The new novel Solar by Ian McEwan, Britain’s “national author” (as many call him) tackles the issue of climate change. I should perhaps start my review with a disclosure: I’m a long-standing fan of McEwan and have read all of his novels, and I am also mentioned in the acknowledgements of Solar. I met McEwan in Potsdam and we had some correspondence while he wrote his novel. Our recent book The Climate Crisis quotes a page of McEwan as its Epilogue. And of course I’m not a literature critic but a scientist. So don’t expect a detached professional review.
In interviews McEwan describes his difficulties in approaching the topic of climate change: “I couldn’t quite see how a novel would work without falling flat with moral intent.”
One solution is that he makes his protagonist who tries to “save the world”, the Nobel laureate physicist Michael Beard, thoroughly pathetic and unlikeable. (Actually quite unlike any scientist I know, but certainly less boring than us at Realclimate.) The only redeeming feature of Beard is his sarcastic humor. When his business partner is worried that claims of global warming having stopped will ruin their grand solar energy scheme, Beard (after expertly refuting the “no warming since 1998” myth) retorts:
Here’s the good news. The UN estimates that already a third of a million people a year are dying from climate change. Even as we speak, the inhabitants of the island of Carteret in the South Pacific are being evacuated because the oceans are warming and expanding and rising. Malarial mosquitoes are advancing northwards across Europe… Toby, listen. It’s a catastrophe. Relax!
This is McEwan’s funniest book. The humour in it is another way around the moral gravity of the subject. In an interview he said:
The thing that would have killed the book for me, I’m sure, is if I’d taken up any sort of moral position, I needed a get-out clause. And the get-out clause is, this is an investigation of human nature, with some of the latitude thrown in by comedy.
Half-way through the novel Beard gives a riveting speech on climate change to an auditorium full of pension-fund managers (representing 400 billion dollars of investments) – a speech that I’d be almost tempted to steal and use verbatim myself at some occasion. But what could have been tedious – a whole lecture embedded in a novel – is turned into a hilarious scene where Beard is engaged in a losing battle with his bowels, trying to continue speaking while swallowing down “a fishy reflux rising from his gorge, like salted anchovies, with a dash of bile”.
McEwan showing off that he can write such a speech better than a scientist is reminiscent of his novel Enduring Love, to which he appended an entire scientific paper about a psychological disorder (De Clerambault’s Syndrome) that allegedly inspired the book. Later he admitted this “paper” was part of the fiction. He’d even submitted it to a journal, but one of the reviewers smelled a rat.
McEwan’s deep (and often playful) affinity to science is one of the hallmarks of his writing and of course one reason why I like his novels. The other is his stunning power of observation; he seems to be reading people’s minds, cutting right through their delusions to get to the deeper truths. In that, his analytic work as a writer resembles that of a scientist.
McEwan is a forceful rationalist and well-versed in science culture, and his witty observations on that are a big part of the fun of his books. In Solar, for example, he pokes some hilarious fun at the social constructivists. Beard chairs a government committee to bring more women into physics, and a social scientist on his committee introduces herself with a speech on how a particular gene is not discovered by scientists, but is rather a social construct.
Beard had heard rumours that strange ideas were commonplace among liberal arts departments. It was said that humanities students were routinely taught that science was just one more belief system, no more or less truthful than religion or astrology. He had always thought that this must be a slur against his colleagues on the arts side. The results surely spoke for themselves. Who was going to submit to a vaccine designed by a priest?
This develops into my favourite subplot. At a press conference of his committee, the journalists are “slumped over their recorders and notebooks” and “depressed by the seriousness of their assignment, its scandalous lack of controversy”, as “the whole project was lamentably worthy”. Beard makes some fairly harmless remarks about the efforts of bringing more women into physics perhaps reaching a ceiling one day, because they may have a preference for other branches of science. The social constructivist explodes (“Before I go outside to be sick, and I mean violently sick because of what I’ve just heard, I wish to announce my resignation from Professor Beard’s committee.”) Predictably, that makes the predatory journalists spring to life, and in the following McEwan spins a completely credible story how Beard’s remarks turn into a media storm where Beard’s love life is dragged into the tabloids and his “genetic determinist” views are linked to Third Reich race theories. One journalist, “more in the spirit of playful diary-page spite”, calls him a neo-Nazi.
No one took the charge seriously for a moment, but it became possible for other papers to take up the term even as they dismissed it, carefully bracketing and legalising the insult with quotation marks. Beard became the ‘neo-Nazi’ professor.
McEwan knows what he is writing about: he became subject to a media storm about his Islam-critical views a few years ago. I read Solar in February (thanks to an advance copy that the author had sent me), in parallel with the unfolding surreal, but real-world media campaign against IPCC, and found that McEwan dissects the mechanisms beautifully.
McEwan says that the idea to make a Nobel laureate the main character of his new book came to him in Potsdam, when attending the Nobel Cause Symposium organised by our institute in October 2007 (and on page 179 his hero Beard returns from a conference in Potsdam). At the time I discussed with him whether this wouldn’t be a good topic for a novel: humanity facing an existential threat that is well-understood by its scientists, but largely ignored by a population who prefers to delude itself in creative ways about the gradually unfolding disaster. McEwan responded: everything there is to say about this situation has already been said by Thomas Mann in his novel Death in Venice.
I’m glad he tackled the topic of climate change nevertheless. It’s McEwan at his best. Intelligent, funny, and full of insights. Read for yourself!
Link: Here is McEwan speaking about Solar (and about his views on climate change) in a TV interview.
