Things of Interest

New E-Cat website here. Nice.

Patronizing essay at the Conversation. My guess is that as the “Climate Crisis” continues to fizzle, the less gullible skeptical scientists will take a more prominent place. The credibility of CSIRO, BoM and Astronomers will likely suffer for the certainty they have voiced, their deference to the IPCC, and defense of poor practices.

Newt Gingrich now leading in the GOP polls. A man for the time? UPDATE: Good article on why Newt will lead – its his command of the ancient art of debating.

UPDATE: Penn State and academia:

The culture of the academy teaches that the primary allegiance of faculty and staff is to the institution and not to external democratic values.

Renewables: Dumbest f***ing idea I have ever heard

Paraphrasing Steve Jobs — reasons not to pursue renewables:

1. Anti-environment. Increasing the concentration of generation allows larger areas of land to be retained in their natural state. In contrast, harvesting of land for biomass, wind or solar or energy damages more land. Advocates of renewable energy damn the natural environment with ugly, dangerous solar and wind structures.

2. Backwards. The progress of civilization is characterized by the utilization of denser, more intense energy sources. The inclination to dispersed energy sources is a form of neo-Luddism — opposition to modern technology.

2. Inadequate. It is difficult to generate the quantities of electricity as large as those produced by traditional generators. This means renewables assume we will reduce the amount of energy we use, either by voluntary or pricing mechanisms. Some Greens don’t even balk at a $500 per tonne tax, about x5 the wholesale cost of coal.

3. Expensive. We will pay more, and industries will be less competitive. Even at the most favorable low end of the cost estimate, the total cost of wind power was really around 6-7 cents per kWh approximately double the cost of new gas-fired electricity generation–and triple the cost of existing underused generation.

5. Up-front cost. The current capital cost of renewable energy technology is also far in excess of traditional fossil fuel generation.

6. Unreliable. Renewable energy relies on the weather for its source of power. When these resources are unavailable so is the energy, and so larger reliable generators are required for backup.

7. Climate-change dependent. The viability of renewables is contingent on the urgency of CO2 reduction action, and so on the immanent threat from climate change. Contrary to predictions of climate models, actual temperatures appear to be stabilizing, and extreme events like hurricanes decreasing.

8. Taxation. JoNova maps the Climate Change Scare Machine Cycle: how tax dollars are converted into threatening messages by well-funded scientist/activists, rubber-stamped by a compliant media, and converted into massive tax-funded subsidies from a duped public.

Cap and trade is actually a giant scheme to tax and redistribute, for the benefit of political insiders.

9. Brain-damaged. Dangerous exposure to the opportunist rhetoric of eco-activists like the WWF, such as the following from the Australian Academy of Science:

Likewise, our approach to infrastructure development needs to be holistic and many-faceted. A report
commissioned by WWF Australia states:

… modelling finds that there are sufficient low emission energy resources, energy efficiency opportunities and emissions reduction opportunities in non-energy sectors to achieve reductions of 60 to 80%, and even emissions reductions of 90% or more if livestock emissions are reduced; and that there is sufficient time for the low emission technologies and services to grow at sustainable rates if development starts promptly.

10. Alternatives. Despite the risks, conventional fission nuclear is a viable alternative, and new, safe, conventional and low emission nuclear technologies are commercially available.

11. Vanity. Its hard to find a renewable energy article without the words “energy revolution” in them. What is it about renewables that attracts the Marxist narratives? Could the writers be attracted to an agenda that requires the individual-crushing social control, and big-government intervention inherent to Marxism?

12. Ineffective. The idea that renewables will reduce greenhouse emission is itself of dubious merit, as Peter Lang crunches the numbers and finds solar and wind power do little for greenhouse gas reduction.

And for those erudite academics who would take offense at my characterization of renewables as the dumbest f***ing idea I have ever heard, I give “Benjamin Franklin: Philadelphia, Serendipity, and a Summer Storm” by Dr. Bryen E. Lorenz. Quoting at length in response to the British Board of Ordinance effort in 1776 to protect its gunpowder from lightning strikes:

The question eventually became whether a pointed or blunt lightning rod end should be used in this application. Franklin, who was appointed a member of the committee, recommended a pointed end which was based on his earlier kite experiment. One dissenter on the committee had opted for a blunt end. Nevetheless, the committee’s recommendation was for a pointed end. King George III angered by Franklin’s political views, had asked Sir John Pringle, president of the society, to give an opinion in favor of the blunt end. Pringle replied that, “The laws of Nature were not changeable at royal pleasure.” To this the King indignantly responded, “…by the King’s authority that a president of the Royal Society entertaining such an opinion ought to resign.” Pringle promptly resigned. The London gossip soon found an apt verse to relish the moment.

