Month: March 2014

Pious Fraud and Climate Skepticism

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Pious fraud is the idea that sometimes it’s a good idea to lie to serve a higher good. In religion, it may mean lying about the origins of a sacred text or witnessing a miracle. In science, it may mean lying about a useless medical treatment to try and strengthen the  placebo effect. In Disney movies, it means giving an ordinary feather to Dumbo and telling him that it will magically help him to fly.  The ethics of pious fraud are therefore hotly contested.

The most recent entrant in the long and checkered history of pious fraud is the exaggerated claim that 97% of climate scientists all agree on climate change. The claim started out as a paper (not peer reviewed, btw) and then went on to get lots of airtime. Even President Obama tweeted it:

2014-02-27 Obama Consensus Tweet

There are lots of problems with the original paper and with the way that the paper has been used by others. Before we dig in, however, it’s important to carefully define the terms. The issue that is really at stake is not just a science issue, but a policy issue as well. It has 5 core components. They are:

  1. Climate change is really happening, and will continue to happen. (Implied: human forecasts are accurate.)
  2. The principle cause of climate change is human behavior (e.g. carbon emissions).
  3. The effects of climate change will, on balance, do much more harm than good.
  4. Climate change is largely reversible (e.g. we can do something about it).
  5. The costs of reversing climate change (e.g. with slower economic development for impoverished nations) are outweighed by the benefits.

As it turns out, however, the 97% paper successfully establishes near-universal scientific consensus on exactly none of these issues. Well, maybe on point #1, if you want to be generous. There are several articles out there castigating the authors of the paper for dishonesty and other shenanigans, but by far the strongest evidence of just how fraudulent the paper is comes from Popular Technology.

First, let’s explain how the 97% paper worked. Bjørn Lomborg (as reported in WattsUpWithThat) writes that:

The paper looks at 12,000 papers written in the last 25 years (see here, the paper doesn’t actually specify the numbers, http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/watch-the-pea/). It ditches about 8,000 papers because they don’t take a position.

They put people who agree into three different bins — 1.6% that explicitly endorse global warming with numbers, 23% that explicitly endorse global warming without numbers and then 74% that “implicitly endorse” because they’re looking at other issues with global warming that must mean they agree with human-caused global warming.

Voila, you got about 97% (actually here 98%, but because the authors haven’t released the numbers themselves, we have to rely on other quantitative assessments).

In other words, the 97% paper is based on interpreting the papers of various other climate scientists. So what Popular Technology did is actually quite simple, they asked the original authors if they agreed with how the 97% paper had characterized their articles. As it turns out: they did not. The 97% paper effectively drafted many of the most vocal and outspoken critics into the consensus regardless of their actual feelings. That would be bad enough. But, as the scientists described, the problems only get worse from there.

Let’s start with issue #2. Ostensibly, this should be the most reliable claim of the paper because it’s the whole point of the paper. Other folks, like President Obama, may have subsequently added on points 3-5 (which the paper itself didn’t claim), but surely the paper at least had some accuracy about the main issue it claimed to study? Not really. The problem is that the consensus being defended is what’s called the IPCC consensus (after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but the IPCC defined anthropic global warming as global warming that is caused 90%-100% by humans. That’s a pretty high bar. The 97% paper, on the other hand, lowered that bar to just 50% and it did so without explaining what they were doing or why. Dr. Scaffeta, who has a PhD in physics and whose paper was used by the 97% paper as evidence of the consensus, explains:

Cook et al. (2013) [the 97% paper] is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.

What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. [emphasis added]

Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most. [emphasis added]

What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.

They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.[emphasis added]

This is why I say that none of the 5 points above are actually substantiated by the 97% paper. Not only do Scaffeta (and many more) reject the characterization of their papers, but they in fact have dissenting views about the causes of global warming. This has profound implications. If (to use Scafetta’s high estimate), 70% of the global warming from 1990 – 2000 is caused by the sun, then this means that the models used by the IPCC consensus are wrong and we can’t trust their forecasts (so much for points 1 and 3). It also means that we have significant reason to doubt whether or not there’s much humans can do about climate change (points 4 and 5).

