K
- Status
J
JasonSB
Guest
Correct, although it’s not really “according to me”, I was just relaying information from the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Although I never actually made any claim about the former (i.e. the temperature of the overall atmosphere) – perhaps you inferred that from the overall heat content graph? – I will point out that those two statements are not in conflict anyway.
The surface temperature has continued to increase. It is only after it is artificially adjusted using the method published in a 2008 paper to remove the effect of ENSO that you can get a trend that is 0.0 for the particular period of 1999-2008, and only the NOAA paper talked about that, and only for the HadCRUT data in any case. The raw temperature readings are still positive, so anything that is talking about actual temperature readings and heat content will disagree with the concept that “surface temperature has remained flat”.
Furthermore, “remained flat” is not exactly what the “trend of 0.0” says. The ENSO-adjusted data has, in fact, gone up and down all over the place during that period, but if you fit a straight line to that particular adjusted data then the straight line has a slope of 0.0.
It’s not really “by appeal”, it’s actually an observed and measured effect. How do you think ENSO has an effect on the global temperatures in the first place? The point is that ENSO is not the only effect.
And, as mentioned above, you’re comparing apples with oranges. The surface temperature of the oceans hasn’t remained constant while atmospheric temperature increases. The global temperature anomaly as defined by HadCRUT had a trend of 0.0 for the period from 99-08 when adjusted for ENSO, but that doesn’t mean actual ocean temperatures didn’t rise or that actual atmospheric temperatures didn’t rise or that the overall heat content didn’t rise.
Perhaps it will be a little bit clearer if I put it into equations:
Temp[sub]99-08[/sub] = AGW[sub]99-08[/sub] + ENSO[sub]99-08[/sub] + PDO[sub]99-08[/sub] + Solar[sub]99-08[/sub] + …
Temp[sub]95-09[/sub] = AGW[sub]95-09[/sub] + ENSO[sub]95-09[/sub] + PDO[sub]95-09[/sub] + Solar[sub]95-09[/sub] + …
Temp[sub]99-08[/sub] - ENSO[sub]99-08[/sub] = 0 trend
TotalHeatContent[sub]00-09[/sub] = +ve trend
Therefore
Temp[sub]95-09[/sub] - ENSO[sub]95-09[/sub] = ???
AGW[sub]95-09[/sub] = ???
There are simply too many unknowns in the information we have been looking at to fill in the ???'s there because you still need to account for PDO, Solar, and any number of other effects that aren’t even mentioned in the above equations. You keep trying to find inconsistencies with data that is insufficiently constrained for you to be able to.
I already explained that Solar[sub]02-08[/sub] is strongly trending negative, so you can see that simply taking into account just one more effect we get a postive trend for AGW again. I also pointed out that the very same NOAA article that talked about the “0.0 trend” also clearly states that the temperature change from 95 to 08 was positive, so I really don’t know what it is you’re hoping to prove.
As I keep saying, this is precisely why you can’t draw conclusions from short time periods – after all, 2009 and 2010 blew the whole “no warming” carnard out of the water anyway, which is exactly the sort of thing that we expect to happen as time periods get long enough to reveal what’s really going on underneath.
J
JasonSB
Guest
Now that’s an excellent question, because it illustrates a common misconception about how science actually works.
How were Newton’s Laws of Motion disproved?
They survived, intact, for hundreds of years, but they were fundamentally wrong. They’re still used today, but they still are fundamentally wrong. The first clues that they were fundamentally wrong emerged in the 19th century (e.g. the orbit of Mercury wasn’t quite right), but it wasn’t until Einstein’s Theory of Relativity came along that anybody could say why.
Why is that?
Because they worked. In everything that almost all humans ever do, the error in Newton’s Laws is small that you can’t actually tell that they’re wrong.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had to give the same answers as Newton’s Laws in every case where they seemed to be correct and explain the observations that Newton’s Laws weren’t able to. Relativity would not have been successful, for example, if it explained Mercury’s orbit but failed to predict the path of a baseball.
Now, we know that the physics of greenhouse gasses is basically correct, in the same way that Newton’s Laws describe the motion of a baseball – or even the entire planet about the sun – basically correctly. The theory underpinning the behaviour of greenhouse gasses is Quantum Theory, which has proven to be incredibly accurate within its domain, so to overturn the theoretical underpinnings of AGW you’re going to have to overturn an awful lot of physics, and that theory has to explain why the existing theories have passed every test conducted so far in the same way that Relativity was able to explain why Newton’s Laws could have been wrong for so long and nobody noticed.
What is unknown is whether there is some new mechanism, that may kick in at a certain point, to curtail the impact that we expect increasing greenhouse gas concentrations to have. For example – and this is just a hypothesis – perhaps cloud coverage will increase enough at just the right altitudes that the enhanced albedo will more than compensate for the enhanced greenhouse effect that the clouds themselves will cause, preventing overheating.
If this mechanism exists, it won’t “disprove” AGW in that sense – it will simply be added to the models as just another feedback mechanism. The theory will be refined. We don’t normally say that “Relativity disproves Newton’s Laws” but rather that Newton’s Laws have been refined – in practice, the Laws are the same but an extra term is added that happens to be very close to zero when speeds and accelerations are “low”. As they must, for those equations to have worked all those years.
Philosophically, however, we must act on the best information we have at the time, and the best information at the moment is that no such mechanism has been demonstrated and so therefore we had better assume AGW is correct. That should be the default assumption. We can hope and search for mitigating effects, but you shouldn’t based your decisions on the assumption that some will be found. That’s gambling that what you don’t know will save you, when it could just as easily make things worse (and, given the errors in the IPCC predictions of sea level rise, etc., so far have all tended to be underestimates, it seems that the unknowns are actually far more likely to make things worse).
It would be like stepping off a cliff in the hope that you won’t plunge to your death as Newton’s Laws predict because the orbit of Mercury is a little bit wrong. (And, in this case, we don’t even have an “orbit of Mercury” example to even give us a clue that the theory is wrong.)
It hasn’t been demonstrated that “other considerations” have any impact at all. So do you step off the cliff?
Who, precisely? I’m not aware of any scientists who claim changes in the forcings over the last 50 years that could account for the perceived warming.
