data driven and being willing to look hard at theories and weight evidence).
Sortition:
That’s a very optimistic view of scientists. Any evidence to back it up? I would suggest that like most people, scientists are politics driven, and being willing to examine new theories or face unpleasant evidence only as a last resort.
Good, properly skeptical question, Long answer.
(Quite often, when somebody says “most people…” they mean, “of the tiny number of people I know, most agree with me…” 
, but I don’t mean that. I also don’t mean that most scientists are objective about everything or that there is no confirmation bias. And of course, if something is an established theory, it takes stronger evidence to change people’s minds, which is necessary for sanity.
So what could my statement mean?
“most” means >50%, and since I clearly haven’t met >50% of the world’s scientists, it can only mean that I think:
That I have enough experience [live contact and by reading]
a) with enough scientists
b) and representative enough
to have a valid sample to make that statement, DESPITE the clear examples of scientists, even great ones, who in fact get locked into positions that are not data-driven.
For example, Yoram would surely know of Sir Ronald Fisher (but for other readers see #322 in:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/g8-summit-declaration/
who just wouldn’t believe smoking-disease causation even as the data piled up.)
Linus Pauling and William Shockley are examples, and another (current) sad case is Syun-Ichi Akasofu. I’ve managed cognitive psychologists, and know other psychologists (relative, friends) well, and have read/discussed papers on belief systems in general and psychology of scientists in particular, so I’m familiar with the things that go wrong, and the fact that scientists are human, and that in fact, a lot of science is geared to get improved answers despite human foibles, egos, etc.
Nevertheless, personal experience leads me to the statement I made.
My sample size (at least 1000, of which at least 900 pretty well fit what I said) is adequate, although perhaps it is not adequately representative, i.e., as it is heavier weighted towards physical sciences (and parts of engineering where science is done, i.e., like in computer architecture, where quantitative analysis has often supplanted much of the old intuitive design styles).
Other than the cognitive & other experimental psychologists, I haven’t had much firsthand exposure to social scientists. {Of course, coming from a physical sciences background, it is mandatory to have some suspicion bout whether some social sciences are sciences or not and I’m still not sure about economics. ]
Also, I’ve been lucky enough to have lots of firsthand exposure to good-to-elite scientists, and that might be unrepresentative as well.
Now, one should always be wary of anecdotal evidence, and I haven’t done a formal study. BUT:
1) My undergraduate work was in math and physics (with a little psych on the side), before I switched to computer science for grad school. I also had summer/vacation jobs working with geoscientists.
I started reading Scientific American in 1967, and I am a AAAS member, so I read Science regularly.
2) I worked 10 years at Bell Labs, which once upon a time employed 25,000 people. A bunch were superb scientists, including of course, some great statisticians (like John Tukey and Joe Kruskal) who tried to keep the rest of us honest. Internal reviews of papers for external publication were so ferocious as to make external peer review easy. Of course, even the engineering sides used a lot of scientific-evidence-based analyses, which didn’t stop every crazy idea, but killed off many.
3) I worked 15 years at MIPS and Silicon Graphics, much of the time as a Chief Scientist or equivalent, which meant that (especially at SGI) I spent about 50% of my time talking to customers / potential customers about what they were doing, what they needed, and (of course) why they should switch from their current vendor to us. There was a time when 40% of the Top500 list of supercomputers was 40% SGI, so we talked to serious people. I helped sell a lot of those systems, and they were very data-driven sales.
More than half of the customers were scientists (split between academe, industry, and government), and a typical meeting might be half a day or a whole day, with me doing a presentation to a roomful of people, with a lot of skeptical give-and-take (people are not shy), plus informal interactions over lunch or dinner. Scientists primarily used SGI machines to gain insight, either via simulation, visualization, or both, so relevant topics about data quality, hypotheses, confidence, errors, etc, etc were often discussed, along with followup discussions of surprises revealed by better computing, as there were some people I saw repeatedly.
Scientists I talked to were mostly: physicists, physical chemists, biochemists/biologists, atmospheric and oceanographic climate researchers, petroleum geologists, seismologists, hydrologists, and medical researchers, as well as occasional mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists (although of course, many of us are really more like engineers, but there are some subspecialties, like performance analysis, that must act more like science.)
4) I know well a few members of the US National Academy of Sciences, plus one Nobel Prize winner.
