January 14, 2008
Posted to: Pielke Jr., R
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001320pachauri_on_recent_c.html
IPCC vainly tries to hold the fort on global warming in the face of
relentless global cooling!
Last week scientists at the Real Climate blog gave their confirmation
bias synapses a workout by explaining that eight years of climate data
is meaningless, and people who pay any attention to recent climate
trends are "misguided." I certainly agree that we should exhibit
cautiousness in interpreting short-duration observations, nonetheless we
should always be trying to explain (rather than simply discount)
observational evidence to avoid the trap of confirmation bias.
So it was interesting to see IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri exhibit
"misguided" behavior when he expressed some surprise about recent
climate trends in The Guardian:
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel
Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look
into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.
"One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this
really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors
compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
He added that sceptics about a human role in climate change delighted in
hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who
would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash,"
he said.
Ironically, by suggesting that their might be some significance to
recent climate trends, Dr. Pachauri has provided ammunition to those
very same skeptics that he disparages. Perhaps Real Climate will explain
how misguided he is, but somehow I doubt it.
I believe that there are currently multiple valid hypotheses to
interpret climate observations of the early 21st century. I also think
that we can best avoid confirmation bias, and other cognitive traps, by
making explicit predictions of the future and testing them against
experience.
The climate community, or at least its activist wing, studiously avoids
forecast verification. It just goes to show, confirmation bias is more a
more comfortable state than dissonance -- and that goes for people on
all sides of the climate debate.
Comments
Dr. Pachauri throws out, once again, the strawman here:
"He added that sceptics about a human role in climate change delighted
in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people
who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all
hogwash,""
This is typical alarmist misdirection. Skeptics don't say that.
Denialists say that. In fact, Pachauri represents another type of
denialist - those that deny the major effects *could* be other than CO2.
Skeptics are simply skeptical that controlling CO2 (and enriching a few
carbon traders, not a few of whom are in the tight circle of the UN) is
the magic bullet here.
The current question is why has Antarctica been cooling now for decades?
Does this not mean that the warming is not global? Of course that's what
it means. Is CO2 not increasing down there? Of course it is. How
difficult is it for those in their individual rooms of this huge Tower
of Babel called climate science to admit something's not quite right
here? I submit the last ones to realize that are the slowest ones...
Posted by: Harry Haymuss at January 14, 2008 02:08 PM
Roger,
Pachauri would do well to remember that because someone delights in
finding a climatologist has made a failed prediction, it does not follow
that that delight negates the prediction error.
If this sort of thing was true, then every bit of evidence for
significant man-made temperature change that was held up with glee by
activists would have to be discounted.
In Pachauri's logic, the side that cheered the loudest would lose.
Posted by: mattstat at January 29, 2008 10:24 PM
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
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"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for
anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree
panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology MIT and Member of the
National Academy of Sciences
"What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the
only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes"
Dr. Richard Lindzen
[most of the current alarm over climate change is based on] "inherently
untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately
forecast the weather a week from now." Dr. Richard Lindzen
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