Well this is great. Judy Curry and Peter Webster will be presenting at this event, so I’ll get the chance to meet up with them again too. I’ll try not to be pushy here, but I hope I’ll be able to garner some interest in our techniques in the foyer and coffee bar as well as listening carefully to the tone and approach being offered by the various speakers during the formal sessions.
Handling uncertainty in weather and climate prediction, with application to health, agronomy, hydrology, energy and economics
Thursday 4 – Friday 5 October 2012
The Royal Society at Chicheley Hall: Home of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, Buckinghamshire
Organised by Professor Tim Palmer FRS
For the attention of: Roger Tallbloke
Thank you for your email and interest in attending the above meeting at the Royal Society at Chicheley Hall, home of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre. On behalf of the organiser, the Royal Society would like to formally invite you to participate.
Synopsis of the meeting:
This meeting follows on from the 2010 Anniversary Discussion Meeting on “Handling Uncertainty in Science” but with a focus on weather and climate prediction and downstream applications. How is uncertainty represented in weather and climate prediction? How reliable are representations of uncertainty? How can decision makers in weather and climate sensitive sectors make useful decisions in the light of uncertain input? Are current ensemble weather and climate prediction systems useful for decision making across a variety of application sectors? How should probability forecasts be presented to the public.
To confirm your participation, please follow the link below. Unfortunately accommodation is now fully booked for this meeting, but I happy to add you to a waiting list and advise you if rooms become available nearer the time. Please find attached some information about nearby alternative accommodation providers that may be useful.
We hope you will be able to join the meeting but if you have any queries regarding this event, please do not hesitate to contact me in the first instance.
Kind regards,
Jennifer H****s
Events Assistant
Tel +44 (0)*********
Web royalsociety.org<http://royalsociety.org/>
Simple linearly linked determinations of risk routinely fail to recognize that a series of undesired events is unlikely to occur concurrently; these business-style risk analyses are useful for comparing projects, but unsuitable for determining probable outcomes as we will experience them. The confusion, though, is rife, and is what I see in the eco-green movement: if five things can go wrong, action is determined that most of them will go wrong (a cluster-f**k). (example: A pipeline over an aquifer will break AND it will contaminate the aquifer AND the contamination will be catastrophic AND irreversible AND there will be no adaptive or corrective response forever.)
A Monte-Carlo simulation style, which is what I gather the IPCC employ, assumes we know enough of the defining and limiting factors to sufficient detail that the many simulations accurately describe all possible outcomes. What they do, however, is accurately describe the various outcomes determined by the assumptions.
A logicians problem of validity, not truth.
This is the difficulty in any discussion of risk: those risk averse (or who are risk-avoiders) follow a style of analysis that removes positive counteractions or positive interactions (like clouds cooling things down). Those who claim certainty of knowledge follow a style of analysis that removes other factors which, if considered, would provide an outcome other than the one their certainty allows. A cost-benefit analysis is, actually done, but since the view is lopsided for cost, the result is predictable: the costs outweigh the benefit, and greatly so.
Still, that isn’t where the ultimate difficulty in discussing risks and appropriate action regarding CAGW. It lies in the final application of the Precautionary Principle.
The Precautionary Principle is really a socially constructed concept for risk management that places the pleasant lives of people ahead of material gain. The Principle says that we should act to prevent horrendous damage to the human experience even if the risk of the damage happening is small. (On a trivial level, we should stay at the traffic stoplight at 3 am because, should a car be coming though the intersection as we illegally enter it, the T-bone we suffer for not following the rules will be untenable – even though we can’t see any cars coming in either direction.) Yet, here again, the Principle is not applied in a rounded way, i.e. to itself. It reasonably could be : the question would be, are the anti anthropogenic CO2 actions even remotely to cause great economic hardship, social dislocation and political loss of freedoms AND it turn out that A-CO2 will not, in fact, lead to the death of the biosphere? If it were so applied to itself, we would hesitate, because the known costs then would be far out of proportion to the risked benefit.
The weaknesses in each style of risk assessment and management as described above should be countered with added elements of optimism. It is the lack of uncertainty, ironically enough, that generates all conventional, eco-green discussion to varieties of doom and the necessity of action and action now.
Have fun at the event! Regardless of what any of us want, 2015 will arrive sooner than we expect, and one or the other side will have to explain what the last 15 (2000 was the first normal year after the 1998 El Nino) or 20 (no statistical change since 1995, according to Jones) years means for Global Warming. Until then, we’re all just speculating.
