This article started off strong. I particularly appreciate the links.
It went off course halfway through though, right after the "but that's misleading"
The 2nd half didn't substantiate itself at all and sounds like more nonsense from the carbon cult.
I assure you, I am quite sane. I am also quite skeptical of claims regarding anthropogenic warming, particularly since as you've previously noted, most of the people pushing the idea sound and act like some kind of pagan Gaia cult. So no, I don't see the situation as a croupier getting caught slipping extra aces in, I only see a bunch of doomsday nutcases repeatedly claiming that the world will end in a few years and trying to back that up with bad theory, manipulated data, worse models, claims that entirely normal events are abnormal, and deliberate alarmism & exaggeration even as their predictions fail. Sorry, but carbon claims, especially about extreme weather, fall squarely into "The boy who cried wolf" territory for me, they are presumed false upon sight. It's a breath of fresh air to me that somebody had the integrity to admit that the data not only doesn't prove those overblown claims, but statistically CANNOT prove them given the available sample size. THAT is good science.
So when you call that good science 'misleading', then offer no actual contrary evidence, it's YOU who loses credibility with me, not it.
The only issue I have with this is that the numbers in the blackjack analogy are not analogous.
If you gave us the total amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by all natural sources and used a proportionally appropriate number to represent that value for the amount of aces in the deck to begin with, and then calculated the percentage of those emissions that anthropogenic emissions represent, and then used a proportionally appropriate number of aces that the dealer slipped into the deck each, I suspect the number would be something like 0.0004 aces, not 4.
Give me that calculation and your blackjack analogy will illustrate something valuable, either to you or to me. One of us will be surprised by how many aces are being slipped in.
and was very pleased when I found this post in my inbox. Unfortunately, upon finishing the post I found myself largely agreeing with the comment by Steven above.
First, you attack a strawman which is always suspicious in debate. I do not recall Roger Pielke ever claiming that hurricanes are definitely not getting stronger. He has stuck to presenting the IPCC position and he also argues, very plausibly, that monetary damages caused by extreme weather events are a problematic measure of the physical intensity of these extreme weather events.
Second, you are addressing a problem that is so ridiculously unimportant with respect to public policy - namely that the observation that the IPCC does not actually consider it proven, given its methodology, that the increase in global surface temperatures has caused (in the strict scientific sense of the term) an increase in the intensity and / or frequency of hurricanes could be used in some kind of nefarious way which, however, you do not spell out. If that is not your motivation in writing the post, what was?
Third, which is it, actually, intensity or frequency? Sure, your article sticks to the "frequency" aspect throughout, but isn't it obvious that the intensity dimension needs to be addressed as well? If it is not addressed (which may be quite reasonable, I do not know that) shouldn't that choice be explained?
Fourth, the cutesy blackjack analogy is just that, cutesy. If all you do is rehash RJP material, why bother reading your Substack? I expect, at the very least, a statistically complete description of the hypothesis being tested and unter which conditions, if any, you are willing to reject the Null hypothesis. I would normally expect this to include a description of the type of (assumed) underlying distribution and an argument explaining why that is the right distribution to describe the frequency of hurricanes, the relevant parameters, the relevant input and output variables etc. I would also expect a similar description for the hypothesis testing for an increase in intensity including what kind of power you consider adequate.
Fifth, except for an almost legal-disclaimer-like statement at the very beginning, you completely ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to this topic. I think that I could probably pull together (and may yet do so, time permitting) a list of world-famous universities, "learned associations", research funding agencies, national and international government bureaucracies (other than the IPCC), as well as an enormous number of individual (climate) "scientists" that are all on the record as claiming that the relationship under discussion (plus a number of additional postulated links between warming and various parameters of interest) is proven beyond a scientific doubt and that anyone who claims otherwise should be banned from social media, participating in public discussions of any kind etc.etc. It seems to me that that is the first order problem, although I happily acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on this. (If and when I get around to establishing that list and I should have to acknowledge that the institutions and individuals referred to have, in fact, been more careful than I postulate here, I shall be in touch.)
