[LINK] In Retirement on this thread - Was - The meaning of

[Gordon Keith]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:15:34 AM TKoltai wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gordon Keith [mailto:gordonkeith at acslink.net.au]
> > Sent: Friday, 29 June 2012 9:51 AM
> > To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> > Cc: TKoltai
> > Subject: Re: [LINK] In Retirement on this thread - Was - The
> > meaning of
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
> > Tom, you haven't previously come across as anti-science per
> > se, but this rant
> > is starting to look that way.
> 
> Actually Gordon, I love Science - but only when Science is good for
> humanity.
> 
> I'll give you an example of "Acceptable/Tolerable and Not acceptable"
> for humanity:
> 
> From a Tsunami Planning Document:
> Quote/
> Criteria Risk to human life
> Acceptable Less than 10-5
> Tolerable 10-5 to 10-3
> Not acceptable Greater than 10-3 /Quote
> 
> Whilst not wishing to debate the morals of disaster planning that
> considers 10 to the 3rd Tolerable human life loss, I would suggest that
> AGW at .6 degrees per century is so irrelevant as to be a waste of our
> time to discuss by comparison.

Tom

Science has very little to do with what is good for humanity, it is about how 
things are.

Science may be able to calculate that the expected population loss in the area 
of impact of a tsunami of a given size is 1 in a thousand, but it is totally 
neutral about whether that level of loss is acceptable or not. The decision 
about what is acceptable is a political one which may be informed by the 
science.

> I love almost all aspects of science. The whole "learning, exploring,
> philosophising, inventing, prototyping, and then delivering."
> 
> What I hate is the boys club cabals that prevent the average non-boys
> club person from being able to do that successfully.

What about those areas of science that have become too complex for an 
individual to be across the whole field, where it takes collaboration of a 
number of different specialists working together to make progress in the 
field? There are an increasing number of areas of science, including climate 
change, which are just too hard for an individual to progress.

> I hate the Universities that refuse learned valid thesis because the
> conclusions are contrary to the belief systems of the examiners.

I don't think you are alone there. Scientist are ordinary people at core and 
any system which is based around humans will have some who are problematic. I 
can think of no reason why scientists should be better than average in that 
regard. There are systems in place to try to limit the damage individuals 
cause, but systems aren't perfect either.

> And I hate that the AGW conclusion is referred to as being the result of
> science.
> 
> A 279 Kb Fortran model designed to spit out increasing log tables is not
> science, it's programming.
> 
> The proof of climate change is not Science either. There is nothing
> scientific about taking temperatures in urban areas and then say - gee
> lookie lookie, there is a temperature rise across the planet.
> Of course there's a temperature rise in the urban centres, it's called
> population growth.
> We increased the population by 5 billion, obviously there are
> ramifications. The fact that over a century that effect is only  a
> provable 0.6 decrees C after all the "data smoothing" is the alarming
> aspect.
> 
> That Gordon is also not science, it's Statistics.

Programming and statistics are both important tools used by science. There is 
a lot of science that can't be done without them.

As to air temperature readings as proof of climate change, you can totally 
ignore air thermometer readings and there are plenty of other datasets which 
provide substantial evidence of climate change: sea temperatures (surface and 
profiles), ocean salinity, sea level, migration of species habitat 
(terrestrial and marine) to preciously cooler areas (up mountains or further 
from the equator). The evidence from all of these data sets and others provide 
compelling evidence of climate change without any urban impacts.
 
> And those statistics tell me that our environment outside those urban
> areas is cooling.
> That's bad for all the agriculture based growing activity.

The state of the climate report 
http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/State-of-the-
Climate-2012.aspx gives a map of change of average daily mean temperatures 
from 1960 to 2011. The only area it shows cooling is around the Kimberleys. 
This report is a summary of best data available by CSIRO and BoM. 

> I also love Science fiction.
> But not usually the kind that reaches out and removes wads of cash from
> my wallet.
> 
> And whilst I'm not allowed to mention why... I don't think the average
> Australian is going to be too kindly disposed to an additional impost on
> his unemployed cost of living standard.

