When I came down for breakfast, Jim held up the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The Brexit now “is”.
We knew what await us when we checked the impact on or portfolio. Yikes. But oddly, we both had been sort of rooting for the Brexit. Mind you…. it’s not really our business. Up to UK’ers.
But still, both Jim and I thought if we’d been voting, we’d be inclined to vote leave. Not saying our inclination was for any rational reason. Yes. Nationalism is a “thing” that influences people and can certainly tip balances. And in this case, neither of us followed details closely enough to know which choice was “better” from any other point of view. Economy? Dunno. Regulations? Dunno. As I had “Dunno” in most columns and “national pride” in the other one, that tipped toward “leave”.
It was obvious some ‘threats’ on the stay side were pretty bogus– at least long term. For example: on Twitter one argument on the “stay” side was those in UK would need a visa to take a vacation in Europe. Well… maybe short term. But I’m not in the UK and I don’t need a visa to visit the EU. So that didn’t sound like a likely outcome. (Not saying it can’t happen. Maybe the EU will now hate the UK and block vacation goers. But seems unlikely.)
Anyway, it seems despite the possibility of needing visa’s to vacation on the French Coast, it appears the UK voted to leave.
I think my main reaction is summed up by Paul Ryan
As an American, we value the principle of sovereignty, self-determination, government by consent and limited government,†said House speaker Paul Ryan.
Without mention of fresh Scottish and Irish calls for independence in the wake of the result, he added: “England is our indispensable ally. Our friends in the United Kingdom are our indispensable ally, and this is a very special relationship, and that relationship is going to continue no matter what. Period, end of story.â€
I suspect that’s the way most Americans who were paying attention feel about your choice: It was yours to make. As countries go, you’re just as much our friend as ever. The recent decision shouldn’t change much.
So to those in the UK: Felicitations. And good luck!
The next few months will certainly be unsettled. You have lots more decisions to make.
Did I say months? Well… I should say years. But my multi-decadal forecast is: it will work out pretty well.
Mind you…. I could be wrong. So once again: Good luck!
Way do the Scots want to remain? I refuse to believe it’s because they want free stuff.
I was also rooting for Brexit as perhaps Churchill’s revenge on the modern political dogmas of diversity and political correctness. The modern dogma of diversity has been watered down to be a form of censorship by the Left. The old version of diversity was the founding principle of the United States. Different states could have very different cultures, economies, and yes different laws. This old form of diversity is the only kind that actually allows real diversity of human possibilities. The Roman Empire version, which is a harbinger of the modern version could only exist through tyranny and brutality.
Britain has a proud cultural tradition in science, philosophy, and the arts with a strong strain belonging to John Locke and his intellectual descendants. The left views this as all anti-scientific and prejudiced. After all, Hegel showed that there is a science of history and that synthesis is the Borg that absorbs all those with parochial prejudices or views of cultural or economic superiority.
BTW, The markets will settle down soon enough. Brexit is the least of the global economic problems.
Lucia,
My take is that the loss of control on immigration was what ultimately gave ‘leave’ the voting edge.
.
Of course, the remain side, in a quintessential ‘progressive’ move, decided that it was smart to belittle and parody anyone who supported ‘leave’, accusing them of stupidity, racism, dishonesty, etc. We don’t have to look far to see the same take of the ‘progressive’ American left against anyone who opposes their vision of ‘progress’, with climate activists helping lead the charge, of course. That any thinking person can imagine insulting your opponents is a good idea is shocking; that it is remarkably common among ‘progressives’ is almost unbelievable.
.
A complete lack of humility and plenty of obnoxious arrogance on the remain side gave leave a chance, immigration pushed leave over the top.
Duke C.
“Way do the Scots want to remain?”
They are a leftist/socialist leaning region dominated politically by a much larger and more populous certer right region. They like that the EU provides some ‘protection’ against laws and regulations passed by the English majority. My guess: the Scotts will hold a plebiscite and leave the UK within a couple of years.
SteveF
Quite possibly. Dyson (of the vacuum cleaners) pointed out that EU citizens with few skillzzzz can get in easily, but it’s very difficult to hire a non-EU with skillzzzz. That’s a problem for his company.
That’s probably not the specific argument many voters saw. But they can see that those coming in to do not contain a sufficient proportion of those who are either “poor with gumption to start their own business” nor the “skilled”. And do lack of control is an issue. (Yes. I’m aware some of the immigrants started their own businesses. But there’s going to be a general sense based on some sort of “typical” behavior. Of course, some of anti-immigrant sentiment is just racism– as it always is wherever it occurs. But that doesn’t mean it’s all or even most.)
I’m betting that Northern Ireland will ask to leave the UK and join the rest of Ireland. That would actually make sense.
IMO, the Scots are like the Quebecois, they love to talk about separatism, but in the end, won’t go through with it.
Lucia,
If you are in need of a giggle, read over Ken Rice’s thread on Brexit… a perfect example of “a complete lack of humility and plenty of obnoxious arrogance on the remain side”. Apoplexy can indeed be funny, and electoral defeat on the left always brings apoplexy. Contrast the hysteria on that thread with the thoughtful resignation speech by David Cameron… it’s clear most of the remainers still don’t have a clue. Their answer to Brexit: you must never let the voters decide these questions. Totalitarian tendencies, as usual.
.
Mosher tried to get the rabble to actually reflect on what happened and why; they were having none of it.
DeWitt,
Maybe, but the vote was a lot closer in Northern Ireland than in Scotland. If I were a betting man, I’d bet the Scots will leave the UK within 3 years. I’d also bet they will regret that choice some years later. From a practical standpoint, Scotland is too small in population (about 5 million) to be much of a country on its own.
SteveF
Ken/Ander writes:
People whose funding was through the EU will likely be scrambling to figure out where to get funding. He’s in astronomy… right? So… yeah. He’s not going to get money from private industry. Now likely needs to find a new public source.
I don’t really know whether the step is in the right direction or wrong. But I do think UK astronomers doing research whose source of funding is the EU are going to have a bit of a scramble.
Lucia,
Ken can probably find a bit of money from the Scottish Parliament. Funding planitary evolution studies isn’t like funding climate science…. a handful of grad sudents and a professor is about it. Of course, actualy justifying reseach on how planets form may be a hard sell if public money is very tight.
.
Having delt with nightmarish (and utterly crazy!) EU regulations a few times, I think in the long term the Brits will be much better off not having to deal with Brussels, though the up front cost for getting out will be significant.
SteveF,
That’s a potential source. But lots of people are going to be looking to it.
i had thought Brexit might not be a good idea. my thought was that thw most onerous burden of belonging was runaway regulation, regulation beyond the capability of the reglated to influence. Another commenter suggested my theory that by remaining within, Brits would at least have access to the process was nuts.
I would also suggest that the media is in the catastrophe business and the possibility that leaving is actually a very good thing won’t surface for at least ten days.
chiclet keyboards really suck.
Steve, Scotland’s leaving would mean that UK’s trade would be effectively zero tariff, but without the regulations.
Lucia. It’s about sovereignty and its loss. England, and more recently the UK has spent several hundred years developing its own governing and legal institutions. Within the EU, rules are made by unelected bureaucrats and handed down as directives. These override our own laws and our own courts. We have Germans making our laws and Italian Judges overturning our court decisions. The two main players are Germany and France. These nations are not our friends. They have worked together to consistently expand the power and reach of what was the EEC (economic) and is now the EU (union, political) with the stated goal of creating a United States of Europe (“ever closer union”).
Immigration is the acute symptom of this loss of sovereignty. The UK has no control over who is allowed to enter and stay. The result has been the arrival of something like 6 million migrants in a nation of less than 60 million people over a period of 10 years. There has been no effort to expand the health and education systems, or to build enough housing. This has put a lot of pressure on services and created massive house price inflation. My brother has done very well from this: on paper he’s a rich man, but he hates it. He was able to support a wife and three children and bootstrap himself into the housing market while earning a very modest salary. It is impossible for his children to acquire anything like the home he provided them. Many young adults will never
own their own homes. Unaffordable housing has upset many middle class conservatives in the leafy shires, and is one reason why the counties all voted leave.
There was strong support for Brexit in the Labour heartlands of Wales, the midlands and the north. Labour has been captured by middle class public sector professionals who can afford private medicine and schooling and aren’t in competition for jobs. These people loathe the working class and don’t care about the parents who haven’t had a pay rise for 10 years, whose children have to attend overcrowded schools and have to wait weeks or months to get medical appointments. These are real issues for ordinary people and our politicians have brushed aside criticism as coming from racists and bigots.
A clincher for many came a couple of months ago when Obama announced that post-Brexit Britain would “have to go to the back of the queue” for any trade deals with the US. He used “queue” rather than “line” so we know he was reading Cameron’s script. Being lectured and threatened with punishment by your president interfering in our affairs, treating us a delinquent children, caused absolute fury and certainly shifted a lot of undecideds to Brexit.
Any financial wobbles are pure sentiment and can be fixed, because the UK economy is in reasonable shape and the banks are solvent. What can’t be fixed is being enslaved by Brussels. This result crosses party lines. This is what Brexit is all about.
Lucia,
It wasn’t about me specifically. The UK Higher Education sector has benefited from the EU, both in terms of research funding and in terms of the students who come here. There was – from what I saw – overwhelming support within the HE sector for remaining in the EU. I ended up talking with a bunch of our postdocs yesterday who were genuinely shocked and dismayed by the result, especially those who are continental Europeans; they don’t know what this means for them. There’s every expectation that the HE sector will suffer because of this result. If this is for the greater good, then that maybe it will be worth it and I hope that it is; my suspicion is that it won’t be.
Addition. WRT to travel, there were no visa requirements for citizens of Western European nations to travel in Western Europe prior to the UK joining the EEC. Nothing should change there, and if visa requirements are introduced it’s down to vindictiveness.
Scotland is an interesting case. Scotland chose to enter the union in 1707 after it went bust over the Darien scheme. It is a true union between equal nations, with both partners sharing a parliament, monarch and the benefit of peace and trade with the colonies. The Nationalists have succeeded in driving a wedge between England and Scotland. Prior to the independence referendum, the plan was a) to take the income from all that luvverly oil and keep it to themselves, and b) join the EU as an independant nation and take a seat at the top table.
The Nationalists got thumped in the referendum and the price of oil has crashed. WRT to b), successive British Prime Ministers have beaten a path to Brussels to try to influence decisions and got nothing. Bear in mind the UK has the 2nd largest economy in the EU. Scotland is tiny. I have a vision of Sturgeon kneeling front of Merkel and Hollande, presenting them with Scotland’s newly minted (ink still wet) Certificate of Independence. Begging to be allowed in. “What is place called Scotland? Can you show me on the map?”
Hi Lucia, thanks for the good wishes.
I heard Peter Hennessy (in the House of Lords) on BBC Radio 4 yesterday say that the idea of the EU was created by a group of clever left-wing Catholic French bureaucrats, and that most British have a problem with at least 3 out of those 5 characteristics. I think it’s fair to say that there has never been any great enthusiasm for the European project in the UK, as there is in parts of Europe, for at least as long as I can remember (since the 80’s). It’s always been kind of a Franco-German thing.
I voted Remain as I don’t see the main problems facing Britain as being caused by our membership of the EU. I’d be happy to be wrong – hopefully things will turn out for the better, and your long-term forecast is accurate.
One topic conspicuously absent from the Brexit discussion is introspection by the European Commission on what can be done to give member states more autonomy, or at least paths to appeal their decisions.
The idea that the unimpeachable Commission, with its unaccountable members serving their 5 year terms, can look at limiting their reach or find a way to be more flexible with all member states, has had minimal discussion. In fact the main response to Brexit seems to be that the Commission will “punish” England for leaving the marriage. This does not bode well for future friction within the Union.
At the end, unreformable political institutions are unsustainable, especially to a society that believes a degree of autonomy is their right. The United Nations and its continued slide into irrelevancy stands as an example. Can the EU be reformed? Their eventual reaction to this wake-up call will give a big hint.
Polls show there is a line of other countries ready to leave now after Brexit, including Texas.
Anders
I didn’t say it was about you personally. I said people situated as you are are going to have go scramble for funding because of this. In fact, I think I’m agreeing with you. You previously has a stable source of funding, now you are going to have to nail a new one down.
I certainly believe you when you way university faculty and students who benefited from membership in the EU and also that these people who did benefit were in favor of staying in.
I”m a bit puzzled you were shocked that the vote went “out”. Even sitting here in the US, I could see the race was going to be tight and there was a very strong possibility of “out”. This was not remotely surprising and should not have been to people who read national newspapers. (You might wish to advise your post docs that keeping abreast of the national news is wise.)
Of course non-UK students sitting in the UK are going to be nervous right now and UK students sitting in the EU will also be. That’s one of the groups impacted by this political change.
This may well be an especially difficult situation for those in astronomy as that field tends to be employed by the public sector, and the path to employment has changed. So they can’t be sure where to point their job searches.
So in other fields (engineering, software, etc.) might have somewhat less difficulty finding non-gov. employement. But they will likely still be a bit unsettled right now.
Is HE higher ed? It may suffer.
Certainly to the extent funding is EU rather than UK it will have to find new revenue streams. I’m sure a similar level of reshuffle would throw HE in a bit of a spin here in the US. (For us, the issue of whether a state can secede was decided a while back. It involved a war. Now adays it’s agreed that the only way a state can leave is to have an actual war.)
Whether it will hurt universities in the long run or not, I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure universities and high level research was not the #1 consideration in this decision. (I also don’t think it should have been the #1 consideration. There are zillions of more important matters. But of course, for many individuals at universities, their livelihood and future is in their own personal top 10 considerations.)
Up Yours, EU.
Andrew
oneuniverse,
I thought French Catholics were right wing? Shows what I know.
If that is the main reaction, it will be evidence you were wise to leave. It would tend to support the contention the bureaucrats are a bunch of unaccountable, power mad tin-pot little dictators. After all: if the policy actually does permit leaving and describes a path to do it, “punish those who leave” is not the behavior that best benefits the EU.
One big happy communal marriage….. (Or if you count UK, France and Germany as the ‘main’ members, a menage a trois, which has now become deux. Which is the right number for a marriage.)
Those who have access to the Wall Street Journal, this is a well written opinion piece on the Brexit:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-a-very-british-revolution-1466800383?cb=logged0.4530367835912671
(One of the other articles in the WSJ used the “shot heard round the world” allusion. I don’t know if the Brits will recognize that, but all Americans will. If you do, I think you can infer the WSJ’s reaction just from that. )
Lucia,
“It would tend to support the contention the bureaucrats are a bunch of unaccountable, power mad tin-pot little dictators.”
.
This seems to me one of the things that experience always shows is true; almost reaches the level of being included in the list of ‘we hold these truths to be self evident’.
SteveF,
Yes, which is why the rule should be that bureaucrats rules are subject to being overturned by courts (at least) and that their power be limited and focused on a specific thing. So, for example: IRS functionaries can apply tax code, EPA environmental rules and so on, but you don’t set up a single agency that decides on everything for everybody.
Admittedly, having to go to court to overrule something is very expensive. But at least it is a path. Some people take it in the US.
Lucia,
Yes, in principle at least, the courts can overturn a bureaucratic rule, but as you say, it is expensive.
.
There are two bigger problems: first, administrations like Mr. Obama’s push bureaucrats toward desired political outcomes (IRS targeting, EPA regulations, etc) and vigorously defend those outcomes, even when the actual statute (and the statute writers’ intent) plainly does not support what the bureaucrats are doing. Since the only real limitation on this abuse of administrative power is the Supreme Court, packing the Court with judges willing to ‘interpret’ the Constitution as not saying what the plain words actually say is top priority with politicians like Mr. Obama.
.
Second, Congress can’t seem to bring itself to write laws which explicitly and tightly control what the president, whoever that happens to be, does based on those laws. It’s incredible how sloppy many laws are (RICO being a good example). Future presidents may want to overstep their legal authority, but I don’t understand why Congress makes that easier for them via overly broad, unconstraining laws.
There’s been talk about the difference of view of old vs. young. It appears they split on remain vs. stay and — likely– whether they cared enough to bother to vote:
Now, I have to say, it may be the young cared a lot but somehow were ignorant about the importance of actually voting. But it’s also possible that the young expressed a view when button-holed or phoned by a pollsters. But really, they didn’t actually care much one way or the other. And so did not vote.
I know there are sometimes (usually local) issues on which I do not bother to vote because I have no strong opinion. When I was young, this happened for lots of issues. (Honestly, I did not have strong feelings about impact of things on local grade schools or high schools in Champaign or Urbana when I was in grad school.)
Local governments sometimes are aware of this and specifically pick voting dates that do not coincide with statewide or national elections knowing that means only those who care will show up. (College towns know this well.) And my guess is current 18-24 year olds aren’t all that different from the way I was back them. So… 18-24 year olds had an opinion. But really… they didn’t care that much. Even now, many probably don’t care that much- though a few are going to be upset and vocal. That’s the way it has always been.
SteveF
Yes. With some luck, Congress may learn to write more laws to control federal agencies more tightly. They past laws certainly were written to give too much leeway and so transfer too much power to the executive office. The current president certainly oversteps.
Given the two major party candidates in place, the next president will almost certainly be inclined to overstep if that’s what gets him/her what they want. ( The only real difference is that the direction in which Trump or Clinton might want to overstep. One might want “non-enforcement” or “lax” which if taken to an extreme is also rewriting. It just doesn’t tend to be the version we generally see. I’m not sure even Trump is ballsy enough to do something like tell the EPA to do nothing, or pare back to fewer than 3 employees so that the effectively do nothing. But that would really fall in the same category as a rewrite– as it’s deciding to “do nothing” when clearly “do something” is intended.)
Anyway, one possible advantage of Trump might be that an executive overstepping in the direct opposite way compared to the previous one just might get Congress to wise up. (I shudder to think of Trump in office….. OTOH, I shudder to think of Hillary in office…. Oy!)
Lucia (#1488886) –
“Anyway, one possible advantage of Trump might be that an executive overstepping in the direct opposite way compared to the previous one just might get Congress to wise up.”
I’ve advanced this argument to friends as a possible silver lining to a Trump victory, but none seem convinced. But I would love to see executive power diminished, regardless of the president. Far too much power (and leeway in exercising that power) has been ceded over the years from the citizens to the executive branch.
Ok… From Anders thread. Do we have evidence on anti-democratic views? Yes. Yes we do:
Ok… So he’s suggesting:
1) Suspending all vestiges of freedom of the press. (e.g. “break up the Murdoch press” and “pass a law against the concentration of media power”. Are they going to can the BBC? That’s concentration of media power– big time.)
2) Creating a rule that virtually ensures the vote is meaningless ( Super majority for some changes makes sense. But >75% turnout exceeds the turn out parliamentary elections in recent years. http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm )
3) Something that is likely impossible: “make clear what the alternatives mean”.
On #3: Sounds like a nice plan. But honestly, no one really knows what the alternatives to “leave” , “stay” are in their entirety. We don’t know what specific rules the UK will implement after leave. We also don’t know what the EU is going to do nor what path it would have taken if UK had voted stay.
Even I could tell people on both sides said stupid unsupportable things pre-vote and I’m sitting in the US. Some of the “stay” statements were more obviously stupid in a quite transparent way. ( You’ll need a visa to visit the EU? Sorry, doubt that. I don’t need one; UKers probably aren’t going to either. In contrast lies or mistatements about funding of the NHS are harder for someone to determine the truth on pre-vote.)
On #2: For what it’s worth, local municipalities sometimes use rule (2) to their advantage on some issues for which we have previously set the need for minimum turnouts. They will slate special voting periods at weird times to virtually ensure turnout will be low or the opposite if they want turn out high. (The opposite can happen if there is no “minimum turn out” rule.) But generally speaking one doesn’t create these minimum turn out bars at levels that are above the turn out for the previous presidential or even statewide election. Anyone can see that doing so makes the vote a sham. Running elections costs money. Better not to have a vote at all than run a costly sham one that will ultimately do nothing but piss electorate off. (And if you do something like that too often, you will end up with revolution because people will know which side actually got more votes.)
HaroldW,
The problem with silver linings is they are are sometimes surrounded by big dark tornado inducing Mjolnor wielding thunder clouds. But yes, the silver lining may exist.
Venema is a self declared socialist, so this is not too surprising. I would also point out that the whole Lew, Cook, Rice, SkS group of fellow travelers is pretty convinced of their own superiority and likes to smear anyone they don’t like or who disagrees with their message. Rice’s comments come disproportionately from this “elite” group.
I was going to ignore the theme of the most recent comments (as that is what they really deserve) but I can’t resist highlighting the irony of David Young saying this:
I think that if you were to determine the ratio of David Young’s comments in which he is smearing someone, to the total of all David Young’s comments, I would guess that it is somewhere close to 1.
Really Ken Rice. Among those suffering from these smears are our own Lucia, Richard Tol, Judith Curry, and Paul Matthews. You are just denying well documented history now and not being very honest.
DY,
Was my comment too complicated for you? Even if what you say is true (and I would dispute most of it, but that’s neither here nor there) it doesn’t change that the ratio of your comments in which you smear someone, to all you comments, is probably pretty close to 1.
Ken Rice, If what I say is true, it is not a smear. Attempting to change the subject to the content of my comments, and clearly misrepresenting them, is just so transparently a partisan technique it speaks for itself.
DY,
You just can’t help yourself, can you?
David,
Your comment got me consulting the dictionary. Yes, it does appear that “smear” requires the statement to be false. So I learned something.
On Victor Venema: I rarely read VV stuff. The anti-democratic one happened to catch my eye.
