For the record, my vote is that this is pseudoscience. No theory, model, or testable predictions are presented. It is a non-falsifiable idea that is couched in such generic and vague terms that it could mean just about anything.
The article that the news story references was just published in Nature, which has been around since 1869, is peered reviewed, well-respected, oft-cited, and has many distinguished moments, including the initial publication of Watson and Crick's work on DNA. "pseudoscience" might be unfair. Nice object lesson in the "social structures for doing something just aren’t there" though.
Nature and Science in particular have been forced to retract many papers recently for failure to replicate. A short list of recent retracted Nature and Science papers:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/highly-cited...
http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/04/guest-post-accurate-i...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails...
And here is a recent climate paper by Gergis which was retracted after the blogosphere found flaws while attempting to replicate their work:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gerg...
All of those papers were beaten up after they were accepted because other scientists couldn't replicate their results. Perhaps we should see whether this too holds up to scrutiny for a few years before remaking the $100T world economy.
It's also interesting to note how the "auditors" compare to the scientists: while the scientists graciously send a thank you for pointing out a flaw and get to work on fixing it, the auditors seem almost entirely focused on crowing, getting a scalp and spreading conspiracy theories and innuendo. Interesting.
Regarding retraction, I think this is pretty unambiguous
http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/
Dear Stephen,
I am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the
Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th
century warming from an Australasian temperature
reconstruction spanning the last millennium’
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data
used in the study, which may affect the results. While the
paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data
were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we
discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the
final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection,
making this statement incorrect. Although this is an
unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have
implications for the results reported in the study. The
journal has been contacted and the publication of the study
has been put on hold.
This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific
studies through independent analysis of data and methods
strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has
been identified and the results are being re-checked.
We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on
your ClimateAudit web site.
We would like to thank you and the participants at the
ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which
also identified this data processing issue.
Thanks, David Karoly
Print publication of scientific study put on hold
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data
used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century
warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction
spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael
Neukom, Stephen Phipps, Ailie Gallant and David Karoly,
accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.
We are currently reviewing the data and results.
So paper authors usually are very resistant to bugfixes, as they are career ending.In this case Karoly severely damaged Gergis' career and may have hurt his own. From a purely self-interested perspective he should have just stonewalled the "denialists" like Michael Mann has. But he was honest as a scientist.
Much better to move towards an open source culture where a "paper" is just the documentation for a major version number associated with a data/code repository.
because the trait they have in common is denial of climate crisis, urgency, or climate change validity
> and attacked from many sides
because the majority of them either (a) lack relevant expertise, or (b) are blatantly on the payroll of fossil fuel & extraction businesses, or billionaires derived thereof. And so if you take a stance from a position where you appear to lack credibility or objectivity, and you do it repeatedly, and because the stakes are indeed huge and world-wide, you're going to be attacked. fair enough.
> even though they are the only ones who publish full source code, push for raw data release and actually try to replicate results
utter bullshit and you know it
> and actually try to replicate results. We are making $100T decisions on the basis of $1M papers and closed datasets.
hint: the existing "$100T" world economy is already the result of the combined actions of a bunch of people working from $1M papers and closed datasets. When BP decided to do the Maconda well and Deepwater Horizon, and decided how they did it, and weighed the risks/rewards, do you think they shared the data with the whole world beforehand and let us all submit our vote on whether to do it and precisely how to do it? Hell no. Repeat this pattern ad nauseum across the entire world economy, every day, 24/7. Except if BP makes an oopsie with Maconda the worst-case downside is ruining merely the entire Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and fishing/tourism industry, perhaps for only 30 years, maybe -- worstcase. But in the case of climate change, the worst-case downside scenario is fucking up the entire Earth, for everybody, potentially irreversibly. That's bad. That's really fucking bad. And you're right we want the science on it to be good. But we also want to make sure that it's only people with relevant expertise who are making the recommendations, and not people with clear financial incentives to keep their heads buried in the sand until it's too late. You can be skeptical all you want about a doctor's recommendation, but if given a choice between following the advice of a doctor, or a crazy old lady across the street, I know who I'm sticking with. And we're not even talking about only relying on one particular individual doctor, but on the consensus view of a large majority of practicing, experienced doctors.