While you, great George, for safety hunt,
And sharp conductors change for blunt,
The nation’s out of joint.
Franklin a wiser course pursues,
And all your thunder fearless views,
By keeping to the point.

Niche Modeling 2010 Roundup and Goodbye

Seth Godin, a blogger I admire greatly, suggests we publish a list of accomplishments for the year (What did you ship in 2010?).

• Peer-reviewed publication demonstrating that policy-makers are being misled by inadequate climate models.
• Hosted a venue for the “Watts Up With the Climate” Tour of Australia.
• Gave four public lectures on climate skepticism, arguing that the forecasts of prominent climate modelers are not reliable.
• Contributed to two articles on the ABC community blog site Unleashed.
• Started a school chess club
• Reviewed a number of manuscripts
• Set up the The Climate Sceptics Party web site, supporting their candidates in the general election.

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who helped as it could not have been done by me alone. I hope that in some small way a measure of common sense has been brought into the climate change controversy.

My greatest achievement in my mind was preparation of a draft of a paper on a new climate modeling approach that has been circulated to selected climate scientists. Based on a control-systems methodology and called “Accumulative model of climate systems” some highlights are:

• A mechanism for amplification of weak solar forcing by accumulation in the ocean, explaining solar variation from 1 million to annual time scales;
• A model showing that even if global warming since 1970 was caused by increasing greenhouse gasses (and not UHI eg.), greenhouse gasses cannot present a significant long-term warming problem, due to poor ocean-atmosphere coupling;
• A model showing how PDO/AMO cycles may be driven by random ENSO variations.

As I would like to spend considerable time this year getting this work published, I am going to discontinue posting comments on topical events on this blog, at least until this paper is shipped.

Since there is so much control-systems background material to go through in order to understand the modeling framework, I have a mind to expand it into a book. In that case I will post draft chapters on this blog as they are done.

All the best for 2011! I’ll be back!

The Cost of Green Schemes

Another day, another half-baked green scheme busted as $150 million is blown on a clean coal scheme. Common sense tells us that burning a bulk substance, only to recapture it and return it back to where it came from will be very expensive. And, OMG, that’s what they found.

Its a good example of moral hazard, as the scientists, policy makers and advisers bear none of the costs that all fall on the long-suffering taxpayer. The list of green debacles in the state of Queensland (with a GDP about the same as Tennessee) is long:

• ZeroGen Clean-coal $150 million
• Mothballed Tugun desalination plant $1.2 billion
• Traveston Dam $265 million
• Bundamba water treatment plant $380 million
• Gibson Island Water Treatment Plant $313 million
• Cloncurry solar thermal power station $7 million

This from a state that is selling off assets in a desperate attempt to reduce its debt.

I see more articles starting to pin blame on CSIRO advice. Michael Asten, a professorial fellow in the school of geosciences, Monash University writes in the Australian about exaggerated government models of sea level rise:

Did scientists from the no-longer independent CSIRO (or other competent body in Australia) brief minister Combet and his team at Cancun on this discrepancy and its implications? Are they permitted to make such comment publicly? And how will such observations affect the targeting of our funds on offer for regional adaptation programs?

The same questions could be asked of the studies reporting increases in drought that motivated the building of desalination plants around the country. Did scientists from CSIRO brief the ministers on the discrepancy between the decreasing rainfall shown by the models, and the observations of increasing rainfall over the last century? And how will such observations affect the targeting of our funds on offer for regional flood adaptation programs?

Financial advisers would bear some moral (if not financial) liability for losses resulting from the forecasts of models known to be worthless. The same goes for climate models exaggerated at best and proven to be worthless at regional scales.

Climate model abuse

Roger Pielke Sr. reviews another very important new paper showing the abuse of models.

In the opinion of the editor Kundzewicz (who has served prominently on the IPCC), climate models were only designed to provide a broad assessment of the response of the global climate system to greenhouse gas (GHG) forcings, and to serve as the basis for devising a set of GHG emissions policies. They were not designed for regional adaptation studies.