I should add: In the US, when we have ‘minimum turn out’ requirements, they are generally some fraction of the last presidential election or the last election for governor or something like that. The motivation is generally to ensure that anyone who does slate a vote on something makes dang sure it is publicized sufficiently for the vote to be meaningful. This avoids local officials from slating plebiscite on obscure (and possibly unpopular) issues they’d like to pass at periods where they know few will vote
But no one would ever suggest the minimum turn out to permit a vote to count in some local elect should exceed that in the most recent presidential election. That some are suggesting that does smack of anti-democratic tendencies.
The fact is, the Brexit vote got larger turnouts than recent elections for Parliament. So I think it’s a bit much for anyone to complain that turn out was too low to be representative. Doing so definitely does smack of cherry picking potential reasons to invalidate a vote that didn’t go one’s way.
Perhaps they should have required supermajority prior to the vote. But they didn’t.
I have no idea what options they have going forward. Evidently in some sense this vote was just a “suggestion” and not legally binding. If so that may also have been unwise. Elections are expensive. People know the outcome of this one and would know politicians set it aside. Setting aside the “suggestion” would be fraught with problems that cut to foundations of a democratic republic, (or monarch or demoncratic anything.) Do overs are also fraught.
Of course, I’m not in the UK…. so it’s all up to them. (And likewise up to the Scots to decide if they try to leave the UK and so on.)
With regard to turnout and winning by a majority of only 51.9%…
2012 US presidential election:
Winner – 51.1%
Turnout – 54.9%
Too late for a petition?
Lucia
I think Hennessey was exaggerating a bit, or maybe referring to history I’m not aware of. Having Googled a bit, it seems the Vatican has been officially anti-communist since 1937’s encyclical, and more so since the 1948 Decree against Communism, which excommunicated all communists. (Pope Francis’s seems more agitated about free markets and capitalism though.). I think the reality is a bit more complex, as there were many Communists in the Catholic Church at the time of the decree.
He may have a point about the the Catholic influence on the thinking that went into the EU though: Robert Schuman (French), Jean Monnet (French), Konrad Adenauer (German), Alcide De Gasperi (Italian) were key figures in the foundation of the EU, all of whom were Catholics. Adenauer was a devout Catholic, as was De Gasperi I think. They were also all politically more-or-less centrist.
Lucia on Victor V comment at ATTP: “… Better not to have a vote at all than run a costly sham…”
.
Prisons and gulags throughout the world are filled with those who made that practical observation.
Ron Graf,
Of course. Those who run costly shams don’t like the fact they are shams to be pointed out.
If there is one certainty it’s that all is done in the name of the greater good; bless their souls.
Lucia,
“Perhaps they should have required supermajority prior to the vote. But they didn’t.”
.
That would only be suitable if the Brits had voted by supermajority to get into the EU quagmire. They didn’t. They voted exactly once, by simple majority, no turnout limits, for a common market, not the supra-government organization the EU has become. Those who want the stupid masses to be controled by their (leftist) ‘superiors’ are who suggest this kind of nonsense.
SteveF
And appeared to have proposed it after the result was not what they preferred.
Since Ken has appeared here, I would just reiterate that his post on McArdle’s assertions about modeling contained a fundamental error that Ken has never corrected or even commented on. Ken stated that any physical model that violators are laws of physics can be discarded. This is in error in that all high Reynolds’ number turbulent flow simulations use sub grid models for example eddy viscosity models that change the Navier-Stokes equations viscosity to be “nonphysical” in a strict sense. Since this is such a fundamental mistake, one would expect an honest person to discuss it further, or at least try to argue against my assertion. In this important sense, all interesting turbulent flow simulations use empirical relations and models that modify the “laws of physics” to account for unresolved scales.
David Young, have you seen this (I know nothing of models, willing to learn) : http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/178/bok%253A978-3-662-48959-8.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fbook%2F10.1007%2F978-3-662-48959-8&token2=exp=1466727277~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F178%2Fbok%25253A978-3-662-48959-8.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Fbook%252F10.1007%252F978-3-662-48959-8*~hmac=2b6338da9436fd3ca040c6d0aa9488fb7cc230cd81d1bf2896623e9602ee02ed
“That would only be suitable if the Brits had voted by supermajority to get into the EU quagmire. They didn’t.”
Well, as it turned out, they did. Over 67% voted yes.
For socialists/liberals such as Venema democracy is fine as long as it does as they say.
This is what C.S. Lewis said (68 years ago!)
@Stokes, wisdom comes with the years, besides in those days it was a economic union, now it’s a political union.
@Lucia, I’m afraid for the Scots it’s not that easy. The Eurocrats already made it very clear that Scotland in case it applies as a independent state it has to apply again from new which may include much more stringent rules as when they were a part of the UK, including abandoning the Queen and the pound for the euro besides it could take many many years to complete. Madam Sturgeon is now experiencing the wrath of the Eurocrats.
The general mood in Brussels is now “F*ck the British”.
DY,
Just for the record, what you’ve claimed I said, is not what I said. I don’t expect you to correct your misrepresentations (you’ve never done so before) and I don’t particularly care. If your desire to call me dishonest is so great that you feel the need to continually misrepresent me, that reflects entirely on you, not me.
For those who are actually interested (DY clearly is not, smearing me in public appears to be his main goal) what I said was:
The fundamental laws of physics are energy conservation, mass conservation, momentum conservation. You’ll note that I said “the results of which violate any of these laws”, not (as DY claims) physical models that violate these laws. Of course, the results of a numerical model cannot satisfy these laws exactly (you will always need to decide on some threshold) but any model the results of which does not conserve energy, mass, or momentum can be eliminated. That’s really all I was saying. Maybe the reason I won’t correct this is because it very obviously is not incorrect.
DY, feel free to find some other reason to smear me, as it appears that you are incapable of doing anything else. Also feel free to prove me wrong by choosing to actually correct your misrepresentations, but I certainly don’t intend to hold my breath.
Nick,
Was there over 75 percent turnout?
Nick Stokes,
The issues are 1) a supermajority was not required in that vote, nor 2) was what they voted for a supra-national governing body… they were voting for an open market within an ‘economic community’. ‘Mission creep’ is not really a strong enough description for what they got out of a vote for a common market. Can’t say I am surprised that many on the losing side want now to move the goal posts and demand a redo… seen that behavion quite often among spoiled 8 year olds too… and those folks do share many emotional and intellectual characteristics with spoiled 8 year olds.
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According to public opinion surveys, a substantial majority of voters in France are also ready to ditch the project and start over. I am betting officials in Brussels also blame that preference on stupidity, ignorance, racism, and dishonesty. I hope the national governments in Europe will start reforming how Brussels ‘governs’, at a minimum placing limits on what kinds of laws, rules, and regulations Brussels can influence. If not, the whole thing will likely collapse.
“It’s not hard to tell the difference between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grudge”
(From memory, P.G. Woodhouse)
John McTernan in the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/a-second-scottish-referendum-is-not-inevitable/
England is supporting the black hole that is Scotland to the extent of £15 bn per year. And the Scots are threatening to leave? Good luck with that. Don’t let the door hit you ohn the arse on your way out.
John M,
Turn out was evidently 65%.
So it looks like the “in” vote would not have passed the 75% turn out threshold. It’s not an impossible threshold– some parliamentary votes in the 90s got that high. But it’s a a very high turn out– none have gotten that high this century.
Interestingly, there is an “online petition” with (supposedly) 3 millions of so votes to re-do the referendum. It’s being investigated for fraud.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36634407?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
I first read about this petition at Anders. They were all super excited. I then heard about it on twitter. My first thought was how do those petitions make sure only UK citizens vote? (See:
https://twitter.com/lucialiljegren/status/746731575241379840
)
Anyway, it turns out a scan of the IP addresses reveals orgination sites includes many from non-UK locations (Azerbiajian to… whatever.) Right now no one knows how many UKers filled it out.
My theory is someone set a signature-bot to the page which used open proxies or something and filled out and just did “reload-fill-post, reload-fill-post” at whatever rate it could.
But they didn’t think to stick to all UK proxy IPs. Oh. Well….
Seth,
Maybe cooler heads will prevail in Scotland, but I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it. There are big differences in political inclinations, and those on the left may be willing to lose some overall wealth if they think they can force what wealth remains to be more ‘fairly distributed’.
Lucia,
“But they didn’t think to stick to all UK proxy IPs. Oh. Well….”
.
LOL
Maybe some will argue there are lots of Brits in Azerbaijan.
Cameron himself already twittered (before the vote) about a second referendum “a referendum is not a neverendum”.
It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the EU finally switched from a trade association (albeit with delusions of grandeur) to a political union (albeit in nascent form), but one plausible candidate is the Lisbon Treaty. If Gordon Brown had had the courage to put that to a referendum before ratifying it then we wouldn’t be where we are now.
Preventing the ordinary people from having their say is a good strategy in the short term, but it ensures that the eventual shock will be far larger than it need be.
Hoi Polloi,
He resigned, stating clearly that the voters’ will must be respected. I doubt there will be another vote before the UK is officially out of the EC, if ever.
SteveF,
Evidently, the # signatures from British Antarctica exceeded the number of Brits in Antarctica by a long shot.
This is the problem with casually created online polls. They potentially can be a way to learn of issues people care about. But if not carefully thought out, they can be swamped by bots. In this case, it may have taken exactly 1 mischievous script-kiddie to write a script and start ‘posting’ submissions.
Jonathan Jones,
“It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the EU finally switched from a trade association (albeit with delusions of grandeur) to a political union (albeit in nascent form), but one plausible candidate is the Lisbon Treaty.”
.
I think the process started long before, around 2001, with drafting of the treaty forming a European Constitution. That Constitution was rejected by plebiscites in the Netherlands and France, and looked likely (if I remember right) to face almost certain defeat in the UK and elsewhere. So it was abandoned. The Lisbon Treaty seemed to me to be just a back-door way for people who supported the earlier constitutional treaty to achieve the same result, but without being subject to voter approval. I agree that Gordon Brown could have saved everyone a lot of grief had he conducted a plebiscite after the Lisbon Treaty, but I think he knew the treaty would have been rejected, but he wanted ‘ever closer union’ even if the voters did not. Brexit is just birds coming home to roost.
Irony is that the petition originally was started by a leave activist when it appeared remain would win. Obviously it has now been hijacked by the remain camp.
Apparently 39000 votes came from the Vatican with a population of 800. Bots galore…
https://mobile.twitter.com/cbfortescue/status/746721789011722240/photo/2
https://mobile.twitter.com/jason_oco/status/746795550721335296/photo/1
@SteveF
The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 to integrate Europe. It was drafted in the same Dutch city in 1991. Upon its entry into force on November 1st 1993 the EU was created and led to the creation of a single currency the Euro.
You’re correct about the Lisbon Treaty which was a backdoor move to correct the French and Dutch Non-Nee.
SteveF,
Yes indeed, the process started earlier. But the Lisbon Treaty is the moment when the EU basically said “f**k you” to all the opponents, adding “we’re going to force this through whether you like it or not, even if we have to lie and cheat to do so”.
Up to that moment the EU could claim some sort of basic legitimacy; after that it threw everything away and its demise became just a matter of time.
It sounds odd to hear anyone cheering nationalism and national pride in a world where that has led to so much death and destruction. I’d long thought that the great dystopias of the 20th century – not to mention the actual events — had taught us that we need to move beyond arbitrary lines on maps and our accidental place of birth and get on with treating each other as fellow human beings. Obviously I was wrong.
My personal favorite historical person has always been Thomas Paine and my favorite line from Paine is: “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” These sentiments were presaged by a couple millennia by Socrates: “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
Instead what we see is a growing xenophobic, nostalgic yearning for a past that never existed, and a misguided vote for building walls instead of tearing them down.
Yeay team us.
Ken Rice, Most of what you said above that is technical is superficial but correct in so far as it goes and does nothing to address my point. As Steve McIntyre said: Can you read? I’ve said this many times and gone into great detail on the previous thread.
The RESULTS of all models of high Reynolds’ turbulent flows violate the correct physical law of conservation of momentum because of the source terms due to the sub grid model. This is not just a small numerical round off error either. The molecular viscosity is modified by several orders of magnitude depending on the local turbulence level being predicted. Now the source term is based on what Prof. Drela calls in his thesis “useful statements about turbulent flows” that are not really based on anything other than intuition or fits of experimental data. In some sense that’s physics, but its not “fundamental laws of physics.” Your original formulation would require us to discard all models except direct numerical simulation, which is impossible for all realistic flows, particularly the atmosphere.
You could just do a little reading on eddy viscosity models or on Reynolds’ averaging. This point is really quite well known to specialists.
Ken Rice, Let’s say for purposes of my being very generous to you and showing an interest in honestly understanding the broad picture here, I ignore your error and focus on the broader point, which I could roughly paraphrase as “physical models are based on more physics than economic models.” There is as with all vague statements, some truth in this. And I think that is what you were ineptly trying to say.
There is another broad and very important point however, and that is that generally, people who are on the fringes of computational fluid dynamics, especially those who are not turbulence modeling specialists tend to be dramatically overconfident in the quality of the results. I don’t know if you fit this category but it is very prevalent in the CFD literature, where selection and positive results biases are very prevalent and give a very unfair picture of the state of the art. It also gives the impression that the simulation problem is mostly solved, a dangerous notion for the entire field because it makes it unlikely that anyone will care to spend money to address the huge theoretical and practical gaps that exist.
There is a string of papers recently by our group on some of these issues, including things like multiple solutions, spurious separation, etc. If you are genuinely interesting in learning something, instead of just participating in online warfare for your point of view, I can send you a good list. The big picture here is quite different than the scientific literature paints and that one reason science needs reform.
Kevin Oneill, I would be careful about projecting your view onto the broad world. There are many religious and philosophical ideas about what mankind is and can become. In a sense every country and/or every apparently balkanized group embodies a different perspective. That’s the idea behind the American constitution. That’s what the 10th amendment was supposed to be about. There must be limits obviously, but it was a new and revolutionary idea. The civil war tested those limits.
In the case of Britain, there is a broad history of tolerance and dedication to Western values that changed the world for the better. The Royal Navy for example single handedly stamped out the slave trade. Many particularly Muslim traders were very angry about that and a few were hanged. To characterize that as you do is doesn’t really stand up to an honest evaluation of history.
I am not suspicious of these things, but regard it as healthy human nature to regard your groups way as better and worth preserving. in any case, that aspect of human nature is not going to change.
Kevin
Not so sure the dystopia’s of the 20th century nor actual events were all or even mostly due to “nationalism” or “national pride”. As for going past arbitrary lines: I’m not seeing the EU as really doing that. It’s not as if they ignore national lines to the extent that someone from India or Ethiopia can just walk right off an airplane and legally take a job in the EU. Heck, I can’t. It’s just a matter of what lines are set up and who gets to cross them.
Quotes are all well and good. But no matter what Socrates said, he was not a citizen of Britain, Rome or for that matter, Troy. And Greeks owned slaves. It’s not clear that Socrate’s thought slaves got to be citizens of the world.
Some may well be xenophobic. But I don’t think it’s quite fair to conflate xenophobia and national pride. They share aspects, but they aren’t the same thing.
For that matter: Who do you think is yearning for the past? (Real question.)
As far as I can see, there are people trying to have the present and future take a form they prefer. That their preferences might differ from yours doesn’t make it yearning for the past. (And certainly doesn’t make it yearning for a past that didn’t exist!)
Note also: We here in the US aren’t in the EU. We also aren’t in any sort of “union” with Canada. We and Canada have managed to keep fairly easy to cross borders for a long time without being a “union”.
DY,
If you are interested in honestly understanding the broader picture, you could start by correctly representing what I’ve said. You’ve still failed to do so. Until such time (which I suspect is never) I have no further interest in discussing this with you. There are plenty of well-informed people I can discuss this with. I certainly don’t need to do so with someone who seems incapable of doing so without throwing around insults.
Individual voters reasons for voting to leave the EU are no doubt varied and with a range of thoughtfulness and rationale. Democracies seldom operate on the idealistic basis often referenced in Civics 101 or expounded by big government advocates or even when preferred voter reasons are extracted by those interested in smaller government.
A positive result regardless of voter motivations could occur if the move by GB to exit leads to freer trade by Great Britain and some circumspect of the remaining EU members on their over regulated and perverted view of what free trade embodies. The former proposition is more likely to occur to some degree than the latter one in my view of things. So called free trade that involves numerous and detailed stipulations in government agreements on trade is hardly free.
The declarations of dire consequences of leaving the EU by the opponents of the GB exit appeared to be grounded in a very non-intellectual variant of conservatism whereby all things EU past and present are merely deemed good and changes are bad. Interesting for me will be the reactions of the EU to the exit and whether there will be retribution by the EU and if the EU will show that is has interest in having good interactions with European nations outside of the EU – and even a nation that has left the EU. Also of interest will be the reactions of other EU nations to the demand for EU plebiscites in their countries.
‘From a practical standpoint, Scotland is too small in population (about 5 million) to be much of a country on its own.’
Oh chzist, what an attitude!
There are plenty of countries of that size particular in Europe, like Denmark, Norway, Finland, Slovensko, Ireland to name a few. Much very good very fine countries. England is 10 times more populated and historically 100 times more willing and capable of starting a major war inside the borders of abovementioned countries. Of course they have not been alone in murdering and slave trade. These we call ‘much of a country’. Keeping ‘much of country’ out is a majr headeache in Europe historically speaking.
Lucia I hope you don’t automoderate me..
Jonathan Jones,
“It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the EU finally switched from a trade association (albeit with delusions of grandeur) to a political union (albeit in nascent form), but one plausible candidate is the Lisbon Treaty.â€
.
The development has been the stated goal (the preamble) in all the treaties right from the start (Rome and Paris treaties) with its commitment to an ever closer union. From The Solemn Declaration on European Union, 1983:
“The Heads of State or Government, on the basis of an awareness of a common destiny and the wish to affirm the European identity, confirm their commitment to progress towards an ever closer union among the peoples and Member States of the European Community.”
Of course, there was never (and never will be, I think) such a thing as a European identity or destiny. And certainly no wish outside the ruling or journalistic classes in Europe for another grand Utopian project on the battered continent.
Free trade, yes. The Danish and the British voted to join the common market in 1973 because they believed the politicians who said this was about free trade only. Almost no mention were made of the ideoloques’ plans of an ever closer European Union until I think the Danish referendum in 1992 on the Maastricht Treaty. At this time I realised the ideological, progressive, utopian nature of the EU. The preambles of the treaties were not just words, they actually meant what they said! Before the Danish referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, articulate, well-reasoned people made me realise the ideological and totalitarian aspects of these plans. The Danish voted no to the Maastricht Treaty in June 1992 and almost miracuously won the Europeans soccer championship later that month.
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After the Danish ‘no’ in 1992, the ideological plans for European Union have been at the center of the discussions in Denmark and most other European countries and always downplayed by the politicians as just words.
.
Characteristically, in 1986 the Danish Prime minister, Poul Schlüter assured the electorate just before the Danish voted yes to the ‘Single European Act’ that:
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“The Union is stone dead”
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I hope Brexit will spread and the peoples of Europe liberate them themselves from the EU before it is too late. It is almost too late for the Southern European countries already. The monetary union and the Euro have destroyed their economies and made them dependent on transfers from the North, Germany in particular. The Euro makes it impossible for these countries to revive their economies. It is so sad on so many levels.
Hugs,
First time comments are always moderated. I think wordpress goes by “name/email” combo. I approved as soon as I saw it. 🙂
Hugs
I’m not sure how England is going to manage to win wars without flanks of Scots bagpipers making a racket that instills fear in the hearts of all listeners!!
@NANielsen
Denmark ratified the treaty in 1993 after the Edinburgh Agreement with 4 exceptions, amongst others not being a part of the EMU, again confirmed by the 2000 referendum.
Ken Rice, I guess the question is really “did you actually read what I have said above?” I summarized your point and understand it precisely. It contains an important oversight that is a common error amoung those who’re only on the fringes of CFD and turbulence modeling. I laid out above very patiently the issue. You chose to simply ignore the issue and “stand pat” on your own authority. That’s OK. Why can’t you be honest even about this small thing? I know it would take work for you to actually understand this issue, but you would be a better advocate for climate issues if you extended your knowledge. It might even help you in your career. I have your best interests at heart here.
https://cliscep.com/2016/05/24/its-all-so-futile/
@Hugs
I’m sure you are aware of the aggressive expansion of the EU towards the borders of Russia including war mongering speeches of EU MP’s Van Baalen en Verhofstadt in Kiev/Ukraine. So far the peaceful EU…
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This relentless expansion without any control by democratic means is one of the reasons of the resentment by the European people for the EU.
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The EEC was much better solution and worked fine for many years until Eurocrats decided more political power was needed.
DY,
No, you haven’t summarised my point. You’ve summarised what you think my point is. I’ve explained where you’re getting it wrong more than once. My post isn’t even all their complicated. You could try reading it again. Until you can understand the difference between these two positions, there really isn’t much point in discussing anything more complex with you. I really don’t have time to end up in a discussion about your strawmen. TBH, I don’t really care because the thought of spending much more time discussing this with someone who seems incapable of not throwing around insults is not particularly appealing.
Just out of interest. You know who I am. Have you actually looked me up? Do you know what I do?
Hoi Polloi:
“@NANielsen
Denmark ratified the treaty in 1993 after the Edinburgh Agreement with 4 exceptions, amongst others not being a part of the EMU, again confirmed by the 2000 referendum.”
.
Yes, I voted no on both occasions. Recently, a Danish referendum in december 2015 rejected a government proposal of lifting one of the opt-outs.
