One of the most curious aspects of the climate debate is that almost no one insists on mathematically rigorous tests of the major hypotheses that are involved. This is true among the warmists, of course, but is often true among the skeptics as well. Why the skeptics do not do so is beyond me. But most skeptics do not appear to do so. This often takes the form of endorsement of both natural and man-made sources of global warming, often with the view that the skeptics believe the man-made effects are minor. One of many examples is Benny Peiser, the Executive Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London, probably the leading climate skeptic group in Britain. He has done many useful things for the skeptic cause, but endorsing the concept of man-made global warming is not one of them.
Peiser is a social anthropologist–a discipline that may not widely use the relevant rigorous statistical methods in their work. Peiser has stated that climate change is due both to natural and man-made causes. But there is no rigorous evidence for the latter offered by Peiser or anyone else. So why is it advantageous to skeptics to support the opposition for a belief that has not been rigorously supported using the most appropriate mathematical techniques?
This may be crucial to the outcome of the debate here in the US since a legal case can be made that even a minor human effect is sufficient to invoke the Clean Air Act (CAA), assuming that the Act is even applicable to climate as the courts (but not Congress) have ruled. Now the US CAA is not applicable in Britain, so perhaps Peiser can be excused for not understanding the implications in the US, but the result is the same.
However, everyone needs to use the mathematically proper tools that are readily available, particularly in a controversial topic like climate. This is particularly true given the enormous, totally unnecessary costs involved if the current “consensus” on climate science has in fact no rigorous proof of its validity. The principal “evidence” offered by the warmists is not really evidence at all. Their elaborate mathematical climate models prove nothing except that they make a lot of assumptions, and the results reflect the assumptions they have made. Many billions have been wasted on this “research,” perhaps because some people actually believe in this sophisticated nonsense since all General Circulation Models (except the Russians’) get similar results.
The Merits of an Econometric Approach Compared to Climate Models
Regarding the merits of the methodology discussed here versus that used in developing the climate models relied upon in EPA’s Endangerment Finding and in the IPCC publications, a quote from Congressional testimony by Dr. John Christy is useful here:
- “The advantage of the simple statistical treatment discussed here is that the complicated processes such as clouds, ocean-atmosphere interaction, aerosols, etc., are implicitly incorporated by the statistical relationships discovered from the actual data. Climate models attempt to calculate these highly non-linear processes from imperfect parameterizations (estimates) whereas the statistical model directly accounts for them since the bulk atmospheric temperature is the response-variable these processes impact. It is true that the statistical model does not know what each sub-process is or how each might interact with other processes. But it also must be made clear: it is an understatement to say that no IPCC climate model accurately incorporates all of the nonlinear processes that affect the system. I simply point out that because the model is constrained by the ultimate response variable (bulk temperature), these highly complex processes are included.
“The fact that this statistical model {typically} explains 75-90 percent of the real annual temperature variability, depending on the data set, using these influences (ENSO, volcanoes, solar) is an indication the statistical model is useful. This result promotes the conclusion that this approach achieves greater scientific (and policy) utility than results from elaborate climate models which on average fail to reproduce the real world’s global average bulk temperature trend since 1979.”
Warmists Like Some Econometric Methods but Not Others
Although the warmists are all for using econometric methods to tease out the smallest possible indication that pollutants (e.g., NOx, XOx, ozone, etc.) cause adverse economic or physical effects, they seem adamantly opposed to using mathematically proper econometric techniques to determine what impact CO2 have had on Earth’s temperatures. The point is that the proper mathematical methods must be used in both types of analyses. And the proper conclusions produced to date are that actual pollutants above various concentration levels can cause adverse medical and economic effects, but the effects have unfortunately sometimes been exaggerated, but that increasing CO2, including human-related emissions, have not resulted in statistically significant increases in temperatures in the real world.
Unfortunately, many climate skeptics have not accepted these econometric findings and continue to rely on general statements that the effects of increasing CO2 concentration levels have only minor effects on temperatures. But from a US legal viewpoint and the Clean Air Act this may turn out to be a critical issue. There is simply no basis for believing that increasing atmospheric CO2 has had any significant effect in the real world on temperatures and skeptics need to raise this point at every opportunity. The issue is not whether there may be theoretical effects of CO2 on temperatures, but rather whether any significant such effects actually occur in the real world. It is important to point out that there is no basis for climate extremism’s basic tenet. They will no doubt be attempts to ignore this fact, but sometime, somewhere, people might actually pay attention to what the science actually says.
via Carlin Economics and Science
September 21, 2018 at 10:35AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 