To expect more from these models is simply unrealistic, at least for direct application to regional water management problems. The Anagnostopoulos et al conclusions negate the value of spending so much money on regional climate predictions decades into the future, for example on the South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative and the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence.

Kundzewicz distances the professionals from such efforts:

They are not climate sceptics, but are sceptical of the claims of some climatologists and hydroclimatologists that these models are well suited for water management applications.

Hydrologists and water management professionals (hydrological and hydraulic engineers) have entered the scientific debate in force, because the GCMs are being advocated for purposes they were not designed for, i.e. watershed vulnerability assessments and infrastructure design.

As I showed in Critique of the DECR this is not a matter of opinion, but a matter that can be decided by applying basic validation tests in each instance. To the detriment of the field, tests that would justify the use of the models do not seem to be applied, or if they are they are not being made available. Such testing is regarded as good and standard practise elsewhere.

The recent surge of these sorts of papers suggests I am not the only one to think it is time for the field to pay the piper.

Hal Lewis' Resignation

The APS reminds me of the Australian Prime Minister’s Standing Committee on Climate Change. Some of the more choice parts of Hal’s resignation letter are extracted below.

Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change

The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Number of resignations by Australian scientists? Zero?

Copenhagen a failure? Think again.

Attributed to NEIL BROWN, December 26, 2009

UNLIKE most people, who think Copenhagen was a failure, I think it was a great success. It has preserved the golden rule of international diplomacy.

Years ago, when I was a young fellow and started to go to international conferences, an old hand who was about to retire took me aside. ”I’ll be shoving off into retirement soon,” he said, ”so I thought I might pass on the golden rule of international conferences.”

I was fascinated. I was sure he would say I should always pursue noble objectives, lift up the downtrodden masses of Africa and Asia, stamp out disease and poverty and generally bring peace to the world. Alas, no.

”The most important item on the agenda at any international conference,” he resumed, ”is to fix the date of the next meeting – and of course the location.”

However – and it was a big however – if a conference succeeded in wiping out poverty or pestilence, there would be no prospect of trying to go to another conference the following year on the same subject. Concentrating on the date of the next conference would guarantee poverty and pestilence would still be there the next year and would provide the excuse for another year’s travel, entertainment, spending other people’s money, passing pious resolutions and generally being self-important, all of which are the only reasons for being in politics or diplomacy.

I soon learnt that seasoned players on the international scene knew very well the vital importance of the golden rule. For example, Sir Owen Dixon told me that when he was appointed the first UN troubleshooter on Kashmir, he went to New York to recruit an assistant. Someone recommended a young man in the UN building who, believe it or not, actually had the job description ”to bring peace to the world”.

”Do you like your job?” Sir Owen asked. ”Well, at least it’s permanent,” he replied. This young man, who had a stellar career at the UN thereafter, was right, because the intractable problem of Kashmir has, by definition, still not been solved and in the intervening years has provided immense fodder for studies, working groups, theses, working breakfasts, dinners, lunches and, of course, international conferences.

Statesmen and politicians did not achieve all of this by solving the problem of Kashmir; they did it by failing and by making sure that next year the crisis would be the gift that keeps on giving.

There was also a secret protocol to the golden rule, shielded from the prying eyes of the public as far as possible – to make sure that the location of the conference was somewhere nice, for example, fleshpots such as Casablanca, holiday spots such as Bali or ski resorts such as Davos.

The proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating. Thus, despite the fact that almost everyone says that Copenhagen was a success because it narrowly avoided being a failure, the cognoscenti know it was a great success because it was such an appalling failure.

First, climate change is as bad as it ever was. None of the weasel words of progress and achievement about keeping temperatures down can conceal the good news that the whole thing was a disaster.

If the alarmists are right, climate change can only get worse. If they are wrong, the issue still is likely to have such life in it that it could last as long as Kashmir before the truth dawns.

Second, since Kyoto and again since Bali, we were told incessantly that Copenhagen was the last chance to prevent the world being plunged into a watery grave. Everyone was going to Copenhagen in the belief that it was a last chance to save the planet.

