Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The Global Warming Pause

An interesting discussion here.

The bottom line:
(1) the long-run trend of warming since the late 19th century is real, but climate science seems to be in its infancy and much is not properly understood;

(2) the IPCC’s climate models that were used to predict the rise in global temperatures (CMIP-5 being the model used in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report of 2013) have been revealed to be wrong in their predictions;

(3) there has been either a flattening out of global temperatures or a deceleration in the rate of warming from about 2000 to 2014, as can be seen in the data here;

(4) some think the changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) explain this pause, and some think even other factors are also cooling the planet. More radical critics suggest that there could be a much larger natural contribution to, and cause of, the long-run warming trend in addition to man-made greenhouse gases, and current climate models are very badly flawed;

(5) but even if the cooling effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has ended and an acceleration in global temperatures has resumed, it appears that the IPCC’s climate models are still wrong in their predictions, and governments are trying to formulate policies on the basis of inaccurate models.
I am afraid this whole business reminds me of neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is our mainstream economic orthodoxy but the emperor is naked.

The neoclassical models are abysmal garbage, and our governments design policies that turn out to be catastrophic precisely because they are using abysmal garbage for models.

I would like to think our climate science is much better than neoclassical economics, but in the end I haven’t the necessary background knowledge. If climate models are badly flawed, then it follows that government policies designed from those incorrect models may be badly flawed too.

6 comments:

  1. The main Government policies in relation to climate change merely involves limits/quotas to CO2 emissions, none of this information here would impact that so much, as the Government policies involve generic solutions rather than one with enough specificity to be uprooted by potentially inaccurate models - which are to be expected of course, science is about converging toward the truth.
    It would be disastrous for people to take this information to mean that CO2 emissions therefore do nothing dramatic to our atmosphere - that would be...well...neoclassical. Seeing as the vast majority of peer reviewed scientific journals (strong consensus) praise climate models as being very accurate for use.
    The neoclassical crowd can't deal with the fact that capitalism has to be regulated to deal with the environmentally destructive externalities of individualist liberty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For pity's sake. Neo classicals know about externalities.

      (Ken B on a strange computer)

      Delete
    2. You're right, Neo classicals do know about externalities, I think they just often ignore them when it comes to the environment (fracking, climate change, etc). If this is about the most effective way to distribute shares of resources - this seems to be very important to take into account.
      If some are hammering a concrete ceiling we are all under, that's one thing, but if most ceiling analysts say that the thing you think is concrete is not, it is actually glass! - that should not be ignored, it affects all of us - our liberty, our voluntary decision making, our chance to not be interfered with.
      The vast majority that I see (maybe I'm not looking far enough?) don't seem to take environmental findings very seriously.
      Individualist policies can be difficult under a glass ceiling.

      -- This is not necessarily you 'Ken B on a strange computer'.

      (Original anonymous commenter)

      J.M

      Delete
    3. You're right, Neo classicals do know about externalities, I think they just often ignore them when it comes to the environment (fracking, climate change, etc). If this is about the most effective way to distribute shares of resources - this seems to be very important to take into account.
      If some are hammering a concrete ceiling we are all under, that's one thing, but if most ceiling analysts say that the thing you think is concrete is not, it is actually glass! - that should not be ignored, it affects all of us - our liberty, our voluntary decision making, our chance to not be interfered with.
      The vast majority that I see (maybe I'm not looking far enough?) don't seem to take environmental findings very seriously.
      Individualist policies can be difficult under a glass ceiling.

      -- This is not necessarily you 'Ken B on a strange computer'.

      (Original anonymous commenter)

      J.M

      Delete
  2. The main issue with climate modeling is that its difficult to work out where the energy will show up. There are also obviously gaps in the temperature change estimates which is what the dispute about warming trends is about. The most clear correspondence between forecast and actuals will be ocean temperature trends but these are not long.

    More importantly there are real scientific reasons to know its happening.

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  3. Hahaha! Yes, I figured out ages ago that this was probably a crock. But I'd never start saying it publicly. You can literally lose your job saying this stuff if you work in academia or government agencies and don't have tenure/a permanent contract.

    The best and most comprehensive "down the middle", non-biased assessment of the contemporary climate science around global warming is Donald Rapp's 'Assessing Climate Change'. It is technical yet readable. I highly recommend it.

    http://www.amazon.com/Assessing-Climate-Change-Temperatures-Environmental/dp/3642019870

    Very pricey though. So order it through the library or search out a PDF online. I think Rapp is a NASA scientist or something. He's also pretty left-wing and wrote a fairly okay book on asset price bubbles in the Galbraithian tradition.

    Here is an interview -- although he is a far better writer than he is a speaker:

    http://www.thespaceshow.com/show/13-jun-2008/broadcast-960-special-edition

    ReplyDelete