This is far from the only explosive comment to come from these scientists, however. Dr. Nir J. Shaviv (PhD in astrophysics) was also cited as being a part of the 97% consensus, and also completely rejected that categorization. He wrote:

Nope… it [that the paper was part of the 97% consensus] is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).

I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper. [emphasis added]

So, not only does he also find that cosmic rays must factor into some of the warming (and therefore also criticize the forecasts), he also points out that he was unable to express his true opinion because of the peer review process, which was basically censoring (albeit not very well) his true belief. Just as a quick summary of the rest of the findings, here are some additional comments from the scientists who spoke with Popular Technology about how they felt the 97% paper characterized their own work:

  • “It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.” (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Geography)
  • “I think your data are a load of crap. Why is that a lie? I really think so.” and “I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense. How is that a misrepresentation? Did I falsely describe your sample?” (Dr. S. J. Tol, Economics, in a series of tweets to one of the authors of the 97% paper.) [emphasis original to the Popular Technology article]
  • “The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC.” (Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, Quaternary Geography, describing how his own paper is actually against the consensus.)
  • “I am sure that this rating of no position on AGW by CO2 is nowhere accurate nor correct…. I hope my scientific views and conclusions are clear to anyone that will spend time reading our papers. Cook et al. (2013) is not the study to read if you want to find out about what we say and conclude in our own scientific works.” (Dr. Willie Soon, Rocket Science, describing why the categorization of his paper as having “no position” on anthropic global warming was false. He added: “No extra comment on Cook et al. (2013) is necessary as it is not a paper aiming to help anyone understand the science.” [emphasis added])
  • “If Cook et al’s paper classifies my paper, ‘A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change’ as “explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize,” nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper… I would classify my paper in Cook et al’s category (7): Explicit rejection with quantification.” (Dr. Alan Carlin, Economics) [emphasis original to Popular Technology piece]

The Popular Technology article concluded: “The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.” and added two followup analyses: Cook’s 97% Consensus Study Game Plan Revealed and The Statistical Destruction of the 97% Consensus.

Where does that leave us? The most charitable possible interpretation is that the 97% paper deliberately or negligently inflated consensus on this issue. The reason for doing this is obvious: it’s a policy paper rather than a scientific paper. It is designed to get people to support policies intended to curb global warming without actually proving that these policies are the right decisions to make. It is a pious fraud. When the paper is used by others who tack on issues 3-5 (harm, reversibility, and net-benefit of opposing global warming) they are compounding the same fraud which the paper was deliberately designed to initiate.

This is a very, very bad idea. It is a bad idea because it poisons the entire debate. If scientists are willing to blatantly lie and fabricate to try and win a policy war, how can we (especially we who are non-experts) trust the scientific “consensus”? If the consensus were as low as 33% of scientists but it was transparent and honest and included all 5 points, that would be enough to make the issue quite serious. If it was as high as 67% (with the same conditions) that would be enough to make me seriously consider supporting drastic policies. But to try and trick people into believing there is consensus on all 5 points when there is, at best, exaggerated consensus on just 1 or 2 points throws the entire policy argument into question. Now I know that people are lying to me, and I also know that I have no realistic way of estimating the extent of the fabrications. I have to weigh the uncertain efficacy and uncertain benefits of climate change remedies against their certain costs.

This is not a good position for someone to be in if they are truly worried about climate change. And it’s not a reasonable position to be in if you’re actually confident of the facts. The fact that we are in this position at all is the reason that I, like many other open-minded skeptics, look for other possible explanations to explain the absolutist rhetoric of the climate change alarmists.