5) And finally, between 1-2-day alumni events where one listens to scientists and hangs out with them [via Cambridge and Imperial College], and living a few miles from Stanford & SLAC, where there are numerous public lectures and opportunities for discussion, I can manage frequent interactions with good scientists. Also, I live in an (odd) town of which 10% of adults have PhDs and another 40% have other advanced degrees, so there are always people to talk to locally.
Anyway, I’ve certainly run into scientists that seemed fairly closed-minded, and plenty had strong opinions, but the most common questions were: “We’re willing to listen, but what evidence do you have?” and “We are trying to get answers to these questions. Can you help us do that? When will be able to do that?”
I’ve done about 1500 (public talks plus sales calls), and I’d say that at least 500 of those were for primarily-science audiences, and most of those included time for closer interactions with at least a few people, and that’s a 1000 right there.
Countries whose scientists I’ve talked to include: US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Israel, Greece, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India, China, Hong Kong (when it was separate), Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand. The notable exception is Russia, but otherwise, most of the world’s scientists live in those countries.
Bottom line: I’d say, at least 90% (900) of my putative 1000-scientist sample fit my original comment, and with that sample size, my sample would have to be very unrepresentative, or my assessments way off, for the real ratio to be less than 50%. And either of those *could* be true, but it will take some convincing evidence…
OK, your turn: you have a clear opinion at your website and here, so perhaps you can explain your evidence?
John,
Thanks for taking me seriously and responding in detail.
I clearly have not had interactions with nearly as many scientists as you have. My overall impression is very different – I’ll describe some of it below. First, though, I want to make four points:
1. We might distinguish between two statements: scientists are data-driven on issues relating to their own field of research, and scientists (being ostensibly indoctrinated in objectivity) are data-driven on general issues, outside their field. I guess you believe the former is true, I am not sure about your position on the second one, so I’ll focus on the former. I believe both of these statements are far from the truth.
2. What is of interest is how scientists handle information that they find unpleasant (for various reasons). Most scientists, like most people, would be unbiased (i.e., data driven) on any issue in which they do not have a personal stake – material, emotional or intellectual. The question is, then, whether scientists are able to keep the disinterested attitude when things become personal.
3. Academic science (and to a lesser extent, science carried out in other environments as well) is an intensely personal activity. The names of the actors are always very close to the focus of attention (often being the focus of attention), and the issues of distribution of prestige and material rewards are quite directly associated with scientific questions. When this is the case, most scientific issues become, to a large extent, personal.
4. Lastly: A self-respecting skeptic would approach any position which is self congratulatory with great care. Being scientifically educated (and to some extent being active in the scientific community), it would be self congratulatory for me – and for you – to believe that scientists are objective. This increases your burden of proof – and decreases mine.
And now for my personal observations (these are general observations – if you disagree with any of them, I can go into specific examples):
Academic science is highly hierarchical, with relatively few people getting much of the attention and power. It sometimes borders on a personality cult, where the mere mention of someone’s name commands the attention of all in the field. The peer review process is arbitrary and biased. It is prone to fashion and turf wars. Poor, and at times fundamentally wrong, papers get published, and even draw significant attention (see 1, 2, 3), while good ones are rejected (effectively censored). Self promotion and personal relationships have a lot of influence over assessments of scientific value. Skepticism and objectivity to the academic are tools in the promotion of the career – used when convenient, discarded when not.
Industrial science, being less personal but more centrally managed, is free of many of the problems of academic science, but has its own problems. Scientists in industry are strongly encouraged to produce certain results – those that are pleasant to their managers. Here, too, skepticism (of management decisions) is usually not advisable.
John, Sortition: there is actually quite a lot of evidence available here so we don’t need to rely on anecdote. Scientists are among the groups most studied by sociologists (they are good subjects because they write everything down and are easily accessible on university campuses, plus they organise themselves into labs). Starting with Robert K Merton and progressing onward, the basic conclusions of the literature are:
1) on most questions of science, scientists behave roughly as John says they do.
2) on most *contentious* questions of science, scientists behave roughly as Sortition says they do.
