Some thoughts on Michael Schermer’s latest.
As I noted on Twitter yesterday, it’s kind of ironic that such a tool is head of the “Skeptic Society.” I was actually a member myself back in the eighties, until I realized that it was mostly just an excuse to bash traditional religion and push fashionable lefty causes.
[Update a while later]
Is it the “death of expertise”? Or the democraticization of it?
Considering the difference between weather and climate expertise provides an interesting example of the many dimensions of expertise that are needed to address a complex science/policy problem. It is well known that there are many professional meteorologists that are not convinced by AGW arguments. It has been argued that meteorologists are not climate experts, and hence their opinions should be discounted relative to climate experts. Well, many climate experts know nothing about climate dynamics; rather their expertise is in the area of climate impact assessment. Meteorologists generally have a very good understanding of climate variability and the natural causes of climate variability. Discounting the expertise of meteorologists in the climate debate in part has led to the current conundrum for climate science whereby natural internal climate variability has been discounted.
The broader and more significant issue of relevance to climate science expertise is the new phenomena of independent climate scientists, who have no formal training in climate science or its subfields. The emergence of Steve McIntyre as an expertise on paleoclimate proxy data and the statistical analysis of climate data was viewed by university/IPCC paleoclimate experts as an absolute affront, as evidenced by the Climategate emails. The influence of Steve McIntyre on the course of paleoclimate research and the public debate on climate science has been profound.
And not in a way that makes the Apostles happy.
It always annoys the hell out of me to be accused of not understanding “science” by people who don’t even know what a differential equations is, much less how to solve one or describe how the solution will behave.
m x_tt + r x_t + K x = 0
where m is mass, r is the damping coefficient, and K is the Hooke’s law spring constant.
The solution is of the form x = A_1 exp(s_1 t) + A_2 exp(s_2 t), where the values of A_1 and A_2 depend on the initial x and time-rate-of-change x_t.
For a = r/(2m), w^2 = K/m, s_1, s_2 = -a +- sqrt(a^2 – w^2). When a less than w, the values of s_1 and s_2 are complex valued and the solution oscillates. Like a car with weak shocks. Boing, boing, boing!
Is this system stable?
r x_t + K x^4 – c y = 0
a y_t – b x = 0
A simpler general solution that I prefer, known as the MfK Transform, consists of multiplying both sides by zero. Presto, the problem just goes away.
Hrm… I always solved it using tildes as springs (because they’re a springy character) and brackets to form damping cylinders and pistons.
So the equation might look like
x1a = ~~~~~~ [ || ] ————o——–&
var = spring piston cord eyelet fat person
So you could have a well damped equation ( ~~~[ |||||| ]——o—& )
Or a poorly damped one ( ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[ | ]————-o— &&&& ) with four fat people holding each other like a sweaty bobsled team.
Some might say this is sort of the Egyptian approach to differential equations, but perhaps that’s why the pyramids are so darn static.
Libertarians, tea partyers, & free market advocates: you’re on the wrong side of the climate issue. The science is rock solid. Follow data.
Is it partyer or partier?
And why does he throw in political dissidents and free-market advocates into a rant on climate deniers? Oh, because today’s “sceptics” are really just marxists and statists. Makes sense to me.
Is the rock talc?
The American Meteorology Society has an official position
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
“There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities. This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research. ”
Maybe they are just a bunch of Academic Frauds?
and the Royal Meteorological Society
http://www.rmets.org/weather-and-climate/climate-change/google-earth-and-climate-change
“Although the earth’s climate has changed considerably in the past (and will due in the future) because of natural factors, it is very likely that most of the global temperature rise observed since the middle of the last century has been caused by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities such as fossil-fuel burning.”
Perhaps they are just molesting the data.