Did Anders really write that guest post on “climate scepticism”? The content is outrageous even for Anders. I’ve always been slow to catch on spoofs like “fake Tony,” which I think is mostly art of progressives. There is even one who does a lame spoof of climate audit called nevendingaudit. http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/archive
It’s done in a lovingly stalkerish way. Remember all for the common good and all…
Hoi Polloi:
“@Hugs
I’m sure you are aware of the aggressive expansion of the EU towards the borders of Russia including war mongering speeches of EU MP’s Van Baalen en Verhofstadt in Kiev/Ukraine. So far the peaceful EU…”
.
Yes, but in that respect the EU is just supporting the warmongering US administration and NATO.
Interestingly, the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently sharply criticized NATO military maneuvers in Eastern Europe simulating the repulsion of “Russian aggressionâ€. He told Bild am Sonntag that inflaming the standoff with Russia would endanger European security and increase risk of reviving an “old confrontation.â€
.
“Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken,†Steinmeier said “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,â€
.
Do the US and EU bureaucrats need this confrontation? (real question). During the Cold war where Russia/the Soviet Union was a real threat, appeasement, cooperation and talks of disarmament were the main agendas of NATO and the rest of the western World.
It’s hard to see how a single currency can work without a political union also.
As far as I can recall Krugman was always a Euro-skeptic. A political union was the loglcal progression and why this single currency was likely to fail. Further good points here .
Kevin O’Neill (Comment #148926
“Instead what we see is a growing xenophobic, nostalgic yearning for a past that never existed, and a misguided vote for building walls instead of tearing them down.”
Perceptions matter.
Xenophobia is loving your sense of identity not hating others.
Building anything is generally more constructive than tearing down
AKA Vandalism or Creativity depending on viewpoint.
I’m sure the past exists in the perception of the yearner.
Nonetheless a good argument for openness, change and tolerance of difference.
Just no pride in identity, recognition of achievement and tolerance of conformity or the rights of other people who disagree with your view.
In other words a rebellious teenager argument.
Which, by the way, is perfectly OK.
Why do you need a political union for a single currency to work? It is just a unit of exchange. Lots of countries use the dollar.
Kevin ONeil,
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“….had taught us that we need to move beyond arbitrary lines on maps and our accidental place of birth and get on with treating each other as fellow human beings. Obviously I was wrong.”
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I enjoyed your comment, and found it very entertaining.
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The problem with ‘citizen of the world’ idealizations is that a lot of your fellow citizens neither accept your philosophy, nor give a hoot about you or your life. For example, the whole ‘radical islam’ problem has very little to do with ‘radical Islam’, but a great deal to do with a billion and a half-odd fellow ‘citizens of the world’, nearly half of whom think Saria should be instituted everywhere (you know, throw the homosexuals from high building tops, stone the adultresses, cut off the heads of apostates, etc….. everywhere on Earth). To say your view is ‘naive’ does not really describe it adequately. ‘Dangerously naive’ comes closer, though there is arguably a comical component as well. Maybe “dangerously naive but at the same time silly” is reasonable.
Hugs,
“Oh chzist, what an attitude!”
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I hope the Scots don’t leave the UK, since I think it would be bad for them both economically and politically. If they chose to leave the UK and then become part of an ‘ever closer union’ with Europe, that would be even worse. On the bright side, the Scots’ departure would create a good historical example of a very bad policy choice, which people in the future might learn from.
MikeN,
Why indeed. Your comment shows that you are more perceptive than ‘experts’ like Krugman.
Ken Rice, My point is not a straw man. You have not even managed to restate it. I know who you are. You seem fairly unfamiliar with CFD as your post shows and your continued vacuous restatements of it here.
Once again, for the 10th time here and on a previous thread, the Navier-Stokes equations are a statement of fundamental conservation laws. They MUST be modified for all practical simulations with momentum source terms that are based NOT on these laws but on empirical relationships and statements about turbulent flow that are NOT based on any law of physics. The resulting system of equations VIOLATES the proper conservation of momentum.
If you can read the above paragraph, can you explain to me why your point about being able to discard any model whose results do no satisfy the “laws of physics” would allow you to accept any high Reynolds’ number simulation in the broad field that is the basis of GCM’s.
Just repeating the same erroneous statements (which is all you have done here) does nothing to establish their correctness. What I have said is easily found in for example Wilcox’s big book on turbulence modeling, which is pretty honest about the limitations and questionable assumptions. Of course, its the best we have, but honesty about limitations is the bedrock on which any scientific discussion must be based.
Ron, The blog post I linked to is quite good I think at imitating Rice’s unique style of argumentation. It was not written by him, even though some might be hard pressed to be sure. The key to the style is to deny that you said what you clearly said and then just keep repeating that you are offended that anyone can insult you by challenging the almighty Professor of astronomy and SkS fellow traveler. You then make sure no further enlightenment can take place by refusing to deal with anything else but your sense of being offended that your original statement (which you didn’t really say after all) is challenged and is in an important sense wrong.
The strength of a currency reflects the underlying economy and the underlying fiscal policies, budget deficits, tax policy etc. The Euro helps Germany’s exports as its currency would have been otherwise stronger. On the other hand, weaker countries like Greece need to have a depreciated currency reflecting the underlying economy which would have been helpful in reviving their exports. The monetary union restricts the ability of weaker countries to stimulate their economy, as seen in the events surrounding the debt crisis . Many of the countries that adopted the dollar as a currency did so because their people lost faith in their own regimes in managing their currency.
Kevin O’Neill (Comment #148926)
When you say:
“It sounds odd to hear anyone cheering nationalism and national pride in a world where that has led to so much death and destruction. I’d long thought that the great dystopias of the 20th century – not to mention the actual events — had taught us that we need to move beyond arbitrary lines on maps and our accidental place of birth and get on with treating each other as fellow human beings. Obviously I was wrong.
My personal favorite historical person has always been Thomas Paine and my favorite line from Paine is: “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.†These sentiments were presaged by a couple millennia by Socrates: “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.â€
I think one would have to go further in delineating the individual away from nationalism and globalism and that would be with a statement like that of: “I prefer not to be recognized as an llinoisan, nor an American, nor a citizen of the world, but rather as an individual who respects and acknowledges other individuals as such.”
Your hero’s motivations and actions were more in line with those seeking independence from the EU -although the current exit was much more peaceful.
“As far as I can recall Krugman was always a Euro-skeptic. A political union was the loglcal progression and why this single currency was likely to fail. Further good points here .”
More like speculations that without the excuse of lack of writing space would be verging on vacuous.
DY, now that I had a chance to read the whole spoof, https://cliscep.com/2016/05/24/its-all-so-futile/, I now get it but don’t endorse it. I hope I’m naive but I have to proceed in the assumption there is an outside chance that the debate can be advanced. If dialogue gets satirical it also gets disingenuous, personal, unproductive and removes the remote chance that. Reasoned arguments, like yours above, no matter how scientifically based or logical won’t be acknowledged by anyone who is disrespected. Do I think Anders and others are many times wrong, yes, including myself.
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If Anders’ assumptions break logical laws and are foolish lets be reverent and patient in letting him come around, after all, he does now enjoy the safe company of the current “consensus” (of both politicians and scientists.)
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If I were to make an improvement for ATTP’s blog it would be:
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1) Eliminate censoring of clean comments made in good faith. If the rules are set to keep the blog strictly on topic moderation should be evenhanded toward only that end.
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2) Frown upon appealing to authority, it’s anti-intellectual, especially if appealing to one’s own, aka hand-waiving. If authority is brought up then history of betrayed trusts and scientific wrongdoing are fair game; MBH(98,99), Climategate and Al Gore.
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3) Making blog posts that are disrespectful to the motives and integrity of scientists with views counter “the consensus” is simply anti-intellectual propaganda. Even if it is thought that the studies are paid propaganda both sides can argue of money and political undue influence on the science. Vilifying or belittling skeptical scientists only proves that appeals to respect consensus authority were not based on respect of science per se, just of the favored.
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4) If the goal is to be persuasive to an educated audience it would be wise to make humble assumptions in blog posts. If communicating the Feynman ethic, to tell both sides of the story, with fairness and clarity, does not allow your argument to be persuasive, then you do not have a good argument.
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5) For specific examples of #4, I notice a consistent lack of acknowledgement of centennial of millennial variability (forced or unforced), a stunning overconfidence in the accuracy of historical land and SST records, and overconfidence that the whole AGW debate is settled science, “just physics”, etc… DY covered the climate models already.
RB,
A political union would not necessarily solve the problem, as we may be about to find out. A recession in the next few years, which seems to be an odds on bet, is going to be very ugly. The stock market is a large bubble that’s just waiting to be popped.
Kevin Oneill:
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This is an educated point, not one to be summarily discarded. In fact, I believe it may be near the core of a political divide of thought. It begs the question: why have allegiance to anything or anyone? Most spies I think justify their enterprise under the “citizen of the world” guise.
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I would simply answer if you expect your spouse, your parents or children to have any allegiance to you then it would be logical for them to expect the same from you. Same goes for country. Period.
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Allegiance is not absolute or replace good conscience. A soldier’s duty does not extend to unlawful orders. Only spouses are protected under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution from forced testimony against each other.
In a sense Ron Graf, I agree with you that all should continue to try for reasoned dialogue. The problem here is that Ken Rice gave up on reasoned dialogue a long time ago. We should continue to try and that’s why I continue to return to the technical point. Also, bear in mind that in the SkS world, and also Ken’s, people who disagree are inconvenient to the message and thus dishonest tactics are justified. This explains the smearing of people who disagree and there are plenty of perfectly reasonable victims here. Richard Tol for some reason comes in for a lot of abuse. But Paul Matthews was really very viscously attacked by Rice for no reason other than that he was persistent in his disagreement. The same can be said for Judith Curry. Steve McIntyre tried an appearance and rapidly gave up. The fact that a professor of machine learning is looked to by Rice as a statistical expert tells you all you need to know.
DY,
I’ll try one more time, but I’m probably wasting it. Can you at least, just this once, think for a while before responding. I’m not disputing what you’re saying about the Navier Stokes equations. I’m pointing out that I’ve never said the things that you’ve claimed I’ve said. I don’t actually know how to make this any clearer. It seems to me that you are so determined to insult me at every opportunity (as you have done once again) that you are completely unwilling to recognise that you have been misrepresenting me from the very beginning.
David Young (Comment #148961),
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I find that it reduces the level of frustration to keep in mind that politics is the biggest part of the disagreement. People who see no real cost (indeed, see huge benefit) in forcing everyone to ‘fundamentally change how they live their lives’ (AKA abandon capitalism and free markets for ‘greater equality’ and social control of just about every aspect of life) think draconian changes in response to global warming is a great idea… since they want and support those changes independent of global warming. Those who think there are huge costs, both financial and social, associated with that kind of ‘fundamental change’ are always going to resist the suggested draconian changes. If we had god-like knowledge of what the Earth’s true sensitivity to forcing will be (pick a number), and god-like knowledge of the exact consequences of future warming, there would still be big disagreements about what public response is justified. But at least it would be a simple political choice, to be settled politically.
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We are a long way from ‘god-like knowledge’, so the ideolgical skirmishes are fought about the quality of the scientific evidence. My personal view is that there is a huge ideological bias in how ‘the science’ is presented… a bias which always emphasizes and exaggerates future warming and future problems…. and that is the only reason I bother with participating in the debate. You may be surprised to learn that I find engaging folks like Ken Rice (and the denizens of his echo chamber) distinctly unpleasant.
Ron Graf,
“I hope I’m naive but I have to proceed in the assumption there is an outside chance that the debate can be advanced.”
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I liked your comment.
I think it can be advanced, but that requires first that ‘the science’ not be hyped and exaggerated. I think that will take another decade or two, because only clear failures of the model projections of rapid warming… that is, truth on the ground… will end the exaggeration. Once the hype is removed, a reasoned policy debate can begin.
This thing has been very instructive.
Remain had all mainstream political parties, the EU,Obama, the MSM and BBC (of course), the Bank of England, Obama, The City, Obama, the CBI (Confederation of Britsh Industry), Obama etc. etc. on board. All the vested interests. All predicting crisis, financial meltdown and recession.
I woke up this morning, opened the curtains and there were no locusts to be seen. There is a Plague of Frogs, but they are all on the other side of the channel.
What the English (this includes me) and the Welsh have done have given the two-fingered salute to the statist establishment. This is the heritage of the English speaking nations. Thank you USA and our Commonwealth allies for supporting freedom and democracy.
SteveF,
You might be surprised to learn that I find engaging with yourself and David Young remarkably unpleasant too.
Ken Rice,
“You might be surprised to learn that I find engaging with yourself and David Young remarkably unpleasant too.”
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The intended humor in my comment was apparently lost on you.
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But no, not surprised, you have made this pretty plain. We have very different political and world views. I have a sister-in-law who seems to share yours; engaging her is also often unpleasant.
SteveF, Anders,
Wow, common ground.
SteveF,
Oh, sorry, you hid the humour well. I doubt you actually know my world view. I certainly wouldn’t presume to know yours.
Anders, I offer the suggestion to always state what you had intended to mean when you feel you’ve been misrepresented. I think most here read your blog post quote and got the same point as DY did, that you are saying climate models are different than economic models since physics compliance is a black and white testable trait. (“It’s just physics.”)
Ron,
I typically do. It doesn’t help.
Anders: “I typically do…”
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Actually, it is a commonly recognized trait of yours that you don’t always proactively support your assumptions. Seeing it mentioned in the satire post of you should be a good hint.
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The debate then shifts to trying to prove what you mean; you have that ball in your hand.
Ron,
Apart from my earlier comment where I did, I guess? Maybe I should repeat it over and over and over and over again, but that does get rather tedious, especially when dealing with someone who has shown no indication that they’re ever likely to correct their misrepresentation. I guess you liked that satire post, despite your earlier comment?
Ron Graf,
Satire? Are you suggesting an American used satire?! Or even knows what it is?!!! What never. No never. (Hardly ever!) 🙂
Ken Rice,
“I doubt you actually know my world view. I certainly wouldn’t presume to know yours.”
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In detail, no, but I can make a few SWAGs: you tend to support libertarian politicians, you think personal liberty and personal freedom the only moral foundation for just government, you believe government is a neccessary evil which should be strictly and severely limited in scope, you think governments most everywhere regulate economic activity far too much and impoverish their citizens in the process, you despise the suggestion that governments should tax more and do more, you think the tyranny of the majority is a real and ever present threat to personal liberties. I hope that is a fair summary.
RB (Comment #148955)
“On the other hand, weaker countries like Greece need to have a depreciated currency reflecting the underlying economy which would have been helpful in reviving their exports. The monetary union restricts the ability of weaker countries to stimulate their economy, as seen in the events surrounding the debt crisis . Many of the countries that adopted the dollar as a currency did so because their people lost faith in their own regimes in managing their currency.”
Which is to say that some of the EU countries need a central bank capability to inflate their money supplies in attempts to “jump start” their economies and with a side effect of devaluing their currency in attempts to encourage trade exports. Unfortunately there are assumptions in those premises that these government actions in manipulating the money supply actually work in practice. The Japanese and US experiments in this government exercise have failed to inflate prices after many years of trying. The EU has taken up this banner even in the wake of previous failures. Never having to admit failure and having a compliant media allows these attempts to continue – and to actually intensify in the great tradition of government programs that when a program is failing the first reaction is more of the same and much more of the same.
Devaluing a currency to make exports cheaper has another side of the coin in making imports more expensive just as tariffs on imports in protecting an inefficient industry makes the products domestically produced more expensive. Obviously governments’ devaluations of their currency to artificially change foreign trade prices is in contradiction of free trade.
I should note here that not every country has failed to realize rising prices by inflating their money supply. The socialist experiment in Venezuela has been able to produce rampant price inflation while at the same time producing shortages of everyday consumer goods through price controls.
SteveF (Comment #148976)
June 27th, 2016 at 7:21 am
Wrong Ken.
Ken Rice, You yourself on this thread restated your blog post statement. It still is wrong even though the error is a common one even for people with a lot of experience in CFD. Here I quote you at length.
“For those who are actually interested (DY clearly is not, smearing me in public appears to be his main goal) what I said was:
The basic point is that systems like our climate obey the fundamental laws of physics. This means two things. One is that you can eliminate any model the results of which violate any of these laws.
The fundamental laws of physics are energy conservation, mass conservation, momentum conservation. You’ll note that I said “the results of which violate any of these lawsâ€, not (as DY claims) physical models that violate these laws. Of course, the results of a numerical model cannot satisfy these laws exactly (you will always need to decide on some threshold) but any model the results of which does not conserve energy, mass, or momentum can be eliminated. That’s really all I was saying. Maybe the reason I won’t correct this is because it very obviously is not incorrect.”
If you accept what I said about the NS equations, then your statement quoted here must be wrong unless you reject essentially all high Reynolds’ number simulations including GCM simulations. It really is very simple isn’t it?
DY,
Are you actually being serious? Of course no numerical model can satisfy these laws exactly, both because you can’t integrate exactly, and because there might be aspects of the model that introduces errors. However, you can typically define some kind of threshold (as I said above) that would be regarded as reasonable (it was a blog post for the general public, not a scientific paper for experts). Maybe you can tell me the relative magnitude of the error that the sub-grid model will introduce in a typical GCM run, or in any similar simulation?
You also still appear to be ignoring the key point I was getting at above. Physical systems (like our climate) have structural constancy. Social systems (like our economies) do not. Hence, we know what fundamental laws our climate system must obey, which allows us to eliminate models the results of which will not/do not satisfy these laws (to within some reasonable threshold, of course). The same cannot be said for economic models since the system they’re trying to study does not have structural constancy.
Now, feel free to continue this constructively, or to throw out another of your self-justified insults. I don’t really care either way.
@Kenneth Fritsch.
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I think I agree with most of what you say. Central banks have done a lot of damage to the economies of the world with their extensive monetary stimulus plans, QE, NIRP etc. These policies are not only manifestly ineffective, they are also distorting the working of markets, making price discovery impossible and inhibiting growth, but I also agree with RB that:
“The strength of a currency reflects the underlying economy and the underlying fiscal policies, budget deficits, tax policy etc. The Euro helps Germany’s exports as its currency would have been otherwise stronger. On the other hand, weaker countries like Greece need to have a depreciated currency reflecting the underlying economy which would have been helpful in reviving their exports.”
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Free floating currencies have the ability to absorb shocks, economic weaknesses and excesses. The economies of Southern Europe would have fared much better had they not joined the EURO common currency eksperiment. With the EURO these countries are facing economic and social problems that are almost unsolvable. They face a national depression and their youth see no way out, especially not when their democracies are reduced to empty shells as more and more power is transferred to the supernational bodies of the EU.
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These countries need to join Britain and take back the power to rule themselves. If they don’t do that before the next decade or so is passed, I fear these countries are forever lost. These proud, old countries will be emptied of youth, talent, money – in a word hope. Destroyed by the EU and its silly, senseless ideoloques and their utopian dreams of “ever closer union”.
Anders,
This at least sounds like you think the problem David is talking about is something like “discretization errors”, “rounding” or something numerical.
Pretty sure it’s as a blog post for the general public that David is suggesting you made a pigs breakfast of the issue.
Of course there is “some kind of threshold” above which approximations of the sorts David is discussing can be known valid. (Look up Kolmogorov scales.)
But with respect to turbulence (and much of the transport of mass, momentum and energy in the atmosphere is affected by this) the scales for grids in climate of models are HUUUUUGE compared known threshold.
The issue isn’t “discretization”.
David– Out of curiosity, are they actually using “sub-grid” in the LES sense. Or are they still using things qualitatively more similar to “k-epsilon/RANS closure for ‘eddy viscosity or eddy viscosity like things’.)
Lucia,
Yes, it’s almost as if he thinks I can’t discuss conservation laws in a blog post without also discussing the problems with sub-grid physics. If so, that would seem rather bizarre. Also, it appears that DY has interpreted me saying “you can eliminate models the results of which don’t satisfy the laws” as “you must under all circumstances eliminate all models that don’t precisely satisfy these laws” which would also seem bizarre as I didn’t say that.
It’s almost as if you think I haven’t done any turbulence modelling? The threshold I’m talking about is with respect to how well energy, mass and momentum are conserved, not the threshold at which DY’s approximations are valid. Try not to confuse what DY has said, with what I’ve said.
Indeed, but this is what DY has introduced, not what I was discussing. Again, try to avoid confusing what DY has introduced with what I was discussing in my post. This does not change that physical systems have structural constancy, which is not true for societal systems (economies). Hence you know the laws that such a system must satisfy which allows you to contrain the models that can be used to study such systems. As I think I said in that post (and in virtually any post in which I’ve discussed modelling) this does not mean that a model of a physical system is somehow perfect, but does provide test and constraints for such models, which is not always true for models of systems that don’t have structural constancy.
“Another joint proposal calling on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change was also adopted by unanimous consent.”
https://demconvention.com/news/democratic-platform-drafting-meeting-concludes/
Considering voting for Trump again.
Andrew
A recent poll indicates that when current alternate candidates like Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are added to the mix, it hurts Hillary more than Donald. She goes from a four point lead to one point behind Trump.
I think she’s wasting her money with the recent negative ad campaign. Everybody already knows that Trump is a loose cannon.
It sounds odd to hear anyone cheering nationalism and national pride in a world where that has led to so much death and destruction… we need to move beyond arbitrary lines on maps and our accidental place of birth and get on with treating each other as fellow human beings…â€
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It is a noble sentiment that humans would waste fewer lives and less treasure on war.