And the great thing about science is that you don’t have to trust the scienists (although I’ve never seen anything to warrant distrust of those you mention). If they committed fraud, others would notice, and so far no “audits” have turned up any hint of fraud.
J
JasonSB
Guest
“The theory of gravity is just that, a scientific theory, and deciding how to act is determined by (1) whether or not one believes the theory is scientifically correct and (2) what one thinks can be done that will be effective. Neither of those two considerations presents us with moral conundrums. There is no moral component whatever to the issue of throwing people off cliffs any more than in choosing to emit large quantities of a known greenhouse gas. We make choices based on imperfect information and hope for the best.”
I’m forced to wonder just what would be immoral in your worldview. If harmful actions, that others had warned you would be harmful, are not immoral, what’s left?
J
JasonSB
Guest
What a strange position I find myself in…
I’m normally watching anti-AGW’er squirm as they try to explain how the fact that their information comes from PR firms and right-wing think tanks funded by the fossil fuel industry doesn’t imply that the information is wrong. Normally they’re trying to explain that nothing should be read into the fact that ExxonMobil chooses to fund PR campaigns rather than prove AGW is wrong using actual science.
Now I have an anti-AGW’er saying the exact opposite – that the source of funding actually determines what the outcome will be.
So why aren’t you applying the same test to your own side, kimmielittle?
Why don’t you claim that Pat Michaels’ admission that 40% of his funding comes from the fossil fuel industry proves that his “skepticism” is bought? youtube.com/watch?v=fguJod_voPc Given he’s one of the top scientists on the “skeptic” side, this would have to be pretty damning evidence, surely?
When you gloss over the posts on “skeptic” funding – hard money – you speak volumes, to me.
When you overlook the fact that the funding on the science side produces scientific results that are published in the scientific literature after being reviewed by other scientists, and then those results are replicated by still other scientists, using completely different and independent lines of evidence, you speak volumes, to me.
When you fail to show any evidence whatsoever that the funding on the science side is in any way tied to the outcomes of the research, or any evidence whatsoever that the results of that research are actually wrong, or even any evidence whatsoever – even in stolen emails covering 15 years! – of any reference to attempts to produce fraudulent results, you speak volumes, to me.
Surely this runs opposite to your argument? How does a company that sells methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, funding climate research support your thesis? This proves my point – if all this “soft money” is supposed to determine the outcome of their scientific research, how do they know which way to fudge the data? Some of the funders would benefit from no AGW, others (supposedly, although I haven’t seen any evidence of this) would benefit from AGW.
Do you have any actual evidence of fudging the data, BTW? No, of course not. You’re merely trying to cast doubt on the science based on who funded it while desperately hoping that nobody notices where the funding for all the “science” (or lack of it, really) on your side comes from.
My reference to Exxon was to the fact that they tried to interfere with the IPCC process by having the head (and anybody associated with Clinton) removed, sympathetic scientists appointed, and the whole process delayed, in response to your attempts to sully the IPCC’s reputation by referencing the behaviour of the guy that the Bush administration advocated to replace the actual climate scientist that Exxon campaigned against!
But Exxon is also well-known for funding PR firms and right-wing think tanks that have the specific goal of opposing any government regulation, whether it be in relation to smoking, asbestos, the ozone layer, dangerous chemicals, or global warming.
The fact that they may take very good care of their employees and have excellent safety procedures is completely irrelevant to the observation that they choose to promote the idea that the science is uncertain rather than actually prove that the science is wrong using actual science. It’s what’s called a red herring. We don’t judge Stalin by how nice he was to his mum.
Please just think about it for a second: if AGW was wrong, the board of ExxonMobil would have a legal obligation – a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders – to prove that before it impinged upon their profits. They make $20 billion in profit per year. If it was so easy to demonstrate that the whole thing is a scam, don’t you think they could have afforded to pay some scientists to prove that by now?
J
JasonSB
Guest
I have two responses to this:
- You haven’t provided any evidence to the contrary.
- Science is robust even in the presense of outright fraud. Science doesn’t actually depend on people being nice, or honest, or open in their work. If others can’t independently reproduce results, those results will either be discredited or ignored and they won’t become part of mainstream thought. People do not accept cold fusion not because the scientists who claimed to have seen it were unpleasant, but because nobody could replicate it. People accept plate tectonics not because the scientists who proposed it were great guys, but because it actually worked and explained everything that was so hard to explain before. (It still took a long time to be accepted, however.)
That shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how scientific funding actually works.
Firstly, nobody writes a grant application saying “This work will prove AGW” or “This work will prove AGW is a fraud”. They write grant applications saying “We will investigate the efficacy of beer sales at baseball games as a proxy to global temperature” (or perhaps not). Anyway, the point is that the grant is to fund research who’s outcome is currently unknown, or may be known but you wish to independently replicate. The grant application won’t presuppose an outcome and the grant funder won’t make the funding contingent on an outcome.
But regardless of that, the very idea that funding should be “equally dispersed” is silly. Equally dispersed between what? If I come up with a theory that global warming is caused by excessive nose picking, should my theory now be given equal weight to all the others and my funding be the same? No matter where you draw the line between those on the “inside”, who’s work is considered part of the funding pie, and those on the “outside”, who’s ideas are considered too silly to be considered, somebody will point to the fact that their favourite theory hasn’t been able to attract equal funding as “proof” of a conspiracy.
Of course. I hope you can see the irony here.
Poorly formed complaints about what was actually wrong ought to stop.
Firstly, there is accountability – if a scientific organisation fails to publish good science, it won’t get funding in the future. “Good science” means that others can reproduce the results using the methods published and confirm the conclusions that the original authors reached, which is happening all the time. Ironically, those under attack – Phil Jones and Mike Mann – are some of the most published and cited scientists I have ever seen.
Secondly, those reviews can hardly be classified as “in-house task forces”, and their work was very public.
Thirdly, care to provide evidence for the $2 billion/year (or is it $23 billion)? Is that supposed to be the funding for climate science research, or are you throwing in anything related to the weather, whether or not it would “prove” or “disprove” AGW?