For a related anecdote: I've lost track of how many weather records I've heard broken in the last few years. And I've lived in Colorado most of my life, and am personally witnessing some of the weirdest weather patterns I've seen in just the last year and a half. We had about 3 days of nearly constant rain last year -- this is in arid sunny Colorado -- it flooded a basement room because the ground was so saturated. I've witnessed many weird days with super strong winds and unusually colored skies, winds reminiscent of downtown Chicago. Record wildfires. Record tornado touchdowns and devastation. Hurricanes. Iceberg melting and ice shelf collapsing/shrinkage. Is it all just a coincidence? Just a temporary blip and will go back to normal in a few years all by itself? Maybe. Is that the smart bet to make? Because that's what we'll be doing. Making a bet. With the entire planet, all our our cities (especially coastal cities) and ecosystems AND economy, all at stake. I'd rather bet on the science folks than the fossil money folks.
[T]he specific impact of an erroneous method on a practical data set is hard to predict. In our case, it does not mean that a given reconstruction is necessarily an “artifact” of red noise, since a biased procedure will produce a Stick from an actual Stick signal. (If the “signal” is a Stick, the biased procedure will typically enhance the Stick.) The problem is that a biased method can produce a Stick from red noise as well and therefore not much significance can be placed to a Stick obtained from a flawed method.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gerg...
I agree that McIntyre's tone is ungracious, and fear it may be counterproductive, but I don't think that the Karoly's email was that gracious either. In particular, he did not thank anyone for pointing out a flaw, rather for "also identifying" it, moments after it had been coincidentally found by the original authors. Nowhere does he allow that the auditors provided any new information.
Rather than politely accepting this face saving maneuver (a commenter compared it to the polite fiction of not noticing that someone farted at a cocktail party) McIntyre impolitely, but in my opinion, accurately, calls out the lie and accuses him of failing to give proper credit. Here's the original in case anyone is interested in pursuing it themselves:
The link is to a website that clearly has the agenda of "anti-climate-crisis" and is run by a guy named Steve McIntyre, who, surprise surprise, appears to be from the mining and minerals exploration business, either as a finance guy or lawyer or both, per his own words here:
"Previously, I spent about 35 years in the mining and mineral exploration business. During the last 20 years of this, I worked in the micro-cap exploration business and have a great deal of practical experience in dealing with prospectus and securities issues from the company point of view. Concepts like audit trails, due diligence and full, true and plain disclosure become second nature when you work in such an environment. ............ For McIntyre, undertaking this project has required an unpaid leave of absence from his career in mineral exploration financing, at the cost of over a year’s foregone earnings so far." ............. Wikipedia: "Stephen McIntyre is a Canadian mathematician, former minerals prospector, and semi-retired mining consultant (...) In 2011 he became Chairman of the Board of Trelawney Mining and Exploration Inc."
Thus, probably a shill, and/or somebody with a financial incentive to hold his views, combined with a lack of relevant expertise. Bad combo. And unlikely to be trustable or objective.
I'll stick with the views of the vast majority of climate scientists, thank you very much. However imperfect and human they may be.
> Perhaps we should see whether this too holds up to scrutiny for a few years before remaking the $100T world economy.
That line is not a strong argument, in my judgement, particularly the last 5 words. To get real specific, if the implication is that:
(1) the total economy is $100T therefore we can't possibly change anything ... then, that argument is invalidated by the case that if we DON'T do anything, we may hurt or shrink that economy even more/worse than if we do take steps to address climate change. "We can't possibly make an incision in your skin, that could cause bleeding! Uh, there's a bullet lodged in your lung, you'll be much worse off if we DON'T remove it."
(2) a $100T world economy means if we were to add say a 10% overhead cost to the production of all those goods services, the economy would somehow collapse and disappear, with millions or billions laid off, dogs and cats living together, oh my! No, that's not how it would work. First off, costs always get passed on. If people still needed a given thing, they'd still get it. Maybe they get less of one thing and more of another. And any money spent to reduce pollution or recapture carbon, etc. is money STILL spent on goods & services, on jobs, etc., so it still goes into people's hands, to in turn be spent again on other things. It might be the case that the billionaires and multi-millionaires who make profits from the existing state of the fossil fuel industry might make less profits -- or, they might make the same, if they shifted what they produce or reduced costs in other ways. For example, perhaps the oil & coal industry becomes less profitable. But the solar & wind industries grow and become more profitable. On the net, on the whole, big picture, that could be break even or even overall much better for the world economy. And there's no technical reason why someone like, say, a Koch, who gets a large amount of his current wealth from the oil industry, couldn't also invest in renewables, or in climate change mitigation technologies, and end up just shifting his profit sources over to that. The filthy rich can stay filthy rich. The blue collar guy driving trucks or doing trainable equipment maintenance in the natural gas industry can instead do it in the solar/wind/tidal/geothermal industry, etc.
