A summary of the sceptic argument

[4wd]

I'm not a great fan of Monkton, however he has rather excelled with this, and it deserves wider reading.

Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley

LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion. Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.

Is Private Fraser’s proposition that “We’re a’ doomed!†logical? I say No. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.†The belief that Thermageddon will arise from our altering 1/3000th of the atmosphere in a century is in-your-face illogical, rooted in a dozen fallacies marked out by Aristotle as the commonest in human discourse.

“Consensus†is the New Religion’s central fallacy. Arguing blindly from consensus is the head-count fallacy, the argumentum ad populum. Al-Haytham, founder of the scientific method, wrote: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any mere consensus. Instead, he checks.â€

Two surveys have purported to show 97% of climate scientists supporting the supposed “consensusâ€. In both, 97% agreed little more than that the world has warmed since 1950. So what? One involved just 79 scientists, hardly a scientific sample size. Neither was selected to eliminate bias. Neither asked whether manmade global warming was at all likely to prove catastrophic – a question expecting the answer “No.â€

Claiming that the “consensus†is one of revered experts is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority. T.H. Huxley said in 1860, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.â€

Believers talk of a “consensus of evidenceâ€. Yet evidence cannot hold opinions. Besides, there has been no global warming for 18 years; sea level has risen for eight years at just 1.3 in/century; notwithstanding Sandy, hurricane activity is at its least in the 33-year satellite record; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; global sea-ice extent has changed little; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice; and the U.N.’s 2005 prediction of 50 million “climate refugees†by 2010 was absurd. The evidence does not support catastrophism.

Believers say: “Only if we include a strong warming effect from CO2 can we explain the past 60 years’ warming. We know of no other reason.†This is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental fallacy of argument from ignorance. Besides, natural variability is reason enough.

They say: “Global warming is accelerating, so we are to blame.†Even if warming were accelerating, this non sequitur is an instance of the argumentum ad causam falsam, the fallacy of arguing from a false cause. They go on to say: “CO2 concentration has risen; warming has occurred; the former caused the latter.†This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc sub-species of the same fallacy.

They say: “What about the cuddly polar bears?†This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of needless pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly, as you may think, the profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. No need to pity the bears, and they are not cuddly.

They say: “We tell the models there will be strong CO2- driven warming. And, yes, the models predict it.†This is the fallacy of arguing in circles, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, where the premise is the conclusion.

They say: “Global warming caused extra-tropical storm Sandy.†This inappropriate argument from the general to the particular is the argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Individual extreme events cannot be ascribed to global warming.

They say: “Melting Arctic sea ice is a symptom of global warming.†This unsound argument from the particular to the general is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. Arctic sea ice is melting, but the Antarctic has cooled for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.

They say: “Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk says he isn’t, so he’s not credible.†This is the argumentum ad hominem, a shoddy sub- species ofignoratio elenchi, the fundamental red-herring fallacy of ignorance of how a true argument is conducted.

They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.†This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.

These numerous in-your-face illogicalities provoke four questions: Has the Earth warmed as predicted? If not, why not? What if I am wrong? And what if I am right?

Q1. Has the Earth warmed as predicted? In 1990 the IPCC predicted that the world would now be warming at 0.3 Cº/decade, and that by now more than 0.6 Cº warming would have occurred. The outturn was less than half that: just 0.14 Cº/decade and 0.3 Cº in all.

In 2008 leading modellers wrote:

“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the observed warming rate.â€

Yet the linear trend on the Hadley/CRU monthly global temperature anomalies for the 18 years 1995-2012 shows no statistically-significant warming, even though the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about a tenth in that time.

The modellers’ own explicit criterion proves their scary predictions exaggerated. Their vaunted “consensus†was wrong. Global warming that was predicted for tomorrow but has not occurred for 18 years until today cannot have caused Sandy or Bopha yesterday, now, can it?

Q2: Why was the “consensus†wrong? Why do the models exaggerate? The climate-sensitivity equation says warming is the product of a forcing and a sensitivity parameter. Three problems: the modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the sensitivity parameter are not falsifiable; and their claims that their long-term predictions of doom are reliable are not only empirically disproven but theoretically insupportable.

