I recently came across an old copy of Arthur Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad”. Originally published in 1971, it’s an exploration of a rather tragic footnote in the history of evolutionary science. Back in the early years of the 20th Century (prior to the understanding of DNA, but after Mendelian genetics had become well known), there was still a remnant of the biological community who preferred the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics over the Darwinian idea of natural selection of random mutations. One of the vanguard for the Lamarckian idea was Paul Kammerer whose specialty was the breeding of amphibians that apparently few others could match. He claimed that he could get his toads and salamanders to acquire characteristics that were useful in the new environments in which he raised his specimens. This was touted loudly (in the New York Times for instance) as proof of Lamarckian inheritance and Kammerer was hailed as a ‘new Darwin’. It all ended very badly when one toad specimen was found to be faked (by who remains a mystery), and Kammerer killed himself shortly afterwards (though there may have been more involved than scientific disgrace).
The details of the experiments and controversy can be read online (with various slants) here and here, and a more modern non-replication of one of his experiments is described here. However, the reason I bring this up here is much more related to how the scientific community and Koestler dealt with this scientific maverick and the analogies that has for the climate science and its contrarians.
There are (at least) four points where the analogies with climate science are strong: First, there were clear philosophical motives for supporting Lamarckism (as there are for denying human effects on climate change) (see below). These are strongly articulated in Koestler’s book, and it is obvious that the author feels some sympathy with that argument. Second, there is idealization of the romantic notion of the scientist-as-hero, sacrificing their all (literally in Kammerer’s case) for the pursuit of truth in the teeth of establishment opposition (cf Svensmark). Third, there is the outrage at the apparent dirty tricks, rumours and persecution. Finally, there is the longing for a redemption – a time when the paradigm shift will occur and the hero will be proven right.
Enough time has passed and enough additional scientific evidence has been gathered however to show that Kammerer’s ideas are never going to be accepted into the mainstream. Therefore, we can use this episode to highlight how people’s misunderstanding of scientific process can lead them astray.
So let’s start with the non-scientific reasons why Kammerer’s ideas had resonance. Martin Gardner in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952) puts it well (p143):
Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God’s vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctrines that emphasize the building of a better world.
The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?), and hence there was a clear non-scientific yearning for Lamarckian inheritance to be correct. I use the past tense in referring to these almost 100 year-old arguments, but Koestler’s book and more recent attempts to rehabilitate these ideas tap into these same (misguided) romantic notions. (Odd aside, one of the most positive treatments of this “neo-Lamarckianism” is by Michael Duffy, a frequent climate contrarian Australian journalist). Note that I am distinguishing the classic ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’ from the much more respectable study of epigenetics.
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it’s clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story. Thus while Koestler can’t be uniquely faulted for thinking that Lamarckianism rose and fell with Kammerer, that perspective leads him to imbue certain events with much more significance than is really warranted.
For instance, one of the more subtle misconceptions in the book though is how Koestler thinks that scientific arguments get settled. He places enormous emphasis on a academic tour that Kammerer made to the UK which included a well-documented talk in Cambridge in which the subsequently-notorious specimen was also in attendance. In fact, Koestler devotes a large number of pages to first-hand recollections of the talk. Koestler also criticises heavily the arch-protagonist in this story (a Dr. Bateson) who did not attend Kammerer’s talk, even though he presumably could have, while continuing to criticise his conclusions. The talk is in fact held up to be the one missed opportunity for some academic mano-a-mano that Koestler presumably thinks would have settled things.
Except that this is not how controversial ideas get either accepted or rejected. Sure, publishing papers, giving talks and attending conferences are all useful in bringing ideas to a wider audience, but they are very rarely the occasion of some dramatic denouement and mass conversion of the skeptical. Instead, ideas get accepted because of the increasing weight of evidence that supports them – and that usually comes in dribs and drabs. A replication here, a theoretical insight there, a validated prediction etc. Only in hindsight does there appear to be a clean sequence of breakthroughs that can be seen to have led inexorably to the new conclusions. At the time, the landscape is far more ambiguous. Thus in focusing on one specific talk, and on its reception by one particularly outspoken opponent, Koestler misses the wider issue – which was that Kammerer’s ideas just didn’t have any independent support. The wider community thus saw his work (as far as I can tell) as a curiosity: possibly his findings were correct, but his interpretation was likely not, and maybe his findings weren’t all that reproducible in any case?
This remains the issue, if Lamarckian evolution were possible, it should have been viewable in hundreds of other systems that were much easier to replicate than Kammerer’s toads (nematodes perhaps?). Absent that replication, no amount of exciting talks will have persuaded scientists. In that, scientists are probably a little different from the public, or at least the public who went to Kammerer’s more public lectures where he was very warmly received.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Kammerer’s more vocal opponents would occasionally give vent to their true feelings. Koestler is particular critical of Bateson who, in retrospect, does appear to have gone a little far in his public critiques of Kammerer. However, Koestler perhaps doesn’t realise how common quite scathing criticism is in the halls of academe. This rarely gets written down explicitly, but it is nonetheless there, and forms a big part of how well some people’s ideas are received. If someone is perceived as an exaggerator, or an over-interpreter of their results, even their most careful work will not get a lot of support.
Koestler ends his book with the familiar refrain that since modern science is incomplete, alternative theories must continue to be pursued. He states that since “contemporary genetics has no answers to offer to the problem of the genesis of behaviour”, the replication the key experiments (which he clearly expected to vindicate Kammerer), would very likely make biologists ‘sit up’ and have a long-lasting impact on the field. This notion fails to take into account the vast amount of knowledge that already exists and that makes certain kinds of ‘alternative’ theories very unlikely to be true. The link between this optimistic expectation and discussions of climate change is persuasively demonstrated in this pastiche.
There is one additional characteristic of this story that has some modern resonance, and that’s the idea that once someone starts accepting one class of illogical arguments, that leads them to accept others that aren’t really connected, but share some of the same characteristics. Some people have called this ‘crank magnetism‘. In Kammerer’s case, he was a great believer in the meaningfulness of coincidences and wrote a book trying to elucidate the ‘laws’ that might govern them. Koestler himself became a big proponent of parapsychology. And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).
Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories. So I’ll finish with a 1923 prediction that Kammerer made while he was on a speaking tour of the US: “Take a very pertinent case. The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced” (NYT, Nov 28).
I am no more of a skeptic than any Missourian (the “Show Me” state). I am interested though.
John Lang posted a link to a graph:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/GTCh_Fig2.pdf
Is there anything wrong with the graph?
Because it is pretty obvious that it has not warmed as much as Scenarios A or B predicted.
I know this is all a matter of probabilities and thus that does not prove anything– merely makes things more or less probable.
Nonetheless I agree with the main text statement:
“Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories.”
On that basis the graph suggests that the underlying theory is not doing well as a predictor.
GHG’s have gone up, so far the world has not behaved as it was predicted to behave.
I understand that recent periods may be an aberration, etc. etc. But so far, the probability that the theory is right seems to be diminishing to me. It still may be right, but that seems less likely now than earlier.
What is wrong with my thought process?
Truth, do us all a favor and save your straw men for other rightwing nutjobs who don’t care about the truth. Nowhere did I suggest all coal fired power plants be shut down immediately. Nor has Jim Hansen suggested it.
You keep alluding that there are all these scientists out there who dissent from the consensus. So where are they? Why don’t they publish their ideas in peer reviewed journals? Where are their models and evidence? All I hear from the denialist side is a rather confused mumbling about how we don’t understand climate–and all of it from people who don’t publish in climate science.
If you want to debate the science, the proper venues are between the covers of peer-reviewed journals (not op-ed pages) and in the hallways of conferences. If you want to debate what to do about the threats, there is still room at the table. Price of admission: Learn and understand the science so you can make an informed contribution.
Robert H., Google Rosenfeld’s Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld's_Law
John Hall, John Lang, have either of you read the previous discussions? Do you know the climate sensitivity number assumed to create that particular set of scenarios, for example? Looked at anything besides the picture? If so, what have you read?
> what to do about the threats
Tyndall looked out much further than most studies. I haven’t seen much comment on their
http://earthscape.org/r1/ES17127/t3_18.pdf
Climate change on the millennial timescale
February 2006
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Technical Report 41
Report to the Environment Agency of Tyndall Centre Research Project T3.18
Matt, First, you contend that climate change is controversial. Among what group does the controversy rage? Certainly not among the climate scientists who are actively publishing and advancing the work. Not among the related scientists–physicists, chemists, meteorologists…hell, even the Petroleum Geologists, where not one professional society dissents from the consensus view. Not among National Academies, where there is also pretty much universal agreement on the consensus. It would seem that it is only controversial among those who don’t understand the science.
You attack the quality of the coding in the GCMs. OK, find anything specific that changes the physics? I’d be very surprised if you did. The only way to invalidate the consensus view would be if you could get a greenhouse gas to stop acting like a greenhouse gas or if you found a very large negative feedback. Both are contra-indicated by available evidence.
Now, as to your contention that individual actions are irrelevant, I disagree. Individual actions are critical, because 1)society is a collection of individual; and 2)individual actions indicate that people are taking responsibility. Moreover, if we can find 8 actions that reduce consumption by 1.3%, we’ve cut output by more significantly more than 11%, once you take into account costs of production, transport, distribution, etc. Individuals are not powerless if they become committed, and in any case, as you oppose coercion, I would think you would encourage individual initiative rather than try to discourage it.