“That aim is not served by demanding that people you don’t agree with be ‘thrown out’. Instead, it is served by demonstrating that their ideas are not robust or that their conclusions are not sound – and that happens in the literature for the most part”
I don’t disagree fundamentally with anything you are saying in your reply.
But I will point out that what you are talking about is the “expedient progression of science” and not the “public trust in science” which was the main thrust of my post. If science is going to play an important role in the public policy arena it is the latter that is more important than the former.
George Monbiot said with regard to the Climategate emails: “We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.”
[Response: Again I don’t agree. Science doesn’t have the kudos it does because all scientists are saints and never show human emotion. Science has kudos because it works. As I said at the time, Newton may have been an ass (and he was), but respect for the theory of gravity is still pretty solid (though I haven’t seen the latest polling…. ;) ). What do you want to ‘never happen again’? For some scientists to be friends? To have frank discussions? To have their emails stolen? To never call out a paper that shouldn’t have been published? To have every scientist self-censor themselves in any and all situations? To never make errors of judgment? Well, sorry, but this is not doable short of replacing all scientists with robots. You will be much better off embracing the fact that science is done by imperfect human beings and that it is the scientific method that allows those imperfections not to matter in the long term, rather than expecting saintliness. – gavin]
Sayings of Frank (I’m honest me) Giger:
“Okay, I’m late to the party and preaching to the choir, but so what?”
“Indeed, I think the policy momentum is so great that nothing is able to really alter it”
“Auditing of science does have its place…. It implies that anyone that is questioning of a study or findings is an enemy. That, friends, is how inflexible dogma is formed.”
“Auditing in the form of fact checking from raw numbers to output is statistical as well as checking materiel against invoice.”
“The problem, IMHO, is a lack of good faith negotiations – which both sides are guilty”
“For all the complaining about denialist groups, not much is mentioned about the damage advocacy groups do to the scientist’s credibility. Twisting the words of scientists is hardly a one sided affair – and it happens as much as it does on the “anti” side.”
“1) Overblown alarmism from environmental groups that was clearly bogus”
“2) The UN stamp of approval. Nothing says slanted political effort rife with corruption like a United Nations Committee.”
“3) The immediate policy recommendations that seemed to come concurrent with the first report”
“It is very difficult to say that the IPCC reports are free of political bias when advocacy groups are at the table to give imput on the shaping of the documents.”
“Oh please. I wouldn’t sell the human race’s ability to adapt to planetary changes so short….if any species can survive the next mass extinction event, I’ll bet on homo sapiens.”
“This is why I oppose every political “solution” put forward by greenies – it’s lies.”
And of course, the piece de resitance:
“I will call my Congressman and Senator and ask that they vote against AGW legislation, and similarly pressure the White House to not cooperate with the UN over climate change. The scientists and their advocates are out of control.”
Yah, this guy is totally for the IPCC and doesn’t deny it.
However, despite this, he’s willing to doom the planet because someone is “out of control”…
You’ll have to find the quotes.
But the IPCC doesn’t produce science – it provides “one stop shopping” for the science done outside of the UN, and then uses it to influence political decisions of nations.
[Response: Oh my! A panel set up by, and consisting of, 192 different countries has the temerity to advise the same countries on what they were mandated to provide advice about? Set up an inquiry! – gavin]
Do I trust the UN? Hell no. About the only thing good going at the UN is the WHO; the rest is shot through with the most corrupt leaders on the planets vying for as much cover or money (or both) they can get.
Remember, the IPCC didn’t get a Nobel Prize for any field of science – it got the most capricious of political awards, the “Peace” Prize.
Do I have a problem with NGO’s being part of the IPCC process? Oh, yeah. The WWF and Greenpeace are clearly political organizations first, and shouldn’t be cited in the work (and invariably the problems with the reports stem from them be cited).
Then again, I’d be critical if the National Tobacco Institute was part of the studies and recommendations on mitigating cancer of the US Health Department.
“Do nothing;” I never wrote that, either. IMHO, fee and dividend is a really dumb idea due to political realities, as is wholesale carbon taxes or untargeted cap and trade. Nor can we simply shut down all coal fired plants tomorrow, no matter how much we wish we could.
I don’t talk out of my rear end about you; I’ve only ever challenged your notions. I think I probably cut too close to the bone on that score, as you’ve gone past substance and gone after me personally.
It’s a popular “denialist” tactic.
Mr. Ladbury…thanks; the guy’s name is Kauppinen.
“It sounds like you are defining “rationality” as the willingness to relinquish or modify beliefs when they are not in accord with observed facts.”
I would propose this is because the root of the word “rationality” is rationale.
“Why do I believe that?”
And when you have that rationale, when that rationale fails to hold, you no longer have the same rationale and you change it to another rational position for which you have an acceptably working rationale.
Irrationality is refusing to change even when you have no rationale for your position.
“If you had told a typical scientist in 1850 that the speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of their motion relative to the light, because when an observer is moving his clock will slow down and his yardstick will get shorter, that scientist would probably not have thought you were “rational”. He would have thought you were insane.”
No, a non-scientist would have said that.
However, if you asked a scientist, he’d laugh and ask you why the crispin you think that’s true.
When you answer, he’d be shocked maybe, but he wouldn’t consider you insane.
A little less assume, next time, SA.