Most questions of science aren’t really “contentious” in the relevant sense – there might be a lot of disagreement, but nobody’s fundamental beliefs are being challenged and nobody’s career is at risk. On things like string theory and on gravity waves[1], however, the cutting edge of science is basically defined by science politics. Harry Collins did a huge amount of work in this area (notoriously, he has spent so much time talking to gravity waves physicists that he was able to pass himself off as one in a “Turing Test” email exchange organised for a sociology experiment), and his interviews suggested that they often basically decided who to believe on the basis of “he’s a good guy”, “that lab has a reputation for thoroughness”, “the other guy acted really weird at a conference once” – this sounds terrible but actually it’s the only way that science can be organised if it’s going to be carried out by human beings who would never get any of their own work done if they spent every minute of the day checking through other people’s proofs in the way we hope they do. The general (scandalous) standard of peer review is perhaps a whole nother question.
I can thoroughly recommend Collins’ book “The Golem” as a summary of what I’m on about.
[1] In the case of gravity waves, it’s not the *existence* of gravity waves that’s political – more or less everyone believes in them. The controversy is about what constitutes acceptable evidence of having experimentally detected gravity waves. I put this in because the mention of string theory might have implied that experimental sciences are immune to scientific politics and they aren’t.
Surely, the short answer is that at the cutting edge of science, where the data is unclear/ insufficient, there is a lot of politics. But the cutting edge is not what most of us use, and indeed the cutting edge regarding climate change was passed quite a few years ago.
We have similar problems here at work though- the (rubbish) management will decide stuff based on gut instinct and lack of data, us poor downtrodden middle level people will decide stuff on both gut instinct and previous experience with the process/ machinery, coupled with some test data. We of course think we’re much superior to the management…
dsquared,
Thanks for the references – I’ll see if I can get hold of them.
A-priory, however, I doubt very much that the literature would contain convincing evidence that
> 1) on most questions of science, scientists behave roughly as John says they do.
Beyond the fact that, if true, this would contradict my personal observations and those by others I discussed these matters with, I can’t imagine what methodology could be used to produce convincing evidence that scientists are objective.
It appears to me that any determination that scientists behave in an unbiased, data-driven way would have to rely on subjective evaluation, and would thus not carry much weight. Could you describe what methodologies are used by the researchers in this field?
As for
> 2) on most contentious questions of science, scientists behave roughly as Sortition says they do.
> Most questions of science aren’t really “contentious” in the relevant sense – there might be a lot of disagreement, but nobody’s fundamental beliefs are being challenged and nobody’s career is at risk.
I find, as I explained above, that everybody’s careers, beliefs and egos are very often at risk when making decisions on what (and whose) work is of scientific value. Naturally it is rarely admitted, but the disagreements that exist are mostly on those grounds rather than on scientific grounds.
“Oh and as to Republicans not having a problem with Jews or Bankers, google George Soros’ name some time.”
I don’t get it? Is Soros a Jew? Do the repubs have a problem with him because he a Jew, or is it because he’s a jerk?”
GOPUSA.com a website closely linked to the Republican Party published an editorial referring to soros as “a descendant of Shylock” amongst various examples of typical antisemitic slurs.
Go past the first few pages of google entries and you’ll finad a morass of right wing anti-semtici attacks on Soros.
“What’s worse in your book, Ian? Disliking Uncle George because of his politics or hating Israel because it defends its people and kids from the clutches of barbarian fascist thugs who would kill every last Jew in Israel given the chance? ”
What’s worse engaging in a little covert antisemitism with a bunch of people who’s innate contempt for Jews is temporarily overwhelemed by their admiration for said Jews arab-killing prowess or being a pig-ignorant and pig-like goyim who smears and abuses and holocaust survivor while puking back out the likudnik propaganda he’s happily swallowed?
The horseshit spread about Soros by the extrme right of the Jewish world doesn’t reflect the majority of Jewish opinion.
Brian Schmidt, what address do you have to Ball? I sent a perfectly polite email to the link at the article, and have got nothing back. I see he pries himself in responding, unlike people who get a large volume of responses. I’m sure it’s Bon Carter who is the ‘growing number of experts’ (is he gaining weight – that might make him growing, but I think the number would still be constant).
Poor Bob, flown to England to be ignored.
Stewart, email me: schmidtb98 at yahoo com and I’ll forward it to you.
Not sure why I’m protecting Ball from spambots patrolling the Internet that would pick up his address if I put it here…
I will bet that world GDP will be higher in 20 years time than it is right now. Use a proxy. US GDP will be higher than it is now. I expect decent odds.
GDP will be higher as a function of population, if nothing else. This highlights a key point, however: We can well afford to work against climate change. Conservation of natural resources is always a good investment.
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