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The author's claim is this, and if true there is merit to listening --- Indeed there is rarely merit to not listening. Science is all about observation and p

The author's claim is this, and if true there is merit to listening --- Indeed there is rarely merit to not listening. Science is all about observation and probability. EDIT: although clever political framing can skew naive readers away from truths, which is one of the article's meta topics. --- "I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax. But my research led me to a conclusion that many climate campaigners find unacceptable: There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. This is a topic I’ve studied and published on as much as anyone over two decades. My conclusion might be wrong, but I think I’ve earned the right to share this research without risk to my career."

triplesec 10y ago
On the other hand, the claim in the following quotation is logically flawed. 'True' and 'no evidence' are, importantly, not opposites: 'I was right to question the IPCC’s 2007 report, which included a graph purporting to show that disaster costs were rising due to global temperature increases. The graph was later revealed to have been based on invented and inaccurate information, as I documented in my book “The Climate Fix.” The insurance industry scientist Robert-Muir Wood of Risk Management Solutions had smuggled the graph into the IPCC report. He explained in a public debate with me in London in 2010 that he had included the graph and misreferenced it because he expected future research to show a relationship between increasing disaster costs and rising temperatures. When his research was eventually published in 2008, well after the IPCC report, it concluded the opposite: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses.” Whoops.'
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  What is the logic flaw? No evidence to support a position is enough to exclude it. Even though you are right, it doesn't mean it is proven false. It does mean no evidence of it being true.
  - triplesec 10y ago
    'X is true' 'X is false' 'X is not proven to be true or false' are all different statements. He is committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. If OTOH he wishes to claim X is false he should say it was proven false. But I infer he didn't have such evidence, just that the committee had found no supporting evidence. Of course, in science truth is a probabilistic concept, but here we don't have the figures. I'd also like to read a response from other climate scientists or journalists to see if there's a part of the story he's omitting from his framing here.
    - WillPostForFood 10y ago
      I agree with you what you are saying, but at least in the WSJ article, he doesn't claim it was "proven false" so the fallacy doesn't apply. He is being fair, and quotes the report which simply says "insufficient evidence". But that is enough to exclude from positive claims, even though it doesn't disprove it.
      - triplesec 10y ago
        The second paragraph of the quotation begins: 'When his research was eventually published in 2008, well after the IPCC report, it concluded the opposite:' So he does claim that these are opposites. That is my problem with his argument as presented.
        inimino 10y ago
        "There is statistically strong evidence of X" and "there isn't" are opposites. I think you're perhaps reading it over-pedantically.
        WillPostForFood 10y ago
        OK, I see where you are coming from, and it is a fair interpretation. I just don't read opposite as equal to false. I read it the opposite of a proven claim is an unproven claim, not a false claim. But I think this is a distraction - even if he meant it as proven false, and fell into fallacious thinking, he should simply be corrected, not vilified, not investigated by the government, and not hounded out of a job by a billionaire activist.
- michaelkeenan 10y ago
  I think you're mistakenly interpreting that quotation as claiming that there is no relationship between temperature increase and catastrophe losses. But it instead makes narrower claims, such as: he was right to question the report; the graph was based on inaccurate information; the later data didn't show a relationship between temperature increase and catastrophe losses. If he'd written something like "Because there is no relationship between temperature increase and catastrophes, as proven by the insufficient evidence to support that, I was right to question the report", then you'd be right. But he didn't say that. I think he's only saying that he was right to question the report because that graph was inaccurate and invented, and because later data showed there was insufficient evidence for the relationship it was supposed to show. If reports shouldn't contain inaccurate and invented data, especially invented data that isn't similar to empirical data, then he was right to question it.
  - triplesec 10y ago
    If read that way I agree with you. Our readings may vary, since reference in English is not fixed.
salmonet 10y ago
Even if opposing viewpoints are likely incorrect, there is some risk to omitting sections of the climate change discussion. There are many "things you can't say" about climate change.
- A1phab3t 10y ago
  And yet I constantly see those "things you can't say" being said in the public mainstream media. Like the Wall St. Journal. The claim that dissent is being suppressed rings hollow to me. Just because that dissent is in opposition to a lot of other voices-- should it be given equal weight or "volume" in our discourse, or proportionate weight?