When I heard this, I mourned for the international political and diplomatic brotherhood of which I was once a part; they clearly were not going to be able to stretch climate change beyond Copenhagen as the excuse for more conferences, new taxes, tougher and more complicated laws and the perpetual extortion of money from poor workers in rich countries to rich kleptomaniacs in poor countries that foreign aid has become. Some other issue would have to be found.

Fortunately, this has turned out not to be the case. Mercifully, climate change will be there for at least another year to take its vengeance on a profligate and decadent world. It will provide the excuse for conferences next year and for years beyond. So also is the secret protocol intact: conferences on climate change will never be held anywhere near Darfur or Bangladesh.

Neil Brown is a barrister and former member of Federal Parliament, h/t to Geoff Sherrington.

About

This site since 2006 has dealt with current scientific issues, through feedback or drawing attention to articles — perhaps even your own! We prefer articles that show a fascination with evidence from numbers — that share the passion — and welcome critical feedback as a path to knowledge.

The range of topics considered is wide, whether it be stock predictors, maths, statistics, ecology, climate, betting systems or money, algorithms for predicting things or automated trading systems for FOREX. Prediction; how to, and how not to do prediction, this blog is to help people to predict better.

Ways to be involved are:

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Enjoy.

Validation of Climate Models – the missing link

Validation of climate models is like finding someone to cement your drive.

You ask one contractor, and they say they can do it, sometime between now and Christmas. That’s a high level of uncertainty.

You ask another, and they say they can do it, but it’s their first time. That’s a low level of skill.

You ask another, and they say that they will do it, but the result is not going to be any better than what you have already, or may even be worst. That’s an honest vendor, and a product not ‘fit-for-use’.

Model validation is very obvious when you put it in a familiar context. There is a level of service you expect from the money you have to spend. Any public servant involved in the procurement of services faces a similar situation to concreting one’s drive. Due diligence requires a check that models are fit-for-purpose.

Demonisation of Science – A trend to be fought

As I write this, my wife of 46 years is in intensive care fighting to live. She is there partly because of bad medical science and partly because of what had become a widespread syndrome in many scientific disciplines, the demonization of a person or a concept by people who can be wrong.

My wife does not provide the best example of demonization, but it is current, motivational and recent and on my mind. Please excuse me if I become too personal. The important part is not the personal part. It is the insidious danger of demonization.

I am a chemist, with a B.Sc. and part-time honours, chemistry major, from the University of Queensland, Australia. I also did a couple of years of aero engineering before a car crash curtailed further flying in the Air Force. My career covered many aspects of science, some engineering and much politics at the end. In retirement I can draw on a diverse set of experiences, but can also appreciate points of the philosophy of science. Mostly, that only comes with age and experience.

“Demonisation” is not my term. Maybe it originated with alcohol, the “demon drink”. It is now in fairly wide and expanding use. It was used a few years ago in climate circles to describe CO2 as a troublesome compound for all people, probably before the facts were complete. More recently, it has been used in a people context, as in the demonization of denialists.

Scientists to whom the demon label is attached can have a harder time than they should. In the case of Colleen, I was demonised by the general physician in charge and by senior nursing staff because I consistently told them that they should look beyond the easy diagnosis they had made. When you know a person for nearly 50 years, you can detect changes that are not so obvious to the casual observer, but then the doctor has the training and his word should be accepted. As it turned out, Colleen had a diagnosis of post-operative constipation following a repair of a broken hip – not an uncommon happening. What had really happened was that she had had an earlier colonoscopy where a cut had been made and marked with methylene blue die in case follow-up was need. This had weakened the bowel wall. Several days of large doses of morphine had dehydrated her and the combination resulted in a blocked and perforated bowel, the hole about an inch in diameter, with a couple of pounds of faecal material mingled with her other abdominal organs.

It was necessary for me to be quite forceful of expression for several days before the correct tests were done and the problem – perhaps then 6 days old – was rectified by lengthy surgery. This demonised me in the eyes of some of the medical profession involved. A lay person cannot diagnose, only a doctor can do that. But, unless I had persisted I would now no longer have a wife. Experience, observation, open mind, thinking about the evidence, reinterpretation, explaining every little observation, insisting on more data – these were the life-saving ingredients.