When I was a postgraduate the formula was “one PhD thesis = three peer-reviewed journal publications” – i.e. if you managed to get three peer-reviewed journal publications out of your research you were pretty much guaranteed to get a PhD. If you didn’t get any, it would be very hard to get your thesis passed. And a PhD thesis itself is, of course, peer-reviewed.
So why, then, would you consider a citation of a PhD thesis to be something to be ashamed of? I note that, according to your link, WG1 only cited published PhD theses.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of climate models freely available for download for anybody to use and there have been for years. There is even a special “educational” version of the previous version of GISS’s GCM specifically for teaching purposes. realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#GCM_code
Why pretend otherwise?
And there is no “IPCC Climate Model” – the IPCC is like anybody else, they ask the authors of the various models for simulations and collate the results. They don’t have their own climate models. So where did this bizarre idea come from?
J
JasonSB
Guest
High quality sites specifically designed for measuring long term trends have already been set up.
But that doesn’t help with historic records. As you say, we don’t want to simply ignore them. Adjusting is a different question.
There are two types of error in any measurement – systematic and random.
Systematic error can be modelled, measured, and corrected for. If I had a ruler that had markings 20% too far apart, for example, I could measure that and go ahead and use that ruler as if it was perfect just by multiplying all my readings by 1.2.
We used to sell instruments that had a raw measurement accuracy of about 100 microns. We could model that error, measure it, and correct for it, and sell the instruments with a guaranteed accuracy of 2.5 microns. Court cases could, and were, fought on the basis of the output of these instruments, and I once had a phone call with a professor who was called in as an expert witness in one such court case and had to explain to him how our calibration method worked, which he then testified was correct.
In the case of temperature reconstructions there are several such sources of systematic error, including Time of Observation bias (TOBS), which was successfully modelled in the 80s and is used to correct the difference in daily min and max temperatures that are read. If you use the raw data, and fail to correct these known, systematic errors, you are deliberately making the data less accurate and had better hope you don’t get one of those phone calls from a professor who’s been called as an expert witness.
Random error, on the other hand, affects each observation independently. The solution to random error is to take a lot of observations. If the error is normally distributed and the observations are independent then the error is proportional to the inverse of the square of the number of observations, so four observations halve the error, nine observations reduce it to 1/3, and so on.
This is why large numbers of thermometers are used in global temperature anomaly computations. It doesn’t matter if the odd reading is in error because they will average out. I showed you before that you could actually reconstruct the global warming trend of the past 90 years just by using 61 stations distributed around the globe; using more reduces the noise, but it doesn’t really change the result.
Why ask for these things without making any attempt to discover if that’s already possible or not?
You want to see scanned-in versions of the actual sheets filled in by the actual people making the actual observations on the ground, and you don’t want to pay for them? Be my guest:
www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html
BTW, I first came across this site following a thread on Anthony Watts’ surfacestations site, so those guys have known about it for about three years now. I haven’t seen any report from them that they found fudging of the data, but don’t let that stop you.
Oh, and if you think there’s anything nefarious going on with the well-described and source-code-available adjustment and homogenisation processes, which are simply trying to (a) fix obvious errors in the data and (b) apply known and justifiable corrections like the TOBS bias, feel free to show that. It would certainly be a very odd conspiracy that publicly states the process and makes source code available so others can replicate it, though.
The irony, of course, is that the homogenisation and adjustments don’t actually make any difference that you’d be able to pick looking at the graphs – the warming trend is still indistinguishable. skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm
That’s just silly. For a start no such thing has been “proven”, and secondly, the IPCC is nothing more and nothing less than a reflection of the scientific literature. The whole point of the IPCC is to take the scientific literature and distill it into a coherent whole that is easy for non-scientists to understand. Disband the IPCC and all you do is take away that summary; the scientific literature still stands, and the scientific literature still says the same thing.
Do you have any evidence that the IPCC misrepresents the science? I didn’t think so.
If governments were willing to fund research adequately then tertiary institutions would not need to seek external sources of revenue.
Funnily enough, the people who criticise external research funding tend to be the very same people who don’t want taxes raised so that extra funding can be made available for research. It’s almost as if you’re saying that they simply shouldn’t do research.
I’m also still waiting for any evidence that this so-called “soft money” has influenced the research outcomes in any way, and how it could possibly do so given the outcome of that research can be replicated by anybody using publicly-available data.
If I was funding research to get a desired outcome, and the outcome I got was exactly the same as that of all the other research, I’d be pretty upset, that’s for sure.
E
Ender
Guest
You complain about the removal of ENSO heating as an “artificial” adjustment? If you actually believed that was a problem then you should dismiss all of the HadCRUT data since most of it is adjusted and the temperature trend for the last century would look rather different without the “artificial” adjustments. This has in fact been one of the major complaints about what CRU (and Hansen) were doing: their adjustments have seemed a bit too artificial.
Another attempt to “hide the decline?” When tree ring proxy data started going the wrong way CRU abandoned it in favor of numbers that went the right way. When the adjusted (read: more accurate) numbers don’t behave properly, why do you go back to the raw numbers even if they include the contributions of cyclical events that have no bearing whatever on the issue? If the raw numbers are more accurate then how can you justify what CRU does in adjusting them and if the adjusted numbers are more accurate why are you complaining when I use them?
Your chart shows the heat content of the ocean rising for the last decade. Has the atmosphere warmed (trend > 0) in that same period? If the oceans have warmed and the atmosphere has warmed (?) how do you explain why surface temp has not?
I don’t really get the sense that you’re trying to make this any clearer. You claimed - based on your graph - that the removal of the ENSO effect from the entire period 1995-2008 would actually increase the warming trend, to which I responded that in order for this to be so the ENSO cooling from 1995-1999 would have to be greater than the ENSO warming from 1999-2008. When I asked if anyone had actually done this calculation you demurred with appeal to PDO et al but those unknown parameters were not part of your original claim and have no bearing on its accuracy. I will certainly accept your estimation that there are simply too many unknowns to know what’s going on, which is one of the reasons I reject AGW.
If you had left it at that we wouldn’t be having this discussion but you’ve been trying to show that in fact warming continued in the last decade even though the trend showed that it had not.