As an addendum to V, assuming that I am correct with respect to the problem that people have in acknowledging the IPCC results - what could be the reason for that? They could be run-of-the-mill idiots (not likely) and they may not admit the nuance in the IPCC findings in that this nuance sheds doubt on the party line. I do not see any alternative plausible explanation and, contrary to the rule that one should not suspect malice to be at work when stupidity can fully explain the obversations, I think that we actually are dealing with a deliberate attempt to influence public discussion that deliberately does not make use of the best science available. Note that I am not claiming that this effort is coordinated by some sinister body; I do not think that a conspiracy in the normal understanding of the term is going on.
As addendum to the addendum: If a "scientist" cannot handle nuance, he or she should get the h*** out of science.
Sixth, I suspect (I deliberately write "suspect" since I am not sure that this suspicion is really an adequate description of your motivation - I would ask you to please accept my apology in case you can sincerely state that this suspicion is unfounded) that the supposed "causal" nature of the increase in the number of hurricanes is important to you because of your hobby horse (aerosols - all types - and bunker fuel in particular). There is nothing - zero - in your article in the way of scientific evidence as in data, cross-references etc. that supports your point. Your argument is pure hand-waving: "It's really plausible, so it must be true." Yeah ... we have had no shortage of that cavalier attitude to real science during the Covid pandemic and it has caused the credibility of the public health establishment to take a hell of a knock which it still needs to recover from. Do you really want to damage your credibility with more or less unsubstantiated posts such as this one?
Seventh, "famous contrarian climate policy analyst" - an interesting choice of terms. How about simplifying to "one of a small number of climate policy analysts who refuses to prostitute himself" (with the possible addition "and has probably paid as high a personal price for his steadfast refusal to follow the party line as it is possible to impose on a public figure outside an authoritarian state").
Well, it was a good run, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
This article started off strong. I particularly appreciate the links.
It went off course halfway through though, right after the "but that's misleading"
The 2nd half didn't substantiate itself at all and sounds like more nonsense from the carbon cult.
I assure you, I am quite sane. I am also quite skeptical of claims regarding anthropogenic warming, particularly since as you've previously noted, most of the people pushing the idea sound and act like some kind of pagan Gaia cult. So no, I don't see the situation as a croupier getting caught slipping extra aces in, I only see a bunch of doomsday nutcases repeatedly claiming that the world will end in a few years and trying to back that up with bad theory, manipulated data, worse models, claims that entirely normal events are abnormal, and deliberate alarmism & exaggeration even as their predictions fail. Sorry, but carbon claims, especially about extreme weather, fall squarely into "The boy who cried wolf" territory for me, they are presumed false upon sight. It's a breath of fresh air to me that somebody had the integrity to admit that the data not only doesn't prove those overblown claims, but statistically CANNOT prove them given the available sample size. THAT is good science.
So when you call that good science 'misleading', then offer no actual contrary evidence, it's YOU who loses credibility with me, not it.
The only issue I have with this is that the numbers in the blackjack analogy are not analogous.
If you gave us the total amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by all natural sources and used a proportionally appropriate number to represent that value for the amount of aces in the deck to begin with, and then calculated the percentage of those emissions that anthropogenic emissions represent, and then used a proportionally appropriate number of aces that the dealer slipped into the deck each, I suspect the number would be something like 0.0004 aces, not 4.
Give me that calculation and your blackjack analogy will illustrate something valuable, either to you or to me. One of us will be surprised by how many aces are being slipped in.
Dear Mr. Toro, I wrote to you about this very topic in reply to
https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/termination-shock-now
and was very pleased when I found this post in my inbox. Unfortunately, upon finishing the post I found myself largely agreeing with the comment by Steven above.