(3) remaking the $100T world economy is bad. Changes to our routines are bad! We shouldn't do that. ..... This is an invalid argument because the world economy is already changing. It's always in a constant state of continual change, anyway. Period. If anything, it's clearly not in a steady state, it's very chaotic, and the total nominal dollar size of the world economy just keeps growing and growing each year, seemingly without bound, just as the human population is growing. So it's already in a state of constant change, it's (roughly) growing without bound, and it already experiences retractions and booms and shocks. The climate science argument is, we might need to make certain changes in certain parts of our economy (not everything, just a subset of it), in order to prevent these other undesired things from happening, which could have a much bigger negative effect financially, and non-financially (quality of life terms, etc.)
(4) remaking $100T world economy is bad, we shouldn't remake it! Again invalid because the climate change case is not to completely remake it. It wouldn't need to change 100% into something radically different. Just change enough to (a) take us off a collision course, and (b) ideally shift the total human impact on the climate & ecosystems into something sustainable and balanced. It could be a gradual partial change. But the longer we wait, the bigger the changes might have to be, all at once, and that's our fault and the fault of the folks who keep fighting it or dragging their heels. Never exercise and then ignore those weird sensations in your chest and suddenly one day you'll be making a radical change to your own personal economy in the form of a hospital emergency trip.
Not picking on your personally, just this line of argument which I've seen made many times before on this issue.
Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to
drastically lower our population very quickly.
Show us the quote where he said that. You can't because he didn't. This is classic denialist logic.
First of all, that statement wasn't in the paper, but in a brief summary. And if you look at the context of it, and the other things said in the paper, the actual details, a more honest interpretation of that summary is that, regarding the climate issue, there would be beneficial effects if we could, say, emigrate out of and therefore de-populate more of the Earth's surface, to let it go back to it's natural state, and/or optimize the density in areas where it would be better for the climate due to system recovery/equilibrium effects, and economic effiencies in the systems that support civilization. And especially reduce the related resource consumption & related emissions due to that, which are the primary impacts, at a system level, of the large human population on the climate and ecosystems. Here's the following sentences in his summary, which you conveniently left out:
"More of us need to move to optimal areas at higher density and let parts of the planet recover. Folks like us have to be forced to be materially poorer, at least in the short term. We also need to invest a lot more in creating technologies to produce and distribute food without eating up more land and wild species. "
He did NOT say we need to KILL people. Or let them die. Indeed, the whole point of taking action is so that less people will die, and more people can lead better lives than otherwise. There are many ways of literally reducing the population that are relatively benign, such as pushing down on the global birth rate (through birth control or abstinance, for example, to take your pick between liberal-vs-conservative ponies), or in a more high-tech scenario, off-planet colonization (the whole SpaceX, Planetary Resources Inc. model). It's clear that these are scientists looking at systems and the big picture, and being a bit geeky. If you dig into the population numbers and years in their model, many of those "very bad, past sustainable" points are 40 years out and projections based on trends -- that's not overnight so not "quickly" in the layman's sense.
Here's a link directly to the actual paper in question. If you can cite or quote something in it explicitly that you think is bullshit, wrong, insane, reckless, etc. (and I'll temporarily overlook the fact that neither you or myself are climate scientists), please reply in a comment with it and I'll consider it: http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012...
As to peer-review, this was not published as either an "article" or "letter" (see: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2a_Manuscript_forma...) but as a "review", which is more or less just a published essay. As such it falls under a much different peer review guideline.
Even so, peer review is no surety of fact, far from it, it's nothing more than a signoff that the authors have seemingly followed the basic forms of reproducible scientific investigations. However, in this case I think that Nature has let down its readers even in publishing this essay as a "review".
There is nothing that is not vague and generic in this essay. There is no model here, no theory. And no predictions nor falsifiability. It is not science in any sense and should not be treated as science. At best it is the shadowy outline of a future theory, at worst it is politics, mysticism, and superstition masquerading as science. And yes, reprinted in one of the most prestigious science journals of our times. That doesn't make it better, that makes it worse.
Here's a high level intuitive argument: Imagine that lots of important parameters about the Earth's climate and ecosystems could be modeled using a bunch of differential equations. Right now, due to humans, our current state is deep in historically unexplored territory. To be safe, it makes sense to try to modify all the parameters we can back to where they were in case weird stuff happens in the unexplored territory.
For that, the reader should check the copious end notes.
I've commented on this before, but it bears repeating. Here is "Figure 2" from the article: http://i.imgur.com/Zi3uB.png. Neither axis is meaningful, they both lack a definition for what is being measured, let alone how, let alone how to sort it, even qualitatively. This is junk. It's no better than a diagram with "mood" on the y-axis and "emotional energy" on the x-axis, it's utterly, utterly meaningless.