Bishop Hill Richard B on the two-degree
Oct 29, 2014 Climate: MetOffice Climate: WG3 A reader points me to this long tweet from Richard Betts, which I missed while I was away last week. It's certainly worth of reposting:
I see the '2 degree limit' as rather like a speed limit on a road - both are set by policymakers on the basis of a number of considerations.
On the roads, the main issues are safety, fuel economy and journey time. Regarding safety, driving at 5mph under the speed limit does not automatically make the journey 'safe', and exceeding the limit by 5mph does not automatically make it 'dangerous'. Clearly, all other rings being equal, the faster one travels the greater the danger from an accident - but you also want to go fast enough to get to your destination in a reasonable time. The level of danger at any particular speed depends on many factors, such as the nature of the particular road, the condition of the car and the skill of the driver. It would be too complicated and unworkable to set individual speed limits for individual circumstances taking into account all these factors, so clear and simple general speed limits are set using judgement and experience to try to get an overall balance between advantages and disadvantages of higher speeds for the community of road users as a whole. Basically, a simple limit is practical and workable.
I see the climate policy focus on global mean temperature (eg. 2 degrees C) as playing a similar role - a simple indicator for policy purposes, and as basis for discussing pros and cons of different policy choices, but not to be taken too literally as a real threshold. Despite what we sometimes hear, there is no clear, scientifically-based threshold for 'dangerous anthropogenic climate change'. Clearly the stronger our influence on climate, the greater the risk of exposing ourselves to conditions we are not used to and hence unprepared for (eg. heavier rainfall, higher storm surges, longer or more intense heat waves). Staying below (say) 2 degrees does not mean these things won't happen, and exceeding (say) 2 degrees does not mean they'll suddenly happen all the time. Specific regional climate changes are not strongly linked to any particular level of global warming - there are many factors which affect the relationship between global mean temperature and regional climate and weather. Moreover, the level of 'danger' from such things also depends on how resilient society is - whether adequate flood provision exists, for example. There's so many complex factors that it's impossible to truly say what the 'dangerous' level of global warming is. However, a simplistic indicator based on global mean temperature does at least give some focus for discussion.
Reader Comments (110)
I have no idea what he's talking about.
Richard B is a believer, not very scientific.
Shame these characters never worry about the rather more clear risks of undermining the coal and gas-fired power generation that sustain the economies, health and well-being of everyone on the planet.
We know excessive speed is dangerous. We know an accelerator sets a car's speed. We know how to adjust the speed and we know with great certainty the cost-benefit nature of speed with regards to safety.
We know these things with empirical certainty.
Richard, on the other hand, is making a largely religious argument, as in there may in fact be a Buddha and we should act accordingly.
Not so fast. The 30mph limit has a very good reason to it.
Dr. Betts is a warmist, but despite this is smart enough to realise that he needs to keep his bets hedged (pun intended). He can't leave the religion as the penalty for apostasy is ex-communication whilst at the same time he knows that the time for 'we're all going to die' and 'its worse than we thought' rhetoric has passed. His piece comfortably covers the middle ground and will therefore either be loved or despised by everyone.
So Richard Betts uses 421 words to tell his twits that he believes in the 'Precautionary Principle'. How many words will he use to tell us how the PC justifies the trillions of GBP (not to mention $ - of any dominion) being spent because he's a nervous passenger? With that kind of mindset RB does not need a new £97M 'puter: he's already made his mind up on what is needed for society.
We—society and climate researchers—need to discuss now what constitutes "good science." Some think good science is a societal institution that produces results that serve an ideology.
Take, for instance, the counsel that then-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave to scientists at a climate change conference in March, as transcribed by Environmental Research Letters: "I would give you the piece of advice, not to provide us with too many moving targets, because it is already a very, very complicated process. And I need your assistance to push this process in the right direction, and in that respect, I need fixed targets and certain figures, and not too many considerations on uncertainty and risk and things like that."
There was a car crash waiting to happen.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704238104574601443947078538
In a very polite way, I think he is trying to move the goalposts away from the failed predictions of the models.
Metaphorically speaking, most of the supporters of the 2-degree problem are injecting a 7% solution, so Richard's task is probably not that difficult.