First, you attack a strawman which is always suspicious in debate. I do not recall Roger Pielke ever claiming that hurricanes are definitely not getting stronger. He has stuck to presenting the IPCC position and he also argues, very plausibly, that monetary damages caused by extreme weather events are a problematic measure of the physical intensity of these extreme weather events.
Second, you are addressing a problem that is so ridiculously unimportant with respect to public policy - namely that the observation that the IPCC does not actually consider it proven, given its methodology, that the increase in global surface temperatures has caused (in the strict scientific sense of the term) an increase in the intensity and / or frequency of hurricanes could be used in some kind of nefarious way which, however, you do not spell out. If that is not your motivation in writing the post, what was?
Third, which is it, actually, intensity or frequency? Sure, your article sticks to the "frequency" aspect throughout, but isn't it obvious that the intensity dimension needs to be addressed as well? If it is not addressed (which may be quite reasonable, I do not know that) shouldn't that choice be explained?
Fourth, the cutesy blackjack analogy is just that, cutesy. If all you do is rehash RJP material, why bother reading your Substack? I expect, at the very least, a statistically complete description of the hypothesis being tested and unter which conditions, if any, you are willing to reject the Null hypothesis. I would normally expect this to include a description of the type of (assumed) underlying distribution and an argument explaining why that is the right distribution to describe the frequency of hurricanes, the relevant parameters, the relevant input and output variables etc. I would also expect a similar description for the hypothesis testing for an increase in intensity including what kind of power you consider adequate.
Fifth, except for an almost legal-disclaimer-like statement at the very beginning, you completely ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to this topic. I think that I could probably pull together (and may yet do so, time permitting) a list of world-famous universities, "learned associations", research funding agencies, national and international government bureaucracies (other than the IPCC), as well as an enormous number of individual (climate) "scientists" that are all on the record as claiming that the relationship under discussion (plus a number of additional postulated links between warming and various parameters of interest) is proven beyond a scientific doubt and that anyone who claims otherwise should be banned from social media, participating in public discussions of any kind etc.etc. It seems to me that that is the first order problem, although I happily acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on this. (If and when I get around to establishing that list and I should have to acknowledge that the institutions and individuals referred to have, in fact, been more careful than I postulate here, I shall be in touch.)
As an addendum to V, assuming that I am correct with respect to the problem that people have in acknowledging the IPCC results - what could be the reason for that? They could be run-of-the-mill idiots (not likely) and they may not admit the nuance in the IPCC findings in that this nuance sheds doubt on the party line. I do not see any alternative plausible explanation and, contrary to the rule that one should not suspect malice to be at work when stupidity can fully explain the obversations, I think that we actually are dealing with a deliberate attempt to influence public discussion that deliberately does not make use of the best science available. Note that I am not claiming that this effort is coordinated by some sinister body; I do not think that a conspiracy in the normal understanding of the term is going on.
As addendum to the addendum: If a "scientist" cannot handle nuance, he or she should get the h*** out of science.
Sixth, I suspect (I deliberately write "suspect" since I am not sure that this suspicion is really an adequate description of your motivation - I would ask you to please accept my apology in case you can sincerely state that this suspicion is unfounded) that the supposed "causal" nature of the increase in the number of hurricanes is important to you because of your hobby horse (aerosols - all types - and bunker fuel in particular). There is nothing - zero - in your article in the way of scientific evidence as in data, cross-references etc. that supports your point. Your argument is pure hand-waving: "It's really plausible, so it must be true." Yeah ... we have had no shortage of that cavalier attitude to real science during the Covid pandemic and it has caused the credibility of the public health establishment to take a hell of a knock which it still needs to recover from. Do you really want to damage your credibility with more or less unsubstantiated posts such as this one?
Seventh, "famous contrarian climate policy analyst" - an interesting choice of terms. How about simplifying to "one of a small number of climate policy analysts who refuses to prostitute himself" (with the possible addition "and has probably paid as high a personal price for his steadfast refusal to follow the party line as it is possible to impose on a public figure outside an authoritarian state").
Best wishes
Xiao Xi