Ender
E
Ender
Guest
It is a misconception to believe that a scientific theory can be disproved? Does that also apply to the theory that the theory of AGW is incorrect?
Perhaps, but overturning the “theoretical underpinnings” of greenhouse warming doesn’t have to happen for the theory of AGW to be wrong. Despite much huffing about tipping points, the Earth may well prove to be a much more self regulating system that AGW anticipates.
Exactly. And, as you said, it is unknown.
No one outside of the scientific community really cares which mechanisms actually affect our environment; people only care about whether the AGW predictions of catastrophe are valid, and if compensating effects exist then, as far as it matters to the rest of the world, AGW is disproved.
Given that the best information we have shows that there are no reasonable changes we can make that will have any effect, I’m not sure why it matters.
Current sea level rise has occurred at a mean rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past century, and more recently, during the satellite era of sea level measurement, at rates estimated near 2.8 ± 0.4 to 3.1 ± 0.7 mm per year (1993–2003). (Wikipedia)
The mean rate for sea level rise has been rather unchanged for nearly a century, apparently impervious to rapid changes in CO2 and global warming. It is somewhat ironic that the increase since 1993 (if it is more than an artifact of satellite measurement) has occurred while there has been over most of that period no statistically significant warming. As for the IPCC underestimating things, how about their claim that we will see hurricanes with increased intensity; how’s that one been working out?
Well we have diametrically opposite views about what the hacked emails showed about CRU and I am a great deal less convinced by the self serving investigations clearing them than I am by their own words implicating them.
Ender
E
Ender
Guest
If I behave recklessly then even if the result is good I have behaved immorally, but if I make a considered choice that turns out badly I have not. I have considered the arguments behind the theory of AGW and find them unconvincing. I have also considered the arguments favoring massive changes to reduce the output of CO2 and find them even less convincing.
I find that the harmful actions, about which many others have warned, would be those which would massively change our social environment and have virtually zero effect on our environment. I do not consider those who champion such actions to be immoral. They are simply wrong. There is no moral component to the decisions we each make regarding this topic.
Ender
K
kimmielittle
Guest
I’m happy you brought up PR groups - What do you think of Realclimate;s role with Environmental Media Services AKA Fenton Communication - Science Communications …all part of Mr Soros Tides Foundation?
Oh NoES…MY MY MY !!! How much is 40% of his income? $10,000.00 - $30,000.00 ? Oh Noes noes!!!
C’mon he’s a circuit lecturer.
Nonsense
ALL energy Companies benefit from promoting the hypothesis of AGW… It’s just who gets the biggest bite from apple. The Mr. Gores OR the Companies that add the Taxes to your energy. The only disagreement between Al Gore and Exxon, BP , Nuclear Power Producers, etc etc is who gets to sink the teeth in first.
BTW He is talking about A Flat Tax called a Carbon Tax …At the gas pump
K
kimmielittle
Guest
IMHO it’s a little dishonest to state this. While it’s true that
Svante Arrhenius First promoted this hypothesis in the late 1800’s - it was debunked by Robert W. Woods in the early 1900’s AND again by Svante Arrhenius, himself. It has been debunked by others - UNTIL, in about, the 1980- 1990’s and “Black Body” was added to it. So the “theory” you talk of - used now, is decades old…AND completely reliant upon accepting the “Black Body” and other equations presented now. Is this not true?
$4,600,000,000 for activities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in clmate change, an increase of $237,745,000 over the fiscal year 2009
NASA: nearly $1,300,000,000 in climate change programs at NASA,
NSF: nearly $310,000,000 for climate change programs at the National Science Foundation
OAR: $229,040,000 for Climate Research,
National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS),$199,504,000 for NESDIS operations, research and facilities
NOAA’s Data Centers and Information Services is $71,056,000,
$7,000,000 for climate data records (CDRs) and additional environmental data archiving, access and assessment activities.
NOTE: This does not count the over 1.5 Million Dollars the US DOE has invested in CRU just in 2007 -2008.
We have been funding CRU scientists according to Mr Jones, for some 25 years.
From: Phil Jones
To: “Neville Nicholls”
Subject: RE: Misc
Date: Wed Jul 6 15:07:45 2005
Neville,
Mike’s response could do with a little work, but as you say he’s got the tone
almost dead on. I hope I don’t get a call from congress ! I’m hoping that no-one
there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last 25
years.
I’ll send on one other email received for interest.
Cheers
Phil
Note: £1.5M is 2.278 million U.S. dollars
,
Ahhhhh…This is not the CRU raw data? Now is it?
An interesting note: On Oct 20 2009 emails were leaked. Nov 24 2009 this data at your link ] was published and accessible to the general public.
Before that, Scientists were referred to GHCN data
J
JasonSB
Guest
No. I merely reiterated, once again, that you keep comparing two different things. One is adjusted to remove the effect of ENSO, giving a zero trend for a particular time period, while the other is the actual temperature record. The word “artificial” is to highlight the fact that the adjustment is partly empirical.
Firstly, that’s a logical fallacy – even if I disgreed with one particular adjustment (and, just to be clear, I see nothing wrong with the ENSO adjustment) it does not imply that I disagree with all adjustments. If you were to propose “adjusting” the data by making every temperature reading equal to “0” prior to analysis I would strongly object that the adjustment is arbitrary and unjustified. If you were to propose “adjusting” the data by removing the Time Of Observation Bias I would say that was a necessary adjustment to remove a known error.
Secondly, your assertion is simply wrong. Here is a comparison between the raw GHCN data and the adjusted GHCN data that HadCRUT, GISS, and NOAA all rely on:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/raw_adjusted_ghcn.png
Do you consider that “rather different”?
Not by people who actually know what they’re talking about. Here are independent temperature reconstructions by different people using different methods compared to the “official” reconstructions:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/compare_gmst_landocean.png
In all cases the adjustments are publicly described and the source code is available. Who, precisely, is still complaining about the adjustments? What objections have they raised? What, exactly, is “a bit too artificial”?
