Interview with a Climate Scientist

[TheServant]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

This is a pretty good article to gain additional perspective on the issue. As a Meteorologist, I have worked with hundreds of atmospheric scientists over the years, and 99% are definitely in the business for the science, not for any political motivation or money, even within .gov. However, there is plenty of disagree on this issue.

I posted in the other "cap and trade thread gone amok" that I believe it is still important to keep in mind that there is strong political motivation now to fund and publicize the "death by global warming" theme. There will most certainly be a bias, just as with all the economic data. The question that we should ask on this forum is whether that matters or not.

Among other important points, this gentlemen hits on what I believe is one of the more poignant aspects in terms of how an iTuliper should approach the issue.

The issue of climate change has become so tied into many other questions, such as biosphere degradation, habitat loss, over-development, inappropriate development, energy security, etc.. All of these questions are much more immediate and acute than climate change as a whole. Yet climate change impacts very strongly on how you might deal with a lot of those issues.

There are any number of somewhat related issues that will come to a head well before the end result "climate change". Deciding which of these issues will be the true driver of economic policy in the coming years is what will be most important in developing an investment strategy.

I personally believe it is "energy security" as he phrases it. To me, this idea is supported by the current emphasis on developing new energy sources, as well as previous policies to fight two wars to gain control of what could be considered the closest thing to a remaining large pseudo-pristine oil field.

I would be very interested in hearing other opinions about what may be the force behind the current shift toward this new economic paradigm, or put simply, why is this the next bubble that seems to have been chosen?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

I would be very interested in hearing other opinions about what may be the force behind the current shift toward this new economic paradigm, or put simply, why is this the next bubble that seems to have been chosen?

By "this" do you mean the response to Global Warming, to Global Climate Change, to Peak [Cheap] Oil, or to something else ...?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

I find more good stuff at http://www.climateaudit.org/. See for example the Overview (Feb 2005), and a paper mentioned therein, at Kyoto Protocol Based on Flawed Statistics.

[radon]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

I see an interesting discussion of this graph at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5756. It seems that NOAA does not publish the chain of raw data and analysis programs needed to create that graph. One has to trust NOAA on this matter. It also seems that conflicting results are being found by others.

I couldn't find the graph in the link you gave, but I would like to read through it carefully later. It looks like an interesting site. Do they have alternative data?

I for one don't trust this graph nor the group that produced it. However I don't spend much time analyzing it, because (1) it doesn't seem to be something that I can do much about in the larger sense, and (2) it doesn't seem to be something that would motivate significant changes in my personal efforts to get by as best I can.

The world economy is like global warming on item (1). I don't see much opportunity to affect it either.

However my adaptions over the last half century and continuing to changing economic circumstances have and continue to motivate quite significant changes in my life.

Fair enough.

I'll just conclude by noting that this global warming or climate change issue sets off my mass hysteria hoax alarm.

I understand what you mean about hysteria. But why would an agency risk its credibility by publishing misleading results? Results like that wouldn't have gotten them any love from the previous administration. How would a letter to congress like that one help anything? It contained nothing to refute the basic claims of global warming and is generally misleading. It makes unsubstantiated assertions. It also misrepresents both the nature of scientific proof and the way progress is made though scientific method. Lastly, it is signed by people who either have contributed nothing to the field or have an obvious conflicts of interest. It is the kind of thing on which conspiracy theories made.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

But why would an agency risk its credibility by publishing misleading results? Results like that wouldn't have gotten them any love from the previous administration.

Laura Bush and Rush Limbaugh may curry the favor of George Bush, but pretty clearly many people have other priorities. ;)

It sure looks to me like someone, some power or some group has been leaning heavily on this global warming issue for the past decade. I tend to follow the money. So far, the results seem to include the recent passage of a bill in the U.S. House that will give Goldman Sachs a lead position in a new trillion dollar "carbon credit" market. Other results include calls for increased world organization control over energy and CO2 emissions and such.