John Hall, First, there are certainly uncertainties in the models for how energy gets distributed. The warming we see in the temperature may not be all there is, because not all the systems in the climate come to equilibrium at the same rate. Thus, there could be more warming “in the pipeline”. Second, climate is very noisy, and long time series are needed for trends–even strong ones–to become clear. Third, even if there temperature trends were lower than expected, other warming trends (e.g. ice loss) are happening faster. I wouldn’t draw any comfort from small discrepancies.
John Hall wrote “Because it is pretty obvious that it has not warmed as much as Scenarios A or B predicted.”
John: A, B, and C are “scenarios,” not predictions. They are hypothetical states of the future world. Each scenario assumes different greenhouse gas emission rates. The graphed lines are the different predictions made by the same model, given those different rates of greenhouse gas emissions. The only relevant line is the one for the scenario that is closest to the actual greenhouse gas emissions over the 20 years since the predictions were made. That’s Scenario B.
If you read the 2006 paper in which that figure appeared–especially the exact page on which that figure appears–you will find excellent explanations.
The 20-year old prediction actually has done quite well. Predictions made now probably will do even better, because our knowledge has improved. For example the climate sensitivity to CO2 is now known to be smaller than was believed 20 years ago. Again, read the 2006 paper in which that figure appeared.
The issue about the correlation of standard of living and energy use, is not what we are talking about. We are talking about standard of living and CO2 emissions, which is clearly non-linear, and saturates quickly
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/143487801_7f13664e13_o.gif
The US, Canada and Australia could have the same standard of living with about a factor of 3 less CO2 emissions if they instituted good public policies.
Captcha: Mises interested – guess not
> previous discussions
Here is one example; you can use the ‘Start Here’ link at top of page and the search box for more help:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
information for you..
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European leaders clash over pledges on global warming !!!
European leaders gather in Brussels today for a crunch summit, acutely divided over how to deliver on pledges to combat global warming almost two years after declaring they would show the rest of the world how to tackle climate change.
The EU is split between the poorer east and the wealthy west. Germany says that most of their industries need not pay to pollute, Italy says it cannot afford the ambitious scheme, and Britain says that the package on the table could result in huge windfall profits for companies.
“There is a very big chasm between the various parties,” said a senior European diplomat.
Prime ministers and presidents appear to be getting cold feet over key decisions that need to be taken by the weekend to enact laws that will make the climate change package binding for 27 countries.
Failure is not an option, they say. But Polish veto threats, Italian resistance, and German insistence that it will not jeopardise jobs to help save the planet, suggest that the action plan will be diluted. The risk is the EU will draw withering criticism from climate campaigners and signal weakness and indecision to the US, China, India and other key players in the global warming fight.
“It’s a question of credibility,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission who described the summit as the most important of his five-year term. “It would be a real mistake for Europe to give the signal that we are watering down our position.”
A negative outcome to the talks would moreover cast a pall over the latest round of UN negotiations to secure a post-Kyoto treaty to limit global greenhouse gases.
But at talks in Poznan, Poland, on Wednesday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, said: “There are a few issues left but I cannot imagine that we’re not going to get an agreement on Friday. We are going to deliver the targets.”
The EU package represents the most ambitious legislative effort on climate change anywhere which includes four laws that mandate cuts in greenhouse gases by one-fifth by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, reduce energy consumption in Europe by one-fifth by the same deadline and stipulate that 20% of Europe’s energy mix comes from renewable sources.
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel engineered the deal as EU president in March last year. Since then the EU has been bragging about leading the world in the race to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C.
It falls to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to end his dynamic six months in the EU hot seat with a deal that could see the entire package turned into law before Christmas.
Sarkozy is staring failure in the face. But he is widely viewed as a consummate fixer who may pull it off. The disputes are fundamentally about costs, a disagreement that has become magnified in the current economic climate. While everyone agrees the headline target of 20% cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020 is sacrosanct, the disputes are about how to get there.
The heart of the scheme is the “cap-and-trade” or emissions trading system which is to supply around half of the cuts in greenhouse gases. The ceiling for industrial pollution levels is progressively lowered and industries and companies pay to pollute by buying permits in an auction system.see
http://hernadi-key.blogspot.com
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Gavin Inline #289: Response: This can’t be correct. The response to 2xCO2 is independent of any aerosol effect, and similarly, I cannot find any reference to the Hadley model having a sensitivity of 6 deg C. Be careful of inventing anecdotes to demonstrate rhetorical points. – gavin]
Sorry, details were off but conclusion the same.
“A few years ago, a leading climate model–developed at the British Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, in Bracknell–predicted that an Earth with twice the preindustrial level of carbon dioxide would warm by a devastating 5.2 degrees Celsius. Then Hadley Center modelers, led by John Mitchell, made two improvements to the model’s clouds–how fast precipitation fell out of different cloud types and how sunlight and radiant heat interacted with clouds. The model’s response to a carbon dioxide doubling dropped from 5.2oC to a more modest 1.9oC.”