SA: You’re projection when you say:
“When someone encountering an anomalous phenomenon says “there must be a rational explanation for this!” what they often mean is “there must be an explanation that is in accord with my existing beliefs””
Because this:
“rather than “there may be an explanation that is in accord with what I am observing but which will require me to abandon my existing beliefs”.”
is exactly what I mean by rationality.
I think Ray and Nick would think the same thing too.
The explanation must be able to explain the phenomenon without recourse to inexplicable phenomena.
It’s why we don’t accept “irreducible complexity” as a scientific argument but a dogmatic (irrational) one.
Note: just such a thing happened when Einstein showed through the photoelectric effect that the corpuscular theory of light was correct. People who believed light was a wave COULD NOT explain the photoelectric effect with their “belief” (as you put it, incorrectly by the way) that light was a wave.
But this didn’t mean that they had to throw away their belief in gravity.
They had to modify their beliefs to include the corpuscular nature of light.
Similarly when the general relativity effect explained (gave a rationale to) the precession of mercury. Again, didn’t need to drop all their beliefs. Just modify them.
CFU, I believe that you have some interesting and edifying points to make, but my empirical observation of your posted comments finds them to be nearly unintelligible, which leads me to question whether that belief is rational.
Gavin, you’ve missed the point as well.
One can embrace the science of the IPCC reports and be highly skeptical of political solutions it recommends – mutually exclusive of each other.
Do I trust the science of the of the IPCC? Yes.
Do I agree with the political recommendations that flow from it? No.
[Response: And what might these be? Please point to the IPCC recommendations for national policy so that we can see what you are protesting against. – gavin]
The science is vetted by scientists to ensure the science is right. Politics or how it will be received plays nearly no role. How Botswana or Canada or the USA will view absorbsion rates of CO2 by the ocean is never a factor.
This is not so true in other portions of the report.
“Remember, the IPCC didn’t get a Nobel Prize for any field of science – it got the most capricious of political awards, the “Peace” Prize.”
Well, this just proves that the UN is wrong.
Only wrong people get the Nobel *Peace* prize…
Non sequitur much, Frankie?
“Do I have a problem with NGO’s being part of the IPCC process? Oh, yeah.”
‘course he also has problems with GO’s being part of the IPCC process (since this is just dogmatic maneuvering to keep the party in control, yes he said that too!)
This doesn’t leave many people. ‘cos “greenies” aren’t allowed. I guess that only leaves Company Officers (who can’t be pro renewables because that makes them a smelly hippy).
““Do nothing;” I never wrote that, either.”
No, but when you continally say that there’s nothing that CAN be done, and nothing that WILL be done and that nothing that NEEDS be done, what else is left?
All you have to do is exclude anything to be done and you’ve left them with the hobson’s choice that you don’t want to say: do nothing.
“I don’t talk out of my rear end about you”
Uh, you have at least three times.
Not counting this one.
“Nor can we simply shut down all coal fired plants tomorrow,”
Strawman.
“I’ve only ever challenged your notions.”
And the notion of any possibility of change. Often by saying “it’s other people, not me, I’m just the messenger”.
A common rightwinger talkshow tactic. Attack Munchausen By Proxy…
SA, your inability to think clearly isn’t my problem.
Actually Thoughtful, I’ll try to keep this short but yes indeed if I can produce a system that meets code, is aesthetically acceptable, will produce a reasonable number of KWH of offset over its lifespan, can recover its capital within less than ten years and requires no financial smoke and mirrors I’ll feel compelled to talk about it. I won’t do so in any concerted way unless and until I have better confidence in my numbers and can explain in an unambiguous and fully characterized manner why and how it’s possible to produce such affordable systems.
See, my problem is that on the one hand I see and hear your budget, while on the other hand, I’m using a system that will add a known number of joules per minute to my storage tank here, cost nowhere near what you describe, meets code requirements and is visually unobtrusive. It was built as a one-off using conventional materials at retail prices so it enjoys none of the scaling benefits such a system would if produced in quantity. No special skills were needed to either assemble the raw materials into components or to install them. For me that’s a problem because it says something’s drastically wrong with how these systems are being sold through to consumers, what metrics are being used to evaluate success.
Regarding false or misleading claims, it’s easy to inadvertently make those. For instance, if a person should make a claim about the thermal loss rate of a DHW storage tank in units of degrees per hour without also defining initial delta T across the thermal barrier of the tank as well as the mass/volume ratio of the tank and taking into account declining delta T given a constant amb-ient temperature, one is making a claim that might be termed false or at least indefensible at first glance.
Regarding the skills necessary to install these systems, I’ve done plumbing and I installed the system here. I see no difference in skill sets; the only possible gotcha for drainback systems is the need to maintain consistent pitch in piping above the level of the drainback tank. One also has be able to point in which direction lies south. Like I said, it’s not rocket science.
CFU wrote: “SA, your inability to think clearly isn’t my problem.”
I’m sure that my inability to think clearly is the problem, since it is irrational to suppose that the clarity and coherence of your writing could use any improvement so as to communicate your ideas more effectively.
#24 #35 Alastair McDonald
I see your point, but disagree on the idea that science is based on belief in the connotation presented, rather it seems based on potential to get closer to the truth using the scientific method. Khun, pointed out bias potentials; I don’t agree with the idea that it is ‘all’ bias, as the scientific method is to reduce bias as able and get to objective reality as best as possible. id est, the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
Religious belief in any hypothesis or theory (dependent on connotative usage) such as: it’s GCR’s, It’s natural cycle, it’s solar luminance are built on false logic, shaky foundations and arguments that are essentially houses of cards that require continual support in the form of straw-man arguments to fend of intruders, arguments from (misinformed/myopic) authority. They must not look at the big picture, or else the house of cards falls.