Thanks for your thoughts Doug. I’m encouraged by the fact that this meeting is happening at all. The admission of uncertainty didn’t look likely even just a few years ago. The combination of nature contradicting expectations, the climategate revelations and the ongoing vigilance of the sceptical side of the climate blogosphere has concentrated minds I think. It has led to those who control the funding for climate science to call for a reassessment of what we (don’t) know and how we should proceed in terms of making recommendations to policy makers.
There are some words significant by their absence in the synopsis given for the meeting.
Anthropogenic
Mitigation
Carbon
It may be that underlying causes are believed to be so firmly established that there is no need to bang the drum. However, if that is so, then at least there is recognition that there is no simple step from theory to climate and weather prediction. I’m reminded of Tom Wigley’s comment to the Team following K Trenberth’s gnashing of teeth over the inadequacy of our measuring systems:
“you need to be up front with uncertainties and the possibility of compensating errors.”
Looks to me like someone has started to take that observation seriously. Not before time.
Roger, there is a guy who is a forecaster (mathematical rather than some branch of science) who has challenged Al Gore to bet $10,000 that he can make better predictions of future temperatures than IPCC. He says to make it easy for Al Gore, his prediction is that temperatures will not change in the future. Although he has needled Al Gore a lot, he has never got a reply from him. Would be a great item to have in your talk I think. I think this is the one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Scott_Armstrong
Thanks Ray, downloaded a few of the papers including one about the Delphi Technique which I have used. I think I have previously seen a paper, of his, critical of statistical and forecasting techniques used by the IPCC. Unfortunately Scott Armstrong is getting aged but he has a few younger followers. My recollection of the Delphi sessions is that most forecasts in the medical field (eg heart transplants, IVF, human genome etc) have happened before the expert forecasting (mainly because of lots of research money) while forecasts in nuclear energy have not occurred because of political interference and minimal reseach (eg Thorium reactors). If governments would not waste their money on climate research and so-called renewable energy we would have had by now safe, clean and cheap nuclear energy. It will happen in the future, the question is when..
Great stuff Rog. Perhaps you can provide a modicum of sanity at this event, and question some of the basic premises on which this politically driven climate strategy is based.
Prof. Tim Palmer is an interesting guy and i would expect him to be a charming, but slippery customer. His DPhil was in general relativity theory from Oxford, but he chose to work in the field of weather and climate dynamics / prediction for the Met Office, later joining the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting.
Highlights of his career include being Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge – lead author of the IPCC third assessment report – President of the Royal Meteorological Society – serving on a Government Office of Science quango looking at how science can help mitigate the humanitarian impact of natural disaster – serving on the Met Office’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
He gave the Bjerknes Lecture at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting: Towards the Probabilistic Earth-System Model.
I expect, because of his academic training and career background.that he believes that climate is driven by random stochastic processes, rather than by spatio-temperal chaos, and so erroneously assumes statistical methods for probability can be applied to our climate system and some sort of meaningful forecasting is possible beyond the very short-term.
Some good stuff from Tomas Milanovic on this here…
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
Our current brand of post-normal climate science will always produce the results politicians, and their masters, want to hear.
“Forecasting is the art of saying what will happen, and then explaining why it didn’t!”…
Ray: Since this will be my first interaction with members of the RS I won’t be setting their teeth on edge if I can avoid it.
Tenuc: Local forecasting may be playing with chaos, but I think at broader scales and timescales, we can make progress which will enable us to then isolate patterns and tendencies at the regional level, and work inwards to predict the eddies better from there using past lookups like Richard Holle, Ulric and Piers do.
Marcel Leroux’s work on mobile polar highs and the importance of the Arctic Oscillation plugs in to this, and although his work isn’t currently fashionable amongst the mainstream theorists, it dovetails well with the planetary scale conceptualisations of Erl Happ and Paul Vaughan.
The media is obsessed with extreme events like drought and flood, but to understand why these occur when and where they do, we have to step back a level to get a wider perspective. Planetary, Solar and Lunar cycles can reduce apparent chaos to a smaller residual, and that’s a good start on the problem.
tallbloke says:
August 20, 2012 at 12:12 pm
“…we have to step back a level to get a wider perspective…
Totally agree. Only by using an holistic approach to the overlapping ‘climate’ quasi-cycles, some of which oscillate over 1000s of years, can we hope to understand what is happening now and try to guess what the future will bring.
Climate is not driven by random, stochastic linked processes, rather it is highly complex non-linear system which reconfigures itself in both space and time to achieve maximum entropy production.