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But it also doesn’t include the understanding of our evolutionary past, or the unlikelihood of something like the EU actually accomplishing those lofty goals.
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Friedman points out that it is interdependence that tends to produce war, not isolation. Also, the nationalities of Europe did not disappear – they’re very much still present. But forced interdependence of Europeans may actually hasten, not prevent war.
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Greeks are unhappy with Germans precisely because the two are in the EU, not in spite of it.
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Italian banks will soon fail – who will bail them out?
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The Brexit is not the cause of EU disintegration, it is merely a symptom. The real causes are, beyond the realities of humans getting along with one another, the shrinking populations and related shrinking economies, making the union more a liability than asset.
Anders
Well, you did write– and I quoted
Of course no numerical model can satisfy these laws exactly, both because you can’t integrate exactly,
That statement sounds like you are interpreting DY’s objection to having something to do with not being able to integrate exactly.
Whether or not you agree with his concerns lack of exactness of integration is not remotely close to his concern.
I don’t think I am. I read your response to him as alluding to a purely numerical issue which has nothing to do with his criticism of models. That suggests that you may not understand what his criticims is. Mind you– I know you very well may– but your comments aren’t saying anything that suggests you do understand what he is saying.
I realize that you are not discussing the point that you may not understand what DY is saying. Or possibly, you are under the impression that DY can’t criticize your argument by bringing up an important issue you did not discuss but which nevertheless matters to your entire argument. If so, you are mistaken. The mere fact that you overlooked something important to your argument– possibly sufficiently important to undercut the entire argument- doesn’t mean other people can’t point out that important thing. Your saying you weren’t discussing that thing hardly makes it unimportant.
Beyond that, I’m really not going to get into your argument about how climate models are somehow different from economic models. In my view: they differ in some ways. They are the same in others. I didn’t go over to your post to discuss it with you there because I didn’t think the original post had much insight.
But I can say as much as I read here: You and DY are having it out. You’re not making much a defense of your post– despite the fact that one might be able to point out that in some important ways climate models do differ from economic models. I have a feeling that– in most regards– I’d actually agree with you about some issues.
Now to give an example where I think you and I would agree– and mind you– In’ reading in things you did not say. But –even if the turbulence models are inadequate and woeful approximation, there are cases where if we set ‘knobs’ on pretty approximate models we can use a “tuned” model for a general class of flows. For example: if we set the “knobs” for pipeflow, we can pretty much expect those “knobs” to stay the same for nearly all pipeflows. We engineers do that– and DY knows it. There are wider classes, and the classes grow. (In engineering we have some advantages over climate modelers that we can check/test over time and see where things break down or don’t and so on.)
The knobs are still cludgy knobs, but they thing works more or less and we get guidance. (But generally, great care is required. And yes, modelers often love their models more than they should.)
The proble for climate as that we really test the way we do for pipeful (or similar problems.) But yes, we can hope the “knobs” are set right. And if they are, we might expect robustness because at least the correct “knobs” wouldn’t be expected to change next month. In contrast, for some economics models an new invention (e.g. steam engine, internet) might actually change “the model” for some particular things. That’s is different from physically based things.
(Ok. I know I said bunch of things you didn’t say. . . Hope that’s allowed. 🙂 )
Ken, You start to get it and then say something to indicate You still don’t get it. Momentum as rigorously defined is not conserved in these simulations and it’s by a lot. Your word salad above is too many words. I don’t have time to discuss the constancy issue. One might ask so what. The earth system is just as complex as human behaviour and modeling either one a tremendous challenge.
Lucia, I mean primarily eddy viscosity and Reynolds Stress models as used in GCMs. However LES is not a panacea and has a host of problems.
Lucia,
You seem to be larboring under the impression that if you quote someone that your interpretation of what they said is automatically correct.
DY,
Indeed, they are both complex. That does not, however, change the fundamental point. You still haven’t actually answered my question as to by how much momentum (for example) is not conserved in a GCM. “A lot” doesn’t really tell me much.
Anders
My interpretation is that when you use the word “integration” you mean “integration”. If that is not what you meant, the reason people don’t understand what you mean is you have concocted a language of your own.
I am curious how the degree of CMIP5 climate models’ failures to conserve energy can be determined empirically given the model output data available to the public. I have made attempts to determine the amount by obtaining the net global downward radiation energy and after assuming the portion of that energy transferred to the ocean determining that energy. I have found no way to determine independently the amount of energy transferred to the global land mass.
It is telling on differences in model performances to determine the energy out of balance with an assumption of energy absorbed into the oceans since either there is a relatively large imbalance given the portion of energy absorbed into the oceans is relatively the same for the models or the portion absorbed into the oceans is quite different from model to model in order to arrive at an energy balance.
The confusion here is common in CFD. The physically correct viscous momentum source uses the MOLECULAR viscosity. What I think Ken is thinking about is the pseudo-momentum that uses effectively the eddy viscosity. The difference is very large in a boundary layer for example. Only pseudo momentum can be conserved, which doesn’t mean much for model accuracy really.
Lucia, Yes these models can be good for limited classes of flows. However, the literature is very biased and tends to make people think these simulations are fully ready to be used where public health and safety are at stake. Climate is very odd in that ordinarily specialists would make very cautious claims for GCMs which even by biased CFD standards are risable. We need fundamental breakthroughs here, not communicators exaggerating dramatically skill because they like the model results better than other sources of presictions
David,
At this point I have little idea what he’s “thinking” about. I only know he wrote
I know that what you are talking about has nothing to do with not satisfying the conservations laws laws exactly because you can’t integrate exactly. Why he is talking about integration and it’s effect on satisfying conservation laws, I can no longer begin to guess. But that is indeed the statement he made. So there we are.
Sure. But obviously, we can’t get to arguments about these sorts of things and whether the way physics is dealt with in models is adequates if someone is going to babble and go off on strange tangents that involve suddenly discussing “integration”.
Lucia, David,
Maybe Ken Rice just doesn’t understand the field as much as he suggests. That would explain some of his comments.
Kenneth Fritsch,
“Wrong Ken.”
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Could be.
Lucia, You express exactly my frustration. Honesty in use of language is a first requirement for real discussion. I think actually that Ken writes so much on things he knows little about, he simply gets overloaded and doesn’t take the time to be thoughtful. As is the SKS way, pioneered by Cawley, admitting the slightest error is not permitted in the drive to counter heretics. Constant repetition of legalistic points is a sure sign of this.
Meanwhile, a real Mann says we don’t need data or models – just take his word.
Policy maker: “If you’re scientists show us your models.”
Mann: “Models? We don’t need need not stink-n models.”
Also, just when I’d reconciled myself to the realization that presidents are weak and can’t really do much, the DNC goes Orwellian and wants to prosecute dissent. How American.
Doubt that there will ever be a Brexit. The establishment is hosing it down, it is not enacted though it was promised. Will be delayed watered down and then not promulgated.
SteveF, Scotland’s leaving could be a good thing. Suppose Britain really is placed ‘at the back of the queue’ and faces tariffs. Perhaps this is because some in Europe decided to hurt Britain for leaving so as to set an example, even though they are now paying as well.
In this scenario, if Scotland leaves UK and joins the EU, they would get a tariff-free zone, and would become the center of commerce on its island.
Lucia, you said “It was obvious some ‘threats’ on the stay side were pretty bogus– at least long term. For example: on Twitter one argument on the “stay†side was those in UK would need a visa to take a vacation in Europe. Well… maybe short term. But I’m not in the UK and I don’t need a visa to visit the EU. So that didn’t sound like a likely outcome. (Not saying it can’t happen. Maybe the EU will now hate the UK and block vacation goers. But seems unlikely.)”
I think that the visas people are generally talking about are those that concern working and long term residence (not holiday/vacation). One of the very important rights that have been granted via the various EU treaties involves the right of free movement of people within the EU member states for the purpose of living and working. By leaving the EU, the UK would, unless otherwise negotiated in the exit agreement, forfeit those rights. The same loss would also affect the large number of EU citizens living and working in the UK, the City of London being a very large consumer of banking skills, for one.
For those who are interested in seeing the migration info for various groups into / out of the UK, see here: http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics/#create-graph
schnoerkelman,
Those are much more likely.
But people were posting the “vacation” one. My view is that generally speaking it is best to avoid raising obviously bogus threats when trying to persuade. It just makes people not listen to any other threats no matter who plausible they are.
Yes. Unlike the vacations, this is a real issue.
The ability to work in the UK would be a big concern for UK people working in the EU now and possible for those who might have hoped to do so in the future. So it will be up to the EU (and possibly individual countries) to negotiate with the UK on this point.
I have looked up a bit since the Brexit and it appears the number of UK people working in the EU is far fewer than non-UK EU people working in the UK. So that might have colored the views of some who were voting.
Or maybe they just didn’t even think about it. I can’t guess.
True. But with respect to these people it would be up to the UK to decide what requirements they need to meet to stay. We don’t yet know what they will decide, but the UK leaving the EU doesn’t mean the UK will necessarily make it difficult for non-UK EU citizens to stay should they wish to do so.
They may, or they may not. They may go to a points system applied equally to people outside the EU (say Canada, US, Australia etc.) and EU people. That sort of thing might address the concerns of someone like Dyson who complained it was easy for EU barristas to enter the UK but hard to hire Taiwanese engineers. Possibly, once the ‘points’ are in place for everyone, they can lower the requirements on non-EU and still keep immigrations managable. Who knows?
And so on. Or they may keep it easy for EU people to stay and keep the points for non-EU high as they have been.
The things is: This will be a decision by people in the UK now. None of us yet know what they will decide. But the “Brexit” by itself doesn’t necessarily mean those EU people will lose the ability to live in the UK. We just don’t know yet.
Lucia, in referencce to this “True. But with respect to these people it would be up to the UK to decide what requirements they need to meet to stay. We don’t yet know what they will decide, but the UK leaving the EU doesn’t mean the UK will necessarily make it difficult for non-UK EU citizens to stay should they wish to do so. ”
Yes, we don’t know what the EU/UK will finally work out in detail, BUT. One thing that may not have been clear to those viewing from USA (or other countries in EU, for that matter) is that the complaints about “too many immigrants” and taking back control over immigration apply primarily to EU citizens. The UK already has control of who gets in except for EU citizens under treaty rights. Those treaty rights we agreed and are used extensively by UK citizens working in EU (as with EU working in UK).
To put a bit of a point on it: they think too many Poles and even more so Bulgarian and Romanian EU citizens are exercising those rights.
I don’t think the EU will move at all on the free movement of people issue. YMMV.
bob
schnoerkelman,
Yes. I know. So obviously, to the extent that they want to block, it’s mostly EU immigrants at least some voters who voted “leave” want to control. That’s been pretty clear on twitter.
You previously alluded to banks in this way
Are the majority of those Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians working for the banks? My guess is no.
If not, the issue of people with banking skills staying may be a largely separate from everyone in the EU staying. If England goes to a skill classification system for admission, they may well permit those with banking skills to stay relatively easily while those with few employment skills will find it more difficult to enter. I know some people will be unhappy with this sort of situation, but others may like it. The thing is this may be just what voters wanted.
If you don’t let the Poles in, maybe they can come re-invigorate the historically Polish neighborhoods in Chicago! They’ll find plenty of second cousins are already here. (Actually, I’m not sure whether they might not also find it difficult to come here. But there isn’t much anti-Pole sentiment in Chicago. )
lucia,
At a guess, they would. The H-1B visa for skilled foreigners has a cap of 65,000/year. An extra 20,000/year visas are available to foreign citizens with Master’s or higher degrees from a US University. Dyson might find it just as hard here as in the UK to hire a Taiwanese engineer. And, of course, there are fees involved.
It seems Ken Rice has disappeared. I am actually researching his question about the size of the eddy viscosity term for typical flows. I guess the discussion has gotten too technical to hold Ken’s interest.
David,
Or gone to a conference. Or on vacation. It’s best to not over-interpret absences from comments blocks.
Well, He’s not been too busy to post and comment at his own blog.
Whether the eddy viscosity term is O(1) or O(.001) is not particularly important, it makes a huge difference in a simple airfoil flow, making a difference of O(1) in the lift and the drag. But I will post the data when I get it.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #148959)
Recession for the US is very likely in the event of external shocks of the magnitude of a financial shock arising from a euro breakdown. The US economy by itself still has plenty of juice to keep going i.e., no recession likely this year due to domestic causes. The stock market could still always drop significantly (or not).
RB,
Did you read the statement from the foreign ministers of the six major EU nations?. If that is to be believed, the EU is dead as anything other than a free trade zone. They’ve thrown in the towel. Oh, there are weasel words aplenty in the statement, but it amounts to a capitulation.
Besides the other national economies in the EU teetering on the brink like France and Italy, there’s lots of other international shoes that could drop with sufficient force to trash the global economy.
The FTSE100 is now back to more or less where it was before the Brexit vote, in fact around the level it’s been all year.
I don’t think Lucia’s retirement portfolio is in jeopardy.
We were hoping the markets would remain down through the beginning of July. We make a monthly deposit. You can only “buy low and sell high” if you buy low. (We are buy and hold people. We don’t want to spend our days timing and aren’t sure we’d be much good at it anyway.)
That’s the best way – you automatically buy more (shares) when the market is lower. But you knew that.
Fabius tweets:
How will the historic #BrexitVote affect the US? Hysterics in the headlines! Investors vote with their money: 2 week S&P500 change is -0.4%.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #149023)
I really get a kick out of how in these government statements we get the Civics 101 version of why nations join and remain in the EU: Peace among European nations and so called free trade that is regulated to the hilt.
European nations are so focused on attempting to pay for their domestic programs that they cannot afford to go to war. The poorer and less financially stable nations in the EU liked the fact that with the assumption of an EU bailout their borrowing costs are significantly lower. Reality strikes as it did in Greece where borrowing gets so out of hand that those doing the borrowing fear the EU will not do the bailing and interest rates on bonds go up sufficiently to make debt repayment (interest actually on new debt or recycled debt) a major program. Countries like Germany like the EU trading partners to which to export. There is much nationalistic self interest that holds the EU together at least until the policies have to eventually face reality.
The EU as a whole is avoiding changing the structural problems that are currently retarding economic growth there with their central bank low interest rates and QE money printing just as the US Federal Reserve has shown the way with QE and low interest rates towards what the proponents call the “new normal”, i.e. the government policies did not fail but rather we have a new and unexplained outside our control impediment.
Also interesting is why should any trade or travel agreement with a nation outside the EU, and particularly one that was once a member, change just because the nation is not currently a member. If relatively free trade and travel is a good idea than why would it be limited to member nations? The only reason I see is that the EU is a kind of super nation with all the negative nationalistic trappings.
As an aside, immigration into the EU can be motivated more by economic self interest than any magnanimous jester towards humanism in that a number of member nations are facing unfunded problems with their government retirement and medical programs that is made worse by the changing demographics and low reproduction rates. An often talked about effort to, at least, partially alleviate that problem is to allow immigration of workers who are younger and favorably change the ratio of worker to retiree or older people needing more medical care.
Ken Fritch:
“European nations are so focused on attempting to pay for their domestic programs that they cannot afford to go to war. ”
Eli refers you to the situation in Germany and Italy before WWII during the depression
WRT visas, there are something like 800K British retirees in Europe, principally in Spain and France. Their needing to get Visas if they remain and the UK leaves the EU is the least of it. As EU citizens they get free healthcare. As non EU citizens they get bupkis
The situation would be the same for any Brits working in the EU.
The major banks, even the British ones, are going to leave London. The UK was a major supplier of financial goods and services to the EU. If they leave that goes by the board.
Many of the banks have announced plans to cut their presence in the UK drastically already and Dublin and Paris are among the places chasing the business. This is not a small thing for the UK
https://next.ft.com/content/a3a92744-3a52-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7
David Young:
” The physically correct viscous momentum source uses the MOLECULAR viscosity”
At the molecular level the second of thermodynamics fails to Loschmidt’s paradox
http://www.nature.com/news/1998/020722/full/news020722-2.html
One thing London has had going for it are the special rules under which it operates as a tax haven within the United Kingdom.
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Right.
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Friedman points out that the EU was more or less a US construct, the thinking being that if Germany was prosperous and Europe interconnected, war would be precluded ( and the US had enough of intervening in European wars ). The Europeans were skeptical, until Charles DeG reckoned that France might benefit.
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Well, Germany is prosperous and Europe is interconnected, but that may perversely be the problem, not the solution. Germany depends on exports ( 50% of GDP! ) most of it within the EU. A common currency means that other economies remain uncompetitive with Germany. Being in the Union means many interests are in conflict – BECAUSE the nations are connected.
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Stuck in the Union, Greece cannot devalue its debt or remain competitive with other EU exporters.
Stuck in the Union, all EU members will have to pay for the looming Italian bank crisis. It will be even less popular than bailing out the banks here, not only will there be a bailout but of a different nation’s banks.
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This is all predictable and was predicted, much of it at the founding of the EU.
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The same forces that are leading to the decline of Europe are also what make CO2 irrelevant. Populations are aging and declining. When that happens, demand drops and economies stagnate.
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Friedman believes that more or less all of Eurasia is in decline. He believes Russia and China are in the process of fragmenting just as the EU is.
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The Brexit didn’t cause EU problems.
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The EU problems led the UK to jump a sinking ship.
Eli Rabett (Comment #149033)
ER, hopefully we are talking about two different times in European history. The Nazis and fascists were not bound by social spending since using slave labor was evidently not beyond the German governments reach (even before the war) nor was expropriation of captured capital. Hopefully lessons have been learned in Germany and Italy and a Hitler and Mussolini and their parties and the consequences would be spotted early. Germany/Italy union did not turn out very well.
Actually spending on domestic programs in Europe (and eventually in the US) beyond the nations means has a benefit of making it more difficult to waste money on their military. Of course, a Keynesian like Krugman might want a means of a wasteful spending excuse in order to attempt to jump start a stalled economy – in Keynesian fashion that is.
Eli Rabett (Comment #149034)
ER, getting “free” EU health care as you suggest implies that there is an EU fairy who dispenses “free” healthcare to EUers and that a non EUer must find its own fairy to provide “free” healthcare. I do not want to be the one to tell you that that there is no free healthcare fairy so I’ll merely suggest we follow the money as to whom really pays.
Eli Rabett (Comment #149035)
If the financial and banking center where about to leave London I would think there would be more turmoil than we are seeing in that sector. However if you are as certain as you appear to be I am sure you can make some big money making the correct investment bets. Also the some of the European banks were in trouble long before the UK voted to leave the EU. It is difficult for banks to make money with ultra low interest rates imposed by central bankers – and without taking increased risks.
For any needing a good chuckle: Nick Stokes has weighed in on Brexit, saying (shockingly!) that he thinks it is a mistake, and that he doesn’t see how Parliament will ever implement it. The usual suspects show up to lend support: ‘how could any responsible person ever implement the expressed will of the voters?’ They suggest (and hope) it won’t happen. It is an extremely funny thread, reminding me of a troop of screaming chimps that are working each other up about a intrusion into their territory by another group of chimps. Seems to me the left will never willingly face reality.
People who claim that the EU is responsible for keeping peace in Europe are delusional. What has kept peace is NATO, the Soviet threat, and the realisation hammered into thick French and German skulls that all-out war is a BAD THING.
During the Balkan wars (and the Balkans are in Europe), the EU (and the UN) was powerless, with columns of Muslim Kosovars being marched to their deaths past Dutch “peacekeepers”. It took NATO, and specifically (but not solely) US forces to knock heads together. The EU propagandists will never admit to this because “not EU” and “America”. Both are anathema to sophisticated Europeans.
RB quotes from Vanity Fair (above):
From a socialist perspective, anything which isn’t state controlled is “lax regulation and lax enforcement”. There is an alternative view: free markets. The piece gives itself away with the “British Empire crumbled”. It didn’t crumble, it was dismantled country by country. The post-WWII Atlee Labour government was elected with the specific policy of de-colonisation, and this policy was continued by the succeeding Conservatives. The process was carried out in an orderly manner to timetables and without colonial wars (c.f. France, Netherlands, Portugal).
Re: Seth Roentgen (Comment #149044)
The war bankrupted Britain. It might make you uncomfortable to see it that way but the British Empire crumbled as a result i.e., their hand was forced. And it appears that you want to call facilitating money laundering a free market operation.
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Yeah.
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Depending on how you categorize the conflicts, there have been more wars in Europe ( Serbia, Kosovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Crimea, Eukraine ) since the Maastricht Treaty was signed than during the Cold War.
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The Cold War brought EuroPeace and the EU, by the seemingly positive goal of enhancing trade may have also caused risk by amplifying internal imbalances of trade.
RB (Comment #149037)
That linked article is topical in today’s world where terms like xenophobic are thrown at anything political of which one might disapprove. The rather vague innuendos appear to be aimed at foreign interests in the city of London. I would suppose that if we can paint these foreigners as all bad rich guys we can avoid the xenophobic label.
Kenneth,
I don’t know what innuendos you see from the article written by someone apparently professionally involved with writing about tax havens. I see it very openly aimed at ultra-wealthy foreigners operating behind shell companies with special focus on commodity plutocrats seeking a safe place to park their ill-gotten wealth under the protection of the legal system.
RB (Comment #149050)
I did not see any details on illegal activities or any pending legal action. In fact the details on how these operations obtain their wealth and handle it were lacking. Reminded me of Trump’s innuendos on Mexican immigrants.
Some background on the author of the article linked by RB on the London tax haven.
http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2011/07/19/Not-even-good-fiction-Treasure-Islands–Tax-Havens-and-the-Men-who-Stole-the-World-by-Nicholas-Shaxson/
Kenneth,
It’s a magazine article, not a thesis. He seems to be involved in researching these activities .