Science is quite the opposite. It builds a strong foundation. When done well, it builds houses made of brick, not straw, or sticks. If it finds a problem with the foundation it will repair it with better materials.
In the case of belief, when a hole is obvious that threatens the structure, they increase the rhetoric with red herrings and arguments from authority to keep the audience distracted to the new false logic or the reinforced old false logic. In other words, get some more straw and sticks and reinforce that perceived hole.
Science is about testing and figuring out the best potentials including the use of mathematics and physics, not believing. There is a connotative and practical difference. Scientists test, falsify, build, share, argue, test, refine, argue, develop, improve, share, argue. . .
Science is not a belief system, rather ‘a let’s take a look and see what is most likely the cause’, approach. It also uses mathematics, so an analogy may be that mathematics is the gun and if you point it in the right direction you might hit the target or get close. 2+2=4 but what that means depends on context.
I’ve seen how the denialist side uses the gun. They don’t try to figure out where it should be aimed, they aim it where they want it (in the most profitable direction for those so inclined, or the most hilarious direction in conversations and emails amongst themselves to get a good laugh about those crazy soci-alist liberals).
And of course then you have guys like Monckton making up an equation and claiming it is the string theory of climate science and therefore the sun rises only because of his equation (even though his equation has nothing to do with the sun, hmm, that is also a McIntyre/McKitrick method – pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!). Heck, it’s not even an argument from authority since he is not an authority on the subject.
Spencer I believe falls into the Christy, Lindzen category (and/or vice versa). ‘As long as we don’t consider all the evidence, we can safely say that it’s not that big a deal’. Neurosis in king.
—
A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
‘Fee & Dividend’ Our best chance for a better future – climatelobby.com
Learn the Issue & Sign the Petition
Whoops, for some reason I said “mass/volume ratio” above; that should be surface area/mass ratio
To the moderator: Thank you — my sincere appreciation. WRM
Science is a belief system based on reality.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ~Philip K. Dick
Which makes science more USEFUL than any other belief system I know of, but not (as Alastair points out) any more likely to persuade the masses.
Until reality itself intrudes on their footy and fashion and food-supply.
respectfully
BJ
Gavin, shall we look at the national policies that have suggested at the UN based on “flow from” the IPCC reports?
Let’s start with Kyoto and move all the way to Copenhagen. Eco-reparations, global climate carbon offset credits, even the arbitrary years decided for levels of reduction. Exemption of “developing nations” from any responsibility – like China.
While the IPCC reports don’t zero in on specific policy statements, there are some real leading statements, like this gem from Working Group III’s section:
“Finally, the most serious concern about sustainable development is that it is inherently delusory. Some critics have argued that because biophysical limits constrain the amount of future development that is sustainable, the term ‘sustainable development’ is itself an oxymoron (Dovers and Handmer, 1993; Mebratu, 1998; Sachs, 1999). This leads some to argue for a ‘strong sustainability’ approach in which natural capital must be preserved since it cannot be substituted by any other form of capital (Pearce et al., 1989; Cabeza Gutes, 1996). Others point out that the concept of sustainable development is anthropocentric, thereby avoiding reformulation of values that may be required to pursue true sustainability (Suzuki and McConnell, 1997). While very different in approach and focus, both these criticisms raise fundamental value questions that go to the heart of present debates about environmental and social issues.
“However, discourses of sustainable development have historically focused primarily on the environmental and economic dimensions (Barnett, 2001), while overlooking the need for social, political and/or cultural change (Barnett, 2001; Lehtonen, 2004; Robinson, 2004). As Lehtonen (2004) explains, however, most models of sustainable development conceive of social, environmental (and economic) issues as ‘independent elements that can be treated, at least analytically, as separate from each-other’ (p. 201). The importance of social, political and cultural factors, for example, poverty, social equity, governance, is only now getting more recognition. In particular, there is a growing recognition of the importance of the institutional and governance dimensions (Banuri and Najam, 2002). From a climate change perspective, this integration is essential in order to define sustainable development paths. Moreover, as discussed in this chapter, understanding the institutional context in which policies are made and implemented is critical.
[..]
“Since the 1980s, sustainable development has moved from being an interesting but sometimes contested ideal, to now being the acknowledged goal of much of international policy, including climate change policy. It is no longer a question of whether climate change policy should be understood in the context of sustainable development goals; it is a question of how.”
They’ve framed the political debate.
It’s not about climate change, it’s about social justice and rethinking our values (in a national policy way).
[Response: Since you know appear to acknowledge that the IPCC does not recommend policy, perhaps you can direct your criticisms more constructively? -gavin]
FCH @#148 “I hope the author captured all of the bizarrity that is the solar industry, because it’s one odd bunch of people!”
Yes, I’m sensing that there are people with strong opinions even in this thread! But I’m learning alot listening to them. We’ve thought about installing solar heating at least – but we’re in a pretty shaded location. Now I know where to get advice maybe we’ll think about it again.
Let me know what you think when you read Solar!
#153 Frank Giger
I agree that we can’t just start shutting things down. Stopping the economy has many severe repercussions.
But to say that a pragmatic solution is a dumb idea because of political only reality addresses the dominant political environment. That does not mean ‘Fee & Dividend’ is a dumb idea, though I recognize your context.
Fee & Dividend is literally our best chance at a better future. My analysis is overarching and holistic in nature. It is not a dumb idea in the context of the best possibility of keeping a functioning if not a reasonably vibrant economy.
