I sent this to The Age a few days ago but they neither published it nor responded to its submission.
La Trobe University’s Professor John Carroll in The Age (January 27, 2010, page 13) makes irresponsible remarks on the issue of climate change. His article misrepresents climate change science and the policy required to respond to climate change.
Carroll argues that the global warming debate has been captured by the “prophets of doom” raising the same risk of irrelevancy as the “Limits to Growth” discussions of the 1970s. Has Carroll read the evidence on catastrophic risks associated with climate change or are these observations just a cheap shot? The famous MIT economist Martin Weitzman has examined the prospects for catastrophic climate change. His estimates are based on 22 simulation models provided by the IPCC and show that if emission control policies are only gradually ramped up remedies that, in two centuries, the probability distributions of temperature outcomes have ‘fat’- tails. In simple terms:
- With probability 0.05 the increase in mean global surface temperatures will be greater than 10oC.
- With probability 0.01 the increase in mean global surface temperatures will be greater than 20oC.
Such temperatures have not existed on earth for hundreds of millions of years and the rate of such increases has possibly not been experienced for billions of years. With a 1-5% probability (not a negligible range of probabilities) there is the prospect of a worldwide catastrophe. Is it then wise to rule out the possibility of this risk when climate change policy is discussed? Is it sufficient to preach about the dangers of ‘alarmism’? What about the prospect that there may be a catastrophic risk that should be addressed by policy?
Carroll’s second class of cheap shots concerns his critique of the use of ‘computer generated mathematical models’. This is inaccurate language since it isn’t the models which are computer-generated – these are designed by climate scientists – but model outputs such as forecasts. But more significantly, what is the alternative to using models to make climate forecasts? Is the best alternative merely to wave your arms and express scepticism? What alternative methodology might one employ to assess the impact of human and natural-sourced climate drivers than by using quantitative modelling?
Carroll finishes his analysis of models by making the unproven claim that these models are “next to useless for long-term prophecy” because they don’t capture every aspect of reality and because the future might be different from the present. This is naïveté and displays a misunderstanding of the methodology of modelling. A road map doesn’t need to literally represent reality to be useful. Given that forecasts are needed and that models cannot be constructed capturing every aspect of reality one could reasonably ask how one might otherwise proceed by using simplifications of reality? Arm-waving again will not do the trick.
If Carroll is merely saying that one should be sceptical in the sense of being prepared to alter one’s position on the basis of new facts then what he is saying is blindingly obvious? Everyone should maintain an open mind in that obvious sense.
On the facts concerning climate change Carroll distorts reality. He claims that “global temperatures have been stable for the past decade” which is grossly misleading since as various meteorological authorities – including our own Bureau of Meteorology – have pointed out that the last decade was the hottest in recorded history. What Carroll is omitting to say is that that 1998 was a year of record temperatures and this record was not repeated subsequently. How often must these myths in interpreting climatic data be repeated? They have been refuted on so many occasions that one wonders whether commentators like Carroll read much at all about climate change issues. How much intellectual effort does it take to understand that you cannot evaluate the trend behaviour of a time series by picking out an extreme pair of observations? Averaged over the whole decade temperatures to 2009 however rose in a fashion consistent with climate change.
The inconsequential, non-events at East Anglia and the single error on glaciers in 3000 pages of IPPC text – an error not repeated in the Executive Summary or in the IPPC’s AR1 (“Physical Science Basis”) report – are used to attempt to discredit the thousands of reputable scientists involved in climate change research – including our own CSIRO – who have a very definite view on the consequences of accumulating greenhouse gas emissions on climate. It is a distortion to dismiss the mainstream science of climate change because of the questionable behaviour of a few individuals or an isolated error of fact.
The ETS is dismissed as “very bad policy” and “a tax on carbon under another name”. This isn’t argued by Carroll but asserted. But what is wrong with the policy and what is wrong with taxing something that is harmful and currently unpriced? By allowing emissions permits to be traded they go into their highest valued uses so that markets provide the cheapest way of controlling carbon emissions. The exemptions given to groups such as electricity generators (now $7.2b) are a disgraceful waste on money since these firms provide non-internationally traded good (electricity) whose demands are relatively price unresponsive. The surprising thing is that it was opponents of the ETS who supported this inept policy move on the grounds that we would have “brownouts” around the country without it. These massive payouts were funded by reduced concessions to taxpayers which earlier would have made the ETS effectively revenue-neutral with consumers paying higher prices for carbon-based electricity but being compensated for this in terms of income so they were no worse off.
Carroll’s claim is that the ETS isn’t worth considering because it doesn’t include agriculture. It would have been better to include agriculture in an ETS to capture methane as well as the carbon emissions Carroll mentions. But surely if the objective is to control emissions it is better to capture some emissions than none. Inconsistently with his agricultural views Carroll argues that only “major emitters” should be targeted by an ETS. But they are – it is only about 1,000 emitters who are covered by the ETS legislation. It is important to be informed about the ETS before you criticise it.
I agree with one and only one aspect of Professor Carroll’s argument. The sceptics are indeed winning the political debate on climate change. Part of the reason for this is the sort of poorly-informed debate that people such as Professor Carroll are actively promoting. It is not enough to present oneself as an ambivalent sceptic on the modern science of climate change without attempting to make oneself informed of its content and making a modest effort to understand the literature. The costs of being wrong are too great.
re road maps and literal representation: the NYC subway map is a classic easy to use accurate guide to the subway. And a masterpiece of elegant design. But it is in no way a “proper” representation of the literal subway as a photo.
FXH, That’s right. Its a cheap shot to attack simplified models of complicated situations on the grounds that they lack realism. We teach our first-years that. Indeed, as Milton Friedman pointed out more than 50 years ago, a good model will be unrealistic – it will yield a lot of insight from a simplified structure. Moreover, climate change models are among the most complex in any field – they face relatively intractable computational constraints – so to tackle them on the grounds that they are oversoimplified is doubly foolish.
Yep, you can obviously get to professor and still be ignorant. Perhaps he likes models where the counting occurs on your fingers.
It’s funny really — if you designed a model which predicted the market 1% better than everyone else, you’d be hero, yet somehow if you’re climate model doesn’t explain 99.9% of life, the universe, and everything, you should completely ignore it. And it should definitely be ignored if the average person can’t understand the mathematics behind it. That must make it really bad.
If you were able to get an opinion piece on Weitzman’s fat tails into a major newspaper that would be very cool. There is a very good piece by Andrew Leigh somewhere on the internet that discusses how to write them. A key issue is the first paragraph. I suspect that a ‘letter to the editor’ piece might be more likely to be published than an opinion piece as a response to someone else’s opinion piece.
Interestingly, James Hansen has written a piece called “If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?” which demonstrates that it is highly likely that there have been warmer years since 1998.
I like the saying attributed to George Box “all models are wrong, some are useful”.
Not to be cruel and snobby, but a professor of sociology at La Trobe Uni isn’t very far up the greasy pole of academic seniority, and is not the person I would turn to for anything approaching cliamte change science advice.
That’s a great rebuttal, Harry, and it’s disturbing that The Age didn’t publish it. But I’m surprised they published something so far outside the author’s area of expertise, not to mention so banal in its arguments.
Streuth Harry, where to start, but here’s as good a place as any-
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/5749853/the-global-warming-guerrillas.thtml
Simply put, the AGW theory boys have been cooking the books and indulging in political advocacy with a whole bunch of the usual suspects and they’ve been caught red handed at it. They were more than happy to ride the political wave with stage managed carpet-baggers like the Goracle but now the MSM have dumped on them they’re crying foul. They were only thinking of the kiddies’ futures and you know how it is folks?