inimino 10y ago
Ah, the messy intersection of politics, journalism, and science. It looks (from one side) like an example of journalism constructing a narrative and suppressing evidence that doesn't fit. Obviously this doesn't help the cause beyond the short term.
- wpietri 10y ago
  I think that's too simple a reading. There is a whole industry of people whose job it is to create doubt about science so as to prevent action that might harm those who pay them. It started with decades of denial that cigarettes could possibly cause harm, but went from there: https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threate... I'm glad that a guy with a political science degree is interested in scientific topics. But I think he'd be a little more sensitive to the broader problem of non-experts jumping in to an area that has become highly politicized, and where industry has such a strong short-term incentive to undermine the appearance of scientific consensus.
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    You are totally right, and bad science should be vigorously debunked. But that doesn't justify the suppression of dissenting views. Science isn't static, there needs to be free debate.
lisper 10y ago
> There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. Try telling that to the residents of California or Gatlinburg, TN. OK, anecdotes do not constitute data. So here's some data: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html Look at the number of acres burned, which is the metric that matters. The upward trend over the past few decades is unmistakable even without fancy statistical tests. And that's just what I was able to find in five minutes on a ridiculously slow internet connection. It's hard to tell the difference between "there is scant evidence" and "there wasn't any evidence where I happened to look for it." [UPDATE:] Here is some evidence that the author is being deliberately deceptive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156
- inimino 10y ago
  Sorry, but where is wildfire in "hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought"? This kind of dismissal of a no-doubt nuanced opinion on a scientific issue based on "what you found in five minutes on the internet" brings literally nothing to the conversation.
  - lisper 10y ago
    The increase in wildfires can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas. The reason that droughts don't appear to be getting worse overall is that the rain is moving from one place to another. So some places that used to get more water are now getting less, and places that used to get less water are now getting more. But this is still a problem because it's very hard to move agricultural infrastructure to chase the rain.
    - inimino 10y ago
      > can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas Among many other possible explanations. Look, you wanted to show the author wrong, for whatever reasons, and you went looking for something and went with the first thing you found. Now, rather than admitting there was nothing there, you really want to argue about the causes of wildfires? Your point was not a good one. Just admit it.
cm2187 10y ago
In fact this is why I take the fear mongering around climate change with a pinch of salt. I agree with Popper's definition of science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability A discipline is scientific if it is possible to challenge it, if it can be proven wrong (it doesn't mean it will, but there is a way to prove it wrong). If the discipline is using political pressure to prevent anyone from doing so, it cannot be called science anymore. A political movement would be a more appropriate term. And more generally, my profession (finance) is making extensive use of mathematical models to model something too complex to be understood perfectly (financial markets / the economy). But we know our models suck, because we could do experiment on them, we can test them against reality. We know we can build models or investment strategies that do great in back-testing but fall apart as soon as they go live (I have seen that so many times first hand). I give very little credibility to someone who comes up with a complex mathematical model that pretends it will predict the climate in 30 years, knowing that we will only know if his model was reliable in 30 years, we have no way to test it now. Therefore it cannot be falsified and therefore I don't think it is science.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Any prediction requires us to wait to see what really happens. I don't think it's fair to say that 30 years is too long to wait and that it's therefore not falsifiable. Science has made claims in the past that took much longer than that to prove false, but we still accept them as falsifiable and that they were valid science at the time.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    What sort of claim do you have in mind? I can think of scientific theories that have been proven wrong after a long time, but they haven't been proven wrong because it was impossible to prove them wrong immediately. Only because it took so long to come up with an experiment / better theory which in insight could have been done on day 1. This is not the same as telling everyone "I have a model, my back-testings are telling me it works, I will only be able to prove it right (or wrong) in 30 years, but you need to take actions now based on what this model says".