I really like functioning economies. I prefer objective economies, but that also is not our current reality either. Such is life, but that does not mean that we should not promote the best ideas in order to achieve the best possible outcome.
Instead of saying it’s a dumb idea because of political reality, why not help promote it and help it become political reality?
—
A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
‘Fee & Dividend’ Our best chance for a better future – climatelobby.com
Learn the Issue & Sign the Petition
I’ve got to support Septic Matthew here. The discussion is interesting but frustrating, because were not defining our terms sufficiently, and we wind up in violent agreement.
I’m just pleading for more disambiguation, because I suspect there are some excellent thoughts trying to come through. With Donna@128, I congratulate those who are contributing to a civil conversation on a fascinating subject.
171 Mal Adapted: I’ve got to support Septic Matthew here.
Thank you.
Offtopic, but Steve Goddard is trying to claim the temperature of Venus is almost entirely due to pressure of the atmosphere and not greenhouse gases. That’s obviously wrong as greenhouse gases must have a strong effect, but what is the contribution of atmospheric pressure to the temperature of Venus’s atmosphere? Is it zero, I suspect it might be. Or does it contribute some heat? Or is it a stupid question in the first place? thanks!
Gavin said “Science has kudos because it works. ” It’s an interesting comment. Most college educated people have a relatively minor exposure to science – maybe some simple physics, and chemistry lab, etc. Calculating friction, rates of acceleration in a gravitational field, what happens when I heat this compound, etc. And, yes, science ‘works’ in these contexts. We are able to predict outcomes very successfully in these constrained systems. I’d call this “simple science”. It’s the science engineers use to calculate loads, and that rocket scientists use to calculate trajectories.
Complex systems science is just a different beast. Take genetics. We’re barely scratching the surface. Or ecology. There are whole fields that are currently more engaged with cataloging and comparing than they are with being able to make strong predictions about future events. These are fields with huge uncertainties when it comes to future events.
Then, there are the social sciences – let’s not touch those!
So it seems misleading to use “science” and “scientist” as blanket terms. When a physicist claims “that object will follow a parabolic arc in a vacuum under the influence of a gravitational field and assuming no other external influences” that’s a profoundly different type of statement that an ecologist claim that “this species will go extinct in 30 years”. Is it accurate to say that they are both “predictions made by scientists with broad consensus support”? Complex systems with large unknowns are just different.
[Response: But you are just making up quotes. Science works even for complex systems, despite the fact that it is harder to make ‘simple’ statements. The methodology is the same. – gavin]
Examples that claim to be justifications for the success of complex system predictions should come from other historically successful complex system predictions – not from ‘gravity’…
Mr. Reisman, Fee and Dividend as described is as reasonable and workable as the Fair Tax, yet neither will ever be passed – and if they were it would be in versions that would be unrecognizeable from their origins.
Indeed, a national sales tax (which would also remove income tax when enacted) would do much of the same things as fee and dividend. Both even have a built in “everybody” rebate.
I’ve got quite a few ideas on how to mitigate GHG emissions, starting with our largest single problem: coal fired electrical plants.
Unfortunately, very few want to hear ideas or criticism from a conservative Republican.
It’s pretty funny that I’m actually on the side of the science and still taken to be a “denier” because I’m not politically aligned with the majority of participants here.
Want to get something done? Don’t make anyone that disagrees with policy proposals – even if they completely disagree – a villian.
SA 113: Buddhist teachings are beneficially applied within the entirely secular contexts of psychology and neuroscience… The thing is: they work. They get results
BPL: Among those results are:
* Impeccably Buddhist judges in ancient, medieval and fairly recent China handing out criminal punishments involving mutilation and torture.
* Chinese foot-binding preventing women from walking to enhance their “beauty.”
* Japan invading China in the 1930s and killing over a million people.
* Japan now being about the most casually racist country on Earth, and, weirdly, considering how very few Jews live there, one of the most antisemitic.
* Thailand in the 1970s preying on the Vietnamese boat people, raping, robbing and killing them to the tune of about 100,000.
* Thailand now deriving a good fraction of its foreign exchange from child prostitution.
Want me to go on? Being a Buddhist doesn’t guarantee good behavior or even sanity. If you want to say those folks weren’t/aren’t “real” Buddhists, you’d have rather a hard time proving it.
As for Zen… I can’t imagine any scientist taking seriously a philosophy that says you should do your damnedest to turn off the stream of thought and merely react. It’s one of the most anti-intellectual philosophies ever created.
SA 117,
An argument is rational if it proceeds validly from its premises. That’s what the word means. The pop meaning of “sane” is not really a good use of the word.
FG 153: fee and dividend is a really dumb idea due to political realities, as is wholesale carbon taxes or untargeted cap and trade.
BPL: In other words, any plan that might actually work is off the table in your view.
Bob 173,
That high atmospheric pressure could in and of itself cause high temperatures is ludicrous. It amounts to a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, continuously generating energy out of nowhere.
Compressing Venus’s atmosphere might well generate heat by the ideal gas law (PV = nRT), though you’d need a power source to do it. But once heated up, the Venus atmosphere would radiate that heat away. The only sustained energy input to the Venus climate system is sunlight. Its radiative equilibrium temperature is 232 K. Its surface temperature is 735 K because of the greenhouse effect. A static atmosphere generates no mechanical heat whatsoever.