Coming back to Eli’s original point, according to this report , it appears that the banking industry, with the help of the UK government, started its preparation to protect itself from Brexit from the moment that the referendum was announced. London’s status in international finance appears to be safe.
Shaxson is obviously a big government advocate who attempts to make tax avoidance and financial privacy appear evil since he sees it no doubt as an impediment to bigger and more intrusive government. That his thesis about London’s tax haven for foreigners comes across as xenophobic is probably an indication of the political emotionalism he is willing to use. Again not unlike Trump.
It might be of interest to those who might want to jump to conclusions based on preliminary reactions to the UK exit vote that the UK stock index is up and that of the leading EU nations are down.
Re: Kenneth L Fritsch (Comment #149055)
This is to certify that I read the comment and I think it is a great place to end this sub-thread.
Our rodent friend, as usual, is falling victim to his wishful thinking.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/u-k-bank-chairmen-push-to-keep-trading-operations-in-london
At the other hand, one could wonder if Big Finance is actually healthy for the economy in general.
At the other hand, one could wonder if Big Finance is actually healthy for the economy in general.
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Good question. How many private ventures require financing that a regional sized bank couldn’t provide? In the US the reaction to the 2008 crisis by liberal legislators and Obama was to enact regulations that as its “unintended consequence” only Big Finance could survive. This is widely seen as ironic since the 2008 problem was created by too-big-to-fail institutions.
RB (Comment #149057)
To certify that I agree.
Ron Graf (Comment #149060)
I wonder about that unintended part. Big government can better control big businesses if government regulations can be used to keep smaller businesses from competing. Big business than depends on big government and in turn defends big government. Even better alliances and dependencies evolve from too-big-to-fail government bailouts.
The notion that big business yearns for the less regulated environment of some semblance of laissez faire should have long ago been dispelled simply by looking at the political positions of many big business corporate officers.
ATTP was astonished at the vote. Well, a lot of people were: at the time that the voting closed in Britain, I’m told you could get 20:1 odds for Remain on the betting markets. 20:1! When the opinion polls were dead even.
And even now, read anywhere that liberals comment, ATTP or anywhere else. They have absolutely no clue what happened and no way to understand it. Must be: Bigotry and a bunch of people misled by falsehood.
Conservative have zero problem. Zero. Who would want to be ruled by the EU?
People are so very bad at understanding points of view different from their own.
Scotland leaving the U.K. and rejoining the EU may be problematic since it seems to EU may not want them for fear of encouraging separatist movements elsewhere in Europe: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/scotland-the-lonely/
It would seem that Scotland would have to first take the plunge and leave the U.K. and only then could start negotiations for entering the EU. That would be even more disruptive to their economy than leaving the EU along with the U.K.
I’m kinda curious why this is perceived as a partisan issue. In sociobiology, a predominant process is call kinship theory – as Sly and the Family Stone put it: Blood is thicker than mud.
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It’s not surprising that much of our behavior is geared around our evolution, which took place largely in a unit no larger than a familial clan. Now we’re in much larger populations.
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That doesn’t mean that the nation-state is evil. In fact, its probably less barbarous than the tribes, kingdoms, theocracies, fiefdoms, or city-states that preceded it.
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And it doesn’t mean that a state ( like the EU ) aggregating multiple cultures is immune from genocide. In fact, it may be worse – one does not have an ugly divorce from those one never entered union with.
I am surprised at all the hand wringing about this vote. Real consequences will take a long time to play out. There are some indications that it may pose challenges for the Paris agreements, which had strong challenges from the beginning. Markets seem to have recovered to a large extent. I doubt that economic relationships will change much. The Iranian nuclear deal had far bigger practical ramifications. I didn’t see much hand wringing on the part of European elites and/or the climate concerned.
I must revise my remarks slightly. Annan highlights issues with uncertainty in Eu funding involving UK scientists. At the risk of sounding callous, certainly in my field, European research such as it is is not generating much that is new. There is apparently a lot of funding for everyone and his uncle to build their own models and codes, all of which are pretty much the same and there is almost no progress on addressing issues of uncertainties and their quantification. In fairness, the situation on this side of the pond is not much better. It’s fairly easy to build a “state of the art” code and run it extensively. The problem is that the state of the art has some serious issues that are hard to address without a more intense and riskier effort that requires a long term commitment to hard work that may or may not benefit the careers of those involved. It’s far easier to make a living building infrastructure to generate questionable results faster and more easily for non-experts. Of course, there are real risks here for those who want to use CFD in the real world.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch just handed her authority to FBI director Comey on the question of whether to indict Hillary on national security violation after a firestorm erupted from Fox News reporting that Lynch met with Bill Clinton on her private jet this week. Lynch quoted from story here:
Turbulent Eddy wrote: “I’m kinda curious why this is perceived as a partisan issue. In sociobiology, a predominant process is call kinship theory”
Who are your kin? If you are an Englishman with traditional values, they are other Englishmen. If you adopt the cosmopolitan values of the elites, your kin are the international elites and their followers. Conservatives (elites excepted) tend to be the former, progressives the latter.
David Young wrote: “I am surprised at all the hand wringing about this vote. … I doubt that economic relationships will change much. ”
That will be true if the EU leadership decides to agree to an amicable divorce. But there are rumblings of a number of other EU members wanting out. An undemocratic bureaucracy (the EU leadership) might well decide that the way to quash further exits is to teach the UK a lesson, even at a significant cost to the EU. Then things could get very nasty.
“US Attorney General Loretta Lynch just handed her authority to FBI director Comey on the question of whether to indict Hillary on national security violation” Actually, she didn’t. Read the actual words in the NYT story (not the title).
It’s made much clearer here: http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/07/01/i-wouldnt-do-it-again-lynch-admits-meeting-bill-clinton-raises-questions-and-concerns. “Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday she will accept the recommendations of _non-political subordinates_ [italics mine] on whether to bring charges”
Not nearly as reassuring!
MikeM, I’m not looking for EU to show the necessary discipline or conviction to sacrifice short term economic gain for the future of the
EU structure. Could be wrong though.
David Young,
You might well be correct. Bureaucrats and politicians often chose the path of least short term resistance. Or maybe they will just decide to do the right thing. I am only pointing out that a smooth exit is not assured. The prospect of the EU unraveling might well be sufficient for the EU leadership to decide to incur some short term costs (which will not be born by the leaders) and disapprobation (which might matter to national politicians, but not so much to the commissioners and bureaucrats).
The Brits might well be in for even more “interesting times” than us yanks.
I don’t believe they can quash further exits by making an example of the UK. If anything, it’s more likely to collapse faster. Threats are the tools of dictators and despots.
Some have erroneously cast the Brexit as nationalism and xenophobia imagining that the EU had somehow transcended nationalism.
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Geopolitical futures has this chart of all the active nationalist movements within Europe.
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It’s easy to forget history and recall only the recent past.
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Don’t forget history.
When comparing pre and post Brexit London and EU stock markets, shouldn’t we also adjust for the change in currency value?
Was American Independence the original Brexit?
If so, Happy Brexit!
Sometimes people want a change. I think it is good if they can see an avenue to achieve meaningful change, even if it is slow. The EU decreasingly offered that to many people in the UK.
Happy holiday everybody… though I still don’t get why this celebration happens on the fourth of all days.
Brandon (#149088) –
You mean, why isn’t Independence celebrated on July 2nd, when the resolution was passed? [My town happened to have fireworks on the 2nd this year.]
I’d bet that most citizens were only aware of the Declaration with its date of July 4th.
Happy 4th to all! May your fireworks give you lots of oohs and aahs.
HaroldW, I think the reason is the Declaration of Independence Day is dated July 4th (but likely wasn’t signed until a month later and more), so people just assumed that was the day we became independent. They probably didn’t realize the Declaration of Independence wasn’t approved until two days after the resolution for independence was voted on and passed.
That’s the best explanation I’ve found, but it still leaves open questions like, “Why did they (most likely) not sign the Declaration of Independence on the fourth?” and, “Why do we not even know with certainty what day the Declaration of Independence was signed?”
I think the arguments people have offered to say the Declaration of Independence was signed on the Fourth are weak, and it seems likely to me different people signed it on different days. The only thing that seems to have actually happened on the Fourth is the wording for the Declaration of Independence was approved. That seems hardly remarkable compared to what other things could be celebrated.
But hey, fireworks! Everybody loves fireworks! Who cares about logic, fact and rationality when we can just make explosions instead?
I think it was John Adams who declared that people were going to celebrate on the 3rd(2nd?) after they approved it.
Brandon wrote: ” The only thing that seems to have actually happened on the Fourth is the wording for the Declaration of Independence was approved.”
Well, the Declaration was printed and released to the public on the 4th, which made it official. So on the 2nd, they decided to do something and on the 4th they actually did it. Celebrating the 4th makes perfect sense to me.
These days, the decision to declare independence would be widely known within minutes of the decision being made. But the world was a lot different 240 years ago.
MikeN (#149099)
John Adams writing to his wife: “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” [The interwebs are wonderful, aren’t they?]
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Mike M. (#149105)
Congress passed the resolution on the 2nd, but it took them until the 4th to agree on the language of the Declaration. [Shades of the IPCC SPM process…but let’s not go there.] I would have to agree with John Adams that the resolution was the more fundamental action, but how many people know the resolution text vs. that of the Declaration? [Oops, that’s rhetorical. My answer: much fewer.]
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Brandon (#149092),
I did not know that the signing date of the Declaration was in dispute. Fascinating, thanks!
Happy Independence Day all! Another successful July 4’th – lots of explosions, still have all my eyes ears fingers toes and so on. No loss of property or life.
Yes. Happy Fourth!
HaroldW,
“the resolution was the more fundamental action,”
A decision to act is not an act.
Do you know what happened on June 6, 1945? How about June 4? The event that is remembered is the invasion, not the decision to go ahead with the invasion.
The action commemorated on July 4 is the declaration of independence from Britain. That action occurred when the Declaration of Independence was issued. And that happened on July 4, 1776.
People keep quoting John Adams on the subject when there seems to be no evidence that he gave any real thought to the specific date that would be celebrated, as opposed to the action that would be celebrated.
MikeN:
Yup. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail he expected there to be great celebrations on the 2nd, in light of when the nation declared it’s independence.
Haroldw:
No problem. What’s particularly interesting is the evidence seems to fall squarely on the, “Signed on August 2nd and later dates” side (with not everybody signing on the same day), yet several people who signed the document claim to have remembered signing it on the Fourth. It appears even people who signed the document managed to get mixed up about this.
Mike M.:
No. The voting for independence made it official. The result of the vote was even announced to the public that day.
A vote on whether or not to become an independentt nation is in fact the act of becoming independent. Writing a declaration which states the outcome and motivations of the vote is not the act of becoming independent.
Leaving aside the other problems with this statement, John Adams wrote the letter to his wife on July 3rd, before the Declaration of Independence was approved. You may think he hadn’t put much thought into the specific day that would be celebrated, even though he wrote:
Which would seem to indicate he felt it was the second that was important. That’s your choice. I am merely going to point out that given the letter was written before the Declaration of Independence was approved, John Adams clearly couldn’t have thought the approval of the Declaration of Independence was what should be celebrated. He clearly thought it was the vote that was important.
Mike M. (#149112):
“The action commemorated on July 4 is the declaration of independence from Britain. That action occurred when the Declaration of Independence was issued. And that happened on July 4, 1776.”
The “action” part of the Declaration is the bit near the very end, stating “We … solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved …”
That is the text of the resolution which was passed on July 2.
The majority of the Declaration (including the most famous lines) isn’t action, but a statement of the reasons for the action, according to its words “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
HaroldW, don’t forget the Declaration’s declaration was that we “We solemnly publish and declare.” People can publish and declare their independence many times. In fact, it is common to. Pretty much all revolutions have the people revolting say they are free/independent many times.
You can’t just cherry-pick one such publication/declaration and claim it is the act which counts, ignoring previous acts just because you feel like it. Or at least, you shouldn’t.
$1.3058 31 year low
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36711595
$1.3058 31 year low
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So, you’re long, or short now?
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Past five years versus the Dollar:
Euro: -22%
Pound: -19%
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You’d still have been better off buying Sterling than Euros ( and best off holding Dollars ).
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I’m not advocating the Brexit or the Bremain should have taken place – politics are irrational.
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But from an economic perspective, the UK probably is better off not going down with the European ship.
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Germany is in inevitable collapse because of unsustainable dependence on exports ( UK dependence is also high ).
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Italy is in inevitable crisis because of the bad paper the banks hold.
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And all European nations are in inevitable crisis because of falling populations.
TE,
“from an economic perspective, the UK probably is better off”
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For me, this is obvious. The EU has a severe form of regulatory cancer, which will ultimately kill the host… that includes the UK, had they been dumb enough to stay. The EU is destined for the ash bin of history, unless they change from a super-national Frankenstein-monster of regulations, to an organization which promotes commerce. I am betting on the Frankenstein monster version of the EU to prevail; the bureaucrats can’t possibly reform themselves, and the national governments are too impotent to resist. So the EU is doomed.
“Shades of the IPCC SPM process”
HISS…
OT- I tried to get here from DuckDuckGo, and the link was to page 16.
Lucia said (some days ago)
Dyson (of the vacuum cleaners) pointed out that EU citizens with few skillzzzz can get in easily, but it’s very difficult to hire a non-EU with skillzzzz. That’s a problem for his company.
This demonstrates the difference in view points from older and younger UK voters. I have two kids in their 20’s and they and most of their friends are very pro-EU.
The problem with what Dyson said can be shown by replacing the EU with the USA.
If it is pointed out that in California, people with few skillzzzz from Chicago can get in easily, but it’s very difficult to hire an Indian or Chinese worker with skillzzzz – well, you see the difference. To young people in the UK, someone from Rome or Frankfurt or Leeds or Manchester are the same thing when applying for a job in London.
And although the USA is very fond of saying they would never surrender sovereignty, you’ve in fact done exactly that when the United States was formed! And there are many folk in various states who object to interference from Washington as much as some in the UK object to Brussels.
It’s all about perspective.
It could be that it takes a disruption like Brexit to clean out the shaky politicians who were ‘running’ the UK. They seemed, from here, at least, to have no grasp of the ‘will of the people.’ Starting with Cameron not realizing that the Conservatives could win without promising an exit referendum, to the folks on both sides of the issue who never thought ‘leave’ would prevail and had no plan to follow up if that was the chosen course, to the apparent abdication of any participation in what follows by the principal leave advocates, the picture I see is pretty unimpressive.
It may turn out that Theresa May can invent what is to follow and negotiate a new relationship with the EU that has benefits to the UK which were heretofore impossible.
I can’t see any other EU countries bailing before the UK relationship settles out and proves to be better overall. Then, with a pattern for how to do it visible, watch out.
Of course the remainers (Angela for example) might realize how much the present buraucracy needs to be throttled and get the runaway regulation under some sort of sensible control.
I have a wonderful example of EU regulatory madness shown us on our visit to Chios last month for a subsequent comment. It would require a photo if that can still be done here.
I encourage corrections to what I’ve written above.
I’ve heard a lot about the idea that Brexit might “clean out the shaky politicians who were ‘running’ the UK” – but Theresa May is definitely one of them!
j ferguson,
You can always upload a photo to a hosting site like Flickr or Photobucket and include a link in your post.
Hi Steve Ta, could you enlarge on your views of T. May. All i had to work with was a couple of interviews, and of course could only compare them to the standard being set these days here in the colonies.
Steve Ta (Comment #149180),
Well, in a sense you are right about states surrendering sovereignty to Washington DC. But the big difference is there was no explicit mechanism in the constitution for individual states within the United States leave the union (while the UK and other nations within the EU have a mechanism). If the US Constitution had an explicit mechanism for departure, then the United States would long ago have disbanded. Half the states tried to walk away without that mechanism, of course, but the other half were having none of it, and civil war followed.
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I think it not surprising that the time from ratification of the US Constitution to the Civil war was 73 years, while the time from the Treaty of Paris to Brexit was not all that different- 65 years. Peoples’ economic, political, and social interests often diverge over time.
j ferguson,
“Of course the remainers (Angela for example) might realize how much the present buraucracy needs to be throttled and get the runaway regulation under some sort of sensible control.”
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While that might seem sensible to you and me, I really doubt that will ever happen. People who like the EU generally support a ‘regulatory state’ and think it is a good thing, because it is a means to force everyone to ‘act as they should’. The EU changing into less of a regulatory nightmare seems to me as likely as Barack Obama declaring his support for Donald Trump.
Hi Steve,
I was carrying on my frequent rant about insidious regulations with a Brit about a week ago. He said he generally favored regulations because he thought they protected his interests from people like me.
I, was unable to make any inroads into his view.
Liberal, I guessed.
I am a 63 year old British citizen, on climate I am a lukewarmer and generally find Victor Venema’s comments risible but in this case I find myself in agreement if feeling somewhat ‘unclean’ as a result.
72% of those eligible to vote cast a vote in the referendum, 52% of those voted ‘leave’. The margin of the leave decision was therefore 4%.
Demographic analysis shows the over 64 age group were the strongest supporters of ‘leave’. It could be argued that the entire ‘leave’ 4% margin came from that demographic.
We are all aware that the Brexit negotiations will take multiple years to conclude and further multiple years to implement.
So the democratic process has resulted in a decision affecting the entire population of the country by a demographic group that will largely be dead before any effect of Brexit is felt.
As far as I’m concerned this ‘democratic’ decision is close to insanity.
The catastrophic fall in financial markets that has followed Brexit, with leading investment funds, particularly those invested in property, having to ‘close’ for withdrawals will bring about the biggest pension crisis since Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown’s £5bn a year pension fund tax.
Am I bad for indulging in ‘schadenfreude’ because the demographic who voted for it are going to suffer the worst Brexit consequences as the pension industry in the UK falls apart.
gras albert,
I doubt you know what you are talking about. The London stock exchange averages (FTSE 100, 350, and all stock) are all up by about 5% since the day before the Brexit vote. Apparently investors don’t share your concerns about the future. With regard to ignoring the votes of those over 65: those folks are going to live, on average, another ~10 years, so they do have a ligitimate interest in the future, certainly until well after the Brexit is complete. That demographic also has a longer term perspective, based on personal experience, about social and political trends, a perspective 20 year olds lack. Judgement changes with experience, and one hopes, improves with experience. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the judgement of 20-something year olds….. I have seen too many absolutely horrible decisions by people in that demographic, including some decisions of my own. Those over 65 have children and grandchildren who will live for long after they are gone, multiplying their interest in the UK’s future. Suggesting that 65 year old’s ought not vote about the future of their country, because they have no legitimate interest in that future, is both simple minded and offensive… the stuff of ‘progressive thinking’. Everyone has an interest in the future. I expect such rubbish from Venema, he is after all basically an id!ot. Do yourself a favor and think about this a bit more.
Albert, sitting here on the outside(US), I’m not so convinced this was the wrong course, but there are numerous aspects.
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The age divide probably reflects other aspects as well.
I would think that older British citizens are likely also multi-generational native, while younger citizens are more likely to be first or second generation of immigrants. There is nothing wrong with being an immigrant. Since the ice receded from the British Isles at the last glacial, everyone has been an immigrant. And the US is a nation of immigrants.
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However, if immigrants do not assimilate into a common culture, the nation will fracture, whether or not it is part of a larger union of nations. That may happen yet because of demographics. But it wouldn’t be much different than the various waves of continental invaders that overtook the islands in the past. That’s probably independent of the Brexit, but it may also explain the Old/Young divide.
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As I understand it, there were wealthy/poor and educational divides as well. But one must consider that the poor and uneducated were probably the ones to feel the effects of immigration ( competition, particularly for unskilled labor ) while the wealthy and educated received the benefits ( trade and banking ) of the union.
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As far as economics go, Europe is a disaster in the making and I think the UK will probably avoid some of the pain, but not all, by being independent. Euro demographics mean falling GDPs and economic stresses between Euro states. Unemployment is at depression levels in numerous EU nations. The Italian banking system is on the verge of collapse. And Germany’s economy is 50% exports, mostly to EU states, meaning they’ll go down with the ship. Note the IMF marking DeutcheBank as the greatest systemic risk. The UK is 30% dependent on exports, so the pain of others will transmit to the UK. But that will happen regardless of EU status. The UK also imports from EU nations and no nation ( neither the UK, nor Euro states ) will sacrifice exports because Brexit.
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Many observed, even before the EU, that having a common currency without common debt was always a bad idea – and Greece serves as exhibit A. Having a currency that floats means remaining competitive with exports. It also means the ability for nations to devalue their debts. Member states of the EU may say they like union, but none want to be responsible for the debts of others. The Italian banking crisis is an example of this. EU rules say the EU can’t bail out the Italian banks and even that the Italian government can’t bail out the Italian banks. This is more or less denial. Whether it is the depositors, the Italian gov, or the EU at large, all will feel the effects.
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There’s been much denigration of nationalism. And to be sure, there have been horrific genocides from nationalist movements, which the EU was in part designed to prevent. But people forget the bloodshed before nation states that was no less. Also, that codified individual rights and great advancement of civilization have taken place within nation states.
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The EU has not risen above nationalism, it is just an aggregation of nationalism. When economic times are good, those national differences don’t matter. When times are bad, the stresses appear.
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Ironically, the stresses are exacerbated because there is union, not in spite of it. Trade imbalances, debt obligations, immigration all tend to transmit the problems of one nation to another. Cooperation -> disagreement.
