Re : The Porsche 718 GTS bombshell | PH Footnote
Discussion
ANOpax said:
anonymous said:
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Consensus building is a political process. It isn’t a scientific one. Anyone who refers to scientific consensus demonstrates their scientific illiteracy.
To conflate climate science with quantum physics or molecular biology is an insult to the latter and misrepresents the former. Climate science is no more a science than economic science.
Climate science models are not capable of forecasting the climate (just like we can’t forecast the economy correctly). This is why the public is fed up of having climate alarmism rammed down its throat - none of the doomsday predictions made over the last 25years have come to pass.
Anecdotally speaking, discussion about climate change appears to be becoming far more common among motoring enthusiasts, although most of the people I meet in this world tend to skew a little younger than average.
As for the accuracy of past predictions, most are pretty bang on. Sawyer predicted in 1973 that we'd have 0.6 degrees of warming by the year 2000. Actual warming measured? Between 0.52 and 0.56.
While he overshot slightly on emissions, predicting 375-400ppm in 2000, actual results were close at 370ppm (up from 329 in 1973). Two years later, Broecker came ever closer estimating 373ppm by the turn of the millennium. 13 years after that, Hansen et al. predicted a scenario of 401ppm by 2016. Actual concentration observed? 404ppm. In 1990 IPCC also overshot, predicting 418ppm in 2016. That said, they adjusted their models to better track the data and in 1995 their 2016 predictions were almost perfect at 405ppm.
Since that time, IPCC models have all predicted temperature rises within 16% (on either side) of observed values.
I'm not sure where you get your data from, but I'd say that's pretty accurate forecasting when looking 20-30yrs ahead...
TheOrangePeril said:
From what survey do you extrapolate the feelings of "the public" being "fed up" of the issue? Most polling shows a genuine increase in concern re: global climate change.
Anecdotally speaking, discussion about climate change appears to be becoming far more common among motoring enthusiasts, although most of the people I meet in this world tend to skew a little younger than average.
As for the accuracy of past predictions, most are pretty bang on. Sawyer predicted in 1973 that we'd have 0.6 degrees of warming by the year 2000. Actual warming measured? Between 0.52 and 0.56.
While he overshot slightly on emissions, predicting 375-400ppm in 2000, actual results were close at 370ppm (up from 329 in 1973). Two years later, Broecker came ever closer estimating 373ppm by the turn of the millennium. 13 years after that, Hansen et al. predicted a scenario of 401ppm by 2016. Actual concentration observed? 404ppm. In 1990 IPCC also overshot, predicting 418ppm in 2016. That said, they adjusted their models to better track the data and in 1995 their 2016 predictions were almost perfect at 405ppm.
Since that time, IPCC models have all predicted temperature rises within 16% (on either side) of observed values.
I'm not sure where you get your data from, but I'd say that's pretty accurate forecasting when looking 20-30yrs ahead...
Predicting the steady rise of CO2 concentration is the easy part and not what I was referring to.Anecdotally speaking, discussion about climate change appears to be becoming far more common among motoring enthusiasts, although most of the people I meet in this world tend to skew a little younger than average.
As for the accuracy of past predictions, most are pretty bang on. Sawyer predicted in 1973 that we'd have 0.6 degrees of warming by the year 2000. Actual warming measured? Between 0.52 and 0.56.
While he overshot slightly on emissions, predicting 375-400ppm in 2000, actual results were close at 370ppm (up from 329 in 1973). Two years later, Broecker came ever closer estimating 373ppm by the turn of the millennium. 13 years after that, Hansen et al. predicted a scenario of 401ppm by 2016. Actual concentration observed? 404ppm. In 1990 IPCC also overshot, predicting 418ppm in 2016. That said, they adjusted their models to better track the data and in 1995 their 2016 predictions were almost perfect at 405ppm.
Since that time, IPCC models have all predicted temperature rises within 16% (on either side) of observed values.
I'm not sure where you get your data from, but I'd say that's pretty accurate forecasting when looking 20-30yrs ahead...
The temperature predictions have been less than accurate - hence the need to explain ‘the pause’. If it had been accurately forecast, there would be no need to explain it! There are also plenty of emails from the climategate saga (in which, I think, Hansen was implicated) showing frustration that observed data didn’t meet the output of the models.
I’m in the business of forecasting and a 16% standard deviation about the mean would get me fired. This is why I treat climate alarmism with a healthy dose of skepticism.
As for the general public being fed up, we know that polls are a useless indication of opinion - witness the Brexit referendum polling and the 2019 GE polling.
John Locke said:
Repent said:
Great article.
Similarly, public perception. When horrific weather cranks up even more globally, people’s homes begin to flood in low lying areas, will driving around with an overtly ICE powered car put you in the category of social pariah?
Outside the followers of Greta, public perception is that the weather has always been, and always will be, changeable, likewise the general climate. Similarly, public perception. When horrific weather cranks up even more globally, people’s homes begin to flood in low lying areas, will driving around with an overtly ICE powered car put you in the category of social pariah?
Why would the stupidity of those who make their homes in low lying areas, not expecting to be flooded from time to time, render drivers of ICE powered cars social pariahs?
ANOpax said:
Predicting the steady rise of CO2 concentration is the easy part and not what I was referring to.
The temperature predictions have been less than accurate - hence the need to explain ‘the pause’. If it had been accurately forecast, there would be no need to explain it! There are also plenty of emails from the climategate saga (in which, I think, Hansen was implicated) showing frustration that observed data didn’t meet the output of the models.
I’m in the business of forecasting and a 16% standard deviation about the mean would get me fired. This is why I treat climate alarmism with a healthy dose of skepticism.
As for the general public being fed up, we know that polls are a useless indication of opinion - witness the Brexit referendum polling and the 2019 GE polling.
I'd be interested, as an educated and hence privileged person, just what clear evidence you will need in the now before you cease proudly championing scepticism for scientific community forecasting. Which, based on your industries standards, are woeful, but are dealing with one of the most complex subjects on the planet. The temperature predictions have been less than accurate - hence the need to explain ‘the pause’. If it had been accurately forecast, there would be no need to explain it! There are also plenty of emails from the climategate saga (in which, I think, Hansen was implicated) showing frustration that observed data didn’t meet the output of the models.
I’m in the business of forecasting and a 16% standard deviation about the mean would get me fired. This is why I treat climate alarmism with a healthy dose of skepticism.
As for the general public being fed up, we know that polls are a useless indication of opinion - witness the Brexit referendum polling and the 2019 GE polling.
When the fires in California begin to burn down entire townships, or weather cycles in Florida wipe out settlements there, and the American bond market refuses to insure them against future occurrences. I wonder if that will be the point. Does the system have to believe in it too? Isn't that a huge waste of intelligence.
It's a bewildering thing to advocate, it's not the percentile accuracy that's the concern its the story the data is telling you should be worried about. I'm sure intelligent people argued against the Earth being round, they were no more correct than you are.
Repent said:
I'm sure intelligent people argued against the Earth being round, they were no more correct than you are.
It cuts both ways. History shows that there were plenty of intelligent people who argued that the sun revolves around the earth, including prominent business leaders, religious leaders and governments. The ‘settled scientific consensus’ of the time was that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Anyone suggesting otherwise was accused of being a heretic; much like sceptics are today (see accusations levelled by another poster in an earlier post). The point I’m making is that the failure of the models to work demonstrates that the system is complex beyond our understanding. If it is complex beyond our understanding then the information contained in the trends we see cannot be properly understood either.
I take your point about the models apparently getting the trend right (except they didn’t during the pause - and this is something modelling is terribly poor at doing - predicting step changes or inflections). However, until we really understand what’s going on, we are opening ourselves up to mistaking correlation for causality.
F6 drivers are evil. Anybody who drives a huge displacement F6 is clearly a climate hating, Koala bear burning, Polar bear murdering social pariah ! 
F4 /Alpine drivers are saints by comparison, true eco-warriors, biding their time prior to ordering the next Cayman 'whale saving', climate friendly EV.
And V6's are also fine btw...
F4 /Alpine drivers are saints by comparison, true eco-warriors, biding their time prior to ordering the next Cayman 'whale saving', climate friendly EV.
And V6's are also fine btw...
anonymous said:
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You haven’t answered my question about your understanding of the basis on which the claim for scientific consensus on climate change has been made. I appreciate your willingness to engage in reasoned debate but please leave out the personal judgements of my abilities and understanding which are verging on ad hominem.
anonymous said:
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Oh dear. Well, bang goes the reasoned debate. And to top it off, you still haven’t answered my question about the basis for your assertion that there’s a climate change consensus.
Thank goodness your car engine doesn’t rely on engineering ‘scientific consensus’ as flaky as climate science. If it did, it wouldn’t run at all. But hey, as far as you’re concerned, it’s just as robust and valid...
Now that you’ve resorted to name calling and not answering the question, it’s time to bow out from the discussion with you.
Edited by ANOpax on Monday 20th January 17:23
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Does my suggestion that you demonstrate scientific illiteracy really justify your claim that “ You bracket yourself with holocaust deniers and creationists with this poisonous nonsense. Actually, you’re worse. The implication of your stance being broadly adopted is utterly catastrophic.”.
I think that qualifies as rather more than the ‘same in return’.
And once again, you fail to answer the question about the basis of your claim for consensus around climate change.
Consensus does not good science make and the scientific method is utterly independent of it. It may be an outcome but it’s not a necessary condition. Therefore, any appeal to consensus is coming at this from the wrong end of the problem.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Damn. I said I was bowing out of this but I keep coming back for more...Your post above shows that you understand the issue I take with climate ‘science’. It is, as you put it, the ‘variation in quality’ between one science and the next. You then say that I look foolish by making a judgement call as a layman on the quality of one science versus another. But consider the material engineering analogy - can’t I make the judgement that engineering science is better quality because materials perform as expected and climate does not? So while I am not an expert in either field, my empirical observation is that if you ask an engineer how much load a steel structure will bear, his model will very closely resemble reality. If I ask the same question of a climate scientist, it won’t.
So why can’t I be allowed a valid view on the relative merits of one science vs another based on empirical observation rather than your assertion that any challenge to science by a non-expert must, by your definition, be political?
anonymous said:
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I don’t need to understand the climate models to see that their output is wrong. The fact that they are being constantly revised also tells you that they are not correct. The issue then becomes one of ‘is the science good enough’ and the wider public at large has been sold the idea that climate science is ‘settled’ when it is far from it. There is an ‘uncertainty gap’ for want of a better description which politicians, organisations (and some scientists) prefer to gloss over. As a linguistic measure of how large that ‘uncertainty gap’ has been, the whole climate science narrative has changed from ‘global warming’ to ‘ climate change’ - why? Because for a goodly period during ‘the pause’, there was no statistically significant warming...
On polling, if the media are so misinformed about that, who’s to say that they aren’t also misinformed about climate science. I find it hard to believe that you’re an expert in both polling and climate science ;-)
Edited by ANOpax on Monday 20th January 19:47
ANOpax said:
I don’t need to understand the climate models to see that their output is wrong. The fact that they are being constantly revised also tells you that they are not correct.
You used the analogy of a car engine in comparison with climate science. Now you're saying that if models are revised, then they are "not correct". That's not the same as saying the engine won't run, but rather that the engine will not run as efficiently as it will in the future with a revised model.Edited by ANOpax on Monday 20th January 19:47
If you bought a 4L Cayman and it started doing
12mpg with a heavy foot you'd likely think there was some failed engineering going on. Go back a couple of decades with a similar sized engine and you'd call it about right.
ALL science is based on revising and improving models. If a model is completely "right" and never needs revising, I'm sorry but it is NOT scientific.
The other poster was spot on re: your apparent misunderstanding of the scientific method.
All models are wrong but some are useful. The purpose of science is to iteratively improve these models with continued experimentation that takes into account changing variables. Climate science does exactly that, while working with interacting systems that are several orders of magnitude more complex than those being considered in engine design.
TheOrangePeril said:
You used the analogy of a car engine in comparison with climate science. Now you're saying that if models are revised, then they are "not correct". That's not the same as saying the engine won't run, but rather that the engine will not run as efficiently as it will in the future with a revised model.
If you bought a 4L Cayman and it started doing
12mpg with a heavy foot you'd likely think there was some failed engineering going on. Go back a couple of decades with a similar sized engine and you'd call it about right.
ALL science is based on revising and improving models. If a model is completely "right" and never needs revising, I'm sorry but it is NOT scientific.
The other poster was spot on re: your apparent misunderstanding of the scientific method.
All models are wrong but some are useful. The purpose of science is to iteratively improve these models with continued experimentation that takes into account changing variables. Climate science does exactly that, while working with interacting systems that are several orders of magnitude more complex than those being considered in engine design.
I don’t disagree with you - except to say that I do understand the scientific method. Progress happens - I get it. If you bought a 4L Cayman and it started doing
12mpg with a heavy foot you'd likely think there was some failed engineering going on. Go back a couple of decades with a similar sized engine and you'd call it about right.
ALL science is based on revising and improving models. If a model is completely "right" and never needs revising, I'm sorry but it is NOT scientific.
The other poster was spot on re: your apparent misunderstanding of the scientific method.
All models are wrong but some are useful. The purpose of science is to iteratively improve these models with continued experimentation that takes into account changing variables. Climate science does exactly that, while working with interacting systems that are several orders of magnitude more complex than those being considered in engine design.
Where we differ in our perception of this is the value of the models currently available. To continue your car analogy, it’s like being presented with an engine from a Benz patent motor car of 1885 and being told it’s as good as a 2020 AMG motor. Obviously, this is an exaggerated example but this is the ‘uncertainty gap’ to which I refer.
You only need to take a look at now discredited forecasts (Mann hockey stick anyone?) to see that the science behind climatology is not accurate or well enough advanced to be making important policy decisions based on such lousy models.
I model and forecast for a living and the complexity of what I deal with is orders of magnitude simpler than the climate.
I am also acutely aware that modelling trends is far easier than allowing for shifts or inflections and this is the key weakness of the current models - they have failed to predict such outcomes. They also fail to explain some historic pauses and dislocations as well.
So when climate alarmists tell me that the accuracy of the model is not important but the direction of travel is, my response is that the model is incapable of predicting a reversal as it hasn’t been designed to do so - witness the failure to explain prior warm periods or predict the recent pause.
ANOpax said:
Where we differ in our perception of this is the value of the models currently available. To continue your car analogy, it’s like being presented with an engine from a Benz patent motor car of 1885 and being told it’s as good as a 2020 AMG motor. Obviously, this is an exaggerated example but this is the ‘uncertainty gap’ to which I refer.
Manabe and Wetherald was 1967, Otto made a successful four-stroke in 1876... That puts climate forecasting models in about 1929.Considering how well climate models have predicted the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature rises so far (clearly not perfect but pretty damn close), your claims that the models don't work are - with respect - a bit like standing in 1929 claiming that the Ford Model T will be a massive flop, or that motor racing will never catch on.
TheOrangePeril said:
Considering how well climate models have predicted the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature rises so far (clearly not perfect but pretty damn close), your claims that the models don't work are - with respect - a bit like standing in 1929 claiming that the Ford Model T will be a massive flop, or that motor racing will never catch on.
Except that they don’t. They didn’t predict the pause and they don’t explain the MWP. And let’s not forget that hockey stick...Edited by ANOpax on Tuesday 21st January 13:06
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