triplesec 10y ago

On the other hand, the claim in the following quotation is logically flawed. 'True' and 'no evidence' are, importantly, not opposites: 'I was right to question the IPCC’s 2007 report, which included a graph purporting to show that disaster costs were rising due to global temperature increases. The graph was later revealed to have been based on invented and inaccurate information, as I documented in my book “The Climate Fix.” The insurance industry scientist Robert-Muir Wood of Risk Management Solutions had smuggled the graph into the IPCC report. He explained in a public debate with me in London in 2010 that he had included the graph and misreferenced it because he expected future research to show a relationship between increasing disaster costs and rising temperatures. When his research was eventually published in 2008, well after the IPCC report, it concluded the opposite: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses.” Whoops.'

WillPostForFood 10y ago
What is the logic flaw? No evidence to support a position is enough to exclude it. Even though you are right, it doesn't mean it is proven false. It does mean no evidence of it being true.
- triplesec 10y ago
  'X is true' 'X is false' 'X is not proven to be true or false' are all different statements. He is committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. If OTOH he wishes to claim X is false he should say it was proven false. But I infer he didn't have such evidence, just that the committee had found no supporting evidence. Of course, in science truth is a probabilistic concept, but here we don't have the figures. I'd also like to read a response from other climate scientists or journalists to see if there's a part of the story he's omitting from his framing here.
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    I agree with you what you are saying, but at least in the WSJ article, he doesn't claim it was "proven false" so the fallacy doesn't apply. He is being fair, and quotes the report which simply says "insufficient evidence". But that is enough to exclude from positive claims, even though it doesn't disprove it.
    - triplesec 10y ago
      The second paragraph of the quotation begins: 'When his research was eventually published in 2008, well after the IPCC report, it concluded the opposite:' So he does claim that these are opposites. That is my problem with his argument as presented.
      - inimino 10y ago
        "There is statistically strong evidence of X" and "there isn't" are opposites. I think you're perhaps reading it over-pedantically.
      - WillPostForFood 10y ago
        OK, I see where you are coming from, and it is a fair interpretation. I just don't read opposite as equal to false. I read it the opposite of a proven claim is an unproven claim, not a false claim. But I think this is a distraction - even if he meant it as proven false, and fell into fallacious thinking, he should simply be corrected, not vilified, not investigated by the government, and not hounded out of a job by a billionaire activist.
michaelkeenan 10y ago
I think you're mistakenly interpreting that quotation as claiming that there is no relationship between temperature increase and catastrophe losses. But it instead makes narrower claims, such as: he was right to question the report; the graph was based on inaccurate information; the later data didn't show a relationship between temperature increase and catastrophe losses. If he'd written something like "Because there is no relationship between temperature increase and catastrophes, as proven by the insufficient evidence to support that, I was right to question the report", then you'd be right. But he didn't say that. I think he's only saying that he was right to question the report because that graph was inaccurate and invented, and because later data showed there was insufficient evidence for the relationship it was supposed to show. If reports shouldn't contain inaccurate and invented data, especially invented data that isn't similar to empirical data, then he was right to question it.
- triplesec 10y ago
  If read that way I agree with you. Our readings may vary, since reference in English is not fixed.

salmonet 10y ago

Even if opposing viewpoints are likely incorrect, there is some risk to omitting sections of the climate change discussion. There are many "things you can't say" about climate change.