I already showed reconstructions using just 61 rural stations with no adjustments and the result is the same. NOAA already published the results of using just the stations that Anthony Watts himself described as the “best” with no adjustments and the result is the same. In fact, investigations have shown that what GISS does with its adjustments is effectively use just the best rural stations and ignore the urban ones by adjusting the urban ones until they match the rural.
I’m sorry but that’s just rubbish. The particular tree ring proxy data with the “decline” started experiencing it four decades before it was used for temperature reconstruction and the decline was clearly discussed in the original 1998 paper on the subject, where they advised against using post-1960 data because it was clearly wrong. It has been discussed in the scientific literature many times since as the “divergence problem”.
So if the decline was shown in the graph, it would have meant including data that was known to be wrong.
Now you may argue that the scientists should have included data that was clearly wrong rather than not include it and then talk about the data that was omitted and the divergence problem in the associated text (which is precisely what they did) on the basis that if the data is clearly wrong post-1960, perhaps it is also wrong pre-1960 and showing the decline would highlight the unreliability of the data for those who are unable to read.
Maybe that’s a valid point to make, but it ignores the fact that before 1960, the same data agrees well with all the other proxy measures as well as the instrumental record where they overlap, so we have no reason to doubt it for that period, and that after 1960, the world has changed thanks to pollution, acid rain, etc., and that that could explain a sudden and novel decline in Briffa’s tree rings.
But let’s say you decide that it would be better simply not to include any proxy data that has known problems – that way you avoid lying to the public by including data that you know to be wrong, and you avoid making them think we’re somehow trying to hide information from them despite the fact that it’s clearly talked about in the accompanying text.
What happens if you do that?
Well, it means replacing this figure:
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/7707/fig221.gif
with this one:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7420/fig221nobriffa.gif
Nooooo! Mann’s Hockey Stick! No MWP! Briffa’s tree reconstruction is the one that was restoring the notion of a MWP!!!
So what’s better?
- Exclude Briffa’s tree reconstruction, making Mann’s more prominent and making the millenium appear flatter?
- Include Briffa’s tree reconstruction, but exclude the post-1960 data on the advice of Briffa’s original paper because it is known to break down and discuss the divergence problem in the accompanying text?
- Include Briffa’s tree reconstruction with the post-1960 data, making all of Briffa’s data look suspect when in fact the pre-1960 data actually looks pretty good?
J
JasonSB
Guest
I have never “gone back to the raw numbers”, you are the one who keeps comparing adjusted vs raw and getting upset when I point out that you are comparing apples with oranges so your question makes no sense. There’s another example below:
Correct.
Yes, according to HadCRUT (trend = 0.09), GISS (trend = 0.20C/decade), UAH (0.20C/decade), and RSS (0.17C/decade). woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/trend HadCRUT definitely looks low compared to the other three, but it’s still definitely positive. (Now you can perhaps see why anti-AGW’ers still force themselves to use it while at the same time claiming it is unreliable, and can’t bring themselves to use GISS with its 100% public data and 100% public source code.)
I have nothing to explain because the surface temp has warmed. Why do you think it has not? If it is because, as I suspect, you’re assuming that from the NOAA ENSO-adjusted data, then you are comparing apples to oranges and your question is a false dilemma. There is no conflict. If you want to use ENSO-adjusted data, then use ENSO-adjusted data, but don’t keep showing me unadjusted data and asking me to explain why it’s different. It’s different because it’s not ENSO-adjusted!
Actually, I pointed you to the actual graphs that quite clearly showed exactly what happened prior to 1999 and how NOAA’s own graph showed that the temperature increase from 1995 to 2008 was about 0.2C.
But for some reason you remain confused so rather than get you to try to figure it out for yourself, I have gone to the trouble of obtaining the actual data that NOAA used for their figure and calculated the trend line for the original HadCRUT data (that Jones was talking about) and the trend line for the ENSO-adjusted HadCRUT data that you seem so enamoured with so you can see for yourself exactly what Jones would have been able to say:
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/8452/ensoadjusted19952009.png
Look very carefully. The trend line I get (well, Excel, actually) from 1995 to 2009 is 0.112C/decade. Jones claimed 0.12C/decade, but since I don’t know exactly when in 2009 he stopped I can forgive that.
The trend line Excel gives me for the ENSO-adjusted data that NOAA used for their figure from 1995 to 2009 is 0.142C/decade.
So I was right – removing the effect of ENSO for that period increases the trend from 0.112C/decade to 0.142C/decade, and Jones would have been able to claim a higher trend if he had used ENSO-adjusted data. And then “skeptics” would have been all over him for avoiding the question and used “fudged” data to make the trend look higher.
If you look at the graph very carefully, which I tried to get you to do before, you can clearly see why as well. The raw data has a high peak in 1998, near the beginning of the trend, and a deep low in 2008, near the end. They will tend the push the starting point higher and the ending point lower. The adjusted data has a much smaller peak in 1998 and a much smaller trough in 2008, so this result isn’t even surprising.
J
JasonSB
Guest
Now the really interesting question:
Why do you like that data so much?
Is it because you think the science behind it was very good? I doubt it; I very strongly suspect you’ve never even seen the paper, for reasons that will shortly become clear.
Is it because you trust the people who did it? I doubt it, again for reasons that will shortly become clear, although you may not realise this.
I think the only reason you like this particular “adjusted” data set is because it shows something that appeals to you – a trend of 0.0 for a particular period of time. Your assessment of the science is entirely determined by whether it agrees with your preconceived notions or not and has nothing to do with the quality of the work, how it was done, or who it was done by, in exactly the same way that anti-AGW’ers continue to use HadCRUT’s temperature record while at the same time claiming it’s fake and ignoring GISS – HadCRUT has only half the trend of the other temperature reconstructions for the past decade, so “skeptics” grit their teeth and go ahead and use it and ignore a perfectly good data set that has none of the shortcomings they complain about. (They used to love UAH but Spencer and Christy fixed the bugs that made the temperature trend seem to decline and now it’s ignored.)
So why do I say that?
Because one of the co-authors of the paper that is the source for NOAA’s ENSO correction is none other than Phil D. Jones of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, and you’ve said before that you don’t trust him. (Note that it wasn’t NOAA that came up with that data that you do trust, it was Jones’ co-author.)