Modellers define forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, with surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change surface temperature. So the definition offends against the fundamental postulate of logic that a proposition and its converse cannot coexist. No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus†disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.

Direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per CO2 doubling, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. So the modellers introduce amplifying or “positive†temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, triple the direct warming from CO2. Yet this dubious hypothesis is not Popper- falsifiable, so it is not logic and not science. Not one of the imagined feedbacks is either empirically measurable or theoretically determinable by any reliable method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have justifiably excoriated its net-positive feedbacks as guesswork – uneducated guesswork at that.

For there is a very powerful theoretical reason why the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74]. However, process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is far too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification function.

At high gain, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling. Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long- run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether inconsistent with a loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as modellers’ estimates imply.

Surface temperature changes little, for homoeostatic conditions prevail. The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air: one reason why 3000 bathythermographs deployed in 2006 have detected no significant ocean warming. The atmosphere’s upper bound is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away. Homoeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Thus the climatic loop gain cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will be a harmless 1 Cº.

Yet the overriding difficulty in trying to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never measure the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in the evolution of all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term modelling of future climate states is unattainable a priori.

The IPCC tries to overcome this actually insuperable Lorenz constraint on modelling by estimating climate sensitivity via a probability-density function. Yet PDFs require more, not less, information than simple estimates flanked by error-whiskers, and are still less likely to be reliable. The modellers are guessing. Their guesses have been proven wrong. Yet they continue to demand our acquiescence in an imagined (and imaginary) consensus.

Q3: What if I am wrong? If so, we must travel from physics to economics. Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the cost of failing to prevent warming of that order this century will be about 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by typical CO2-mitigation schemes as cost-ineffective as Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of acting now exceeds that of adapting in the future 36 times over.

How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade, abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. In turn predicted temperature will fall by 0.00006 Cº. But the cost will be $130 billion ($2 quadrillion/Cº). Abating the

0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP. Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will thus be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.

Q4: What if I am right? When I am proven right, the Climate Change Department will be swept away; Britain’s annual deficit will fall by a fifth; the bat-blatting, bird- blending windmills that scar our green and pleasant land will go; the world will refocus on real environmental problems like deforestation on land, overfishing at sea and pollution of the air; the U.N.’s ambition to turn itself into a grim, global dictatorship with overriding powers of taxation and economic and environmental intervention will be thwarted; and the aim of science to supplant true religion as the world’s new, dismal, cheerless credo will be deservedly, decisively, definitively defeated.

Any who say “I believe†are not scientists, for true scientists say “I wonderâ€. We require – nay, we demand – more awe and greater curiosity from our scientists, and less political “correctness†and co-ordinated credulity.

To the global classe politique, the placemen, bureaucrats, academics, scientists, journalists and enviros who have profiteered at our expense by peddling Thermageddon, I say this. The science is in; the truth is out; Al Gore is through; the game is up; and the scare is over.

To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.

To men of goodwill, lovers of logic, I say this. It is our faculty of reason, the greatest of the soul’s three powers, that marks us out from the beasts and brings us closest in likeness to our Creator, the Lord of Life and Light. We will never let the light of Reason be snuffed out.

Do not go gentle to that last goodnight – Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

http://wattsupwithth...-climate-panic/

[BornFromTheVoid]

Wow. So, so many things wrong and so many hypocritical statements.

But basically, Monckton says he better than all the scientists because he studied classics, then gives a point for point overview of the usual debunked denier claims and misrepresentations, before riding out on a wave of self-righteousness and comparing himself to God.

What is this doing in a science forum?

[Thundery wintry showers]

I would suggest that this is one of the poorer sceptic arguments out there (and yes, there are better ones- for example I remember a discussion with Captain_Bobski where he really had me reconsidering some traditional pro-AGW positions).

It's riddled with the usual straw men and the "uncertainty over AGW implies certainty that AGW is being seriously overestimated" type of position. Also, there has been global warming over the past 18 years (contrary to his claims)- it has just happened at a slower rate than it did during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The "What if I am wrong?" argument ignores a range of factors including rising fuel costs as a result of increasingly scarce oil reserves.