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Good luck to both the UK and the EU. I’m afraid we’re all going to need it.
The sad thing about the entire Brexit issue is that it is almost always framed as an either/or stark decision. You completely leave, or stay in and take what the EU is dishing out. It is a sad commentary that organizational behavior has not in the least progressed over the years, that organizations and bureaucracies primarily exist to preserve themselves to the benefit of those inside the tent while their effect outside the tent is of negligible importance. No accountability will almost end in this sad state.
Those that wanted to stay in the EU are angry at those that voted to leave, and they have their legitimate reasons. But, some of that anger should be reserved for an unresponsive and meddling Brussels that incites this level of irritation. Many people of sound mind, weighing the problems it will cause to leave vs the unpleasantness of staying, decided to leave. It appears that the EU and many of their supporters takes little responsibility for helping create this atmosphere of mistrust and dissatisfaction, and the EU is held to little account for it. “Take it or leave it, because I make and enforce the rules”; that’s the political power credo which is enforced by the bureaucrats. Many are tired of this attitude, not just in England, and are realizing they can have a say in this behavior. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” is under pressure and rightfully so.
Great comments all.
.
I’m a yank too, born and bred. It’s interesting to realize that today’s liberals/progressives would have been the stodgy king’s loyalists 240 years ago. American Libertarianism is only conservative because it still respects the once radical ideas known as the Spirit of `76.
Fantastic post Steve F – thank you.
If KenR is still paying attention I have the answer to his question. The size of the eddy viscosity varies a lot. Roughly 100 times the real viscosity in a healthy BL and up to 100,000 times in a wake. Even larger in massive separation. This source is not derived from the laws of physics and makes an O(1) difference in overall forces. Calling this “obeying the laws of physics”. Might mislead those outside the field.
If Ken chooses to return it might help to tell us if my statement above is true.
Ken Rice comment 148910
.
One might observe that although it is true that one could eliminate a climate model if it could be proven to significantly violate the laws of physics, this same test is also true of any economic model or other model or any hypothesis. The devil is in the proving part.
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So if Ken Rice’s claim is that climate models can be easily invalidated I would say his statement is false. Whether it was intentionally misleading depends on whether he was cognizant that the reader might commonly associate climate with physics while (they) not knowing, as DY pointed out, there are breaks from physical constraints within GCMs.
“So if Ken Rice’s claim is that climate models can be easily invalidated I would say his statement is false. Whether it was intentionally misleading depends on whether he was cognizant that the reader might commonly associate climate with physics while (they) not knowing, as DY pointed out, there are breaks from physical constraints within GCMs.”
No DY still hasnt understood what Dr. rice is saying.
Go back to the Original context.
Question: What makes Physics models different from Economic models.
Answer: In physics there are known laws. Such that IF a model can be shown to violate that law you can reject it. In economics, supposedly, there is no such simple way to reject models.
Now, you can come along and argue that GCMs voliate some physical laws… but that has NOTHING to do with Kens argument.
I’m pretty certain that somewhere in a GCM you can find it violating a law and you could just say.. “well its wrong, but useful” The argument is about what makes physics models ( not just GCMs) different than economic models.
The second question is what do you DO when you find a violation?
Well, of course you can say.. WRONG rejected. But that’s just engineer perfectionism.
I wanted to crosspost here something form Climate Etc concerning the “laws of physics.” If anyone here has any input, it would be welcome.
Ken, This is getting very tutorial. I am going to make a number of statements. Direct answers as to whether you agree and if not why will help you understand it.
1. Of course, if I draw a flux box around the universe, the total momentum flux for that flux box is zero. That has ZERO practical significance and leads to nothing computationally.
2. All practical simulations deal with very small parts of the universe. In any practically interesting problem there are always external and internal forces (viscous force and pressure forces).
3. To derive anything useful you need LOCALâ€laws of physics.†For fluids, the Navier-Stokes embody those laws. They include internal and external forcings and momentum is simply not locally conserved. That is required by the laws of physics.
4. Virtually all interesting simulations involve high or very high Reynolds’ numbers. In this case, its impossible to properly resolve the “laws of physics†and so sub grid models must be used. Thus these simulations violate even the local NS equations as properly formulated.
5. These violations are not small and generate O(1) effects even in globally computed forces and moments.
6. These sub grid models are based on empiricism and more or less questionable “rules of thumb.†All honest turbulence modelers say so.
7. Thus essentially all high Re simulations violate the laws of physics, and not just by a little either. This included GCM’s.
Please answer without trying to subtly shift the argument to something else.
Practical simulations are totally different I fear than astronomy ones, where inaccurate models of the entire universe can be contemplated. Real world simulations by necessity must play by very different rules.
Steven M.,
I’m taking what you say to be that if the model is only mostly physical, it can still be useful. I assume that for this to be reasonable you have to be able to know where it is physical and where it isn’t and understand how the ‘isn’t’ is not disqualifying.
Somehow this seems a bit like finger painting to me – not you, them.
Is it because the current state of modeling won’t support construction of an entirely physical model which is also useful? Does an entirely physical model lack the spread (must be a better word – something like extensiveness, or coverage) to be informative?
Mosher, Of course economic models are in some ways different form CFD models and GCMs. I never said otherwise. My objection is that Rice in his attempt to draw a distinction falls into fundamental errors that minimize the issues with high Reynolds’ fluid simulations. They all in an important sense violate the Navier-Stokes equations. This is really quite well known and obvious to practitioners.
I just crossposted a set of questions. If you are competent to answer any of them, go ahead. They show that Rice’s formulation about the “laws of physics” is either irrelevant or simply wrong. It really shows that Ken’s experience is probably limited to astronomy where things are really quite different from practical simulations. There is no shame in that of course. There is shame in misleading people and refusing to acknowledge even simple mistakes or obvious facts.
SM, I also think it is counterproductive to try to read my mind. We have a new paper on uncertainty that I can send you if you want. I know very well the limitations and power of CFD simulations and we have documented it publicly. I run and use them every day. To make progress, just as in medicine, or science generally, we must first acknowledge the problems. Glosses that are either practically irrelevant or misleadingly wrong are not helpful.
“Mosher, Of course economic models are in some ways different form CFD models and GCMs. I never said otherwise. My objection is that Rice in his attempt to draw a distinction falls into fundamental errors that minimize the issues with high Reynolds’ fluid simulations. They all in an important sense violate the Navier-Stokes equations. This is really quite well known and obvious to practitioners.”
The point is precisely that you never took the time to agree with his basic point. “I never said otherwise” says it all.
you basically agree with his point, but you never took the time to say so. Instead, you cartwheeed into what YOU want to discuss.
namely violations of NV that — face it– dont make a difference
when it comes to climate modelling.
So just a hint. Next time start by agreeing with his basic point.
Then make your point.. which is really a side issue
Now these issues matter to you as they mattered to Browning, but you kinda have to show that the issue matters to climate skill.
I’ll give you an example. in the early codes for figuring out the radar cross section of aircraft there were tons of short cuts.. yes violations of physical laws that meant some mismatch between what was predicted and what was measured. And there were cases where it was just obvious that the codes were wildly wrong. Nobody stopped using those approaches.. all the while folks worked on refinements, new approaches, more compute power.. And we all recognized that “hey dont rely on these results in this regime” but over here… ya it works pretty good. .. or that damn thing is biased high.. but its the best we have.. so use some judgment.. engineering judgement. Then of course there was the guy who wanted it all done perfectly modeling every molecule because to do otherwise was just a violation of how the world works.. he wrote stuff. Got stuff published. never built anything.
he was right but not successful.
Mosher, What you claim is his basic point is of course not what he said. The way he formulated it is just wrong and misleading. Why would I agree with something that is wrongly formulated and misleading? If you want to be imprecise and wrong, that’s your prerogative.
You haven’t answered any of my questions. They are clearly formulated and are pretty much a proof that my point is THE point. Please, enough of the vague and unscientific word smithing. You can do better than that. If you have something technical to say, I will entertain it.
There are also important similarities between economic models and CFD simulations. Those similarities are important too. A balanced picture is something we ought to strive for, don’t you think?
Of course, sub grid models make a huge difference in GCM’s. just run any CFD simulation “laminar”, i.e., without a turbulence model and you will see what I mean. Modelers acknowledge this of course with regard to clouds, just one of the sub grid models. You know far more about the surface temperature record than I do. If you would like to qualify yourself on CFD, I will entertain it too. But my guess is you are not even a “user” of the simulations.
Mosher, Your EM scattering example is particularly inept. EM simulations solve a linear system and the approximations are well understood. We built such a code in the 1980’s and they generally don’t use sub grid models at all. They really do solve Maxwell’s equations pretty well.
CFD is a different problem and a far harder one. More computing power will not really solve these problems at least in your and my lifetimes. Wen Jou and Philippe Spalart have an excellent paper laying this out. It came out about 20 years ago and it is still valid. LES modelers were incensed because the result was persuasive and they didn’t like the result.
Google “jou spalart” and it is the first thing to come up in Google scholar. Bottom line, “first principles” modeling in CFD is a very long way away and we must continue with sub grid models to have any chance.
“Mosher, Your EM scattering example is particularly inept. EM simulations solve a linear system and the approximations are well understood. We built such a code in the 1980’s and they generally don’t use sub grid models at all. They really do solve Maxwell’s equations pretty well.”
then you missed the point.
I am well aware that CFD is harder. I didnt say otherwise.
see how that works?
nevertheless the point remains. Improving NV won’t budge a climate model at all. You can understand all you need to understand with no NV. Its basically just window dressing.
I did not miss the point. You implying that I am a “first principles are all that’s right” person. That’s just complete rubbish. I like simpler models.
I don’t know what NV is. Do you mean NS? GCM’s are more dependent on sub grid modeling than most CFD. That makes them more suspect of course. If you really meant NS, I believe you are wrong. People claim they have tried. We have a paper on that too. Google Forrester Johnson. His most recent entry is good on this. Another good reference is obtained by looking for “numerical evidence of multiple solutions for the Reynolds’ Averaged Navier-Stokes equations” by Kamenetskiy, Bussoletti, et. al. To make a difference requires a sustained effort by people who are looking for new things.
I will send you something if you send me your email.
SM:
.
Steven, I, Lucia and many others read Anders’ point as saying that it was wrong to compare economic models to GCM’s and to criticize their difficulty in being invalidated. One of the reasons Anders gave was that GCMs unlike economic models can be eliminated for breaking the laws of physics.
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My point is: if that’s Anders’s statement then it’s false. Any model can be eliminated if it disobeys the laws of physics.
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You point is that it’s OK on some level for GCMs to fail to conserve energy and other minor details. That was not Anders’s point. Here is his quote:
.
One could then come to the reasonable assumption that Anders was implying that due to their physical nature GCMs could more easily be invalidated then economic models. This is where read DY disagreeing and Ken F also in the other thread tonight.
.
In fact the lack of elimination of any model form the CMIP program, save those that can’t run, is empirical evidence for DY, Ken F’s and many others belief that GCMs are skirting the general scientific protocol of be subject to falsifiability. This was precisely the criticism Anders was counter-attacking Megan McArdle for, we feel misleadingly so. What was Anders’ second point?
Answer: “The other [point] is that this [the first point] will always be true.”
There is a really important point here, SM, that has to do with the replication crisis in science generally. There is far too little fundamental work going on and far too much running of and apologetics to justify current models and codes. I would say climate science is not much worse than CFD, which is pretty bad. The turbulence modelers themselves are perhaps the most honest because they are the most knowledgable about the problems. That’s why its an important issue that is far broader than the issue we are debating here about vague semantic formulations badly in need of more clarity and rigor.
“I did not miss the point. You implying that I am a “first principles are all that’s right†person. That’s just complete rubbish. I like simpler models.”
yes you did miss the point.
No I am not implying you are a first princples kind of guy
I said nothing about whether you like simple or complex models
read harder.
“There is a really important point here, SM, that has to do with the replication crisis in science generally. There is far too little fundamental work going on and far too much running of and apologetics to justify current models and codes. ”
Huh?
Kens point was about physics versus economics
You agree with him
NOW you want to discuss replication?
why?
Steve Mosher,
I think Ken Rice simply refuses to believe McArdel’s key point: There is lots of evidence GCM are not able to make accurate century long predictions of warming (or rainfall, or atmospheric humidity, or ocean circulation, and more). So, when faced with models either known or strongly suspected to be incapable of long term predictions, you shouldn’t rely on those models for setting rational policy. Rice’s rejection of McArdle’s comparison with economic models is the real issue: neither type of model makes good predictions, so they shouldn’t be believed. Of course if you don’t have scary GCM predictions to point at, then forcing everyone to adopt your prefered green policies gets a lot harder. That is Rice’s real issue with McArdle’s comparison. It’s politics, not science, which matter at that echo chamber, as I suspect you are aware.
Mosher,
Saying that GCM’s are different from economic models because they can be invalidated if they violate physical laws is, IMO, a distinction without a difference.
The implication that GCMs are anchored on indisputable principles underlying easily falsified physics is the basis of Ken Rice’s moniker: “and then there’s physics.” No wonder this is sensitive to him.
Mosher writes
That model looks for an instantaneous effect, it doesn’t accumulate errors as part of a projection. You need to be very careful about which models you draw analogies from because useful ones dont project very far into the future in complex non linear ways.
Weather works because its not trying to accumulate a tiny change over millions of iterations, its evolving weather systems over far fewer iterations…and still quickly goes off the rails.
Climate and weather really are very different calculations.
Mosher, Aside from your vague statements that lack real technical content, I can’t see that you have really said anything. Why don’t you respond to he substance of what I have said or of what Ken R. said. Ron has quoted it for you above. Perhaps you are unable to do so. For someone with essentially no real knowledge, your word count is awfully high. Perhaps the highest word count to content ratio of anyone here. You should think harder.
Ken Rice’s point was hard for Lucia to understand too. Its not surprising if you are also confused. It is vague and misleading. But perhaps you have keen powers of mind reading so that you understand English at a deeper level.
DY,
Mosher probably does understand English at a deeper level than you or I, but not by mind reading. Ask him about Derrida and deconstructionism sometime.
Even if you had a proven valid GCM, projections would still be questionable because the scenarios used for those projections are flawed.
“Mosher,
Saying that GCM’s are different from economic models because they can be invalidated if they violate physical laws is, IMO, a distinction without a difference.”
I think I disagreed with Dr Rice the first time he formulated the statement. My point would be models work or they dont work. bonus points for not violating any laws of physics along the way.
The point is simple but DY doesnt want to grasp it.
He agreed with Ken but could not bring himself to say so.
So, he changed the topic to the thing he wanted to talk about.
he did the same thing here. It’s a standard move.
“Mosher, Aside from your vague statements that lack real technical content, I can’t see that you have really said anything. ”
Start with this.
1. You agreed with Dr Rice’s demarcation between physics model and economic models.
That is pretty specific.
Does that say something?
Answer please.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I would think not violating laws of physics would be part of the model ‘working’.
Andrew
“In fact the lack of elimination of any model form the CMIP program, save those that can’t run, is empirical evidence for DY, Ken F’s and many others belief that GCMs are skirting the general scientific protocol of be subject to falsifiability.”
I will suggest that you dont bring up the issue of falsfiablity since you dont understand it and since it has ZERO to do with how CMIP is designed or used.
Up thread I had a comment on how one would determine to what degree that an individual CMIP5 model would violate the conservation of energy, how that would be determined and with the question of what level of violation would be considered a violation of the laws of physics. With the CMIP5 data available to the general public, the net downward radiation energy can be obtained for the individual models as well as the energy absorbed into the oceans. The cumulative sums of these energies over long times can be used to determine an energy balance (or out of balance) by assuming that a large portion of the absorbed energy went into the oceans. If a large number like 95% is assumed going into the ocean there are only a few models that would be considered in balance. However since there is an assumption involved one might have to concede that a larger fraction of absorbed energy is going into other sources such as land. Now if there were an independent way of determining that energy, the in/out of balance could be determined more conclusively. I was wondering whether anyone here had any ideas on how to proceed with this seeming dilemma.
This example leads me to another comment on the Ken Rice statement about readily being able to invalidate climate models that violate the laws of physics. Indeed in my view, climate models that are purely based on the laws of physics would be very different than economic models. Economic models have to deal with very complex and complicated human behavior where the individual has free will choices. I suppose if an economic system could be produced where the individual had only choices commanded by an entirely totalitarian government these economic models could be validated, but even totalitarian governments have problems enforcing their commandments.
My questions to Ken Rice (and those in essential agreement with him) would be:
1. Could a climate model use insufficient physics and yet have the physics used be validated or at least not be invalidated?
2. Can we assume that a climate model that poorly replicates the observed climate and yet we cannot determine that it violates laws of physics be considered valid and the observed results invalid?
3. Is it best to look at the basic physics and how well the model can handle that or to look at the end product such as I noted in my example of conservation of energy?
4. How does one go about doing these validations in either case?
Start here
http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
punchline
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections — the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement — especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?
For vividness I have been speaking in terms of varying distances from a sensory periphery. Let me try now to clarify this notion without metaphor. Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience — and in a selective way: some statements to some experiences, others to others. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of “germaneness” I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. For example, we can imagine recalcitrant experiences to which we would surely be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are brick houses on Elm Street, together with related statements on the same topic. We can imagine other recalcitrant experiences to which we would be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are no centaurs, along with kindred statements. A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, bc accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries — not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits18b comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”
once I show you something works, claiming it works because it’s true, is unnecessary and probably wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY
1. Could a climate model use insufficient physics and yet have the physics used be validated or at least not be invalidated?
Validation is a technical term that refers to checking a model
against predetermined, specified in advance, metrics choosen
by the customer. A model can be perfectly true and invalid.
It’s more useful to speak of model skill.
2. Can we assume that a climate model that poorly replicates the observed climate and yet we cannot determine that it violates laws of physics be considered valid and the observed results invalid?
There is no canonical way to decide whether models or data
are correct. Go see Hubble’s first attempts at determining
the age of the universe and the conflict it presented to
Einstein.
“The age of the universe, in the sense used here, must certainly exceed that of the firm crust of the earth as found from the radioactive minerals. Since determination of age by these minerals is reliable in every respect, the cosmologic theory here presented would be disproved if it were found to contradict any such results. In this case I see no reasonable solution.â€
3. Is it best to look at the basic physics and how well the model can handle that or to look at the end product such as I noted in my example of conservation of energy?
There is no canonical answer to the question. It depends
on what you want to use the model for.
4. How does one go about doing these validations in either case?
Technically you validate against user requirements. Absent that
( hint there are no user requirements for GCMs) calculate skill
scores and work for improvement.
funny thought.
Occasionally you will hear skeptics blather on about “the null”
and science works by falsification.
Here is my null
Ho: the number of planets inhabited by intelligent life >1
your job falsify
Wait
Here is my null
Ho: we are alone in the universe
put another way: do we really set up Seti with a null in mind?
put another way: is waiting to be contacted an experiment?
Or this: why build gravitational wave detectors? would the failure to detect anything allow you to draw a a conclusion about special relativity?
“falsification” is a tool. it is not the sum total of science.
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I would think not violating laws of physics would be part of the model ‘working’.
Andrew”
Its simple Andrew. In the first place we are talking about simulations. It is very simple to write models that have incomplete physics that give you the right answer for the job at hand. Technically they would violate laws, but in practice the specific shortcoming may make no practical difference. Other violations
( say getting the sign on gravity wrong) will still give results.. the model will work.. it just wont be very useful.
look at your own silly brain.. it creates a model of reality that says objects are mostly solid. Utterly wrong, but it works.
I’d say it’s easy to make simulations that give you the answer you want. It’s even easier to make meaningless generalizations about creating simulations that give you the answer you want.
So if simulating laws of physics is not required in a climate model, is anything at all required in a climate model? Serious question.
Andrew
Andrew_KY,
I would say that a GCM would have to produce results that at least make you think you might be looking at our planet. That means things like jet streams and a historical global temperature anomaly series, i.e. hindcast, that also looks more or less like what actually happened.
Thanks DeWitt,
Perhaps you or someone has a link to a more scientific list of actual requirements of climate models in use by current climate science.
Andrew
Since I have not seen any answers or suggested methods of showing that the product of a climate model, such as the case I gave above for conservation of energy, can be used to invalidate a climate model for violating the laws of physics that avenue of approach would make Ken Rice’s statement from a practical standpoint rather useless.
If the problem is approached from the front end, as I think has been the main thrust of discussion on this matter in this thread, we have to decide how well the model handles the basic physics involved and at what point are we able to say that the model’s handling of the physics violates, in effect, a law of physics. Without that consideration and detail of the consequences on the model output spelled out, that avenue of approach would make Ken Rice’s statement rather useless.
My God, Mosher, you are a black and white guy aren’t you? The truth is not a Yes/No thing like simplistic minds sometimes imagine. So I’m not going to answer your silly question directly. The real truth as I said at Judith’s in response to Angech, is that Rice’s formulation is sufficiently vague so to allow him ample wiggle room to redefine the terms to make it seem reasonable. It is as I said many times a half-truth and in important ways false and misleading. Please read harder and stop the idiotic pseudo-scientific largely meaningless formulations.
I laid out a series of 7 very specific questions, the answers will show that Rice’s formulation is basically wrong and a gloss on a far more complex reality. Further, it tends to mislead about the basis of CFD in the “laws of physics.” Perhaps one of your co-workers at Berkeley Earth with a more rigorous background could help you provide answers. Muller is someone i’ve always respected and I would entertain his input with respect.