"eg. heavier rainfall, higher storm surges, longer or more intense heat waves"
Doesn't the IPCC SREX say that it cannot find a link between extreme weather and AGW!
Aren't we in a 30 year low of extreme weather!
Ah yes more Met Office Jackanory
Sounds like the sort of bullsh** the PR gurus in the information office tried to get us to spout at the punters, when a particular policy was going off the rails, when I was a Civil Servant.
That is an extremely reveal tweet (1000 word tweet??? FFS??)
Betts says that
Betts then says that the "considerations" that policymakers take into account in order to set the law are:
safety
fuel economy
journey time
Only one of those is any business of governments at all - but Betts sees them as "considerations policymakers"
When deciding how fast I will drive:
- I will decide how economical I want my journey to be
- I will decide how long I want my journey to be
- I will bow to collective interest through policymakers to make safety-based rules to which I will constrain my choice.
Bett's problem is an ideological one. In his mind, the scope of law and regulation knows no apparent limit. It should should limit people's choices according to an arbitrary set of values or preferences.
What other anaolgies might Betts have made??? It would appear that Betts see no bounds to what behaviour or choice shoud be governed or lmited by law. But I bet he is like most others of his ilk. He is only talking about curtailingthe preferences of others, not his own.
It seems to me that the analogy is rather appropriate. Of course, speed limits are legally binding, but they were enforced in a much more sensible fashion. It was generally only those who flouted them by a wide (and dangerous) margin who were prosecuted. Then came speed cameras etc. and just a couple of miles over the limit regardless of the conditions at the time and it's gotcha. Similarly two degrees has become the end of the world as we know it if it's exceeded.
As already touched upon, a new £97M super computer running the same flawed & failing models will only arrive at the wrong answer that much faster, nothing more, nothing less! Simples, as they say. This is Prof Dame Julia getting her wicked misguided way again, I suspect!
Speed limits don't ruin businesses and slowly kill people due to high energy costs. That don't matter as long as we have vast talking shops on something that will not surrender to human control.
Dream on...I just wish these fools wouldn't.
I fully understand his argument and agree that a 2 degree value is good for policy debate.
Where I disagree is that the argument is moot because he is taking for granted that AGW will achieve this 2 degree limit whereas the empirical data is suggesting that it won't get any where near it.
This argument is secondary based on the acceptance that AGW is valid. I would suggest that the debate is misplaced.
Richard Betts has been taking lessons from Mike Hulme (or the UEA course on creative writing or Sir Humprey Appleby) - how to ramble at great length without saying anything of any use or that people can comprehend.
The meme changes from '100 days to save the World' to '100 days (+/- 5000%) to save the World'
Excellent.
2C relative to what? We simply don't know what the "global" temperature was even as recently as 100 years ago, shame on so-called climate scientists for claiming otherwise.
It has been known for a long time that the safest speed for a limit is the 85th percentile ( the speed 85% of drivers would drive without the limit in place). If you lower or raise the speed limit from there, the accident rate increases, and more drivers (correctly) regard a lower speed limit as unnecessary, and ignore it. So 'speed kills' is just plain wrong. However, governments like ours listen to idiot pressure groups and ignore the research. Where have I heard this before? So speed limits now have to be set at the average speed. Probably the pressure groups and bureaucrats can't handle a percentile.
If you can get hold of a copy 2nd hand, the book: Road Accidents: prevent or punish (1969) by J.J.Leeming, an engineer and former county surveyor for Dorset, is an excellent, and science based study.
Road accidents had been reducing for decades due to improvements in vehicle and road design, until the obsession with speed took over; then they had to
fiddle the figuresfind a better way to calculate accident figures to maintain the reduction.Richard Betts is making a metaphor with something he clearly does not understand about a subject where the 'science' has fallen apart. What's the point.
Richard is talking nonsense...isn't he?
Just another ludic fallacy to add to the rest that make up the "science" of AGW.
RB spends a lot of time being ultra reasonable about uncertainty, then claims that adopting (say) 2 degrees for policy purposes is ultra reasonable too.