As for the following argument:

They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.†This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.

For a laugh, here's what a similarly extreme misrepresentation of scepticism could look like:

They say: “We don't care what the truth is. What matters is that free market capitalism is the solution to everything, and that AGW is just a sham intended to overthrow God. For all that matters in the world is to maximise consumption, maximise economic growth, and maximise GDP, all taking a short-termist viewpoint, and screw everything else including what we do when our oil reserves run out. For Free Market Capitalism our Lord, amen.

I could go on, but I'd be here all night if I was to sit here picking holes in his analysis. It's a shame to see things like this routinely trotted out, when there are many good reasons for being sceptical about AGW. Most climate scientists are happy to have their science challenged and questioned in a well-reasoned way- the problem arises when politics get in the way and politicians want to make out that the science points towards certainty when in reality it points to uncertainty and probabilities, which are currently seen to favour a warming somewhere within the range of 1 to 6C but most likely between 2 and 4C.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Thundery wintry showers

[jethro]

As someone who accepts the basic theory of AGW but is questioning of the magnitude of change experienced so far and likely to happen in the future, I'm often labelled a sceptic. As a so called sceptic, I'd like to say "what a load of tosh" at the above offered by Monkton. Also, as a so called sceptic, I'm of the opinion that Monkton and the nonsense he spouts does so much harm to the sceptical side of this debate.

This is about science, offer science to counter science, offer scientific reasons why there may be errors in the projections or knowledge. Offering gibberish from Lord of Gibberish makes a mockery of this entire debate.

[knocker]

Is Monckton out on license?

[jethro]

Is Monckton out on license?

I question whether he should be out at all....

[mike Meehan]

My point of view is that I believe the case for Global Warming has been overstated and it appears that in some cases the figures have been fiddled so that it is being used cynically by politicians to gain more through carbon taxes but it has not been ruled out altogether - it is just that it is rising at a lower rate than predicted and also taking a pause for breath on the way and that the figures just released from the Met Office put the situation in a better perspective.

I believe that it has been proved beyond doubt that the amount of carbon di oxide in the atmosphere together with other greenhouse gases does, will and has had an effect on the global temperature and we have a duty for future generations to try and keep it in check. Currently it is no warmer today than what it has been at other times in the Earth's history and there have been some periods when it has been considerably warmer. I believe that the warm period of circa 1,000 years before the Little Ice Age temperatures were very much the same as they are now.

So my view is that we should continue to make research into methods of generating sustainable energy and bring these methods into use but in a much more sensible way, whilst at the same time making efforts to increase the flora of this planet to help take out the excess.

There is no need for Mr Mainwaring to panic, there will be only a relatively small rise in temperatures in the foreseeable future and rising sea levels are not going to inundate our coastal cities just yet. The probability of more severe storms will remain with us - we have had them in the past and they will remain with us in the future - most are caused by a number of different aspects all coming together at the same time; however a global increase of just 0.4C represents a hell of a lot of energy and sometimes this can give unexpected results.

The big danger I see is that some of the mad scientists might have a try at reducing the amount of solar radiation, overcook it and plunge us towards an ice age with catastrophic results in respect of food production.

[Methuselah]

There must be better summaries of the sceptic argument than that? Coincidentally, I heard HRH Charley wittering on, with the opposite perspective, sometime during the night...

Why does anyone listen to these people?

[4wd]

There are a lot of points which are rather difficult to brush aside.

A common theme being gross exaggeration of almost every possible negative aspect of slight warming.

In particular the '50 million refugees' this sort of tripe does most damage to the warming argument and they're still at it now.

The silly fuss about Sandy is the best recent example.

Edited January 7, 2013 by 4wd

[jethro]

There are a lot of points which are rather difficult to brush aside.

A common theme being gross exaggeration of almost every possible negative aspect of slight warming.

In particular the '50 million refugees' this sort of tripe does most damage to the warming argument and they're still at it now.

The silly fuss about Sandy is the best recent example.

So two wrongs make a right?

With respect, countering rubbish with rubbish merely makes the mountain of trash a little bit higher. The way forward surely would be to remove some, not add to it?