Mosher, On GCM’s you use a lot of words that aren’t really enlightening. An important measure of models and one that CFD is just starting to use, is to report sensitivity of results to ALL the parameters of the models. That includes sub grid model parameters, grid sizes, initial conditions, numerical dissipation parameters, scheme order, the whole lot. That’s perhaps a big job for a GCM, but it would be more enlightening in my view than simply reporting your “best” result. This is an invitation for selection bias.
I think its obvious to anyone familiar with these things, that there is rather strong sensitivity to parameters of things like temperature anomaly. We have a paper on turbulence models that shows such a study and as you might expect, there is a broad range of results from credible models, a lot larger than most people realize.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #149255)
Isaac Held had a post on results that would seem to meet this criterion.
RB,
There is no doubt that GCMs produce simulated behavior which “sort of looks like Earth”. Seeing that they are based on weather prediction models, and have had 30 odd years for effort to make them “sort of” like the real Earth, it would be shocking if they didn’t resemble the Earth. That doesn’t mean that they can produce accurate projections of future warming, rainfall patterns, hurricanes, etc. Accuracy of long term projections is really all that matters. And that means cloud influence and aerosol influence have to be accurately known. They are not.
Steven when you say:
“funny thought.
Occasionally you will hear skeptics blather on about “the nullâ€
and science works by falsification.
Here is my null
Ho: the number of planets inhabited by intelligent life >1
your job falsify
Wait
Here is my null
Ho: we are alone in the universe
put another way: do we really set up Seti with a null in mind?
put another way: is waiting to be contacted an experiment?”
I think while you are able to get your standard and overly generalized skeptic dig in what you present as a hypothesis test is not really applicable. A frequentist null hypothesis would require some data from which to test and in the case of life on other planets that is not available as far as I know. The assumptions that are required to make a guess would be better suited to a Bayesian approach whereby the prior could provide someone’s subjective probability distribution(s) that given x planets in the universe and a portion that are earthlike and the probability of being earthlike the probability of life and finally the probability of that life having a portion that is intelligent by earth human standards. It certainly requires a chain of probabilities and maybe more than one prior – but I’ll leave problem that to the Bayesians.
I think that while I do not necessarily disagree with your approaches in your replies to my questions, I am looking for something less general and detailed and with examples.
SteveF,
While I agree that future projections are hard for the reasons you suggest, in this post , Isaac Held shows a model run which appears to reproduce major features of tropical cyclones.
RB (Comment #149260)
Isaac Held presents his case for models like a good adversarial lawyer whereby we see only his side of the case. Should not the disinterested scientist show both sides?
Kenneth,
If you read his post(s), he comes across as being mindful of the limitations of the models. For example, he notes in the cyclone post that the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic are consistent with observations but not the intensity. I find Nic Lewis to be a lot more certain of his conclusions than Isaac Held.
RB: ” I find Nic Lewis to be a lot more certain of his conclusions than Isaac Held.”
.
The fact that a scientist must be self-funded in order to be able to tell the other side of the story should be informative.
RB, Beware the Colorful Fluid Dynamics, or as a caustic engineer once called it Continuous Fraud and Deceit. Simulations can look qualitatively right but be in detail completely wrong. Similarly, overall energy levels and distribution can look reasonable and details can be wrong.
Validation even in CFD (a far simpler problem) is a constant struggle and a lot of investment is required. I believe the situation with GCM’s is that they do a reasonable job with some things, but are clearly wrong on other things such as polar amplification. SteveF pointed out a couple more.
As I mentioned to Mosher, to really judge how mature these things are, I would want to look at model output sensitivity to grid density, parameters (and there are probably hundreds of them), numerical method order, etc. This would give you some idea whether the simulations are really doing something in the fine grid limit or are just giant tuned cludges to match a few canonical figures of merit.
RB, I thank you for the link to the Held post from a year ago. It was interesting to see the unchanged debate, particularly DY proding about the limits of the 2D nature of the model and Held basically saying, “Hey, we don’t need no steenking boundary layer 3D info.”
.
Willis asked the usual obvious question: If the model does not get TOA flux correct of sensitivity of precipitation how are you confident in the sensitivity metric to CO2? Held: [no reply]
.
The closest it seems to validation testing besides the reanalysis comparisons are the papers that try to bite into the models by their own re-analysis, like Forster 2013:
.
A little overall report card on tuning it seems, though all is too vague to make much of it.
.
Steven Mosher, listening for an ET signal is science because if there is a signal we have new knowledge. If there is no signal we have a failed test, but only if that failure leaves us inconclusive as the question being tested. If a given test formulation cannot leave us with a conclusive result in any circumstance then it is not science and it is not a test.
Am I correct that the GFDL GCM is one of the outlier high ECS ones? Can’t remember.
David Young,
My recollection is that it is on the high side, though IIRC there are much worse (with waco-bizzaro warming rates.. great for broadening the ‘Ensemble uncertainty’). Kenneth probably knows for sure, since he has invested a lot of time looking at the ensemble.
Ron Graf,
The climate alarmed focus on what the models get right, even if irrelevant. Skeptics focus on what the models get wrong, also even if irrelevant. The crucial question is if models can make reasonable decadal to century long predictions of warming, and the emperical data so far says they can’t. The high velocity of arm waves by apologists does not make the models any more capable or less full of outright kludges, especially on clouds and aerosols. Only a few decades more measured temperature data will tell if the models are worth the effort. My guess: heck no… there is little evidence they are worth more than a pinch of bird droppings.
Did you all read the comment from Held in the first Held link by RB above?
“I am using reanalysis as the observational standard for these fields, an idea that takes some getting used to. Weather prediction centers need initial conditions with which to start their forecasts. They get these by combining information from past forecasts with new data from balloons, satellites, and aircraft. These are referred to as analyses. If you took a record of all of these analyses as your best guess for the state of the atmosphere over time, it would suffer from two inhomogeneities — one due to changes in data sources and another due to changes in the underlying model that the data is being assimilated into. Reanalyses remove the second of these inhomogeneities by assimilating an entire historical data stream into a fixed (modern) version of the model. They still retain the inhomogeneity due to changing data sources over time. Where data is plentiful the model provides a dynamically consistent multivariate space-time interpolation procedure. Where data is sparse, one is obviously relying on the model more.”
By the way this appears to referencing weather models and not climate models.
There are 3 individual climate models from GFLD listed for CMIP5 and the models and the ECS values (in parenthesis) are:
GFLD-CM3 (4.0)
GFLD-ESMG (2.4)
GFLD-ESM2M(2.4)
You have 2 on the low side and 1 on the high for ECS values.
I do not read Isaac Held often but when I do he appears to reference the GFLD models rather exclusively – and those are the models with which he is involved. He seldom or never seems to get riled or abrasive, but I did once hear him get a little hot about climate modeling and invoked his 30 years or so of modeling experience.
Since this is an off-topic thread, I thought I’d share some news I found rather remarkable. Gergis et al have apparently gotten their 2012 paper published. If you believe the media hype they’re trying to create, they voluntarily took down their 2012 paper rather than just correct a “typo” that amounted to “a single word in a 74-page document,” and have suffered a four year long “concerted smear campaign” while they tried to revisit their work.
Of course, it’s all a bunch of rubbish. I expect the topic will receive some attention over the next few weeks, but I wrote a brief piece about it here to try to draw a bit of attention to the story:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/07/the-gergis-saga-continues/
Hey Brandon, good to see you. Sorry to also divert attention but Nic Lewis has a fresh CA post here challenging Richardson’s and Armour’s attempt at revision of observational EfCS.
Kenneth,
“I do not read Isaac Held often but when I do….”
.
I drink Dos Equis. Makes the reading more pleasant.
Mosher writes
In which case they’re a fit and cant be expected to give a useful result when the parameters go beyond what has been seen before.
But that’s a “general” statement about modelling. In the case of GCMs its much worse as the result of every iteration gets fed back into the calculation of the next iteration so the error isn’t a simple one, its a compounded error…and no, you cant build a model that does that “simply”.
SteveF (Comment #149276)
You caught me.
Ron Graf (Comment #149275)
I knew it had to be coming just not when – I’ll go for a read.
The Gergis article is quite disturbing, actually. Gergis has basically 4 claims in her argicle, all of which are false. With the fourth she could be just mistaken as to some extent it is a matter of opinion but with the first three she is quite clearly and simply and knowingly lying
1) It was not a “typo” but a methodological error (can easily be proven)
2) The authors did not discover it themselves two days before Climate Audit (can easily be proven)
3) It was not their choice but the editor’s demand to redo the work rather than just fix the “typo” (what Gergis tried to do using dishonest trick ™ laguage). (can easily be proven)
4) There was no 4 year long smear campaign other than one idiot calling Gergis a bimbo.
In which case they’re a fit and cant be expected to give a useful result when the parameters go beyond what has been seen before.
But that’s a “general†statement about modelling. In the case of GCMs its much worse as the result of every iteration gets fed back into the calculation of the next iteration so the error isn’t a simple one, its a compounded error…and no, you cant build a model that does that “simplyâ€.
1. They are not a fit. If they were a fit then they would fit the past better.
2. You cant say anything about “useful” results without actually generating a result and testing whether it is useful. Simply put. your philosophy about what should or should not be useful is just that. navel gazing philosophy. Want to know if something is useful?
go use it.
3. The errors dont compound. Sorry again, you think they might. they dont.
Oh, and the fifth falsehood – that the reanalysis did not change the results at all (it is quite funny how in climate science all results are so robust that no errors, mild or serious, ever change them. Well, if they do, it is either to make things “worse than expected” or to bring measurements into correlation with never erring models)
Mosher, What a lot of vague words you use to say so little.
1. Parameters are tuned to give a good fit to selected metrics. Perfect fit is not possible or desirable.
2. Useful for what? However a smart person would do a lot of spade work before “just using it.” Only a person lacking expertise would not rule out most things a priori.
3. The errors do compound in a mathematical sense. See any textbook on ODE methods. You will see that some kind of stability criterion is needed for global convergence.
Mosher wrtes
I do find that somewhat ironic.
Here is a paper…
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/klockedaniel/Mauritsen_tuning_6.pdf
I highly recommend reading it.
You write
They are a fit and here is the relevant section of that paper
“Increasing the conversion rate of cloud water to rain in convective systems generally leads to less cloud cover and less atmospheric water vapor, as more water is deposited directly from deep convective systems to the surface. By this parameter, both TOA net shortwave and net longwave fluxes both increase in magnitude, while approximately maintaining TOA radiation balance. This makes the parameter useful for adjusting the level of the TOA net shortwave and longwave fluxes”
So they arbitrarily change the conversion rate of cloud water to rain to influence the TOA imbalance. That is a fit. No navel gazing, I’m using a paper as a reference.
There are other examples from that paper but lets move on…
Mosher writes
So here is my argument. Every component of the model is some sort of approximation and so every component has its own error. All the components interact and those errors combine. The output of those components all influencing each other is a slight change in the “climate” due to a tiny amount of energy that accumulated (about 0.6W/m2)
Here’s a wee pause for a useful quote in the paper
“We investigated the leakage of energy in MPI-ESM-LR of about 0.5 Wm−2 and found that it arises for the most part from mismatching grids and coastlines between the atmosphere and ocean model components. Further, some energy is lost due to an inconsistent treatment of the temperature of precipitation and river runoff into the ocean, and a small leakage of about 0.05 Wm−2 occurs in a not yet identiï¬ed part of the atmosphere.
When run with prescribed SST’s and sea ice during present-day conditions and forcings (1976-2005), ECHAM6 has a TOA imbalance of 0.53 Wm−2, which is barely enough to compensate the coupled models energy leakage.”
So the energy imbalance is about the same as the unaccounted for energy in the model. How accurate can that small amount of accumulated energy be?? I digress…
On the next iteration, the result of the previous iteration is built upon including that tiny change in “climate”. Except of course the errors when combined have utterly swamped any climate signal that might have occurred in that iteration.
It seems to me you’re confusing “compounding” with something that has direction and necessarily spins out of control. Not so. Not so by definition, actually. If the models constantly span out of control then they’d be obviously useless.
But that doesn’t mean the errors cancel out to zero. Particularly when different components have different impacts on the climate as the climate changes.
So…did you have an actual rebuttal on this Steve?
“Mosher, What a lot of vague words you use to say so little.
1. Parameters are tuned to give a good fit to selected metrics. Perfect fit is not possible or desirable.
####################
A) Yes of course moron.
B) Did you see me talking about perfect fits??? NOPE.
C) Perfect fits are possible and in some cases desirable
D) Next time you have ACTUAL GCM DATA before and and
after a fit… AND the actual variables tuned then
we can talk. Until then everything you say is vague
and meaningless
2. Useful for what? However a smart person would do a lot of spade work before “just using it.†Only a person lacking expertise would not rule out most things a priori.
Moron. ask Tim. He is the one saying they are Not useful.
Dont you get it bobble head?
People with no experience whatsover come on and say
oh these models are useless .. and smart guys like you
who know better.. just bobble head along. So,
You know all the things we use models for even when we
know they are wrong and limited, stop playing bobble
head moron.
3. The errors do compound in a mathematical sense. See any textbook on ODE methods. You will see that some kind of stability criterion is needed for global convergence.
Wrong. Go ahead and look at the entire CMIP database
and show me the runs with compounding errors.
Go get the data and prove the case Bobble head.
“I do find that somewhat ironic.
Here is a paper…
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/filea…..ning_6.pdf
I highly recommend reading it.”
Read it before in fact I was probably the one who pointed it out to you and others.
you need to learn to read
and stop tryig to redefine words like “compound”
“But that doesn’t mean the errors cancel out to zero. Particularly when different components have different impacts on the climate as the climate changes.
So…did you have an actual rebuttal on this Steve?”
1. Stop redefining the word compounding
2. It doesnt mean the error DONT cancel out to zero
3. Both You and David need to do ACTUAL WORK
basically you both, you especially, theorize about what a GCM does or doesnt do.. you generalize from one paper about one model.. and you never have actually
A) read the code
B) run the code
C) looked at results to confirm or disconfirm your beliefs.
you are basically bullshitting..
In comparing 4 observed and 108 CMIP5 RCP 4.5 temperature series, I am posting a linked summary table of my analysis of the 1970-2005 global trends for land (tas models) and ocean (SST for observed and tos for models). The trends were determined by Singular Spectrum Analysis decompositions and reconstructions. The left side of the table shows the trend ratios for land to ocean while the right side shows the correlation values for the first difference of the land trend series to the first difference of the land trend minus the ocean trend series.
I present these data without at this time doing any statistical analysis in order to merely show interested parties the differences between the observed and model series, the differences between individual models and even in some cases large differences between multiple runs of the same model.
Even those model runs that show low or negative correlations have sequential runs segments that do have high positive correlations. What produces the low and negative overall correlations is that these multiple segments within a scatter plot series have offsets and/or different slopes. I have not given much thought to why these segments occur differently for some model runs. The correlations in general show that the land to ocean warming or cooling diverges as a function of the land warming or cooling for the observed and for the most part the models.
The observed trend ratios run higher than most of the model runs and an eyeball estimate says that there are significant differences between some models (models with multiple runs that would allow statistical testing) and that the observed would run to the edge of the probability distributions of some of these models with multiple runs.
http://imageshack.com/a/img921/9968/FA9lnz.gif
Mosher, now you are just getting nasty and saying nothing of substance. Lashing out when challenged makes the immature feel better but accomplishes nothing.
I gave you a bunch of references to support what I said. They are very high quality ones. I know that your problem is lack of expertise to evaluate them. If you care to show otherwise I will stand corrected.
I offered to send you an in press manuscript. You didn’t send me your contact info. It really makes get help you.
What is most disturbing is the idea that “just run or ready the code” nonsense. Competent people do background theoretical work before undertaking any coding. Respectfully, I suggest you’d I the same and drop your silliness.
Mosher I just shake my head on the error compounding business. This is really elementary stuff. It was the first thing I learned in graduate school form John Gary. It is elementary math. Usually, people do adaptive time step size to control it. It’s a problem at the heart of any time dependent simulation. Stability also really helps.
I am willing to help you on these issues, but you need to calm down and take the laptop off your chest before it burns you😀
“Mosher, now you are just getting nasty and saying nothing of substance. Lashing out when challenged makes the immature feel better but accomplishes nothing.
I gave you a bunch of references to support what I said. ”
Liar.
Look at every comment you made here.
Not a single reference about
A) GCM tuning
B) The uses of GCMs
C) The compounding of errors in GCMs
Go read the nasty stuff you wrote before you lecture me on politeness.
The issue is not CFD.
The issues are
A) Why didnt you tell Ken Rice you agreed with him?
B) Can we make use of models that work, but are not
perfect. For example, you say you like SIMPLE models..
can a simple model that doesnt capture all the physics
be useful? useful for whom? for what? and who decides
usefulness.
Here are you comments. You wont find a SINGLE REFERENCE to these issues. Further, If you want to make an argument, then make one.. 90% of all references provided by people on the internet dont support what they say they do. So make your argument.. here..
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148890
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148892
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148904
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148927
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148928
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148929
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148938
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148953
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148954
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148961
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148979
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148989
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148993
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-148997
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149017
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149019
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149066
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149072
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149218
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149222
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149224
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149228
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149229
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149230
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149232
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149234
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149241
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149258
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149259
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149267
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149269
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/brexit-felicitations/#comment-149284
Just to be clear Mosher I generally don’t engage people from whom I can’t learn anything unless they ask specific questions from me or they make a significant mistake. Silence does not mean agreement. But you are smart enough to know that, right.ðŸ˜â˜€ï¸ðŸŒ˜
Just to clarify for Moshpit, who may be too upset to read carefully, models can be useful even if wrong. The problem comes when the reporting of results is biased as in CFD. We need more reporting of negative results.
We do not need those like you who are largely ignorant trying to make aggressive and name calling pronouncements. Likewise, we don’t need people like ATTP, who should know better, promulgating vague and misleading half-truths. We need more objectivity and less politization.
Mosher writes
You have no idea what I’ve read, what I know and what I’ve studied. You’ve made no attempt to rebut the actual argument I’ve made.
Just because you heard that “some models are useful” doesn’t mean that CGMs are useful when used to project warming out to say 100 years.
Mosh, Your name calling is getting more intense indicating that you are losing the argument. Calm down and you will feel better in the morning. 🙁
Most of what you say is too imprecise and vague to really discuss rationally. Kind of like what I encounter from inexperienced ill trained runners of codes who say “see the code worked!!” even when the result has massive spurious separation and is clearly wrong.
Lets focus on the issue of accumulation (compounding of errors) since its so elementary and obvious, even to laymen like yourself. Prof. Geer has an old textbook on numerical analysis of ordinary differential equations that is still totally rigorous and correct. You can easily find it on Amazon. The experience of trying to read it might show you that ignorance is not a strong position to call others names. The errors accumulate in ANY time accurate simulation. There are mechanisms to try to control them. In stable systems, they often succeed. There is also additional dissipation that often works to stabilize the calculation but of course increases the errors. GCM’s don’t “blow up” in the layman’s sense, but the errors still accumulate. Only if the attractor is sufficiently strong will they not spoil the accuracy. I can’t make it any simpler for you. Ask any professor of mathematics or numerical analysis.
Nick Stokes said here that “its all CFD” with regard to climate modeling and theory. The references I gave you are applicable to any solution of the Navier-Stokes equations pretty much.
You are making the issue about me and that’s just another device to shift the discussion from issues of truth. I generally don’t agree with things that are misleading, for the 10th time. I call what I think they are. Got that? Can you even repeat my argument as to why Rice’s statement is wrong and misleading?
For the 10th time, all models are wrong but can still be useful. You of all people are incompetent to judge how wrong they are or how useful they are in CFD. We have a paper on this I can send you, for the second time. Being open minded might make you more effective in your job. Just saying. I would welcome any input you had that was specifically verifiable or even meaningful.
Mosher, The Jou and Spalart paper I referenced is applicable to GCM calculations. The numbers say we are just going to have to suck it up and do better with sub grid models for at least a century. “Better resolution” of small eddies is not going to happen.
Actually, Mosher, the other references were given on Climate Etc. in the discussion with Prof. Rice himself. But I can send them to you right now if you tell me how to do so. You really are sounding like a dragon slayer demanding that I make any argument “right here, right now.” Somethings are not amenable to this format but require heavy duty notation and graphics. Your email address please. 🙂
lucia,
Can we put these guys on time out? I’ve rarely seen such a waste of bandwidth.
David and Mosher,
I think DeWitt is right. This can’t really be resolved here. It’s gotten to the point where you are arguing about what the argument is between one party (DY) and another who isn’t even present.
For now, while here, the two of you should desist arguing with each other about (a) CFD, (b) Ken Rice.
Otherswise, can both talk to other people about anything. (Preferably others won’t spend too much time discussing Ken Rice personally. He’s not here. I don’t mind people discussing his arguments, but when it gets to the point of discussing him personally things can go off in long whiny directions that really aren’t useful.)
DeWitt,
“I’ve rarely seen such a waste of bandwidth.”
.
Good thing they can’t type faster.😉
Lucia,
“Preferably others won’t spend too much time discussing Ken Rice personally.”
.
Indeed, pretty boring subject. With regard to his arguments: As I think you have found, Ken tends to say things that are of dubious accuracy, then backtrack when someone questions. The regular ‘I didn’t say that’, ‘I didn’t mean that’, ‘You just didn’t understand’, ‘I don’t know why I even bother’, series of positions tends to drive people a little bonkers. IMO, it’s not worth the effort to point out when he says things of dubious accuracy at his echo chamber.
Ok Lucia. The real content was pretty low anyway. I am working on a post on these issues. Don’t know if you would allow a guest post here on Fluid dynamics and the laws of physics. It can be definitively settled I think
SteveF, I made a sustained effort to interact constructively and politely at Rice’s blog when he first started it since he seemed to promise a civil conversation. Moderation was heavy handed and the trolls abundant especially the anonymous ones. I was said to be behaving like a denier and I gave up. Maybe blogs ought to have special comment threads for anonymous commenters. They can really mess up a regular thread.
So yeah, skipping past the… whatever that was, I wanted to comment to say I have an update on the latest Gergis et al paper. I was obviously critical of the article she wrote about the paper, but the paper itself has issues as well. I’ve only begun to delve into the paper, but I think what jumped out at me almost right away should be interesting to people. You can find my discussion here:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/07/very-small-differences/
But for a short version, the 2012 Gergis et al paper used one approach to screening its proxies – detrending the data and checking the correlation between proxies and the regional (or field) temperature. The 2016 paper uses non-detrended data and checks the correlation between proxies and the “local” temperature. They then write:
Which I suspect was an intentional trick akin to what Michael Mann did with his 2008 paper. As most people will likely recall, he said he gets a hockey stick if you remove bristlecone/tree ring series, and he said he gets a hockey stick if you remove the Tiljander proxies (which amongst other things, had been used upside down). He conveniently didn’t say what happens if remove both. The answer, of course, was you don’t get a hockey stick.
In this case, Gergis et al say if you use detrended data instead of non-detrended data, the results don’t change. They also say if you use regional (field) temperatures instead of “local” temperatures, the results don’t change. Naturally, if you do both, the results do change – you can no longer create a reconstruction prior to 1577. That is, using the approach to screening the 2012 paper used only lets you get a ~420 year reconstruction as opposed to a 1000 year reconstruction.
Oh, and for the record, the “local” temperatures they used were the temperatures in any grid cell within 500 kilometers of the proxy. That means they checked up to nine different “local” temperatures to find a match.
David,
“I was said to be behaving like a denier and I gave up.”
.
My initial experience was identical. And I was also accused of not caring about poor people. That echo chamber is mostly filled with ‘progressive’ drivel that’s not worth reading. I think they have backed off a little on the moderation, which is progress of a sort I guess. When the starting position of the rabble is that you are evil for nothing more than disagreeing with their left wing politics, it hardly seems worth the effort.
David Young,
“Maybe blogs ought to have special comment threads for anonymous commenters.”
.
An interesting idea. I have always thought serious blogs ought to just require that commenters identify themselves to help maintain some level of responsibility/civility. Anonymous commenting is OK if that is how the blog owner wants it, but requiring honest-to-goodness names of commenters would help to restrain the worst offenders.
SteveF,
The one commenter at Rice’s that actually practiced independent thought regarding my comments was Michael Tobis. Perhaps that is because he has a real modeling background. I believe he is at least an honest person. Motivated by this, I sent out some preliminary ideas for writing a GCM using modern methods to some top people in the engineering fluid dynamics field who I’d worked with in the past. Basically, the response was that entering this arena would be a vast political headache and there are more rewarding things to do with my time. BTW, there is a new DOE GCM effort called ACME. I found some evidence that they took flak from the existing modeling groups though for daring to enter this arena.
I’ve never found forcing people to identify themselves to be particularly helpful in managing tone or behavior. Part of that might just be that it is trivially easy to create false identities though. It’s not like you can reasonably check to see if a person’s name really is what they say it is.
What was also very revealing was the doctrinal disputes resulting from Tobis’ attempt to defend me. Lots of discussions of tactics in the crusade against anyone who appears to have a questioning attitude. Truth was secondary to everyone except Tobis.
Brandon, Identification of commenters at least brings into play the possibility of a post of shaming the offender and gives you at least some idea if they know what they are talking about and whether you should engage them. A lot of the “regulars” are simply inexpert at most areas relevant to the debate. At ATTP’s, Rice stands out as exceptionally expert and that says a lot. 🙂
Brandon,
“It’s not like you can reasonably check to see if a person’s name really is what they say it is.”
.
The blog owner could certainly insist on clear verification as a condition for posting comments, even if information like address, phone number, etc. were withheld from blog readers. Don’t satisfy the blog owner who you really are and you just can’t comment. Simple.
David,
“Truth was secondary to everyone except Tobis.”
.
No surprise there. The reason ‘Climate change” is controversial is because it is and has always been mostly a political disagreement, not a scientific one. Political “truths” and factual truths are very different beasts.
.
Tobis seems honest enough, though a bit thin skinned I think.
David Young:
Shaming an offender by real name has no demonstrated effect. I’d wager one wouldn’t be able to find any effect for it. As for level of knowledge, I suspect identification would be largely useless for that as few people on climate blogs have a level of knowledge one could hope to determine to any meaningful extent by their name or profession. I’m a great example of this.
SteveF:
And then what? Are you going to call them? Send them mail? Even if you do confirm the phone number/address are real, are you going to be able to confirm a particular name is correctly associated with them? Supposing you can, do you expect anyone to actually go through the process?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions. It is easy to say you will require certain information, but if you don’t verify that information is accurate, there is little meaning to it.
In my experience and from my viewings, the only thing requiring a “real name” helps combat is spam, and you can accomplish the same just by mandating people use a consistent name, whether it is real or not.
A blog owner may, in principle, require anything they wish before granting permission to post. But placing high hurdles in the way of commenting is impractical at best. Vetting people would be time consuming. And even if one had the time, it’s not at all clear those vetted would behave over all “better”.
As for the concept of ‘shaming’, I agree with Brandon there is no evidence it “works” in any meaningful way. This happens for a number of reasons: among them, frequently the “shamer” and “shame-ees” view of what is shameful are diametrically opposed.
With respect to anonymity: I don’t really mind it provided a person sticks to one pseudonymn while at my blog. The person who created 7 or so people to re-post his own views over and over…. not acceptable. (FWIW: I don’t even mind someone changing pseudonyms as long as they keep the same one a pretty long time and/or uses a stable one at a particular venue. But someone who, over the course of a month, uses a bunch of different names at the same blog cycling through the list? Not so good.)
A couple of years ago, there was a climate blog that did deep scientific posts by scientists on specific climate topics like the hot spot. I’ve forgotten the name. Anyway, they had one comment section for those who had been invited to comment and another one for the rest of the world. I actually found it extremely useful even though very technical. Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long. Perhaps it was too technical to attract a large following.
David, I think you may be referring to Climate Dialogue .
Brandon,
“Those aren’t rhetorical questions. It is easy to say you will require certain information, but if you don’t verify that information is accurate, there is little meaning to it.”
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I suspect those are close to rhetorical questions, despite your protestations. But yes, the ‘then what’ question has a pretty simple answer: don’t allow them to comment.
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The point is, if you want quality comments, and restrict the nutcakes, then you have to set some limits on commenting anonymously. The evil people do as anonymous agents is clear, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Brandon,
“Those aren’t rhetorical questions. It is easy to say you will require certain information, but if you don’t verify that information is accurate, there is little meaning to it.”
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I suspect those are close to rhetorical questions, despite your protestations. But yes, the ‘then what’ question has a pretty simple answer: don’t allow them to comment.
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The point is, if you want quality comments then you pretty much have to restrict the nutcakes, one way or another. Lucia, with the patience of a saint, tolerates a lot more than I would.
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IMO, you have to set some limits on commenting anonymously. The evil people do as anonymous agents is clear, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Lucia,
Strange things are happening with WordPress.
SteveF:
While you are welcome to believe questions are rhetorical even though having answers to the questions is necessary to implement the ideas you proposed, I will suggest the one answer you’ve given is… very strange. This is the question and what it was in response to:
You suggested people could be forced to provide certain information. I responded by asking a series of questions about how you would verify that information. The first of these questions was, “And then what?” That is, if you force people to provide certain information and they give you answers, “Then what?” How do you check if those answers are legitimate?
Answering that question with what you say is “a pretty simple answer: don’t allow them to comment” seems strange. That would mean you force people to provide information, then refuse to allow them to comment once they have. I suspect that wasn’t your intent. Perhaps you misread what I wrote.
While that may be your point, simply stating it as fact does not make it true, nor does it make the approach you propose viable. As both lucia and I have indicated, people do not agree with your view. You’re not going to convince anyone just by repeating it.
Brandon and SteveF, It is pretty clear that many of the worst offenders in our blog universe are anonymous. One could mention Willard and Joshua. Willard’s comments are sometimes interesting to me because I know a lot about philosophy, but almost always off topic and are often half-truths dressed up to try to make them marginally relevant or to make them useful in calling into question what others say. One could mention WebHub, i.e., Paul Pukite, who really tended to favor ad hominem and largely irrelevant attacks, for example, on Judith Curry. I know that Pukite did end up in moderation with Judith many times but kept coming back. He seems to have finally disappeared. You can check his publication record too and find that there is nothing about fluid dynamics really and mostly its technical reports, which is OK,but there is no record of knowledge of the fundamentals. He will probably now show up here to call me names. There are some cases where it is clear that blog proprietors are justified in taking action agains anonymous commenters.
Climate Dialogue had no trouble providing high quality comment threads by excluding certain people. Just because casual bloggers don’t have the time to do the same doesn’t mean it can’t work. Steve Mcintyre also seems to do a very good job of keeping things relevant and civil. He has even removed a comment or two of mine for being off topic. These are models blog proprietors should emulate it seems to me.
SteveF, on the subject of KenRice’s expertise in fluid dynamics that you asked about earlier, he asserted on Judith’s thread that his “research was in fluid dynamics”. I tried to verify this and found that his publication record strongly indicates he is a user of CFD, but has shown nothing indicating any understanding of even the basics. He then said he was insulted that anyone would check his record and didn’t try to defend it. Usually that’s an indication that the original statement is largely true. Certainly, there are some gaps in his knowledge of sub grid models and their effect on simulations.
‘Brandon, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Generally the fruits and nuts anonymous commenters reveal their nature quickly. Even if they provided false identity information, that would become obvious to the astute proprietor.
David Young:
And some are not. That you can find anonymous commenters who behave poorly doesn’t indicate anonymity is the problem. Additionally, some of the best commenters on blogs are anonymous.
I don’t believe Joshua is anonymous anymore, due to people having a strange obsession with identifying anyone on the “other side” who prefers not to disclose their identity.
Climate Dialogue had a great deal of trouble providing high quality comment threads. That’s part of why the site failed. There wasn’t much demand for the model they used. As for Steve McIntyre’s site, a number of his best commenters were anonymous for at least some period of time. Even when McIntyre knew the identity of some of them, most of his commenters didn’t.
The reason McIntyre’s site had better comment threads than most is he took an active interest in both moderating them and talking to his readers about what sort of behavior was desirable. Demanding nobody anonymous wouldn’t have contributed to his success.
If fruits and nuts generally reveal their nature quickly, why would you even need to prevent anonymous commenters? If a blogger can spot them, so to can his readers. That seems better than having a blogger going out and looking for fake user information from people because he has decided they are a “fruit” or “nut.”
Brandon,
Yes, you might call them. You could ask them to send a jpg of an ID. You could do a 1 minute ‘people search’. The details do not matter much. Someone who misrepresented themselves as being another (real) person would be at legal risk, and rightly so. As it is, commenters must provide an email address; you could require other information just as easily. Comments made in good faith don’t ever require anonymity, unless, perhaps, they are made by someone who is getting paid at the same time to do something else.
Brandon,
I didn’t know Joshua was officially anonymous. Now that I do and he’s been outed, I want to know who he is!
Anonimity and being retired:
Being king might be pretty good, but being retired runs a close second. I’ve used something like my name since 1983 when I followed a number of bbs’s in Chicago area. I’ve continued but was circumspect or silent in discussions involving issues related to my employers – most usually in comments on newspaper columns while I was still employed.
i no longer feel so constrained although I still hold back on commenting on columns involving projects with which I’m personally familiar, where the column misses the point a bit, but where clarification could affect litigation.
I’ve been contacted twice in the last ten years by old friends who guessed who I was – there could only be one ferguson who would be sufficiently nuts to write whatever I’d posted.
The risk of declining anonimity is becoming known to be confused, ignorant, or maybe stupid.
Of course it also could make one unemployable.
Lucia: “I want to know who he is!”
Why? (real question) Would that change the weight which you give to his comments?
There is no open thread, so I am posting a reference here:
“Costing the Earth: A Numbers Game or a Moral Imperative?” by Gerard Roe (University of Washington). A PDF is available from Roe’s web page at UW. I found it interesting because Roe makes an explicit argument that “the science” is utterly unable to accurately predict future warming, its consequences, and future costs, so therefore only moral arguments should be the basis for public energy policy. He explicitly says that narrowing uncertainty is nearly impossible, and implies policy decisions must be made based on current knowledge and the assumption of possible future catastrophe, rather than based on better knowledge and more constrained projections.
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I find two things about this argument very odd: 1) If policy should be based strickly on moral (and he hopes very green!) choices, then logically there is absolutely no reason for taxpayers to support climate science, and Gerard Roe should do something else… not bilk the taxpayers for science they don’t need done. 2) The claim of irreducible uncertainty is, IMO, both shockingly unscientific and completely, demonstrably false. Most uncertainty in climate sensitivity, the inability to narrow the likely range of sensitivity, and the inability to better constrain climate models, is due to uncertainty in aerosol effects, and we know how to reduce that uncertainty (eg. start by replacing the Glory satellite that never reached orbit, and gather better aerosol data!).
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It seems to me that Roe has no interest in narrowing the uncertainty, because that would facilitate a more rational evaluation of costs and benefits, and a rational evaluation is what he argues is not appopriate for policy choices. Climate science seems to me dominated by people like Gerard Roe who hold very strong “green” moral views. Participation in the field is, after all, self selecting, and those with strong “green” moral views are naturally attracted. Those “green” moral views seem to me to be interfering with the kind of science the public pays for and needs… but is not getting. I think a strong case can be made for defunding most climate science which is not focused on narrowing the uncertainty of climate sensitivity. The public certaintly does not need to be lectured to about morality by a bunch “green” climate scientists, they need more scientific certainty… climate science should be focused on aerosol effects.
Harold W
It would not change the weight I give his comments. But I do like to know who people are when I can know. Among other things it is interesting to learn whether that sort of person is “teaching” young people to “think” and so on.
HaroldW,
It would help me to understand how someone could be such a PITA, if nothing else. If I had to make a wild guess, I’d guess he works at a university in a fluff left wing field like political ‘science’, psychology, or similar.
I’d like to know who Joshua is too… because dude needs some serious help from someone.
Andrew
Joshua is the perfect exponent of the “tribalism uber alles” theory of human activity. Being totally incapable of commenting on the substance, he tries to find aspects of the comment that might show tribalistic or biased thinking. The microscope he deploys is very powerful and finds a lot of false positives.
Actually, SteveF, Roe seems to be a student of Lindzen and a lot of his research seems to be about ice sheets and ice ages. I heard that he was the one who established the connection between high latitude solar intensity and ice ages. I seem to remember he looked at the derivative of ice sheet size vs. solar intensity. But that’s off the top of my head.
However, I couldn’t find the document you refer to with a quick perusal. Can you tell me what to look for on his web page?
I agree SteveF that it should be possible to narrow the range of our sensitivity estimates. And I agree that more should be spent on getting better data and less on more and more running of GCM’s.
It does seem that a lot of effort has gone into trying to show that energy balance estimates of sensitivity are biased low. Some of that effort has holes in it as Nic Lewis has found.
My question is what would this look like without Nic Lewis’ efforts? Would we still be using uniform priors to inflate the pdf’s? It’s pretty clear he provides an extremely valuable and very detailed and reliable voice.
David Young,
Here is a link to the paper: http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/GerardWeb/Publications_files/RoeCostingTheEarth.pdf
I read several of the other papers about climate sensitivity on Roe’s web page. He consistently emphasizes the difficulty of narrowing uncertainty, and even stated that narrowing uncertainty wouldn’t make any difference for public policy, a claim that seems to me flat wrong.
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He also has a bunch of papers on glaciers (like the one you noted with his contention that the rate of ice sheet gain or loss correlates with summertime solar intensity at 60N). Most glacier papers seem pretty obscure.
David,
“It does seem that a lot of effort has gone into trying to show that energy balance estimates of sensitivity are biased low. ”
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And defending the high sensitivity projections from GCMs has been going on for a decade or more. I even came up with a name for this kind of paper: “You can’t prove the models are wrong that way either”. Gavin Schmidt has been a co-author of probably a dozen or so. Roe has co-authored with Kyle Armour several papers claiming all empirical estimates are biased low, and you saw Nic’s refutation of the most recent article by Armour.
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The pattern is consistent: Always claim catastrophe is possible, no matter what, and try to discredit anything which suggests catastrophe is not going to happen. IMO, pure political bias.
SteveF,
Science of Doom reviewed Roe’s 2006 paper, In Defense of Milankovitch, in two posts:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/02/ghosts-of-climates-past-fifteen-roe-vs-huybers/
https://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/03/ghosts-of-climates-past-sixteen-roe-vs-huybers-ii/
The conclusion seemed to be that the correlation of rate of change in volume to insolation intensity is not as clear cut as he makes it out to be. The problem is dating. Dating tends to be adjusted to match Milankovitch cycles. So there is considerable circularity in the argument.
DeWitt,
Yes, we discussed this a year or more back. I think the timing of ice ages is related to a combination of solar forcing at high northern latitudes and the slow rate of crustal accommodation to the weight of ice sheets, as we have discussed before…. Roe’s paper was too clever by half, as SoD pointed out.
SteveF:
Good luck running a site where you demand this of commenters. I expect you’ll receive basically no commenters, as this is a terrible idea that would make practically everybody turn away.
It is trivially easy to think of reasons a person would need to comment anonymously. Heck, I’ve had reason to comment anonymously on a few occasions (not ony any sites related to the climate change discussion). In those cases, I wouldn’t have commented if I hadn’t been absolutely certain I could remain anonymous. And no, I wasn’t acting in bad faith.
lucia:
I don’t know if he intended to remain anonymous or just didn’t choose to disclose his identity to the public. Either way, I’ve had the displeasure of seeing a number of discussions about his identity. I say displeasure primarily because people got his identity wrong (at first).
I like having information, and I find it interesting to know who people are, but I try not to get involved with it in the climate blogosphere. I just find too much of it to be irresponsible and for shady purposes.
SteveF:
Good luck running a site where you demand this of commenters. I expect you’ll receive basically no commenters, as this is a terrible idea that would make practically everybody turn away.
It is trivially easy to think of reasons a person would need to comment anonymously. Heck, I’ve had reason to comment anonymously on a few occasions (not ony any sites related to the climate change discussion). In those cases, I wouldn’t have commented if I hadn’t been absolutely certain I could remain anonymous. And no, I wasn’t acting in bad faith.
lucia:
I don’t know if he intended to remain anonymous or just didn’t choose to disclose his identity to the public. Either way, I’ve had the displeasure of seeing a number of discussions about his identity. I say displeasure primarily because people got his identity wrong (at first).
I like having information, and I find it interesting to know who people are, but I try not to get involved with it in the climate blogosphere. I just find too much of it to be irresponsible and for shady purposes.
SteveF, I found it. Policy makers should give more weight to moral arguments??? Good luck getting a large number of people to agree on those moral arguments. I would say that in fact mankind faces hundreds of challenges, from antibiotic resistant bacteria, to astroids, to climate change and also poverty. history suggests that we will muddle through. Each religion has a different view of what Mankind is and what it can become. There are many, many secular views on moral issues too. I think that reducing uncertainty in science is a far easier task than resolving moral differences.
Lucia, SteveF et al. —
Thanks for the responses to my question.
For my part, I’m not in the least curious about Joshua. I appreciate being able to connect anonyms with related published work (e.g. Foster, Rice), but I don’t think that applies here.
HaroldW, for what it’s worth, Joshua definitely doesn’t have any published work related to the discussion.
HaroldW, for what it’s worth, Joshua definitely doesn’t have any published work related to the discussion.
Brandon, Joshua’s science free and often content free comments would indicate that not only does he not have any publications in these areas, but he is not very scientifically literate. My question is what motivates someone like that. If he spent half the time he spends on the blogs educating himself, he might have something interesting to say. But that would take real effort perhaps.
Um… okay. In case I haven’t made it clear, I find that subject uninteresting and have no desire to discuss it at this juncture.
Interesting report in Breitbart London.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/17/usa-australia-front-queue-nations-clamour-trade-deal-brexit-britain/
It looks as if the USA is at the front of the queue of Anglophone nations and Asia wanting to cut trade deals with post-Brexit UK (the world’s 5th largest economy), without having to deal with 27 other nations. Who’s the dullard at the back of the class? Speak up man. What’s your name? Did you say Obama?
David Young,
“I think that reducing uncertainty in science is a far easier task than resolving moral differences.”
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Measuring aerosol effects is simple compared to convincing whole societies that throwing gay men from rooftops and stoning unfaithful wives to death are not moral acts.
Just for the record, my comment above about anonymous unhelpful commenters in the climate blogosphere has been linked to by KenRice on his open thread and there are a few cynical and irrelevant responses by both of the aforementioned anonymous but scientifically challenged commenters, namely, Willard and Joshua. As usual they are content free. It is odd that none of them appear here to discuss the topic of blog commenting policy.
And for Ken Rice, my point about them had nothing to do with civility. My point about them is that they never add scientific information or really even much of any information that is reliable.
I’ve said many times, I enjoyed Andy Lacis’ posts and comments despite their incivility because he always added real information and was a true expert. Uncivil and ignorant merits moderation. Ignorant and civil is almost as bad.