With the shaft of that hockey stick broken (that ‘travesty’ they couldn’t explain so they hid the proxy decline) the notion that CO2 = warming is just an interesting theory and well umm…err..we might have missed the ‘soot factor’ with those Himalayan glaciers folks. Fancy that think Mackintyre and McKitrick? Oh but it’s just a matter of simple science say the true believers. Like taking a bronze statue of Harry and sticking it knee deep in a tub of hot water with a thermometer in its mouth. High School physics according to Harry and Co. Then we take the real Harry and repeat the experiment. Welcome to the problem of measuring climate change with thermometers and Harry will explain to us all exactly which field of science is the categorical and definitive arbiter of what happened to that thermometer reading in his real mouth. Another international panel of experts in the offing no doubt.
Then the great leap of faith into carbon credit creation and trading = save the planet to the cheers of all the good folk at Morgan Sachs and Co. You know those Goldmen that earned US$552,000 each in 9 months last year (from the janitor to the CEO) from derivatives trading. Never mind the news out of the EU about the millions in scams going down with carbon trading for exactly what? Harry will explain to us all exactly what the results have been to date as world food prices have doubled in a couple of years largely due to sticking the world’s food in our tanks. As for the good folk that come round and whack in some CF light globes and change your shower heads, do a quick calc of the average CO2 savings and nick off with the carbon credits to be traded forever, Harry will explain that too. Never mind if you don’t like the outcome and fill the joint with downlights and change the shower heads back the following week or stand under the shower twice as long, Harry has done the maths for you all and don’t you worry your silly little heads about all that technical stuff. Of course these concerned citizens of the world had the whole gamut of taxation at their fingertips to raise the price of carbon with offsetting tax cuts but did they choose that path? No prizes for guessing why not but Tony Abbott is spelling it out loud and clear now, much to their annoyance.
It was all supposed to be costless as we earned all those low hanging fruit carbon offsets in the third world and could carry on business as usual like Poliwood with their Gulfstream jets and mango tree plantings or whatever. That was until China and India told these wankers where to go at Cope. Even those pro leftists in Beijing understood the problem of trying to control CO2 from central planning as they knew it would be impossible to control their Provinces and no way were they going to lose face over that with international scrutiny. Just like wall to wall Labor can’t sort the MDB within its jurisdiction, yet these tossers want us to believe such daydreams can cut it on the global stage. When I pointed out how straight resource taxing water in the MDB could likely solve the problem there was stony silence from the usual suspects wich leads to the obvious conclusion. These people are not fair dinkum about the environment and sensible market solutions, just quantitative measures and empire building. They believe absolutely in AGW theory because they want everyone to believe in their prescriptions and remedy.
I’ll remain agnostic on AGW theory for the time being, but never on the crusaders of carbon credit creationism. On that I note even John Quiggin is beginning to see the sense in open, honest resource taxation. That could have been argued at Cope but it was never on their hidden agenda and good riddance to that now I say. In the meantime I’ll look forward to these true believers setting the fine example to us all with Kev announcing no public official will be air conditioned on his watch to cheers all round from the affected. Either that or perhaps all those concerned professors quietly applauding as their students willfully put the sledgehammers through the campus aircons. Let the revolution begin in our sandstones eh?
Slatts has a roundup on the latest shennigans from the political hacks at the IPCC- http://www.slattsnews.observationdeck.org/?p=4127
Even the hardcore lefty media echo chambers can’t ignore the obvious any longer.
Meanwhile the nanny staters in Canberra, under the guise of green politics are up to the usual-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/homes-forced-into-energy-audits/story-e6frea83-1225827464627
Typical Keynesians wanting to dig holes and fill them in again with our taxes, or in this case training up thousands of green assessors and then mandating make-work programs for them. Have a decko at the way the comments are running and imagine the ones they couldn’t print. Keep it up Kev and Co and you’ll be oncers.
I doubt you will find a scientist that will state that the climate in general has warmed from the little ice age. You will find many scientists who say that Phil Jones wrt Chapter 9 is a crock. Btw, was that one of the chapters written by the beer-reviewed (sic) WLF? In so many words the conclusions of the IPCC and the statements about the quality of their data have been shown to deserve an “F” at a jr. high science fair. The manipulation of editorial judgment borders on the criminal.
I pray you keep on writing because I really like to view your stuff.