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In Reply to: RE: Beware of Experts posted by Tony Lauck on October 20, 2010 at 07:30:14
Well, yeah, that's the thing. As Einstein said, if I had been wrong, one scientist would have been enough. Even if someone were suborning scientists, you couldn't corrupt the entire field, because not everyone is corruptible and even if there were, there are lots of tenured professors out there who can say whatever they want without fear for their jobs. Not to mention that there was in fact a lively scientific debate about whether AGW was real or not, which persisted until the evidence became overwhelming a few years ago. And that the scientific conclusions didn't change during the eight years of the Bush Administration, even though an Administration appointee at NASA was caught trying to suppress news about warming.
My interpretation of the retired scientist business is that you always have a few elderly scientists opposing a major paradigm shifts. Even Einstein played that role, in his rejection of quantum mechanics despite his own substantial role in the creation of the theory.
I've also noticed that most of the scientific critics, retired or not, of AGW aren't climate scientists.
Bottom line for me: if someone had an alternative model, they'd send it off to a peer-reviewed journal. And if the journal didn't accept it, they'd post their report on a web page. But no one has, despite a hugely wealthy energy industry that would be delighted to finance any such investigation and undoubtedly has its own scientists working on the issue privately, as the tobacco industry did.
Follow Ups:
"I've also noticed that most of the scientific critics, retired or not, of AGW aren't climate scientists."
I had my doubts about AGW because the material I came across sounded suspicious. It wasn't until I became familiar with the work of Richard Lindzen that I realized there was substance to my suspicions. That's when I began to look into the material in more depth.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Lindzen certainly has valid credentials. The question is, given that the great majority of climate scientists continue to disagree with him, do we continue to use the planet as a test tube?
There are always a few contrarians late into any paradigm shift, which is fine and even desirable when the issue is something that has no immediate practical consequence, e.g., whether birds are late model dinosaurs or Europeans are descended from neanderthals. But in this case, the potential consequences of continued inaction are so serious, the observed warming so rapid, the consequences of current emissions so long-lasting, and the cost of a rapid change in infrastructure so disproportionately great, that inaction seems to me a dangerous course. Whereas my understanding of the engineering is that we could reduce emissions at little net cost, and with little effect on our way of life, if Congress weren't paralyzed by special interest money.
I have to wonder why even those who doubt AGW want to continue sending money to countries that use it to develop nuclear weapons or support terrorism.
I checked out Lindzen's arguments against those areas where I had appropriate (e.g. mathematical) knowledge and he was consistently in agreement with what I knew or believed. That was far from the case with other climate "scientists". I had a lot of problems with their methodology. I go with mathematical and physical laws that have been well established. I check arguments and references. I do not count heads to ascertain truth, and above all else I do not pay attention to governing bodies as the authority on scientific truth, as these are invariably headed by people who are concerned with politics.
As to the "precautionary principle". The problem is that climate is a complex dynamical system. Things change, and even more than the weather one can not predict the effect of any actions. The outcome is chaotic, to the application of intuitive laws will not be useful. In some of these systems any change has an unpredictable effect and even the sign of the effect is in question. Yes, anything we do will change the outcome, we just don't know how much or possibly in which direction. We don't know what would happen without human activity, for that matter, although a good guess would be another ice age. So a case can be made that the net effect of AGW might even be beneficial. Doing nothing in the absence of knowledge is generally a good policy, and wasting a huge amount of economic resources in a misguided quest is stupid and violates a different precautionary principle: conserving one's resources in the presence of uncertainty.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
As I think I said, I don't consider myself qualified to weigh the scientific arguments. This is fairly unusual, even unique, given that I have a scientific and technical background. But warming is a complex modeled phenomenon, and I feel that I'd have to immerse myself in the literature before I could make a valid overall assessment; otherwise, I'd run the risk of concentrating on local phenomena without understanding their significance to the whole. And I'd be running blind without access to the models. So while I agree that science isn't done by majority vote, I have no scientific reason to suppose that this isn't playing out like a textbook paradigm shift -- lone scientists proposes a new theory, after a period of skepticism a majority of scientists come around, some gray hairs continue to raise objections.
As a practical matter, you speak of "doing nothing in the absence of knowledge," and yet it seems to me that we're actually doing something in the absence of knowledge -- pouring vast quantities of known greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So --
- We're adding greenhouse gases
- Most climate scientists, and all the computer models, predict warming
- We measure warming unprecedented in modern times
- Barring extraordinary intervention with unproven technologies, the greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere will remain there for many years
Do we then continue pouring vast quantities of known greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in the chance that a few elderly scientists are correct?
What I am qualified to comment on is the cost of preventing greenhouse gas emissions. It is negligible, *if* done in a timely matter. The average road life of an automobile is 13 years, and a coal-fired power plant is designed to have a 50 year life expectancy. It would cost little to replace infrastructure and equipment with low-carbon alternatives as they reach the end of their life expectancy, and most of the added investment and operational costs could be countered through efficiency improvements. It would cost a fair amount to replace it before the end of its life expectancy, though still less than the anticipated cost of warming, to the extent that can be calculated. An example of a crash program would be the French shift to fission generation in the wake of the oil crisis of the 70's. They did it in short order, without hardship or significant economic harm.
Don't put yourself down. If the model codes were published then they could be critiqued. Otherwise, a safe working assumption is that they are bogus, just like most computer software unless it has served the test of time in the real world.
As to the cost arguments, now you are into politics and economics and that's another matter. If alternate energy technology continues to progress it will eventually become competitive with existing energy technology, e.g. progress in photovoltaic technology and battery technology. Sufficient progress in both of these technologies seems likely in the next decade or two. Then the process of orderly replacement can take place at reasonable cost.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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