From http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;276/5315/1040
How do we know current models haven’t made a similar mistake? We don’t. Only after decades of accurately predicting AND researchers trying to improve and saying “man, this looks pretty good. Our changes improve the accuracy a bit, but those SOBs back in 2010 really new what they were doing” will we know that the models are “hardened” and can reliable tell us what we need to know.
It’s the same with other disciplines.
It doesn’t matter if all 20 models have nearly the same answer. If they all dismissed something because group think deemed it not important and because it wasn’t understood, then all 20 modelers will be very surprised at the change in outcomes.
Mark (291), did you just say you can prove AGW at the cr_aps table?? ;-)
#295 Anne van der Bom: If I assume that commercial & industrial lighting is nearly all fluorescent, then the target is clearly residential lighting. If further I assume that 2/3 of the energy is consumed by incandescent lights that can be replaced by CFL’s, then my estimate for the CO2 savings is roughly 30 million tons. A fifth of what ‘one lighting company’ claimed.
Yes, agree. My number was 37.1M tons. Which in terms of US CO2 production is about 1% (actually about 0.6% if the total US output is 6B tons).
Thus, the savings from CFL is nearly nil.
#296 Hank: Matt, look further in the article you cited, down to the phrase “low profile tire” — their explanation for the small difference they noted: a lap around their track driving an Astra. They note the special circumstances in the same article. One test, one tire type.
As I noted, the DoT claimed a savings of 2B gallons. We drink 140B gallons a year, so that’s 1.5%.
Thus, two cited sources giving about the same amount.
The savings from proper tire inflation is very, very small.
Ray (293), I agree. All I’m asserting is checking air pressure will help like (as the man said) using a coffee cup to bail New Orleans out. How many of your soccer moms, et al are driving around for 6-12 months with about 24psi in their tires. To get the average (and the touted savings) in a normal distribution, it has to be at least 60%. Do you think that’s happening? I think the preponderance of drivers are within 5% of recommended pressure. Those folks checking will provide none of the touted benefits. But, I agree, checking periodically is something all drivers should do — for MPG and safety.
#2: Yes, eventually company B will make the investment to reduce his emissions, so eventually CO2 might diminish. Or maybe not. [How much investment does a cement producer have to make?]
#293 Ray Ladbury: The point, Rod, is that there is a whole helluva lot of low hanging fruit that would allow us to decrease consumption AND save money.
No, there’s not. Be and engineer here for a moment and ack that we need to reduce CO2 90-95% to win this.
The lowest of the low-hanging fruit, CFL and tire pressure, is generously 3%. The EPA “vampires” are another % or two. Reduced hiway speeds another %. And a few other things can probably get us to 8% for the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. And these have 2 year timetables.
The real low-hanging fruit, which is CAFE, has a 10 year timetable. It’s probably another 10%
Backfilling with alt energy is also low-hanging and a 10 year time table. It’s probably another 20%.
But then it gets hard. Really, really hard. We can do all of the above, and we don’t get anywhere near close enough to what we need.
I know the rah-rah attitude feels good. But if a manager type shows up to one of your satellite project meetings and proclaims “we need to reduce satellite weight by 95%”, do your guys start talking about removing a bolt here and there, or do they realize that with that statement business as usual has just ceased to exist and either the manager is insane or he wants everything currently used to be completely thrown away and a new way of getting things into orbit developed?
I think most AGW types fall into the “completely insane” bit, becuase they have failed to rationalize what the US and EU must actually achieve to succeed. And instead, they think a Prius + CFL will get us there. It won’t.
If they truly understood the challenges, they’d opt for nuclear tomorrow. But they don’t, and thus they’ll stick to their plan of using AGW to drive their anti-growth agenda. Sad, really.
301, John, JL’s graph doesn’t split out natural VS anthro forcings. Since natural forcings have been negative, they’re masking the signal. Arctic sea ice thickness is plummeting and volume hit another record low in 2008. Once summer arctic sea ice goes away, temps will start to rise again. It’s a tipping point no natural forcing can counteract.
Oh, there’s low-hanging fruit. The Administration has been protecting it for the past eight years.
Home appliance standards — the states sued and won:
http://www.iowa.gov/government/ag/latest_news/releases/nov_2006/DOE_appliances.html
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?Q=327996&A=2426
http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/2005_releases/2005-09-07_ENERGY_STANDARDS_LAWSUIT.PDF
http://www.energy.ca.gov/energy_action_plan/2005-09-21_EAP2_FINAL.DOC
Saving a few dollars per transformer when replacing utility transformers, by choosing less efficient ones — that will stay in the poles for 40 or 50 years or more, like the antiques they’re replacing. Make sense to you?