A1phab3t 10y ago
And yet I constantly see those "things you can't say" being said in the public mainstream media. Like the Wall St. Journal. The claim that dissent is being suppressed rings hollow to me. Just because that dissent is in opposition to a lot of other voices-- should it be given equal weight or "volume" in our discourse, or proportionate weight?

inimino 10y ago

Ah, the messy intersection of politics, journalism, and science. It looks (from one side) like an example of journalism constructing a narrative and suppressing evidence that doesn't fit. Obviously this doesn't help the cause beyond the short term.

wpietri 10y ago
I think that's too simple a reading. There is a whole industry of people whose job it is to create doubt about science so as to prevent action that might harm those who pay them. It started with decades of denial that cigarettes could possibly cause harm, but went from there: https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threatens/dp/019530067X https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threate... I'm glad that a guy with a political science degree is interested in scientific topics. But I think he'd be a little more sensitive to the broader problem of non-experts jumping in to an area that has become highly politicized, and where industry has such a strong short-term incentive to undermine the appearance of scientific consensus.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  You are totally right, and bad science should be vigorously debunked. But that doesn't justify the suppression of dissenting views. Science isn't static, there needs to be free debate.

lisper 10y ago

> There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. Try telling that to the residents of California or Gatlinburg, TN. OK, anecdotes do not constitute data. So here's some data: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html Look at the number of acres burned, which is the metric that matters. The upward trend over the past few decades is unmistakable even without fancy statistical tests. And that's just what I was able to find in five minutes on a ridiculously slow internet connection. It's hard to tell the difference between "there is scant evidence" and "there wasn't any evidence where I happened to look for it." [UPDATE:] Here is some evidence that the author is being deliberately deceptive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13099156

inimino 10y ago
Sorry, but where is wildfire in "hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought"? This kind of dismissal of a no-doubt nuanced opinion on a scientific issue based on "what you found in five minutes on the internet" brings literally nothing to the conversation.
- lisper 10y ago
  The increase in wildfires can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas. The reason that droughts don't appear to be getting worse overall is that the rain is moving from one place to another. So some places that used to get more water are now getting less, and places that used to get less water are now getting more. But this is still a problem because it's very hard to move agricultural infrastructure to chase the rain.
  - inimino 10y ago
    > can be largely attributed to the increase in droughts in some areas Among many other possible explanations. Look, you wanted to show the author wrong, for whatever reasons, and you went looking for something and went with the first thing you found. Now, rather than admitting there was nothing there, you really want to argue about the causes of wildfires? Your point was not a good one. Just admit it.

cm2187 10y ago

In fact this is why I take the fear mongering around climate change with a pinch of salt. I agree with Popper's definition of science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability A discipline is scientific if it is possible to challenge it, if it can be proven wrong (it doesn't mean it will, but there is a way to prove it wrong). If the discipline is using political pressure to prevent anyone from doing so, it cannot be called science anymore. A political movement would be a more appropriate term. And more generally, my profession (finance) is making extensive use of mathematical models to model something too complex to be understood perfectly (financial markets / the economy). But we know our models suck, because we could do experiment on them, we can test them against reality. We know we can build models or investment strategies that do great in back-testing but fall apart as soon as they go live (I have seen that so many times first hand). I give very little credibility to someone who comes up with a complex mathematical model that pretends it will predict the climate in 30 years, knowing that we will only know if his model was reliable in 30 years, we have no way to test it now. Therefore it cannot be falsified and therefore I don't think it is science.

Hondor 10y ago
Any prediction requires us to wait to see what really happens. I don't think it's fair to say that 30 years is too long to wait and that it's therefore not falsifiable. Science has made claims in the past that took much longer than that to prove false, but we still accept them as falsifiable and that they were valid science at the time.
- cm2187 10y ago
  What sort of claim do you have in mind? I can think of scientific theories that have been proven wrong after a long time, but they haven't been proven wrong because it was impossible to prove them wrong immediately. Only because it took so long to come up with an experiment / better theory which in insight could have been done on day 1. This is not the same as telling everyone "I have a model, my back-testings are telling me it works, I will only be able to prove it right (or wrong) in 30 years, but you need to take actions now based on what this model says".