It doesn’t change a thing. How can you cite what you are not competent to assess (either in full or to a reasonable extent)?
Ross is an economist not a climatologist and based on reviews of his articles by actual experts, Ross is incompetent.
Ross is an untrained quack when it comes to climate science and you seem to have no issue following him around like a lost puppy.
More importantly, my stance on climate change is data-based. Multiple lines of evidence converge on one simple conclusion; most of climate change due to human activities and that’s what I go with.
Its relative. There are many “beautiful spectacles” you are deprived of by not being in my country.
No, I don’t. Nor did claim to. Nor should it be necessary to, in order to understand the comment.
I guess my hint was still not adequate, though I thought I was pretty much giving it away. Nothing ruins a good joke like trying to explain it, of course, so I hope @John_Harshman will forgive me.
It is claimed that a famous man once said of a rival “He is a modest man, with a great deal to be modest about.”
In order to get the joke, do you first need to be know who the speaker was, and about whom he was speaking?
He has vastly more trained in mathematical modelling of complex systems – and the mathematical modelling of systems is very relevant to climate change discussion – than anyone making the comments about climate change here. And his critique meshes with that of Judith Curry and many others who do have training in climate science – again, vastly more training than anyone here.
And by the way, whenever in the past I have ever said anything like “X is not an evolutionary theorist, but only a molecular biologist”, Mercer has jumped all over me, saying that my notion of the boundaries between subjects is naive and that someone from one field can have a lot of knowledge relevant to another. Well, despite your attempt to dismiss McKittrick as only an economist, economists and others who work in advanced mathematical modelling of very complex systems may well have a lot of understanding of the methods used in modelling climate systems. So I trust that Mercer will jump in and inform you that your conception of boundaries between disciplines is naive. (Oh, wait, I forgot the double standard around here that arguments used against Eddie don’t get used against anyone else – so don’t worry, Mercer won’t challenge you.)
Whether McKittrick is an economist or climatologist should not matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not his critique is a useful one. You would do better to discuss his critique than to try to justify ignoring it because he doesn’t have a membership card in the right academic union. Especially since you yourself don’t have a membership card in that union, yet offer loud and frequent opinions on the subject of climate science. The pot should not be calling the kettle black. One thing I’m sure of: even those on the other side who strongly disagree with McKittrick would regard McKittrick as a more significant voice in climate change discussions than Chris Falter (or Michael Okoko, or anyone else commenting on climate change here).
Of course not. But Harshman’s reference to the sixteenth century came immediately after I spoke of positively of pre-Enlightenment traditions. The most reasonable inference is that he was making a negative comment on an actual sixteenth-century thinker, as a way of responding to my praise of pre-18th century thought. If he wasn’t doing that, he wasn’t being conversationally responsive, and wasn’t trying to communicate meaning to me.
I was not sure what point his remark was trying to make, but I assumed that if it had any point at all it was something like this: “Eddie likes pre-modern thought, but the greatest pre-modern minds were not very great.” That’s the most likely meaning of the remark, given what I had previously been talking about.
As for your interpretation of the remark as a joke of some kind, last I heard, jokes had to be funny. But then, given the sort of movies etc. that people on this site praise, it’s likely that their sense of humor is quite different from mine.
Really, “Eddie.” That is “the most reasonable inference.” Well, who am I to disagree with a “highly trained academic” like yourself? Although do wonder if that training should have included a course on “Jokes, and How To Get Them.”
In any event, by no means allow me to distract you from the more substantive issues of discussion here, regarding which you are also making a prize fool of yourself.
So now you’re an expert on economics and econometrics and their relationship to climate science, Eddie? Seriously, Mr. Philosophy Ph.D.?
And you think that my background in computer science and my M.S. in Data Science leave me out of McKitrick’s league in the realm of the computational climate models?
Eddie, do you know how much computational modeling economists performed in the 1990s when McKitrick got his Ph.D.?
Someone is out of his league in this discussion.
And you say this because you are an expert on the models used by both disciplines? Tell us about your graduate studies in both areas, Eddie!
I happen to have taken graduate courses in economics during my sojourn at Princeton, so I think I can say I know more about the comparison between economics models and computational climate models than anyone else in this thread.
The carbon tax modeling that McKitrick (note the spelling) did for his thesis is vastly different from climate models, and is much more sensitive to Bayesian priors. McKitrick almost certainly did his unpublished thesis work with a stats package like Minitab or R/S, while today’s climate work is of a very different class that requires massive clusters running complex stochastic models.
Actually, it doesn’t. Your understanding of Curry’s article is at the level of a good theologian’s.