Re Bob – I don’t think one can say that the greenhouse effect contributes x and that the pressure contributes y; they are both important but in different ways. One sets the stage for what the other does.
Of course, if we kept adding CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere, beyond the limits of fossil fuels – I mean we start heating up a bunch of limestone, etc… then 1. the pressure at the surface, and on average over the mass of the atmosphere, would rise from increasing mass of the whole atmosphere; 2. eventually CO2 would not just be a fraction of the atmosphere whose non-radiative thermodynamic properties are still determined mainly by O2 and N2 (with some small adjustment from spatially and temporally variable H2O, whose importance would grow with warming, though we’d have to have a bunch of H2 escape to space to get to Venusian conditions). Those thermodynamic properties (specifc heat, ideal gas laws (where an ideal gas is a good approximation)), *combined with gravity* (another variable among planets), and the latent heat of water phase transitions *(or whatever substances are present that undergo phase transitions within the atmosphere – another planetary variable), greatly influence the lapse rate tendencies within a convecting troposphere. The lapse rate is an essential ingredient in determining how a change in optical properties affects radiant fluxes in the LW portion of the spectrum (greenhouse effect and related matters). The optical thickness of a given layer with some mass per unit area depends on composition, and is also pressure and temperature (via line-broadenning and line strength effects). The optical thickness of the atmosphere as a whole depends on the mass per unit area of the atmosphere, and the same is true of any portion of the atmosphere.
“You will be much better off embracing the fact that science is done by imperfect human beings and that it is the scientific method that allows those imperfections not to matter in the long term, rather than expecting saintliness”
I sense you are misinterpreting what I am getting at. I am not after blood. The system is what it is and to a great extent some of the recommendations by the investigatory panels make sense of asking the institutions to imbue a better sense of responsibility regarding disclosure and compliance. I am a member of a professional society that has dealt with these issues in providing opinions on financial information so that the public can be more confident in the information they are provided by management. The standards of the profession are extensive and formulated via a cooperative process among the AICPA and government institutions. Further most of the standards do not apply, except the professional competence and ethical ones to assignments that are not attestations with public attestations held to higher standards than private ones.
I have long been a proponent of the role of science in policy formulation but have also noted to my dismay that often it isn’t done professionally but instead becomes a forum for scientists to promote whatever it is they most believe in. And believe me most of my experience in this area has nothing to do with climate.
If investors had to navigate such a mine field it would be impossible to differentiate between decent reports that had met certain standards and those that had not. Further I am fully aware it is not a perfect system but the motivation of almost all auditors that perform public attestation work does meet standards (again set by the profession itself cooperatively with the various public agencies).
So it is good to acknowledge some lapses in judgment and diligence in record maintenance and I see little to be gained from running around trying to root more of it out from the perspective of punishing violators though some rooting out of data and methods would aid in improving the body of science. But initiating profession wide discussions on how to proceed in the words of Monbiot to provide assurance it doesn’t happen again can do nothing but raise the respectability of the profession and improve the body of science in the process.
Septic Matthew says, “Citing Occam’s razor” is always peculiar since Occam was not a “scientist”: he contributed neither empirical research nor lasting theory. Occam’s razor always leads to extreme reductionism in the short run and is always inadequate in the long run.”
SM, actually Occam’s razor is an absolutely essential guide for theory–its weakness is merely that it is incomplete. It merely says, “Entities must not be multiplied without necessity”–but when is such multiplication necessary. Information theory has given us an answer in terms of quantities such as AIC, BIC, etc. Since all of these criteria are of a form proportional to log likelihood (measuring goodness of fit) and a penalty term involving the number of parameters, additional parameters are allowable in a theory when they increase its explanatory power exponentially at least. Now, we know that the theory with minimum AIC will tend to have the greatest predictive power, so we can see that this is precisely the goal of Occam’s razor. It is not arbitrary at all. It is in fact essential–you just have to remember that last word “unnecessarily”.
… Another important point is that, for the same composition and gravity, a thicker troposphere will have a greater temperature difference between the surface and tropopause, and that increases the difference the greenhouse effect can make. (The same would be true for the mass between the surface and the coldest part of significant optical thickness, which is important because on Venus, – ** it is my impression that the lower stratosphere, while stable to convection by definition, is not nearly isothermal or have increasing temperature with height, as is generally the case on Earth; rather, temperature continues to decrease significantly with height through an optically-significant portion of the stratosphere; this allows the stratosphere to have a greater greenhouse warming effect on the tropopause itself, relative to the temperature of the layers that emit most directly to space.)
… To summarize, the mass and composition and gravity of an atmosphere modulate what the optical properties of a greenhouse gas or agent is able to accomplish, but if the greenhouse effect were completely removed, Venus’s surface would only be warm enough to radiate directly to space with the same power that is absorbed from solar radiation (and in terms of global average temperatures, perhaps colder still, as greater surface temperature variation (that I’d expect due to lack of greenhouse effect) would reduce the average temperature necessary to sustain the same globally emitted flux).
Frank Giger,
Would you deny WWF or Greenpeace a place at the negotiating table for developing a solution to this threat? That would be pointless, because, unlike the political right, they have accepeted the basic science, and are waiting for the rest of us to catch up to them.
Likewise in terms of risk assessment, first and foremost, one must bound the risk. Since Greenpeace and WWF are already producing studies that bound risk–albeit, perhaps too conservatively for your taste–it is natural that they get cited in this portion of the summary. The proper response, if you do not like the answer from an NGO is to sharpen your pencil and give a better, tighter bound. That’s how the risk analysis moves forward.