It seems to be a way of nailing down 2 degrees as being important for policymaking. I have no idea whether 2 degrees is the appropriate figure. After close to two decades of hiatus, I think he is probably addressing the wrong point.
The problem with all of this is that the AGW belief is so imbedded that the discussion just follows the same track and the underlying assumption is that the warming is continuing regardless of the observations. That is beginning to stretch uncertainty and reasonable thinking to an unreasonable degree..
"not surrender to human control."
Oct 29, 2014 at 11:44 AM | Ex-expat Colin
What a wonderful way of putting it. But surely, nothing can defy our politicians.
Betts has been trying to play the middle ground for about a year. He knows well that his religion is going to suffer a severe blow very soon and that he needs to have put in the public domain some relevent weasel words to allow him to continue his lifelong holiday in the AGW religion.
He has been denying that his impact department has not been providing policy advice to governments and the IPCC when we all know that if he didn't he would have no funding and no £100 million play station to show his pretty pictures.
Slippery and slimy greens.
The metaphor breaks down the second that you point out that the earth doesn't have pedals fitted to it that crank the temperature up and down. You have to be a bit of a stupid Canute to think that you can control the climate. With regard to fuel economy, I have a 1.9 turbo-diesel that is amazingly economical for such a large car. The thing is, it doesn't get into top gear until it reaches 60mph so the 50mph limits that are spreading around my area are making my car less ecomical not more so.
I like that Richard talks about this. It's nice to hear a scientist chew the fat on these things. However on the other hand I'd rather Richard and all other climate scientists apologised to the public for going past their remit. They aren't engineers. In fact most are theorists. They cannot submit models as evidence for policy. Or as Richard Drake says the data isn't "policy-ready".
You see as a scientist and engineer myself ( and someone who has worked in safety critical software) I know that I have a moral and ethical duty to present scientific data with its uncertainties when needed and engineering standard data with tighter characterisation when required. I know and continue to self regulate that line as otherwise I may present idea as fact. This was something I learned moving from science to engineering so maybe it's not something that has a high priority in academia. Also peoples lives or millions of pounds were at stake.
This will need to change in climate science. There truly is a moral vacuum.
Now to be fair the government should have put a gatekeeping system in place. But then again money and fashionable ideas overruled that. Which means that it is doubly important for climate scientists to demonstrate humility and reserve when presenting data.
But then again when you're looking at a steroid injection of 97 million quid to help beef up your modelling your priorities may change and a little thing like actual responsibility to people (as opposed to some sort of greenie tree hugging type of responsibility to Mother Earth) will slip down the to-do list.
I think it's fair to say we all believe in the idea of sustainability. But I'm not going to spin you a yarn, fleece you of cash, restrict your rights to have heat and power based on a nifty bit of mathematics. That would be inhumane.
A truly scientific viewpoint.
When Richard Betts first started commenting on this site I had a great deal of respect for him. Unfortunately, as time has gone along, that respect has diminished almost to the point of non-existence. Whilst admittedly occassionally tackling some of the more outrageous alarmist claims, he's certainly not above spreading some of his own. Now, besides his day job(s) at the Met Office and Exeter Uni, he is also head of helixclimate.eu. An outfit entirely funded by the EU that can tell you what your part of the world is going to be like with 2, 4 or even 6 degrees C warming (no, really). Go have a look at their website. You'll see many of the usual suspects. They really, really believe they know enough about the climate to be able to say what impacts 2,4 or 6 degrees warming will have. At a local level at that. A few weeks back they all had a nice few days in Delhi. This week they're all in Crete. All on your taxes. And Richard is right there, taking his full part in it. I am so, so sick of these parasites.
Where did the 2 degrees tipping point come from?
Was it on a paper drawn out of the Hat, or was it dreamt up by Bob Ward?
Although working group I’s contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report omits an explicit consideration of the scientific
basis for the 2 ̊C threshold, it does point out, for instance, that during the last Ice Age interglacial period, which ended
about 116,000 years ago, global mean surface temperature was at least 2°C warmer than its late 19th century level,
global sea levels were about 5 to 10 metres higher than today, and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets were much
smaller. This shows that there are significant risks of very serious changes in the climate, even from global warming of
2 ̊C, which would have severe social and economic consequences for human populations around the world.