Science is not imposing anything. Political decisions are being made informed 
by the science, but it most definitely politics not science making those 
decisions.

If you want to complain that the actions being taken are less than optimal 
then be my guest, that is a political debate. Whether we do anything about 
climate change or what we do about it is not a question for or about the 
science. The best the science can do is inform us of the likely impacts of our 
actions - not their value. 

If the science were to say that business as usual is likely to lead to world 
that can support a population of at most 1 billion by 2100 then it is politics 
which decides if business as usual is acceptable or not. Not science.

> It's fine for us to discuss these matters, but did any of you realise
> that the Green Economy is actually a euphemism for a red economy ?
> 
> There is no Green Economy.
> 
> A green economy where in a perfect world ecologically responsible
> citizens all ride bicycles, eat vegan and wash their solar panels daily
> with recycled distilled sewerage water depends on those people having
> jobs.
> 
> There are just business that can't afford to hire people any more
> because of the increasing environmental restrictions that are forcing
> factories and industries to shut down.
> 
> I actually agree with installing smoke stack scrubbers, and catalytic
> converters, but damn it, at what point do we wake up to ourselves and
> say - Hang on.... With all these Green laws that we have implemented,
> who are we hurting.

This is now clearly a political debate and not a scientific one. Personally I 
am fully in favour of environmental restrictions that force the internalising 
or externalities. If some activity causes a cost to the public or environment 
then they should be ones who pay that cost and if that no longer makes the 
activity profitable then the activity should cease.

Properly internalising externalities is however a difficult exercise but we 
should try to do better than we have in the past.

> The Chinese factories are now making what we used to make.
> The standard of living in China is growing almost directly inversely
> proportional to the decrease in jobs in Australia.

Have you any statistics to support that? It surprises me that standard of 
living in China is correlated strongly to jobs in Australia - I would have 
thought the US would have a much larger influence.

> Wake up Linkers... You have a job today, but what will you eat tomorrow
> ?
> Will your families be safe from the unemployed next door neighbours,
> whilst you are at work ?
> 
> How's that for science Gordon ?

Pure politics with no science at all.

> It's called the Science of an almost defunct discipline called
> Sustainable Economics.

Describing economics as science is drawing a very long bow. Economics as a 
discipline is not closely related to science. 

> When Climate Science regulations 

This is where you are losing the plot. "Climate science regulations" is an 
oxymoron. Climate science is about science. Regulations are about politics.

The climate science is established and fairly clear.

The politics of climate change regulation is a completely different kettle of 
fish. 

> start killing more people due to
> increasing poverty, increasing food prices, increasing e***** [censored
> by your government] prices and all the other effects that Climate change
> "science" has achieved then I think it's time to reassess Climate
> Change".

What I think we should be aiming for is the level of regulation were the 
marginal increase in the number of people killed due to increasing poverty, 
increasing food prices etc from the regulations is equal to the marginal 
decrease in the number of people killed to due to increasing poverty, 
increasing food prices etc from the effect of the regulations on the impact of 
climate change.

Where that point is is beyond me.

> Whilst it was good for the world, I was all for it.
> 
> It is no longer good for the world. Not by any stretch of anyone's
> imagination - even if we could believe the cooked figures.
> 
> Point six of one degree over a hundred years. Oh dearie dearie me... The
> sky is falling, the sky is falling - quick let's legislate something...
> 
> Is that what you call Science Gordon ?

0.6 degree over a hundred years is not what I call science. The model 
predictions indicate the change in temperature is not linear. Over the last 
hundred years my understanding (not my field) is that we have had 2.1 degrees 
of warming caused by CO2 and 1.3 degrees of cooling caused by aerosols. Given 
that the aerosol cooling is short term and unlikely to increase dramatically 
while the CO2 warming is long term and likely to increase exponentially the 
forecast for the next century is much worse.

As to the effects of the past climate change, while causes are (and always 
will be) complex it is not unreasonable to blame the civil war in the Sudan 
largely on climate change causing desertification in the north as one of the 
underlying factors. I'm not sure of the death toll in the Sudan, but I'm 
fairly confident is more than have died from the impacts of climate control 
measures (such as they are) to date. 

Regards
Gordon