And the next paper in the series by exactly the same set of authors is the one I mentioned before that also takes into account additional factors, like volcanism, which you thought was suspicious when I described it as Jones’ work. (It doesn’t take into account solar influences, unfortunately – it took me a while to track it down again and I forgot exactly what they managed to correct for.)
Here is the comparison between HadCRUT’s temperature anomaly for the 20th century and the adjusted data:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9748/alladjusted.png
The linear trend for the two series from January 1950 to March 2009 are both 0.12C/decade, proving the point that over longer time periods it doesn’t matter if you remove these short-term influences or not, they average out and don’t affect the trend. The standard deviation of the adjusted data is only 0.10C vs 0.15C for the raw data, however, which proves that removing those extraneous influences does more clearly reveal the underlying AGW signal – meaning that it takes less time to get a statistically significant result than it did in the raw data, where all of those cyclic phenomena were treated as simply “noise”.
Adjusting HadCRUT for ENSO is a good idea; adjusting it even further to remove other effects, like the subsequent paper by Thompson et al did, is even better. (In case you’re wondering, the additional adjustments bring the trend back up to 0.014C/decade from 0.002C/decade for your favourite decade. Given how much solar declined during that decade, if that was taken into account as well it would obviously make it more positive as well, even during that particular period you are so fond of.) If you really think it is more correct to take out more of these effects, then I now expect you to champion Thompson’s later effort which removes more effects and makes the ongoing temperature rise even clearer over even shorter periods of time (Thompson, David W. J., John M. Wallace, Phil D. Jones, John J. Kennedy, 2009: Identifying signatures of natural climate variability in time series of global-mean surface temperature: Methodology and Insights. J. Climate, 22, 6120-6141, atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/ThompsonWallaceJonesKennedy_JClimate2009.pdf). (Maybe ask him to remove solar fluctuations next!)
One last point: the chart of total heat content is immune to the effect of ENSO anyway, because ENSO simply causes a redistribution of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean, it doesn’t change the total.
Why do you like that data so much?
Is it because you think the science behind it was very good? I doubt it; I very strongly suspect you’ve never even seen the paper, for reasons that will shortly become clear.
Is it because you trust the people who did it? I doubt it, again for reasons that will shortly become clear, although you may not realise this.
I think the only reason you like this particular “adjusted” data set is because it shows something that appeals to you – a trend of 0.0 for a particular period of time. Your assessment of the science is entirely determined by whether it agrees with your preconceived notions or not and has nothing to do with the quality of the work, how it was done, or who it was done by, in exactly the same way that anti-AGW’ers continue to use HadCRUT’s temperature record while at the same time claiming it’s fake and ignoring GISS – HadCRUT has only half the trend of the other temperature reconstructions for the past decade, so “skeptics” grit their teeth and go ahead and use it and ignore a perfectly good data set that has none of the shortcomings they complain about. (They used to love UAH but Spencer and Christy fixed the bugs that made the temperature trend seem to decline and now it’s ignored.)
So why do I say that?
Because one of the co-authors of the paper that is the source for NOAA’s ENSO correction is none other than Phil D. Jones of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, and you’ve said before that you don’t trust him. (Note that it wasn’t NOAA that came up with that data that you do trust, it was Jones’ co-author.)
And the next paper in the series by exactly the same set of authors is the one I mentioned before that also takes into account additional factors, like volcanism, which you thought was suspicious when I described it as Jones’ work. (It doesn’t take into account solar influences, unfortunately – it took me a while to track it down again and I forgot exactly what they managed to correct for.)
Here is the comparison between HadCRUT’s temperature anomaly for the 20th century and the adjusted data:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9748/alladjusted.png
The linear trend for the two series from January 1950 to March 2009 are both 0.12C/decade, proving the point that over longer time periods it doesn’t matter if you remove these short-term influences or not, they average out and don’t affect the trend. The standard deviation of the adjusted data is only 0.10C vs 0.15C for the raw data, however, which proves that removing those extraneous influences does more clearly reveal the underlying AGW signal – meaning that it takes less time to get a statistically significant result than it did in the raw data, where all of those cyclic phenomena were treated as simply “noise”.
Then what you are saying is that because we don’t know everything, we cannot possibly know anything, which is obviously wrong. As you can see from the adjusted data above, it really is true that you can simply ignore those processes over longer time periods because they will cancel out.
Again, you confuse actual and adjusted. Warming did continue in the last decade. The trend that you think showed it had not was simply the HadCRUT data adjusted for ENSO for a particular period of time that does not in any way contradict the fact that warming did continue.
Adjusting HadCRUT for ENSO is a good idea; adjusting it even further to remove other effects, like the subsequent paper by Thompson et al did, is even better. (In case you’re wondering, the additional adjustments bring the trend back up to 0.014C/decade from 0.002C/decade for your favourite decade. Given how much solar declined during that decade, if that was taken into account as well it would obviously make it more positive as well, even during that particular period you are so fond of.) If you really think it is more correct to take out more of these effects, then I now expect you to champion Thompson’s later effort which removes more effects and makes the ongoing temperature rise even clearer over even shorter periods of time (Thompson, David W. J., John M. Wallace, Phil D. Jones, John J. Kennedy, 2009: Identifying signatures of natural climate variability in time series of global-mean surface temperature: Methodology and Insights. J. Climate, 22, 6120-6141, atmos.colostate.edu/ao/ThompsonPapers/ThompsonWallaceJonesKennedy_JClimate2009.pdf). (Maybe ask him to remove solar fluctuations next!)
One last point: the chart of total heat content is immune to the effect of ENSO anyway, because ENSO simply causes a redistribution of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean, it doesn’t change the total.
K
kimmielittle
Guest
A simple yes or no will d
Is it a fact that, lead powerful scientists right at the heart of the UN’s Climate Panel around the world, had conspired to thwart, for years, legitimate requests from other scientists for copies of their data and computer codes? Please don’t say part of the codes / data belonged to others - They could have released ALL but those… with an explanation as why some parts were missing - Allowing requesters the chance to petition for the missing parts from other sources. ]
Is it a fact that, this falls under British Criminal Code?