———-
“According to DOE estimates, requiring all new transformers to achieve the same efficiency levels as the best units currently on the market would eliminate the need for nearly 20 large new power plants by 2038.”
…
“Making these simple improvements can make new, expensive coal plants unnecessary.”
Adopting the more stringent standards would also avoid the emission of 700 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than what is emitted annually by all U.S. passenger cars.
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/california-ag-environmental-groups-challenge-weak-energy-efficiency-standards.html
http://ag.ca.gov/globalwarming/pdf/ee_petition.pdf#xml=http://search.doj.ca.gov:8004/AGSearch/isysquery/7fb5426b-ef1d-4c1f-9999-cb6254ce5bbd/1/hilite/
PETITION FOR REVIEW
… the Attorney General, on behalf of the People of the State ofCalifornia, petitions this Court for review of the final action, including the promulgation of regulations, taken by Respondents at 72 Federal Register 58,190-58,241 (October 12, 2007), entitled “Energy Conservation Program for Commercial Equipment ….”
——-
http://www.ieeerepc.org/documents/NRECADOEDistributionTransformerEfficiencyStandardsREPC.ppt
There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit. The people who own it now have been lobbying successfully to keep people from picking it.
Going back to the origin of this thread; whether evolution worked through Darwinian variation and natural selection or through Lamarckian variation and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lamarckians cut the tails of mice and amputated the legs from toads and bread from them, hoping to find mice being born without tails and toad developing without legs. Well, for hundreds of generations, hundreds of thousands or would it be millions of male Jews have been circumcised and they have to continue to do today, because boys are born with foreskins, showing empirically, that acquired characteristics are not inherited. There was no need for the experiments on mice or toads. The experiments had been done.
Many people believe the world is as they want it to be, rather than how it is. That is emotion not science. However, it is hard enough to see how the world is. It is much harder to tell how it will be.
Matt, This idea that we all assume the change will be easy exists only in your head, and the sooner you get rid of that straw man, the sooner we can move ahead. I agree that the low-hanging fruit alone won’t do it. I disagree with some of your details–e.g. that it will take 10 years to increase CAFE standards. Indeed, I’m not opposed to Nuclear, although 1)it’s not a near-term solution; and 2)it does require considerable work to resolve proliferation and waste storage concerns.
The most important point, though is that every watt we save buys time, and time is the most precious commodity we have in addressing this threat. Time allows us to improve the science and better target mitigation. It allows improvement of technology. It allows political evolution rather than revolution. It allows education. All I hear from you and the pro-business types is that we can’t do it. With that sort of attitude do you wonder why many who are concerned about climate change look to the left for solutions.
OK. We get it. It’s hard. Now what do we do about it. I’m waiting for YOUR solutions.
> cut the tails of mice and amputated the legs … foreskins …
Or foot binding, or neck stretching, or shaving beards or other body hair, or eyebrow-plucking, or ear-piercing.
You have to back up to the era and think this through with the information they had. There was a reasonable argument made that perhaps over many lifetimes, some actual useful activity — for example, many generations of stretching for higher branches as climate changed for the ancestors of the giraffe — could have some kind of feedback to heredity. Useful activity, over many generations, with feedback. Like exercise improved muscles, they thought perhaps exercise could alter heredity. Reasonable in the absence of evidence. But the notion was small changes over long spans requiring some sort of active effort toward some benefit.
That was a different suggestion than the notion that some externally imposed alteration could become impressed somehow on inheritance.
Look at the humble clam. Its shell is some protection, but predators have evolved ways to drill through the shell. No one argued that clams would evolve toward being pre-drilled! A deleterious alteration wasn’t expected to become inheritable. Nor was there any particular reason to think a neutral alteration might become inherited — even a strain, let alone an amputation. Some people tried it anyhow, and with no knowledge of statistics so no idea what sort of sample they’d need.
It’s hard for people to remember how _recent_ scientific thinking is. The people looking at surgical alterations had no notion of statistics either.
Regarding Scenario A, B, C etc. I have read both papers several times.
The fact is that temperatures are not keeping up with the predicted timeline in the models – not the 1988 predictions or any of the subsequent IPCC predictions. This is not really in dispute.
Maybe it takes a long time to reach the equilibrium temperatures, maybe the oceans are absorbing more of the greenhouse energy than originally predicted. But the numbers to date are turning out to be only half of the trendlines predicted.
Previously, I said this month November, 2008, provides a good opportunity to examine the warming to date figure because the big ocean cycle drivers of temperature are giving us a more-or-less neutral impact this month.
GISStemp will be about 0.48C in November, 2008 (no sense making observations if you are not going to put some predictions on the line).
[Response: One month or one year is not the determinant of anything much, and the match to the long term trends in the data and in the Hansen et al projections will remain much as it was when I wrote this post. (I’ve already done the calcs). – gavin]
#323 John Lang Said: 14 December 2008 at 4:37 PM
How probable is GISTEMP 0.48C when already RSS & UAH increased their October to November figures?