Courage and Non-Violent Resistance in Ukraine

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2014-03-04 Unarmed Ukrainian Soldiers

This photo is of Ukrainian soldiers who had just confronted Russian invaders for several hours outside their base. Note that the Ukrainians are unarmed. Lots of camo, but no guns.

It never occurred to me for a moment that an armed force might consider using *non-violent* resistance, but apparently that’s what the Ukrainian forces in Crimea are doing. Based on alleged communication intercepts, Putin has no idea what to do about it. He sent in thousands of troops with the idea that they would trigger a fight-or-flight response in the Ukrainian army. He wants them to start shooting (and provide justification for a massacre) or surrender. Instead, every single unit so far has refused to do either, and their wives have also demonstrated stunning bravery, standing as human shields between Russian forces and their outnumbered, outgunned, and undersupplied husbands.

If I’m getting this story right, it’s an incredible strategy of courage, nobility, and also genius. But I don’t know how long it can continue.

(Note: I first posted this story to my Facebook wall.)

Gay Rights and Doublethink

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2013-06-18 gay marriage

Doublethink is a term from  Orwell’s classic novel 1984.  It is “the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.” I’ve heard people try to come up with real-world examples of the term, but so far none have really lived up to the original meaning. But I think we’re really standing on the threshold  now, and it’s the issue of gay rights that threatens to push us over the edge.

Up until recently, one of the key components of the push for gay rights has been that it would take a “live and let live” philosophy. If you don’t like gay marriage: don’t have one. But obviously gay marriage wouldn’t somehow force religious institutions to change their doctrine or allow their buildings to be used, nor would it require religious people to participate in or condone gay marriages. Right? Well, no. Not really.

This became obvious when Arizona tried to pass a bill that would have enacted the principle that “we should not punish people for practicing their religion unless we have a very good reason.” If that doesn’t sound like what the Arizona bill did, that’s no surprise. According to Professor Doug Laycock, who is one of the foremost experts on law and religion, “Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was been egregiously misrepresented both before and after the veto.” You should really read his explanation of what the law really did, but the gist of it is simple: Rather than legalize anti-gay discrimination, the law would have simply clarified the context in which these types of cases would be viewed by the courts, who would still be open to determining who won or lost in any given case.

Instead, however, the country was fed the impression that Arizona wanted to legalize anti-gay discrimination. Which would be wrong, right? If a gay couple walks into your bakery and orders a wedding cake, you bake them the cake. Or else.

But what happens when a lesbian wants a haircut from a  Muslim barber who refuses to touch any unrelated woman other than his wife? Or, for that matter, what happens when a gay stylist refuses to give a haircut to someone who doesn’t support gay marriage? In that last case, the stylist gave the following rationale for refusing to cut the governor’s hair:

I think it’s just equality, dignity for everyone. I think everybody should be allowed the right to be together.

In other words, he had a sincere moral conviction and it would violate that moral conviction to force him to use his business, his talents, and literally his body to support someone who was opposed to that moral conviction. Sound familiar?

Ross Douthat pointed out that the no-holds-barred takedown of the Arizona bill was unprecedented, and he understands what that signifies:

What makes this response particularly instructive is that such bills have been seen, in the past, as a way for religious conservatives to negotiate surrender — to accept same-sex marriage’s inevitability while carving out protections for dissent. But now, apparently, the official line is that you bigots don’t get to negotiate anymore.

So this is where we stand today. Either the American people realize that treating religious objections to participation in gay marriage is a legitimate concern (perhaps with the help of examples like those above) and adopt a more nuanced pose. Or, on the other hand, they ignore the examples and press forward. In that brave new world, I fully expect that the right of gay people to refuse service to religious bigots will be enshrined legally, but the right of religious people to refuse to participate in gay weddings will be scorned and derided. And then, ladies and gentlemen, we will have arrived at a real-life example of doublethink in the wild.

