Saturday, July 23, 2005

The Fight over Global Warming

Yes, I have blogged A LOT about Climate Science in the last few months and I hope it will get back to other topics soon. However, I still believe that environmentalism is a crucial issue to the Western Societies who struggle with too much free time. I think that libertarianism can claim back environmentalism, but only when the bogus science is ripped off it.
Therefore this topic is very important. It also is a topic which is not covered in most libertarian think tanks, or just covered in defense of any big business.

The problem I am concerned most with is global warming and its defenders. Not because I want to evade the issue or to help big business, but because of the danger to science.
The two major critics of the hockeystick, Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Mckitrick, are constantly harassed for their findings, not because they are disproved and outright false, but because their opposition of Mr. Mann et. al.
Of course,t he standard argument goes, those two are economists and not climate scienctists, so what do they know?

This argument holds as long as it is concerned with the pure theories and scientific findings, but it doesn't hold up when it comes to statistics, the hallmark of any economist.
Since I am studying mechanical engineering, I know that statistics is something we scientists are only aware of in the distance. Oh, we can do some gaussian statistics and we are really good when it is about presenting some result that goes along our train of thought, but we often lack the knowledge about the danger of statistics.
Economists and Market-specialists know of the difficulty to forecast a dynamic highly complex thing, especially by reducing it to generalities. And I think that both critics of Mann know their work on statistics. They don't argue about the climate change science or the general natural science, but rather on the way of application and some errors in the math.

So, we have to ask us: Do we believe someone who really knows about statistics, or someone who depends on alignment of his statistics to his other findings?

I think this gives a credible point to the Mann critics and I hope that in the future, other sources see it, too, especially the peer-reviewed journals.

EDITION:

1. please identify any “elemental errors” in my past work.2. Our work has been
criticized in Internet publications. To date, no peer-reviewed article
criticizing us has appeared in print. A submission by MBH to Climatic Change
criticizing our first article was rejected. The Wahl & Ammann submission to
GRL was rejected. This will change shortly since Rutherford, Mann, Bradley,
Hughes et al [2005], which includes some derogatory comments about MM03 in
passing, will be printed shortly. It was edited by Anrew Weaver, a known and
vociferous opponent of our work, so this does not qualify as an independent
valuation by any standard. It does not deal with any matters raised in
MM05a,MM05b which built on our earlier article, thereby falling well short of
full, true and plain disclosure standards.3. we have never “proposed” any
climate reconstruction. This is acknowledged by Gavin Schmidt at realclimate
(see the WSJ comments). We agree that reconstructions using MBH98 methododology
lack “significance”. This includes reconstructions both with and without
bristlecone pines.4. I have never expressed an opinion one way or the other on
whether the current global warming is outside the bounds of natural variation or
whether anthropogenic CO2 is making a material impact on global warming. I
simply tested whether one important study could be verified. I did this for my
own personal interest and with no expectation that anyone would be interested in
the results. Some of the interest in the story has arisen from Mann’s behavior,
as much as from any specific findings, and for that, he has only himself to
blame.

- Steve McIntyre on Climate Audit


I don't think that he is the villain or enemy of climate change, who he had been made to in the public. All of his remarks are rather friendly and reasonable and not the kind of weirdo aggressive insults one would think of given his reputation in the Green-Sphere.

I think this post is another argument that shows there is something amiss in the Climate-Science-community and around Mr. Mann.

No comments: