Well, Steven, thank you for asking.

Your appeals to authority already noted.

I'll appeal to authority, too - you.

YOU said:

* Climate systems are several orders of magnitude more complex than the systems that physicists consider when they study QED.
* We do not know all the parameters. Most likely we do not yet know all the important ones.
* We cannot quantify the interactions of even the known parameters with precision.
* There is no compact set of equations that enable you to predict with precision the way climate will behave as parameters are changed. Climate science will never achieve the predictive precision of QED.
* Climategate demonstrated that a number of scientists were behaving badly. That, by itself, is not surprising. It has happened throughout history and will happen again. In that respect scientists are no different to any other group – e.g. Wall Street Bankers. What is shocking is that, like Wall Street Bankers, the misbehaving scientists were not sacked. Phil Jones should not have been allowed to remain on as head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
* Some climate scientists appear to have an exaggerated notion of their ability to forecast the future.
* Some of the policy responses to AGW are nothing short of lunatic. The only thing that I can think of that would be worse than the Gillard Government's go-it-alone carbon tax would be to emulate Europe's carbon trading scheme.
* People most of us would prefer not to be associated with have taken on climate change as a political cause. I really do not like the thought of being on the same side as that recycled Stalinist and anti-Semite, Lee Rhiannon, in any debate.

In addition, no doubt there are things we don't know we don't know.

So, given as little certainty as you describe, why spend a cent, let alone destroy the economy, on that basis?

PS: The CRU lot ARE charlatans.

Peter Hume and others

As BUGSY has noted:

I am NOT appealing authority.

If I had said "Adding CO2 to the atmosphere poses grave risks because scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say so," that would be an appeal to authority.

But I am not saying anything of the sort.

I am saying on the one side I have a group consisting of climate scientists and members of peak scientific bodies. Call this group the "Science Group." The climate scientists know more about climate than you or I and the members of the peak scientific body are certainly smarter than me and, I daresay, than you.

It is the considered judgement of the Science Group that continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere poses a risk of severe negative consequences. Call this proposition A (propA)

On the other side I have a group made up of people who for most part are NOT working climate scientists, are NOT members of a peak scientific body, most of whom are NOT scientists at all, who claim the opposite. Call this group the Peter Hume Group.

Now I have to make up my mind whom I am inclined to believe. Who do I bet on?

The Science Group?

Or the Peter Hume Group?

Based on the form book for outside amateurs successfully challenging the scientific consensus the only rational strategy would be to bet on the Science Group. The odds are heavily in favour of them turning out to be MORE NEARLY CORRECT than the Peter Hume Group.

That doesn't mean the Science Group will ultimately be proved right. Against the odds it may turn out that the Peter Human Group have it right. Sometimes the 20-1 outsider does win the big race.

But I suggest that to a dispassionate observer, one who does not allow ideology or wishful thinking to cloud his judgement, the Science Group must be considered the odds-on favourite.

But perhaps you can give me a RATIONAL reason for revising my estimate of the ODDS.

Bugsy,

Yes, I should define what I mean by amateur.

In the 21st century a person who meets the following criteria is NOT an amateur.

He or she:

--Devotes at least half his working time to active research

--Is in regular communication with other researchers. THIS IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE! Solitary researchers are usually cranks. Perhaps it is possible to be a brilliant scientist in isolation but I've not heard of any such case. Certainly not in the past 200 years. Science is a social activity. It is also a BLOOD SPORT. A lot of excellent research has resulted from the researcher's desire to demolish a rival's pet theory.

--Occasionally publishes papers, books or monographs that are of interest to other researchers and are an attempt at an original contribution to knowledge

--Submits his or her work to peer review

Note I have made no mention of payment. Peter Mitchell*, one of the most outstanding scientists of the twentieth century, was a wealthy man who largely funded his lab from his own pocket. He won a Nobel Prize in 1978.

I would not have considered either Darwin or Banks to be amateurs.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell

Atman wrote:

>>The author is, by his own terms, in no position to criticise Professor Plimer because the author is merely a 'dissenting amateur' in relation to Prof Plimer's work and not qualified in the field.>>

I called Plimer up on points of fact. If Albert Einstein were to say "the rest mass of the electron is 4 tons" anyone would be within their rights in saying "Errh, Al, I think you'll find that that the real number is closer to 9.1 X 10^-31 Kg"

However, Atman, if it makes you feel better, professional scientists, including some of his colleagues in Adelaide, have been far more thorough in pointing out the manifold errors in Plimer's book than my poor efforts.

Tell me, Atman, what do you think of a professor who knowingly disseminates false information?

Bugsy
Neither Banks nor Darwin made their income from biology, so they were not professionals in that sense.

Neither were they professional in the sense of nine-to-five type full-time occupation. But even if that definition described them, it would equally describe many educated skeptical bloggers who patiently devote their time to analyzing the work, and exposing the fallacies, of the mainstream. One might say such skeptics have far too much time on their hands but of course that’s what Darwin’s father said about his bent for natural history. And it is indeed what I say about the entire climate establishment!

So this point only goes to Steven’s failure to provide any relevant definition for a criterion on which his entire argument depends. His definition of “professionals” is apparently: “vested interests funded by coercion”.

At best, the professional/amateur distinction would only be a *surrogate* measure of reliability of knowledge, which we can gauge better and more directly by identifying and dismissing illogical methods of argumentation – such as Steven’s, and the fallacies with which the establishment case is riddled.

Remember, *one* fallacy is enough to disprove an argument using a *rational* method.

“Well, actually this IS science…”

It isn’t just because you say so. For example, one of the common ploys I have seen over and over again in the so-called professional science is, faced with a data set in the shape of a cloud, to draw a regression line through it, trending *up*. The same degree of arbitrary licence could obviously produce a line trending down. It is nonsense to rest your case on the assertion that such facile and biased INTERPRETATIONS are “science”, and to ignore even considering the possibility that the interpretive discretion is being affected by *non*-scientific orthodoxy and vested interests.

The most parsimonious explanation is obvious, and it’s not catastrophic man-made global warming.

“What rot.”
That is not a rational argument.

There is a need to come to terms with the human values in issue because without that, the positive science has no significance, either as a matter of public policy, or anything else.

(cont.)

Furthermore, the method of taking account of the human values in issue must be rational and scientific for Steven to satisfy his own standard.

Thus the climatology is necessary but not sufficient. If policy action is “not even related to the question”, then kindly concede that climate science provides no ground whatsoever for policy action on global warming, and we can all stop talking about global warming.

Now the alarmist case is that we are faced with catastrophic man-made global warming, such that “the planet” won’t be safe for “our children”. (But if not, then what is it? Neither you nor Steven have stated your case.)

So what is in issue, is *all* actions of *all* human beings who use carbon, *now and in the future*. Why? Because it is such carbon use which provides the proof that people prefer their voluntary actions to policy action – otherwise policy would not be necessary to override their demonstrated preferences.

Thus in order to justify policy action, the knowledge set you would need, is to compare the (subjective) value that people get from the status quo, now compared to the future, with the value set that people would get from policy action, now compared with the future.

It is nonsense to attempt to deal with this gaping abyss in the warmist argument, by airily referring to the absent authority of unspecified “opinion surveys”, as if that disposes of all issues in your favour. Firstly no opinion survey of anywhere near the relevant data set exists. But even if it did, it would already be out of date before it could be brought to bear. And any *statistical interpretations* as to a sample, i.e. *a sub-set*, would not be competent to disprove the *demonstrated preference* of the population, i.e. *the whole set*.

Thus we find, again and again, that the entire global warming belief system, far from being based on “science”, is resilient in the face of multiple complete and total refutations. It is actively irrational.

Hi Steven,

I think a logical problem with your piece is that you say that you need to be really smart to follow climate science, and if you're not that smart then you aren't entitled to make a judgement (hope I am not misrepresenting you).

But you don't have to be very smart at all to know whether climate science is right or wrong. Science proceeds on the basis of falsifiability. If you make a prediction based on your theory and it proves to be wrong, then your theory is wrong. This is not a logical test, but an observational test, and doesn't require great intelligence.

The climate models predict that the troposphere will warm much faster than surface atmosphere, but that is not happening.

Not for me to work out where they have made the mistake, but they have made a mistake. I do have enough intelligence to know where the mistake is most likely to be happening, which is on the question of forcings, or what I would call amplifications as I think forcings is not an accurate description of what they do.

What do you reckon?