Is it a fact that, these scientist knew of the Freedom of Information Act? Yet chose to carry on?
Is it a fact that, because of the statuettes of limitations, these same scientists avoided being charged?
Is it a fact that, by using UN’s Climate Panel projections, if we waited a decade without curbs on CO2 a warming of just 0.24 C would result? 388 ppmv CO2 in the Atmosphere now. We add 2ppmv a year. After ten years CO2 would be 408ppmv.
4.7IN 408/388 ] = 0.24C or 0.43F That’s if UN’ Climate Panels figures are correct. ]?Or to forestall less than half a F degree of future anthropogenic warming - it would be necessary to shut down the the whole global economy for a whole decade? Meaning no autos, planes, trains, hospitals, factories. practically no electricity all IN HOPES of saving less than half a F degree in temperature?
Is it a fact that, CO2 levels are rising just one half of what the UN Climate Panel projects for 2100 - And that literature increasingly, supports around 0.5-1C, not the UN figures of 3.3C.? The first part requires a 1/2 divider alone - couple that with the differences between 0.5-1 AND UN’s 3.3C]
Is it a fact that, lead powerful scientists right at the heart of the UN’s Climate Panel around the world, had conspired to thwart, for years, legitimate requests from other scientists for copies of their data and computer codes? Please don’t say part of the codes / data belonged to others - They could have released ALL but those… with an explanation as why some parts were missing - Allowing requesters the chance to petition for the missing parts from other sources. ]
Is it a fact that, this falls under British Criminal Code?
Is it a fact that, these scientist knew of the Freedom of Information Act? Yet chose to carry on?
Is it a fact that, because of the statuettes of limitations, these same scientists avoided being charged?
Is it a fact that, by using UN’s Climate Panel projections, if we waited a decade without curbs on CO2 a warming of just 0.24 C would result? 388 ppmv CO2 in the Atmosphere now. We add 2ppmv a year. After ten years CO2 would be 408ppmv.
4.7IN 408/388 ] = 0.24C or 0.43F That’s if UN’ Climate Panels figures are correct. ]?Or to forestall less than half a F degree of future anthropogenic warming - it would be necessary to shut down the the whole global economy for a whole decade? Meaning no autos, planes, trains, hospitals, factories. practically no electricity all IN HOPES of saving less than half a F degree in temperature?
Is it a fact that, CO2 levels are rising just one half of what the UN Climate Panel projects for 2100 - And that literature increasingly, supports around 0.5-1C, not the UN figures of 3.3C.? The first part requires a 1/2 divider alone - couple that with the differences between 0.5-1 AND UN’s 3.3C]
J
JasonSB
Guest
No, it is a misconception to believe that’s how science usually works. It is far more likely that theories will simply be improved, not disproved. New observations that don’t quite fit in with the existing theory will cause the theory to be updated so it incorporates those new observations as well, not cause people to throw up their hands and say “Well, that theory is obviously wrong, what do we do now?”.
I chose an example that I thought most people would be familiar with (Newton’s Laws) because the vast majority of people would suggest that the idea they had been “disproved” or that they were “fundamentally wrong” was far too strong. People still use them today. Unless you are doing extremely specialised things (like compensating for time dilation on GPS satellites) you can keep using the same equations Newton came up with four hundred years ago and it wouldn’t make any difference.
Now it is technically correct to say that they are wrong and that Mercury’s orbit, among others, proved that. But it’s also technically correct to say that Relativity and Quantum Theory are both wrong as well, because we know of cases that neither make the correct predictions for (and they don’t make the same predictions as each other). Do you see physicists and engineers the world over simply giving up until someone comes out with a new theory? No, of course not – those theories still generally work, but each has corner cases where nobody is certain what will actually happen in those circumstances.
In exactly the same way climate models continue to be refined, with more physical processes added, becoming more and more sophisticated. But with each new refinement, the models still have to be able to do what previous models did correctly – the refinement must be a matter of filling in the gaps, of getting it more correct in a few places where currently it seems to be a bit wrong. The overall picture simply can’t change that much without making them completely wrong and no longer matching past history or physics.
Then you have a different idea of what “the theory of AGW” is than I.
If we agree that it is highly unlikely that the theoretical underpinnings of greenhouse warming are correct (despite kimmielittle’s protestations to the contrary) then “the theory of AGW” isn’t going to be “disproved” by some new discovery about the climate system. The new discovery will be incorporated as a new factor in the climate models and the forecasts will simply be updated to take the new factor into account. If we’re very lucky, this unknown new factor will magically make our self-inflicted problem simply go away. If we’re very unlucky, this unknown new factor will make things much worse.
So what unknown new factors do we think might exist?
Well, Spencer seems to think that God will step in at the last minute and save mankind from itself. He may be right, but that’s not very scientific and I don’t think we should form public policy on that basis. Even the Bible warns against putting God to the test.
The last IPCC report didn’t take into account melt water from the ice sheets and glaciers in its forecasts for sea level rise; only thermal expansion was considered. This is why the IPCC sea level rise projections were shown so quickly to underestimate sea level rise so badly – melt water is responsible for more than half of the total rise at the moment, so the projections were off by a factor of at least two. That’s a “known but not incorporated” factor that, unfortunately, goes against us. (realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/ippc-sealevel-gate/)
The northern ice cap wasn’t supposed to be ice free for a century, and that’s not going so well, either:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Arctic_models_obs.gif
As the ice cap melts, the earth’s albedo drops, and the more energy from the sun is absorbed rather than being reflected harmlessly back into space. Furthermore, melting of the Arctic tundra releases trapped methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Both of these are postiive feedbacks that, again, are going against us.
I could go on, but I’m curious – what gives you hope that there are unknown factors that will magically save us from ourselves? Certainly the paleoclimate record shows extremes of climate that would be very undesirable today, so if there is some factor that is going to suddenly activate and over-ride all of the known factors, it would have to be somewhat novel.
Since there is no evidence for such an unknown factor yet, you have to postulate that either (a) it doesn’t kick in until a bit later on, in which case we’re also hoping that it kicks in soon enough, or (b) it’s already acting right now but seemingly completely ineffectual in that the current observations are consistent with the current theories that don’t include this unknown factor – in which case we’re hoping that at some point it will stop being ineffectual, and, again, “soon enough”.