[radon]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

Laura Bush and Rush Limbaugh may curry the favor of George Bush, but pretty clearly many people have other priorities. ;)

It sure looks to me like someone, some power or some group has been leaning heavily on this global warming issue for the past decade. I tend to follow the money. So far, the results seem to include the recent passage of a bill in the U.S. House that will give Goldman Sachs a lead position in a new trillion dollar "carbon credit" market. Other results include calls for increased world organization control over energy and CO2 emissions and such.

This would seem likely if we started getting alarming data now, but this has been 15 years in the making. Is GS capable of planing and executing multidecade strategic arcs including manipulating political policies? I'd like to think they are merely being opportunistic when they see a sympathetic administration and a lucrative scenario fall into their lap, the alternative is worse than global warming.

[TheServant]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

I would be most interested in what people think is driving the current economic policy shift to clean...renewable energy, which seems as though it will replace, rival, or mesh with the dying form of our FIRE economy.

Is it because the policy makers view the effects of "climate change" as dire and immediate? Is it because they view Peak Oil as an immediate problem in that everyone is toast if something isn't done? Is it that they view Peak Cheap Oil as the problem in that we, as an oil dependent nation and net oil importer, are toast? ...or maybe they feel it is just the right thing to do for the environment?

By "they" I mean the majority of policy makers that pass or defeat any of the upcoming economic legislation. Cap and Trade is the obvious example in the near term, but I am also interested in the overall movement during the next decade(s).

I figure it will be important as a long term investor to better understand the motivation in this shift to clean/renewable energy in order to get an idea of how "politically" sustainable this paradigm shift will be. What if the climate goes through a significant cooling cycle into the 2020s. Will this undermine the will to undertake this vast challenge? What if a group of oil fields the size of 100 Saudi Arabia's is discovered in North America? Will this change the direction of energy policy? ...or in the Russian Arctic? What then?

I realize this is drifting slightly off the thread topic of debating the validity of Global Warming, but figured it might be an interesting sidebar.

[c1ue]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

I would be very interested in hearing other opinions about what may be the force behind the current shift toward this new economic paradigm, or put simply, why is this the next bubble that seems to have been chosen?

Apparently you haven't read the earlier posts in this thread. I suggest a review.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

This would seem likely if we started getting alarming data now, but this has been 15 years in the making. Is GS capable of planing and executing multidecade strategic arcs including manipulating political policies?

Human civilization is capable of getting that far off the rails, for that long, easily enough. I'll agree with you that the idea that we'd have been fine except for the Evil Goldmanites seems unlikely, too conspiratorial. (Maybe that's why I liked that idea ;).)

Rather I suspect it works something more like the following.

Those men who are the most driven to acquire wealth and power will tune in early to ideas bubbling in the cauldron of discussion which they sense can be used to gain them the most leverage and power. Such men are not by nature humble truth seeking scientists or technicians. Rather they are heat seeking missiles; the heat they seek is power. They hire wonks and other less ambitious worker bees who will provide such technical supporting evidence as they find useful. They will squelch, distract, suppress, ignore or destroy worker bees who get in the way. Goldman certainly attracts its share of such alpha males. Major national government (beauracratic, legislative, executive, judicial and regulatory), international, non-governmental (NGO), financial, and corporate power positions also attract such alpha males.

Ideas that can justify aggrandizing power can flourish in this petri dish of ambition, with little (more likely negative) correlation to whether those ideas would survive an honest scientific debate. Any person or organization that would impede the growth of such ideas is co-opted (money talks) or marginalized or destroyed or bullhorned into oblivion. Universities, research journals, main stream media, Hollywood, public education, church leaders, peer reviewing of research work, web logs, and wikipedia pages can all be sucked into the orbit of such power black holes. Entire careers of more naive wonks and technicians can rise and fall in such gravity fields of power.