In my career I have met demonization several times. We inherited a site where lead batteries had been recycled and there was residual lead in the soil. We were told “authoritatively” that lead poising affects the IQ of young children. A “Team” has worked for years to prove this alarming hypothesis – but they have demonised the authors and the possibility of a simple and strong reverse causation explanation. See
http://www.mja.com.au/public/bookroom/2001/rathus/rathus.html
http://dnacih.com/SILVA.htm

Two comments follow about lead and children. First, in the mid 1980’s, when some intensive work was done, published estimates of the weight of daily soil ingestion by children differed by well over an order of magnitude. So the models had uncertainty – as do today’s global climate models. Second, this question is relevant to climate change because of the discontinuation of leaded petrol and the resultant increase of fuel use by cars and trucks. This affected the so-called GHG load on the atmosphere.

Another case from Australia, again medical, resulted in 2 Nobel Laureates, Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren. See
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/04/science.health
Barry Marshall in particular was demonised for his astounding proposition that ulcers were caused by bacteria and could be cured by antibiotics. He even self-administered a dangerous concoction to drive home his point. Personally, I feel that the “Team” opposition to their work should be documented better and spread more widely, so that those who demonise will know that they can be shamed in public when shown wrong.

Getting closer to climate matters, there was widespread demonization of the peaceful use of uranium for large scale electricity generation from the late 1960s onwards. From 1972 I consulted to and then joined the company which had discovered the immense Ranger uranium deposits in 1969. It was soon apparent that there were considerable learning curves for science sub-sets like radioactive decay, assaying, ore resource calculation and particularly radiation health measures. Well, the mines are still operating today and no person appears to have been harmed by them (though we did lose one employee to a crocodile attack).

The second steep learning curve for nuclear was to counter the demonization of radioactivity. You probably know that there are still many people today who have absolute belief that nuclear power generation wastes have to be managed for 250,000 years. This is simple psycobabble as can be shown in a few minutes. Of course, the future of nuclear electricity interacts with fossil fuel use and projections for atmospheric composition of GHG.

Almost by necessity, I lowered my involvement in geochemistry and increasingly went political about late 1980s to counter the anti-nuclear protest. Slowly but surely, the arguments put up in opposition were demolished by demonstration and logic, until no realistic viable case exists to further hold back on nuclear expansion. Demonisation has however resulted in Australia still having no nuclear power generators, despite a large output of mined uranium.

Demonisation has distorted the science, in a way costly to power users and the environment.

Demonisation is resurgent in relation to the Climategate emails and inquiries. Those who have submitted words critical of the science are not all extremists. There is a weight of experience and intelligence in these contra submissions, but those who make them are being ignored or derided. This is not a civil way to act. The inquirers have done shoddy work (with the exception of Graham Stringer MP from Britain; and now the penny is dropping for the Commons Inquiry leader Phil Willis.)

Wherever you look, it is not hard to find evidence of demonization in science. The anti vaccination movement is an example. There is widespread chemophobia, for example in framing where “organic” or “natural” methods are suddenly trendy, despite the certainty that many people would die of starvation if global organic farming was made compulsory. Ditto for genetic modification of crops, a human extension of a process of Nature. The demonisation of science is an insult to the truly professional scientist. I worked several years in the synthetic fertilizer industry in a very large new plant and mixed with people whose skill and dedication was too prominent to be insulted.

Recently was saw the terrible example of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publishing lists of names of good people and demons with respect to attitudes, as they interpreted them, towards man-made global warming. This is ugly. . PNAS should take a long look at its charter, purpose and methods.

Deductions.

1. We frequent bloggers need to check if we are falling into the demonization trap ourselves. I am guilty, especially a few times when blogging was new to me.
2. Demonisation is antithetic to good science. Good science equates to open minds.
3. There are more effective ways to make an example than by demonising. Shaming is an acceptable alternative sometimes, but most effective of all is the dispassionate analysis that is done by people like Steve McIntyre and several others whom you know too well to need mentioning here. Lead by example.
4. Emotion and politics interact with science, but in an ideal world they are separate from it. It is harder to set out to do good science when you have made up your mind on the outcome.
5. Try to avoid making a mellow generalisation from data. In a surprising number of cases (well, surprising to me) the solution is in the exception to intuition. Data points that are averaged out of existence often take with little Rosetta stones.

It was the devil in the detail that led to intervention in the case of my wife, at the start of this essay. It was not helpful to be demonised for pointing out that misdiagnosis was possible.

There is more that can be written on this theme, more in the context of climate. Should our host feel that responses below warrant it, I would be honoured to write more.