Tenuc,
The thing about the “highly complex non-linear system” that drives climate is that it must have an almost equal number of negative drivers and positive to achieve a reasonably steady-state situation. The actual annual variation in TSI is actually about +/- 45 W/m2 simply from orbital eccentricities. Local or quasi-regional albedo changes on a daily basis of .015 to 0.65 happen simply from the introduction of large-scale cloud cover, a change in some 670 W/m2 (I purposely do not divide by 4 to keep sight of the actual energy input in areas of the planet). Then we have the 12 or more hours of absolute no solar insolation. That we have constant temperatures and light winds at all shows the tremendous power our moderating systems have on this planet.
It is only by ignoring the level of mitigation of weather change factors that the IPCC and others can claim the climate system is delicate and prone to tipping points. We do not have a planet on which things happen slowly, on geological time scales. We have a planet on which things happen very quickly all the time but are tamped down immediately.
(I’m not disagreeing. Expanding/expounding/expatiating, perhaps.)
“with application to health, agronomy, hydrology, energy and economics”
They don’t want much do they.
Well I second Doug Proctor’s thoughts – including wishing a good ambassador’s journey to tallbloke. He represents many of us above the call of duty.
It would be interesting to know is Prof.Piers Corbyn will attend to this meeting.
Just to add to the idea that climatologists cannot do forecasting, it is worth noting that in the field of economics, all the experts using complex models based on everything they could think of were beaten by Box-Jenkins who used a single series to predict itself with a very simple and limited range of models. It does allow for some simple cycles such as seasonal effects. I do think that climate would be similar.
Rog, by all means don’t get kicked out the first time. Third or fourth maybe.
Tenuc;
You reminded me of Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary”, wherein we find:
“POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
Volker, this looks like very interesting work you have done. I’m intrigued to know what your thoughts are on the density of the planets being more relevant than their masses. Would you like to write up an article to publish here at the talkshop along with your graphs?
@Volker Doorman: Idiots are clever enough to realize the simple laws which run the universe and like music too….
Density, as we know it, it is in inverse relation to density of vibration. In any case you could read my “foolish” rantings:
http://www.giurfa.com/unified_field.pdf
Volker, I know how it feels to be ridiculed, but take heart. In our research here we have also determined the long cycle by another method. It is a cycle of exchange of angular momentum which marks the return of the largest planets to a repeating configuration. So it could be that your small planet pair is ‘the canary in the coalmine’. The high angular displacement from the plane of invariance speaks of a squeeze of force pushing them up from their easiest path. Their small size means they get pushed around more easily than the larger planets, and this makes them a visual amplifier of the ‘out of balance’ forces which arise during the cycle.
Enjoy your break, and see where we have got to on your return.
adolfogiurfa says:
August 21, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Density, as we know it, it is in inverse relation to density of vibration. In any case you could read my “foolish” rantings: http://www.giurfa.com/unified_field.pdf
You say:
ν = C/λ [s-1]
Where λ = D = 2R [m]
Density Dv = (ν )^3 [s^-3]
Let’s see:
Gravity constant G has the dimension [m5 s-5 V-1 A-1]
Mass M has the dimension [V A s3 m-2]
Density D has the dimension [V A s3 m-5]
Acceleration g has the dimension [m s-2]
Radius R has dimension [m]
Frequency ν has the dimension [s-1]
G = 3 g / (4 pi R D) [m5 s-5 V-1 A-1]
D = 3 g / (4 pi R G) [V A s3 m-5]
G * D = 3 g / (4 pi R) [s^-2]
The product of density D and Gravitational constant G has the dimension [s^-2].
Density D is defined as Mass [V A s3 m-2] per volume V [ m^3] = [V A s3 m-5]
Your Dv = (ν )^3 [s^-3] is not a density and is not even a product of Density and Gravitational constant [s^-2].
?
V.
Hi Rog, back to the coming meeting…
Came across this snippet which illustrates how privilege, finance, politics and post-normal science can all be embodied in a single person…
This person is Prof Sir Bob Watson, “He is currently chief scientist at the Department for Food and Rural Affairs and a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He also used to work for the World Bank and was a senior adviser to former Vice-President Al Gore at the White House.
He is one of the biggest and most powerful cuckoos in climate change Cuckoo Land, and a prime reason why nobody with an ounce of critical reasoning can believe anything that the IPCC cabal of climate scientists say.
Link to this alarmist article here…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19348194
Tenuc: Shhh, speak no evil about Bob Watson. Last time I criticised him I had the climate cops banging on my door less than 48 hours later.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/climategate-2-follow-the-money-to-see-who-calls-the-shots/