Michael Milken (the bond king) and Henry Paulson and most any CEO of Goldman or JPMorgan are examples of such alpha males. The CIA and Defense Department seem to hold less public but more lethal variants. Putin and Soros play at these levels. Whether Bill Clinton played at the top of such levels or was a deeply flawed pawn of them is not obvious to me. I suspect George Bush the Lessor is more a pawn of them; his father George Bush the Greater more a player. Obama has been groomed for years as a teleprompter for the powerful. JFK likely crossed the powerful; his death served as a warning to future Presidents. The audacious false flag operation of 9/11 (and perhaps London's 7/7 as well) put this dangerous power and scope on display for all with eyes to see.

... so, no, it's not just Goldman Sachs ... not in my jaundiced view.

I really need to PhotoShop a tinfoil hat for my cow avatar someday.

[cmalbatros]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

Much of the data "Global Warming" people are using is not the same as before the collapse of the USSR, in that they closed down many of their Siberian weather stations to save money so therefore the data shows warmer temps and the "urban heat island effect" can make the figures look higher than they actually are. And now GS is in on the ground floor of the carbon credit bubble and obviously has congress in its back pocket there will be more draconian actions to come with "Profit" for a select few being the key driving force.:mad:

[Roughneck]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

A friend of mine with some rural property was contacted about selling his "carbon credits" over a year ago. That's a pretty good indication to me that the folks with money in the game are betting cap and trade is a done deal. I'm just really surprised that most of the left leaning, allways looking for some grand conspiracy folks can't see why global warming has become the crisis dojour. There is a lot of money to be made by taxing energy and trading credits. For the government and the private sector. Plus it is the only way to make "green" energy options viable. On the subject of computer models, they are only as good as the data inputed and one wrong variable can have dramatic effects on the prediction. IMHO we should not be making public policy based on models, they are too unreliable and variable.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

Much of the data "Global Warming" people are using is not the same as before the collapse of the USSR, in that they closed down many of their Siberian weather stations to save money so therefore the data shows warmer temps and the "urban heat island effect" can make the figures look higher than they actually are. And now GS is in on the ground floor of the carbon credit bubble and obviously has congress in its back pocket there will be more draconian actions to come with "Profit" for a select few being the key driving force.:mad:

Just the simple act of constructing a building nearby a climate substation, even just constructing an unheated garage or unairconditioned garage, will affect the temperature readings taken in the climate substation. The bias at night, even in the hottest desert, is to shield the substation from radiating heat to the night sky. So the bias is to warmer temperature readings.

Have you seen how cities have grown on this planet recently? Former camel stops like Doha, Qatar or Riyad, Saudi-Arabia are now gigantic metropolisis. Just the physics of sheltering climate substations from the bitter cold of the Earth's upper atmosphere would force higher nighttime temperature readings in such stations.... No matter how hot the temperature readings may be, even at Doha or Riyad, the bias is to even higher nighttime temperatures.

Climate modellers at NOAA or NASA, at the United Nations Building, wherever they are, would do well to think more about the quality of their raw data before they go off and make statements about so-called global warming--- and then claim that the matter is "settled". And climate modellers would do well to think more about the urbanization that is going on right now, nearly everywhere on this planet, before they use their climate models to scare the public and scare the Congress of the U.S. into passing ridiculous cap-and-trade legislation.

[Munger]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

Just the simple act of constructing a building nearby a climate substation, even just constructing an unheated garage or unairconditioned garage, will affect the temperature readings taken in the climate substation. The bias at night, even in the hottest desert, is to shield the substation from radiating heat to the night sky. So the bias is to warmer temperature readings.

Have you seen how cities have grown on this planet recently? Former camel stops like Doha, Qatar or Riyad, Saudi-Arabia are now gigantic metropolisis. Just the physics of sheltering climate substations from the bitter cold of the Earth's upper atmosphere would force higher nighttime temperature readings in such stations.... No matter how hot the temperature readings may be, even at Doha or Riyad, the bias is to even higher nighttime temperatures.