Notice how @Michael_Okoko cites an organization with a roster of climate science Ph.D.'s. Check it out for yourself, @Eddie:
They have published their evaluation process here:
But since you seem to know all about how climate science claims should be evaluated, @Eddie, what is your opinion of the good folks at Climate Feedback?
I rely on the community of climate scientists who have put in the hard work of collectively evaluating data and models, and I have never claimed otherwise.
The difference between you and us, Eddie, is that you are (a) citing an economist with expertise in carbon taxes and (b) misinterpreting an article (by Curry) whose concern has been put to rest by subsequent data…
…while @Michael_Okoko and I are citing the latest peer-reviewed research by the climate science community.
That’s the difference. It’s not me and Mike vs. Eddie, or me and Mike vs. McKitrick. The debate is between a carbon-tax economist vs. a community of hundreds of climate scientists.
You can choose whoever you want to follow, Eddie. But you do yourself and your argument no favors by the way you have framed the discussion in this thread.
I like some, but not all, of Python. I found parts of the Life of Brian very funny. But much else that passes for modern humor, I despise. Indeed most modern film and entertainment, I despise. But I do have a fine collection of over 2000 films from an earlier era, and in the comedies of those bygone days, humor came from clever, witty writing rather than bizarre, outlandish behavior.
In any case, you may have thought your remark was funny, but in comedy, if a joke falls flat on an audience, it’s a bad joke. Perhaps you need to hire a gag writer.
I had not yet started my M.S. studies when that 97% debate happened at Biologos.
It is of course theoretically possible that McKitrick has expertise in massively parallel computational climate models as well as in economics. I was pointing out the error of assuming, as you did, that expertise in the one field translates to the other.
Judging by (a) the responses provided by Clinate Feedback, and (b) McKitrick’s quantity of peer-reviewed climate science papers, I am inclined to think that McKitrick has not acquired climate science modeling expertise.
Also, Eddie, I notice you keep insisting McKitrick is worth listening to in spite of the refutations provided by Climate Feedback
I could add 97% of 1/3 plus 53% of 2/3 in sixth grade. An M.S. in Data Science was not necessary. Careful reading of the source was all that was needed. But at that time you weren’t in the mood for careful reading; nor were the others posting there.
I thank you, however, for correctly spelling McKitrick’s name. I did not realize that it had only one “t”. I will write it correctly in the future.
So if Rousseau refutes Hobbes, Hobbes is no longer worth listening to? Is it not possible that Hobbes could defend himself against some of the refutations? Is it not possible that McKitrick could defend himself against some of the refutations?
Ask yourself a question, Chris. Did you first read McKitrick’s article very carefully, making notes of its good points and bad points, and then coming up with an evaluation, and then go the site which disagreed with him? Or did you, without first analyzing and criticizing his argument, go to Climate Feedback, read their take, and decide you’d go along with it? To use your phrase, I get the strong impression that it was the latter, because that seems to be “how you roll”.
I doubt we will get much further. Let end this with a civil “Have a good day!”
The ones doing the critiques are actual climate scientists, who have the relevant background in the physical, chemical and geological aspects of climate science and who can model complex climate system, drawing from their physical science background, using mathematics and statistics. McKritick lacks the former and it has definitely affected his ability to offer sound criticism of the field’s consensus as evidenced by their negative reviews of his articles.
Yes I did read his article carefully and there is no site with content that has addressed the points he raised, yet.
Did you do any of these before sharing the article here?
That’s definitely how you roll.
I agree. Based on previous expert reviews he was proven to be incompetent, but there is certainly a likelihood that he made a cogent argument in the article you cited even though his track record diminishes that likelihood.
The part I bolded is inaccurate. The climatology community has indeed “mentioned”, “discussed” and “tested” the conditional independence assumption. I got to know this from a quick google search, so it makes me wonder whether Ross made a lousy literature review or he is being intentionally dishonest. One article (written in 2016, ~5 years before Ross published his paper and that article on Curry’s site) which discusses this is the one cited below. Lets see some quotes from it first.
With regards to the conditional independence assumption being “mentioned” in the literature since AT99 was published:
With regards to being “tested”:
So the climate science community knew before now this limitation of the optimal fingerprinting method, but Ross went ahead to raise the issue as if it were an entirely new finding. This man must be really lousy at conducting a literature review.
Unlike Ross, the authors of the paper where these quotes are produced from offer solutions to the challenges. More importantly, it seems climatologists are beginning to look beyond regression analysis to delineate the influence of human activities on climate change as discussed in the paper below.