Thus spoke the 'spin-doctor'.
"Specific regional climate changes are not strongly linked to any particular level of global warming - there are many factors which affect the relationship between global mean temperature and regional climate and weather. There's so many complex factors that it's impossible to truly say what the 'dangerous' level of global warming is".
Is this an admission that Richard Betts and his fellow climatologists do not fully understand the vagaries of the Natural World, despite their big computers.
Still, cheer up, the 2 ̊C has not been exceeded and Lady Verma seems to think the UK has hacked it all on its own!!
" ... long tweet ... "
Too long.
Rather than compare the 2 degree C limit to a highway speed limit, it should be compared to limiting the number of automobile passengers to two so that in the highly unlikely event of a fatal accident, no more than two people will die. It will also require more automobiles, more trips, and higher capacity highways. Great expense and inconvenience for little gain.
"not to be taken too literally as a real threshold"
Already there, Richard.
Andrew
So ok, let’s work with the analogy.
Firstly the speed limit isn’t 70, it’s more like walking speed (3 mph) and we quickly discovered that the lightest touch on the accelerator has us travelling at far more than that. We’re not even sure we want to slow down to 30mph, let alone 3. Other road users are ignoring the speed limit any way. They make the excuse that they’ve only just started driving and they want to progress down the road for an indefinite period. Others haven’t even got a car yet but are sure they’ll want to do a lot of driving before they’re prepared to slow down. We’ve worked out that the only way to move the car along at 3mph is to get out and push and faced with that prospect the passengers have decided to risk a speeding fine. Of course it doesn’t matter if we do slow down because if anyone gets a speeding ticket, we all have to pay. Some of the passengers don’t care if there’s a speed limit, some don’t believe there is a speed limit, others accept there’s a speed limit but want other people to slow down and don’t think the rules apply to them too and those who think they know there is a speed limit can’t prove it. We thought we saw a sign a few miles back but it turned out to be something else. Finally there are sceptical passengers who say that we should proceed with care, keeping our eyes peeled for speed signs, cameras and police speed traps. At the same time let’s put money aside for the speeding ticket; design air bags in case we have to stop suddenly; and try to invent a new form of transport.
The first person who says we’re going to run out of petrol anyway, gets to ride with the car sick kid in the back and if you want a wee, too bad, you should have gone before we set off.
Despite the best efforts of Richard Betts to appear somewhat more rational and emollient to us evil contrarians, the unfortunate fact is that the MET has long since forfeited the trust and benefit of doubt that most reasonable people would once have accorded them.
You can blame Dame Julia and the rest of them for that, but Betts was and is unwilling to challenge them.
Fortunately for him, I am the very last person to whom HMG would listen.
But my advice would be to tell them to whistle for their new super computer. And to put the MET on ebay with a £0.99 reserve.
Just a disguised variant of "The Precautionary Principle"
An inept metaphor.
Concerning highways, we know quiet well the upsides and downsides to speed limits. Highway engineers know the effects of the road surface, road configuration, rain, wind, and snow on vehicle safety and they have a good idea of the maximum safe speed a typical driver of a modern vehicle can handle considering such variables. We know that going slow is not necessarily safer, indeed, stopping completely is likely very unsafe. All told, highway experts know enough to set reasonable maximum (and minimum) speed limits.
Concerning climate, we know very little. Is CO2 really a prime driver of climate warming? The evidence suggests the answer is no, or maybe yes - no one knows for sure. We know that there are large natural forces at work operating over periods of many decades that change climate as much or more than the changes postulated for CO2. We know that higher CO2 levels improve plant growth. We know that our planet has, in historical times, passed through warm periods that were very beneficial compared with the cold periods. We also know that reducing CO2 emissions is very expensive and can (and has) denied electric power to many, primarily the most needy among us and has diverted funds from other very worthy goals.
It takes a lot of hubris for Mr. Betts and this colleagues to think they know relatively as much about climate as highway engineers know about highways. A lot!
Anyone interested in the fallacies of assuming speed limits necessarily make the roads safer, and other government interventions that reduce "risk" and increase "safety" should read the outstanding book Risk by John Adams. I think its now out of print, so you will have to find a second hand copy. Well worth getting hold of and reading. Every policy maker should be forced to read it.