Sources Oct. Nov.
HadCRUT 0,4340 ????
GISTEMP 0,5500 ????
N.C.D.C.0,6307 ????
UAH-MSU 0,1660 0,2540
RSS-MSU 0,1810 0,2160
CRUTEM3 0,7640 ????
John Lang Says:
14 December 2008 at 4:37 PM
> Regarding Scenario A, B, C etc. I have read both papers several times.
Do you recall what climate sensitivity number they used?
How does that compare to that used in current scenarios?
How much of the difference would that explain?
To Mr Ladbury [edit] You have no choice but to believe that the CAFE changes will take 10 years, because it will take that long to turn over th existing vehicle fleet.
317 matt says, “If they truly understood the challenges, they’d opt for nuclear tomorrow. But they don’t, and thus they’ll stick to their plan of using AGW to drive their anti-growth agenda”
Nuclear power *can’t* be used as the world’s power source because the US and EU *won’t* allow *everyone* on the planet to use nukes. There is plenty of wind and solar to power the world – it’s just a safer vision of pro-growth than you have. Me? I like hybrid nuclear/methane plants. No muss, no fuss, no radioactive waste, no proliferation issues, ultra cheap electricity, and a 90+% reduction in GHG emissions as compared to coal.
John Lang wrote: “The fact is that temperatures are not keeping up with the predicted timeline in the models.”
I don’t see how you can conclude that “the numbers to date are turning out to be only half of the trendlines predicted” (in that Fig. 2 graph). Remember that you need to ignore the green and purple prediction lines, because the real CO2 emissions and other aspects of the state of the world have not matched those assumptions. Those green and purple lines correspond with planets we do not live on. (Think of them as descriptions of Earth in two universes parallel to our own–universes that diverged from ours back in 1958.) So compare only the blue prediction line to the red and black observation lines. But nor does that blue line entirely accurately correspond with the actual, historical, Earth. That blue line is not a hindcast using the actual historical state of CO2 and so on. It makes 1988 assumptions about those conditions. It has not been corrected to match the actual history.
Also, be sure you’re comparing the trends to no trend–to a flat line down at the “.0” mark on the y axis. The angle of the observed (red and black) lines’ trend line up from that flat line is not “half” the angle of the blue prediction line’s trend line.
Then you need to see past the noise. Sure, since 1999 the actuals have been slightly below the blue prediction line. But between 1995 and 1998 the predictions were above the actuals. Keep going back and you’ll see swings in the differences between predicted and actual. That’s why inferential statistical tests need to be done to test hypotheses about differences in trends.
Finally, yes, there does seem to be a slight underprediction of the blue line. Part of the reason is the inaccuracy of the 1988 predictions about how much CO2 would be released, ocean phenomena such as El Nino, volcanic eruptions, and so on. (Remember, the blue line is not a hindcast using actual historical conditions.) Another part of the reason is, as Hansen et al. explicitly noted in that article, the 1988 model used a too-high estimate of temperature sensitivity to CO2 (last paragraph of page 14289 of that article). That estimate was 4.2 deg. C for doubling of CO2, whereas the current estimate is only 3 +- 1 deg. C. That’s not a mystery.
Most importantly, current models are not identical to that 1988 model. So if you’re wondering how well “the” models will predict the future from now, you can get a hint from looking at current models’ hindcasts versus observations. That is not what is in the Figure 2 we’ve been discussing.
#321 Ray Ladbury: OK. We get it. It’s hard. Now what do we do about it. I’m waiting for YOUR solutions.
Same answer I’ve been typing here for the last 2 years.
We start the concrete trucks and start pouring cookie cutter reactors similar to Westinghouse AP1000. ASAP. We fund $0.10 gas tax for an XPrize (which would be $14B/year) for achieving a battery with double the gravimetric and volumetric efficiency of Lithium Ion, and at half the cost. That would give us cars with a $12K battery that could deliver 400 miles range. The drive electronics and motors are easy and well understood.
And then we have breathing room. Lots of it. Because in 20 years, we can be to an 60-80% reduction. That is bankable. And concurrently we ramp alt energy as fast as possible, and hope that can hit 30-40% in 25 years. And then we can start dialing down the reactors and eating the cost on those IF alt energy works out. If it doesn’t, we aren’t painted into a corner.
GWB’s greatest screw-up was pissing around with switchgrass and all the other nutty ideas he had planted in his head. On 9/12 2001, if he would have stuck a $0.10 gas tax on battery technology, you can bet car makers plans for 2014 fleet would look radically different than today.
#321 Ray Ladbury: I disagree with some of your details–e.g. that it will take 10 years to increase CAFE standards.