Frank, you will not succeed in excluding other players from the table. Instead, if you want policies that are consistent with your values, you will have to come better solutions and answers that are consistent with those values. You’ll have to play the game better than they do.
The problem is that there are a lot more folks on the right who would rather attack the science–and when that fails, the scientists, and until you have a critical mass who accept the science, you will not be able to move forward.
Keep your eyes on the prize. We have to reach something that approaches sustainability. We don’t know what that means. It has never existed. Whoever comes close to a solution that looks like it might get us there without a massive population crash, breaking the bank or giving up on democracy, is going to score REALLY, REALLY big political points for their political philosophy.
As they used to say in the dot-com era: If you want to predict the future, be the one who creates it.
#174 Frank Giger
I think the recognizability from its origins will be directly proportional to the awareness of the reasonability among the voting population and that is directly related to the willingness to inform those around us of the critical reality of getting it right.
I am a conservative, but not a Republican (Republicans are liberal these days), I do not villainize those that understand the reality of the climate situation in consideration of short and long term considerations.
However, I do believe it is inappropriate to give up before we even try.
Your last sentence is an empty notion. It addresses nothing of substance other than the thickness of someones skin. The issue is how do we achieve the best policy to prevent even more egregious economic damage by allowing the climate system to get out of control and end all reasonable economic capacity.
This has to be done while attempting to keep the economy alive. All I’m saying is we have a serious challenge and as you have succinctly pointed out the political reality does not lend itself to reasonability.
Therefore the onus of responsibility is in our hands. Each and every one of us, to stand firm on best possible policy and force it upon out political realty until it is adopted in it’s most potent form.
Anything less is to abandon the spirit of potential and innovation that has been the hallmark of the American revolution. It comes to this, whatever is the best policy (and until something better than Fee & Dividend comes along, it is the reasoned option), we need to wake up everyone we know, as best we can, as soon as possible.
The clock is ticking. The inertial lag times are a ticking time bomb and delay only translates to greater degrees of economic degradation.
We should be fighting for this as if our future depends on it, because it does.
—
A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
‘Fee & Dividend’ Our best chance for a better future – climatelobby.com
Learn the Issue & Sign the Petition
Bob asks:”Offtopic, but Steve Goddard is trying to claim the temperature of Venus is almost entirely due to pressure of the atmosphere and not greenhouse gases. That’s obviously wrong as greenhouse gases must have a strong effect, but what is the contribution of atmospheric pressure to the temperature of Venus’s atmosphere? Is it zero, I suspect it might be. Or does it contribute some heat? Or is it a stupid question in the first place? thanks!”
I merely point out that the atmospheric pressure is the same in antarctica in mid-winter as in the Sahara in mid-summer.
Stephen @ 169:
This crowd here is NOTHING like the Solar crowd.
A lot of them are hippies, freaks, weirdos, trug-huggers, reform school dropouts, you name it. A great bunch of guys and gals, but also very colorful and interesting.
Solar power isn’t like regular power. One, it can’t just be turned off. When I work on a normal residential or commercial service, I just pull the main disconnect and the entire system goes dead. But with solar, if the sun is shining, something is “hot”. And if there are batteries, not only is something “hot”, but something is UNBELIEVABLY hot. Available current is measured in the thousands of amperes and the voltages are high enough that the total available power approaches a megawatt. Think about what a megawatt represents — enough electricity to power a fairly large number of homes. Every time I get near any reasonably sized battery bank, that’s what I’m near.
The guys who work on solar are mostly characters. I’ve worked with some very proper and professional regular electricians. I’ve yet to work with a very “proper” solar installer. Professional, yes — but one client describes solar people as “two hippies in a tent.” And that’s what I’m looking to see if “Solar” captured.
Why did RealClimate post an article about a science fiction book? Is it because people may understand better what is going on in the real world by reading a fictionalized version? Is fiction a good form of real communication or public relations? Is it that a novel gets around arguments and allows another viewpoint sneak into the ordinary mind?
Personality of scientists: My impression is that scientists are similar to preachers in personality. Bob Altemeyer wrote his dissertation on the personalities of the students in the different departments at Carnegie-Mellon University. He made a map of the personalities. This was in the time frame of 1964 to 1968. Physics majors had the widest selection of personalities of any department. Some physics majors were most similar to engineers while other physics majors were more like mathematicians or was it philosophers? Woops! My memory is rather cloudy on that. I don’t have my copy of his dissertation any more.
With the above as preamble, would Ian McEwan please research the personalities of real scientists and stick to realistic scientific personalities in his next novel? In fact, would the English department please hire a psychologist to teach English majors the true personality types of various professions so that writers in the future will get the right personalities on their characters? It is time for the English Department to get over their “Freudian” doctrine and learn some newer psychology.
Did RC publish on a novel just to prove that ANYthing RC posts will generate the same range of comments?
Mr. Levenson, no, not ANY plan. Just that plan, as far as I’m concerned.
On belief systems, we have a bit of a problem with definitions.
Depending on how broad the definition, everything becomes a belief system. This is silly, of course, but it seems that it is the prevailing “anti-science” (cringe) line is that any acceptance of fact that involves an acceptance of previously stipulated facts to form a basis for it qualifies as faith (in the spiritual sense).
Balderdash and other bad words. I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. to catch sunrise at 5:53 and take pictures of the barn swallows that are building a very nice nest in my porch. Is it faith that I accept the sunrise table?
In the strictest sense, yes.