The Great Enrichment

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Economist Deirdre McCloskey presented a paper entitled “The Great Enrichment Came and Comes From Ethics and Rhetoric” at a New Delhi conference for the Centre for Civil Society in January. The following excerpt is, in large part, why I support markets:

Free markets, that is, have not been bad for the poor of the world. The sole reliable good for the poor, on the contrary, has been the liberating and the honoring of market-tested improvement and supply. Private charity and public works, socialism and central planning, by contrast, have often made people worse off. Yet economic growth since 1800 has almost always made them better off, by enormous factors of increase. The enrichment of the poor, that is, has not come from charity or planning or protection or regulation or trade unions, all of which, despite their undoubted first-act popularity among our good friends on the left, merely redistribute a constant or a shrunken pie. The mere arithmetic shows why. If all profits in the American economy were forthwith handed over to the workers, the workers (including some amazingly highly paid “workers,” such as sports and singing stars and big-company CEOs) would be 20 percent or so better off, right now. One time only. The 20 percent is to be compared with a rise in real wages 1800 to the present by a factor of 10 or 30 or (allowing for improved quality of goods) 100, which is to say 900 or 2,900 or 9,900 percent. If we want to make the non-bosses or the poor better off by a significant amount, 9,900 percent beats 20 percent every time. At 5 percent per year market-tested improvement and supply goes beyond the one-time 20 percent in a scant four years, and then cumulates to a quadrupling.

Check it out. The third volume of her trilogy on the Bourgeois Era- (the 2nd of which is pictured above)-The Treasured Bourgeoisie: How Markets and Innovation Became Virtuous, 1600-1848, and Then Suspect–will be out in 2015.

Closers Only: Higher Education and Business Leaders

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Back in 2011, I graduated from the University of North Texas with a BBA in Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management. My excitement over it was lackluster to say the least. I rarely mentioned my upcoming graduation in the months prior. My own sister hadn’t even been aware I was graduating until afterwards (much to her irritation). I wrote my thoughts about my business education over at The Slow Hunch, noting its pros and cons:

While it may be true that businessmen and economists alike are not as accustomed with philosophy, ethics, or literature as they should be, this does not by default mean that the philosophers opining on the state of the economy have any justification for doing so. Business majors may need to crack open the work of Aristotle, but liberal arts majors would do well to be acquainted with Economics 101. Why? Because one advantage of business education is the focus on practical application, even in management. Theory is important, but whether it actually works is critical.

I didn’t stop with just business majors, but instead commented on the state of higher education as a whole:

The critiques of business education are valid. However, before the [insert liberal arts degree] majors begin their victory dance or crowing about their more nuanced understanding of the world…it should be pointed out that this decline in business major standards is fairly typical across the board. I often quip that the bachelor degree is the new high school diploma. Given the grade inflation that has taken place over the past several decades, I think it is fair to say that higher education as a whole has suffered. Economist Richard Vedder has found that “some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.” With tuition increasing, Vedder has no problem labeling the push for more college graduates a scam. Vedder explains, “Employers are using education as a screening and signaling device, at a low cost directly to them (although not costless because of the taxes they pay to sustain much of this), but at a high cost to the prospective employees and to society as a whole.” Apparently, another type of bubble has popped: higher education.

A new report from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup fuels my pessimism:

  • Seven in 10 leaders say they would consider hiring someone without a degree or credential over someone with one.
  • Just 13% of business leaders say higher education institutions collaborate with business a great deal.
  • Most leaders (88%) favor an increased level of collaboration with higher education institutions.
  • About one in ten business leaders strongly agree that higher education institutions in this country are graduating students with the skills and competencies their business needs.
  • Just (14%) of executives say they are very likely to hire a candidate who has a degree from an online higher education over a candidate with a traditional higher education.
  • Business leaders were most likely to indicate the amount of knowledge a candidate has in the field is a very important factor to managers making hiring decisions for organizations.
  • For business leaders, work skills top the list of factors that should drive immigration policy decisions.