Climate modellers at NOAA or NASA, wherever they are, would do well to think more about the quality of their raw data before they go off and make statements about so-called global warming--- and then claim that the matter is "settled".

How you could read the interview with Dr. Schmidt and come away with the impression that he is naive of the possibility that temperature readings taken from a city might not be fully accurate is beyond me.

First, again, he is not using correlation data in building these models, but the raw, physical processes. You don't need to account for the error in making measurements in a city when you are using the well-understood chemical and physical process of evaporation etc in building models.

Second, he states repeatedly that he uses Bayesian methods (among other things) to quantitatively asses models' predictive ability. That you think a guy like this would go to these lengths to assess the quality of various models and not account for something as simple as the city-effect of tempreature is beyond me. Seriously - high school kids are familiar with the effect of increased temperatures in and around cities - you really think people who have studied this stuff for decades have failed to account for it?

You can assume these people are idiots if you want. I don't buy it. Like I said before, when someone believes something first and looks for data to support it second, there is no amount of discussion that is going to change his or her mind. It's all too easy to decrease the signal to noise ratio.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

How you could read the interview with Dr. Schmidt and come away with the impression that he is naive of the possibility that temperature readings taken from a city might not be fully accurate is beyond me.

First, again, he is not using correlation data in building these models, but the raw, physical processes. You don't need to account for the error in making measurements in a city when you are using the well-understood chemical and physical process of evaporation etc in building models.

Second, he states repeatedly that he uses Bayesian methods (among other things) to quantitatively asses models' predictive ability. That you think a guy like this would go to these lengths to assess the quality of various models and not account for something as simple as the city-effect of tempreature is beyond me. Seriously - high school kids are familiar with the effect of increased temperatures in and around cities - you really think people who have studied this stuff for decades have failed to account for it?

You can assume these people are idiots if you want. I don't buy it. Like I said before, when someone believes something first and looks for data to support it second, there is no amount of discussion that is going to change his or her mind. It's all too easy to decrease the signal to noise ratio.

Excuse me????? "Am I reading this right?"

The world has just experienced the damage that faulty econometric modelling by the Federal Reserve Bank has done to the world economy. We are now in depression, just having witnessed a crash much more severe, much steeper than the Crash of '29.

Have you forgotten Alan Greenspan and his Greenspanese? Have you forgotten the lesson: no-one could understand Greenspanese; no-one dared question Alan Greenspan; the econometric models at the Fed were unquestionable; no-one knew that housing deflation could ever really occur; and no-one could imagine ( or dared image ) that the variables upon which the econometric models at the Fed were based would work differently in a housing deflation than in a housing inflation?

Do you think the field of climatology is that different than the field of economics? Isn't the lesson that critical thinking has to be made, even at the highest levels, by anyone, regardless of who they are?

Dr. Munger, I have questions to ask the global climate modellers of to-day, especially the confident ones; the ones who say that the issue of man-made global warming is "settled" and due to carbon in the atmosphere.

I like to think and ask questions. And I have some questions to ask global climate modellers of to-day, especially Dr. Schmidt at NASA.

[radon]

Re: Interview with a Climate Scientist

A friend of mine with some rural property was contacted about selling his "carbon credits" over a year ago. That's a pretty good indication to me that the folks with money in the game are betting cap and trade is a done deal. I'm just really surprised that most of the left leaning, allways looking for some grand conspiracy folks can't see why global warming has become the crisis dojour. There is a lot of money to be made by taxing energy and trading credits. For the government and the private sector. Plus it is the only way to make "green" energy options viable. On the subject of computer models, they are only as good as the data inputed and one wrong variable can have dramatic effects on the prediction. IMHO we should not be making public policy based on models, they are too unreliable and variable.

Sounds like this could have some unintended consequences. Rising prices of AG land could cause issues, especially if you are holding it just for the carbon benefit.