In other words, you’re asking me to believe in something there is no evidence for that will save our bacon. That’s religion, not science, and even religion tells us we shouldn’t do what we know is wrong in the hope that God will fix it for us. Usually religion says the opposite.
J
JasonSB
Guest
Indeed. I don’t know that my house is going to burn down, but I don’t know that it won’t, either, so I take out insurance, yet the evidence that my house is going to burn down is nowhere near as compelling as the evidence that AGW is going to be a problem.
This is what I don’t understand: Why do you assume uncertainty works in your favour?
The IPCC says climate sensitivity is “likely” to be in the range of 2.0 to 4.5 with a best estimate of 3.0. Annan and Hargreaves give a 95% confidence interval of 1.7 to 4.9 with a best estimate of 2.9. Every independent attempt to estimate climate sensitivy, whether by using the observed warming of the 20th century, using the climate’s response to volcanoes, using the change since the last glacial maximum, using the Maunder Minimum, or using the last half billion years of paleoclimate reconstructions, consistently give a most likely figure of 2.7-3.0. Nobody has found any evidence for anything else. And yet you not only appear to believe it is outside the range given above, but that it is outside on the low end of the range, when it could equally likely be outside on the high end of the range!
If that’s true then science education really needs to be improved. That’s like saying that because the orbit of Mercury is a little bit wrong, Newton’s Laws have been “disproved” and therefore there’s nothing wrong with stepping off a tall building.
So for the sake of clarity let’s use the label “CAGW” to refer to the claim that AGW currently predicts pretty dire consequences from a Business As Usual approach. If currently unknown factors come into play it is entirely possible that CAGW will be falsified. AGW won’t be, those now-known factors will simply be incorporated into the theory and the predictions updated, but, as you say, maybe people don’t care about the fine points and all that’s driving their concern are the predictions of catastrophe.
Now, for CAGW to be falsified, we need a currently-unknown phenomenon to start working fairly soon in a way that will mitigate the effects that the best information we have today says will happen, and we need that currently-unknown phenomenon to have some rather nice properties (e.g. to stick around for long enough that we don’t have to worry in the longer term, be strong enough to counteract any new postive feedbacks that might kick in, and – if possible – solve the ocean acidification problem, because that is really nasty).
In the house burning down analogy, this is like not taking out insurance and instead hoping that a firefighter (or policeman) will magically appear on the scene at the critical moment and prevent the fire from breaking out.
Does this seem like a sound strategy to you?
If the best information we have showed that then I would agree. But what on earth gave you that idea?
The oceans have enormous thermal mass, so it’s never going to be highly responsive, but your own figures show it is accelerating.
But if you dispute my claim that the IPCC sea level rises were underestimates then why not simply look at what they actually forecast and compare them to the actual measurements?
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/4504/sealevel.png
(Note that the satellite measurements line up perfectly with the direct measurements in the overlap.)
Whoah, slow down. There is absolutely no way you can turn either Jones’ statement that the warming from 1995 to 2008 was not statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval or the NOAA statement that the trend was 0 from 1999 to 2008 for the ENSO-adjusted data into the phrase “there has been over most of that period no statistically significant warming”. That is a gross misunderstanding of what those two statements mean.
Since 1993 the rate of warming in the HadCRUT temperature record has been 0.166C/decade, and I can assure you it is statistically significant:
woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1993/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1993/trend
For GISS it is 0.217C/decade, and again it is statistically signficant:
woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1993/plot/gistemp/from:1993/trend
For UAH it is 0.200C/decade, and again, it’s statistically significant:
woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1993/plot/uah/from:1993/trend
The fact that shorter time periods within those ranges do not have statistically signficiant warming, or even periods with no warming at all (heck, last night it actually cooled!), is the reason why we take longer periods to tease out the actual warming signal. They don’t invalidate the longer periods!
J
JasonSB
Guest
Let’s see what they said first, shall we?
“There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.”
“Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.”
What, precisely, do you object to? The idea is that higher sea surface temperatures will provide more energy for cyclones to draw on and that is supported by observations of a correlation between sea surface temperature and cyclone intensity in the North Atlantic since ~1970. Hardly earth-shattering.
You keep saying things like this but keep failing to provide any support. There must be something you have in mind when you make those statements, so please elaborate on precisely what words you feel implicated them and what was inadequate about the investigations. Maybe you saw something I missed, or maybe you understood something I saw in a different way. Until you give me actual examples I have no idea – all I can say is that I didn’t see any smoking guns and I was completely unsurprised by the findings of the investigations because they simply confirmed my own understanding.
So what evidence of fraud did you uncover?
J
JasonSB
Guest
Interesting. I base my opinion on whether something was actually right or wrong, not based on how much somebody thought about it beforehand. Many of the worst losses of human life in history were as a consequence of “considered” actions, like the starvation of tens of millions of people under Stalin and Mao and the execution of millions under Hitler. Do you not think those actions immoral?
If somebody does something that causes harm to others, especially after people warned them that it would, then I consider it immoral regardless of how much they thought about it or whether they found the arguments convincing. The actual outcome is what matters. If you are right and they are wrong then you have nothing to worry about; but if you are wrong and they are right, you can’t hide behind the claim that “you thought about it”. In fact, to me, that actually makes it worse, and the law agrees – penalties for premeditated murder are often harsher than the penalties for the death of another resulting from a sudden act of irrationality.
And so far I have yet to see you present any actual reasons for being unconvinced of the science behind AGW or for your claims regarding the cost and effectiveness of action. Given you have considered these I would have thought you could provide the reasoning quite easily.
I see no convincing arguments that the actions required to avoid catostrophic climate change would massively change our social environment and no evidence that those actions would have zero effect. Where on earth did you get those ideas from? They must be pretty convincing to have convinced you so I would absolutely love to see them.
What I have seen is economic modelling by experts in the field that say it would only cost a few percent of GDP to implement the policies that scientists have worked out would make the changes necessary.
You can say that, but that’s a completely different meaning for the word “moral” to the one I use.
- Status