Flannel.
The 2 degree figure was plucked out of the air because politicians like some sort of anchor to tie their little brains to.
Same goes for "five-a-day", "21 units a week", "BMI of 25", blood alcohol level for driving, and so on and so on.
Numbers also make it easier to control people, something else that politicians have developed a taste for over the years.
"We must do something; this is something. therefore we must do it" (Sir Humphrey Appleby)
Sheildsman - here is how e got the 2 deg C target at the Copenhagen Climate Summit
"Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated." Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.
"Yes, I plead guilty," he says, smiling. The idea didn't hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser -- a position any researcher would envy.
"The two-degree target has little to do with serious science," says Hans von Storch. Many of his fellow scientists, he adds, now see themselves too much as political activists who want to get something done. This, in turn, harms the credibility of science as a whole, he adds, and it is also a more deep-seated cause of the Climategate affair and the sloppy work on the IPCC report.
"Unfortunately, some of my colleagues behave like pastors, who present their results in precisely such a way that they'll fit to their sermons," says Storch. "It's certainly no coincidence that all the mistakes that became public always tended in the direction of exaggeration and alarmism."
You can see the whole article here:-
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html
In the UK, we have a national speed limit of 70mph. In Germany, on rural autobahns, there is no speed limit. In Germany they also build coal fired power stations. In the UK, the blob conspires with government to prevent any new fossil fuel power stations, even gas fired.
Is that what they call a 2 speed Europe?
A 2C 'limit' was designed to be a media-friendly soundbite delivering catastrophe-rich headline potential for onside alarmists, and the breaching of which would somehow act as the trigger to unleashing Hell upon Earth.
It was, is and will always remain, complete b*ll*cks.
Oh perlease. The 2 degree C rise has been marketed as the heat death of the planet. Now it's just a warning sign. Make your mind up guys.
Excuse multiple posting. I keep getting error messages when posting.
Bish - this is the message.
"The page /process/CreateJournalEntryComment could not be located on this website"
I think Prof Lindzen summed up Richard Betts and all the other climate "scientists" in this country in his evidence to the parliamentary committee, and Betts' tweet serves to confirm it.
The Freakonomics series of books writes well about problems of assessing risks : conventionally too many assumptions are made, too much dogma instead of actual statistics, often the wrong areas are focussed on (eg child seats don't save many lives, but there are many uneccessary deaths cos nothing is done about drunk-walking)
@husq : your Danish Primeminster story link is from 2009 (I wish people would context their links)
It's still worth reading though.
An interesting post by Dr. Betts. Dr. Betts states that the models upon which he bases the predictions of climate change are not accurate enough to base policy decisions on. So we can also conclude that his post is simply a pleasant meander through the land of apocalyptic thought.
Seems to me like you could make a similar argument for putting speed limits on soup cans. Except of course that more people have died from eating soup than from AGW.
It's a really bad analogy.
Speed limits are set by law. If you break them you are penalised.
We can't penalise the climate for not doing as it is told. Otherwise the Met Office would have issued untold penalty notices by now.
Interesting that Betts links AG warming to greater weather extremes. After his colleague Peter Stott from the Met Office was frequently quoted in the media after the flooding in Somerset in January linking AGW to those floods, I challenged him on several occasions on the Met Office blog articles to provide data to prove a link between greater extremes of weather and addition CO2. Needless to say there was not a single word in response from him. Betts now appears to have parroted the mantra as if it wee gospel. I suppose it is to the religious followers of CAGW. No proof or data required just endless repetition of theory dressed up as fact.
As for Stott, the Met Office climate "attribution" guru, according to he Met Office site he has spent the last 30 years studying attribution of CO2 on weather extremes and yet can't offer a single piece of data. What's he been paid for the last 30 years and why is he still in a job.
Allan M
"the obsession with speed"
Which was largely because, unlike most aspects of driving behaviour, it is easy to measure. Aided and abetted by the police, who love cut and dried evidence, the do-gooders seized on speed cameras as a 'safety' tool, although now that the roadside ones have been largely abandoned, the accident rate continues to fall. Go figure.