Have you ever wondered why the car radio in your car lags so far behind what the market is currently actually using? Why, for example, do production cars JUST NOW have an mp3 port? It’s because car development lead times for even modest platform changes are 5 years. Major changes are 10-12 years. Big changes to CAFE touch almost every subsystem on a car. They are major changes requiring 10-12 years to implement.
http://www.acea.be/index.php/news/news_detail/lead_time_is_essential_cars_concept_and_production_phase_take_up_to_12_year/
Few actually understand this, however, and attribute the lag to foot dragging and some great oil conspiracy. If they only knew.
That’s right Robert, “Or foot binding, or neck stretching, or shaving beards or other body hair, or eyebrow-plucking, or ear-piercing.” It is funny to think of all these clever men, looking themselves in the mirror shaving, cutting their hair every morning. Then going to work and cutting the tails off mice. Millions of experiments for all to see, but not to understand Even when Darwin pointed them out, people still did not get it. Millions still don’t. As I say, it is hard enough to see how the world is, even when it is pointed out. It is much harder to tell how it will be when 3, 5, 8, 11 factors, all variable and some unknown interact over time.
> Westinghouse AP1000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2006.03.049
re: #321 Ray
“All I hear from you and the pro-business types is that we can’t do it.”
Be really careful with that! Silicon Valley is filled with “pro-business types” who funding and working on all sorts of energy-saving/CO2-reduction technologies, as fast as we can.
1) There are plenty of entities that claim to represent business, like the WSJ for example, or a bunch of conservative thinktanks.
2) But, having worked in high-tech corporations for 27 years, often at executive level, I don’t think those entities represented *us* very well, and in fact, I think they often didn’t represent most businesses very well.
I’ve known plenty of responsible businesspeople who actually welcomed reasonable regulation to do let them “do the right thing” without being at a disadvantage. Some businesses are like farmers: they know where they’re going to be, and they don’t just pollute the place and leave. [For example, the old Bell System was pervasive, and couldn’t easily just leave and go somewhere else, although AT&T did have to threaten the CA PUC with that once.] Some extractive industries don’t exactly think that way.
Google: pittsburgh coal mine subsidence
[I grew up near Pittsburgh and worked summer jobs at the US Bureau of Mines.]
There is of course, absolutely zero-value to a coal producer that anyone works on energy efficiency… one wonders how much R&D coal companies do for themselves, rather than expecting the government to do.
3) While it is perfectly rational for businesses to wish to avoid cumbersome regulations, I’d observe that there is is a set of businesses that operate by “privatizing the benefits, socializing the costs”, particularly with regard to environmental and health issues.
Some of these entities represent *those* businesses, as is clear from the funding patterns. But of course, it’s an effective ploy on their part to take on the mantle of “representing business”, because it’s good cover, and may gain more support from other businesses. The cigarette companies especially pioneered this.
BUT, it is a really bad idea to lump all businesses together, it’s just playing into disinformational hands….
Matt # 330 is basically correct here. Blue lasers for example are an old technology, and HD was used by the military in the 1950’s, but only in the last few years have they been available to the public.
I must say though, that from any perspective, nuclear power is not a good option to increase dependence on in the United States. MP3 technology is not all that new either, but look how expensive they were and how rare at first in general public usage.
Electric car technology was in use in the 1800’s and more efficient designs are available in Britannica from the early 1900’s and in the 1990’s there were EV’s that could travel 300 miles on one charge and drive 100 plus miles per hour and were well built and did not over heat or cause problems of greater magnitude or incidence than internal combustion engines which run on gasoline.
If people want to talk about nuclear, I suggest relocating to the thread over at Breavew Climate on IFR, i.e., a technology James Hansen has written of recently, and at least avoid plowing all the same ground again.
I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say about it here Tuesday.
I am sorry to say that the Australian Govt. has just announced its targets for 2020. 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 with option to increase to 15% if international agreement is achieved next year. It represents about a 20% reduction on the current levels of emissions.
I believe this is not good enough and will be working hard to get it tightened.
John Mashey,
I agree that Si Valley has been a bright spot that shines more brightly against the dark background of American Business defeatism. However, even here, I wish leaders would be more vocal. I think there has been a tendency to merely roll their eyes when the WSJ pretends to be the voice of business, rather than give them the dressing down they so desperately need. I’ve reached the point where I wouldn’t train a puppy on the WSJ!
We’ve reached a point where the only way to put paid to the charge by denialists that addressing climate change means regressing to the stone age is to demonstrate that to the contrary it is the only path forward into the 21st century and beyond.
#265–
Rod, a thought experiment is all very well, but how about a real-world experiment? “Cap and trade” is often credited with reducing the acid rain problem very significantly. Here is a report on that (admittedly from an environmental advocacy organization, but the data they present should be verifiable, if we decide to do that.)
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085
Seems to me they make a decent case. What do you think?
Hmm, here’s the official EPA take on it:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/cap-trade/docs/ctresults.pdf
Another glowing review. . .