Gallup summarizes,

There is a disconnect between what business leaders need and what higher education institutions think they are producing. A separate Gallup study for Inside Higher Ed finds that 96% of chief academic officers at higher education institutions say their institution is very or somewhat effective at preparing students for the world of work. Quite the reverse, business leaders say that college graduates do not have the skills that their particular businesses need such as applicable knowledge and applied skills in the field. Even though leaders are not yet turning to foreign-born workers when hiring, they favor increasing green card policies for foreign-born international graduate students in the U.S.

This is likely why “a strong majority of business leaders favoring an increased level of collaboration between higher education institutions and businesses. An increased level of collaboration will benefit both business leaders and higher education institutions in preparing students with the right knowledge and applied skills so that they are ready for the real world and have the best opportunity to find a good job.”

While we may be complacent in thinking the shiny degree hanging on the wall means we’re educated and highly-skilled, business leaders are providing a much-needed wake up call. It’s not about the piece of paper, but what you can actually do. In the immortal words of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, “You wanna work here — close.”

(Neo) Traditional Marriage

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Over at The Atlantic, Brooking’s Richard Reeves argues that “the most affluent and educated Americans…are creating a new model for marriage—one that is liberal about adult roles, conservative about raising children.” Reeves calls these “high-investment parenting” marriages or HIP. “The central rationale for these marriages,” explains Reeves, “is to raise children together, in a settled, nurturing environment.” These couples “take their time to select a partner; and then, once the marriage is at least a couple of years old, take the final step and become parents. Money, marriage, maternity: in that order.” According to Reeves, this represents a new child-centric, gender-equal model of marriage.

However, a couple recent articles demonstrate that this isn’t exactly new. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute points out that far from being a product of the Industrial Revolution, “the nuclear family—a mother, father and child(ren) in a “simple house,” as Laslett put it—was the dominant arrangement in England stretching back to the thirteenth century.” In northwestern Europe “men and women married later than in other parts of the world, only after they had saved enough money to set up an independent home. By the time they were ready to tie the knot, their own parents were often deceased, making multi-generational households a relative rarity. In fact, the family arrangement so common to England helps explain why it and other nations of northwest Europe were the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the launching ground for modern affluence. The young nuclear family had to be flexible and mobile as it searched for opportunity and property.” This led to expanding roles between genders. Furthermore, this arrangement was “uniquely child-centered… The older brides of northwest Europe…had fewer fertile years ahead of them and smaller families, which enabled them to provide more focused attention on each child.” This means that “the children of married couples are internalizing their parents’ bourgeois aspirations and child-centeredness, both of which lie deep in the bones of the institution they have chosen to enter.”

Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox notes that “family life is organized along neo-traditional lines, and has been since the 1990s, when the gender revolution stalled out in married families. It’s new in the sense that today’s married dads do a lot more child care and housework than dads of the 1950s, and that most married moms are working in the paid labor force. But it’s “traditional” in the sense that most husbands take the lead when it comes to breadwinning, and most wives take the lead when it comes to childrearing.” Married mothers still handle close to 70% of the child care and housework, while married fathers work 65% of their households’ hours in paid labor force and earn nearly 70% of their families’ income. This fits their preferences: “53 percent [of married mothers] prefer part-time work and 23 percent prefer to be stay-at-home mothers. (This stands in marked contrast to married fathers: 75 percent of them think working full-time is ideal and an additional 13 percent prefer part-time work, according to Pew data.)”

 

This is why “public policies and cultural norms related to work and family should be geared toward maximizing flexibility, rather than locking in approaches geared to serving full-time, dual-income families, and toward renewing the employment opportunities of poor and working-class men who have become less “marriageable” in recent years.”

Apparently, child-centeredness and adaptation of gender roles to economic circumstances and preferences aren’t all that new. We should remember that before skewering “traditional” marriage.