But it is backed by a whole bunch of facts that have been established prior to me setting the alarm.
Now, then, if I had set the alarm in order to catch the FSM stretching his arms around Venus, that would be pure faith, as there would be no facts to support such an event happening.
Ray, great job on explaining Occam’s Razor!
Science question:
As the atmosphere expands, what is the relationship between boundaries? Intuitively it would seem to me that it isn’t even – lower, more dense layers would expand less than higher, thinner ones.
If true, I’m guessing that while heat would radiate into space faster from the top layers, the transfer would actually be a next reduction over all. So lower layers would retain more heat, not less.
Occam’s Razor, or parsimony is a key factor in Evolutionary Biology too.
How silly, the whole suggestion that a science like climatology is a “belief”. This word means believing in something that can not be proven. This is a game of words calculated to suggest that the science is not to be trusted. Climatology is a science in search of truth in a complex system. This is not what I would call a belief.
If climatology were a belief, then medicine would qualify as a belief as well.
Pete
Thanks to everyone who commented on domestic solar hot water, particularly Actually Thoughtful and Doug Bostrom. Here’s my thinking (about my particular situation) which has evolved after listening and following some links.
Our water usage is rather low. According to my municipal website, they expect 3 units (100 cubic feet, ~748 gallons) of usage per person per month. That would be 12 units for me+spouse every 2 months. But in fact our usage is typically 5, not 12. So, it’s immediately obvious that our standard natural gas hot water tank is inefficient – it mostly sits there slowly radiating heat. It’s also irritating that when I want hot water upstairs, I have to run it for like a minute before the hot arrives. OTOH, payback for any replacement would be slow due to the low usage. Finally, the house is unusually shaped – it’s more like a townhouse, with three floors – garage, main, upper. (The hot water tank is in the rather cramped garage.) So, probably the logical thing to do is nothing, until better options become available and/or natural gas becomes expensive. Probably, the best single improvement would be a passive ICS as shown in http://www.energysavers.gov/images/passive_batch_solar_water.gif mounted on the front (south) face of the house, which is a lot closer to the tank than the roof is. Passive ICS should be a lot cheaper than the active systems with their own working fluid that A.T. installs. I would simply have to manually turn the valves to take the solar out of the loop and drain it when the air temp drops below some value, say 30, and then put it back in the loop when it won’t be that cold again for a while. That could be tacked onto the existing tank with no need for expensive new components like a heat exchanger. I’d consult an expert before I did anything, and like I said, I think our low usage makes our inefficiency less important. (Like I can drive a Subaru @22/29 mpg because I only drive 1200 miles/year. No I didn’t forget a zero.)
This one is for Gilles, I think it was — Texas demand is 28,411MW right now and wind production is 5,846MW. That’s more than 20% :) Neener-neener.
And for an idea of how much new permitting is being requested, here’s a URL — http://www.stopthecoalplant.org/downloads/recent_coal_plant_chart.pdf
If I were the builders of those plants, I’d be wondering whether or not I’m ever going to make my money back.
RE: Frank Giger — 6 May 2010 @ 6:44 PM Being a Libertarian myself. I understand the position you are in, because political belief and science do not necessarily make good bed fellows. I know I’m called a liberal by many Republican friends and family because I think the science is sound and there are serious consequences if we do nothing. Usually I’m on the side of free market, though I have to admit we don’t have a free market anymore when we spend a disproportionate amount on subsidies for fossil fuels versus alternative energy. One of the roles of government is to do things that the individual cannot. (Many examples of that) So if I cut my carbon usage as an individual, it would basically have no effect. Just as in the past, if I decided not to put my waste in the river while the rest of the city did would have no effect on those drinking water downstream. I’m not attacking you, but I think even as conservatives we need to re-evaluate the politics.
RE: Ray Ladbury — 6 May 2010 @ 8:17 PM I completely agree that Occam’s Razor is an essential guide to theory and logic whether he was a scientist or not. It reminds me of reading some of the posts here earlier, when I believe a poster named Sam wanted to introduce an unknown process for the proportions of C12/C13/C14 in the atmosphere to explain away what was already explainable by what we know. That is a very simple example, in my opinion, but I think makes the point of why Occam’s Razor is as you say an essential guide.
“* It’s next to impossible to characterize the difference between scientific knowledge and non-scientific belief in less than a few hundred thousand words.
I’ve got to support Septic Matthew here.”
So why did SA ask for a definition of rational and irrational?
If it’s not possible, why did SA try to explain to us the difference?
Please check what you are supporting here.
“I’m sure that my inability to think clearly is the problem,”
It is.
Clearly.
If you had a rationale for your position you would be able to explain it rather than imply a problem and avoid having to delineate the issue (thereby ensuring it cannot be fixed or explicated and ensuring you don’t have to change your view or understand anothers).
Barton@175,
While I agree with your overall point–that NO -ism guarantees one is a good person, I do not think your examples are fair to lay at the feet of Buddhism. A better example might be the role the Buddhist hierarchy played in the war in Sri Lanka. Moral: we’re not a very nice species.
BPL says:
“Its surface temperature is 735 K because of the greenhouse effect. A static atmosphere generates no mechanical heat whatsoever.”
Not true. There is no greenhouse effect on Venus since very little sunlight reaches the surface. Most of the heat generated is above the surface. As there is almost no difference between night and day temperature on Venus’ surface, the concept of greenhouse is negated as the theory requires that solar radiation is reflected from the surface and impeded from reaching space by the GHGs in the atmosphere. This process does not occur on Venus.