Oh, and the DNR chips in with this evaluation:
http://dnr.wi.gov/environmentprotect/gtfgw/documents/McTF20071113.pdf
Looks pretty positive, too. Let’s see what Google scholar has to say–I’ll get back to you on that.
. . .and there’s this book, which calls the SO2 cap and trade program a “living legend of effectiveness,” right in the chapter heading.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_1tN6S88HPYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA41&dq=cap+and+trade+acid+rain&ots=u2ti6ZKz7a&sig=LlouTNaRgDVs3WLLdo6mn97JH_0
But I distrust them, because I really don’t think a program qualifies as “living.” Maybe I need to look farther. . .
Ah, here is an ex-post evaluation of the Title IV SO2/NOX program:
http://tisiphone.mit.edu/RePEc/mee/wpaper/2003-003.pdf
Well, this paper seems scholarly enough. They do say that the cost savings over a pure regulatory approach were less than some claim, though still real. From their conclusion:
“The experience with Title IV and, to a lesser extent, other cap-and-trade programs
marks a turning point in the regulation of air emissions in the U.S. This experience has
shown that market-based incentive systems can reduce emissions as effectively, and even
more so, and at considerably less cost than through conventional command-and-control
mandates. As it result, it has become virtually obligatory that any legislative proposal to
limit air emissions in the U.S. include emissions trading. While the agreement of left and
right in the political spectrum is not as complete as it may appear on the surface, there
seems little doubt that emissions trading will play an increasing role in the regulation of
air emissions in the U.S. and probably elsewhere.”
Seems to me there is some reason to think that cap and trade is a bit more than
“smoke and mirrors.”
(Captcha: tandem Realty–better, I suppose, than “tandem reality”)
matt wrote: “We start the concrete trucks and start pouring cookie cutter reactors similar to Westinghouse AP1000. ASAP.”
Recommended reading re: problems with the Westinghouse AP1000:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the reactor revival is NOT ready for prime time
By Harvey Wasserman
July 25, 2008
The Free Press
Excerpts:
More details and plenty of links to documentation in the article linked above.
Smoke and mirrors is SO2 and mercury. CO2 is life
Thank you all for your comments on #301.
I am not sophisticated in my reasoning, but let me say how the argument of ” we can’t base decisions on x years of recent data seems to me.”
The AGW predictions are not definite predictions. They are expressions of odds, e.g. it is 90% probable that it will warm y degrees.
As such they aren’t subject to proof.
But to any reasonable person the probability of a statistical assertion changes as experience accumulates. If I tell you that I can shoot a 85 on the golf course 90% of the time, around the fourth or fifth game with you that I shoot over 90 , you are going to start to regard me as a braggart. That I shoot under 85, 90% of the time isn’t disproved, it just seems less probable of being correct.
That is what is going on now with AGW. Temperatures are not rising in recent years. They may even be cooling a bit.
A reasonable response would be to lessen the odds that AGW is the dominant force in global climate. Maybe the odds don’t lessen by much — it used to be 90% likely, now it is 85% likely, —or maybe they lessen a lot. It seems to me that discussions ought to address the issue, particularly when we are talking major policy decisions.
Instead what I hear is greater vehemence on both sides. The debate seems to be degenerating into a “is”, “isn’t” dichotomy, and I don’t think that is a good descriptor of what we have. This is a “how likely” issue.
FWIW.
RE #327, Richard, what is a hybrid nuclear/methane plant? How does it work?
John Hall wrote: “That is what is going on now with AGW. Temperatures are not rising in recent years. They may even be cooling a bit.”
That is not what is going on now with AGW, since both of those assertions are false.
Eli, I suspect your humor may be a few millibars too rarefied for some!
Re #334: jcbmack,
You really need to start providing sources for your claims.
“Blue lasers for example are an old technology” – Not true. The fist patents for blue laser diodes were issued in the mid 1990s. Commercialization took several more years.
“HD was used by the military in the 1950’s” – Not true. Neither HD video cameras or HD video displays were used by the military in the 1950s. I was an engineer at the Pentagon in the early 80s and I can testify that even the briefing room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff used NTSC video projectors. Even the spy satellites used film in the 50s because there was no such thing as HD available then.
“in the 1990’s there were EV’s that could travel 300 miles on one charge and drive 100 plus miles per hour” – I don’t think this claim is true either. There were several EVs manufactured in small numbers, such as the EV-1, the Ranger EV and the RAV-4 EV, but none of them had a range anywhere near 300 miles or a top speed of 100 mph. If I’m wrong and you know of production EVs with that performance, please provide the details.
As Gavin said “Be careful of inventing anecdotes to demonstrate rhetorical points”. Words to live by.
Regards – Phill
Kevin (338), well that may be the upside. I agree cap and trade helped with the aid rain problem.