MIKE Haseler was once a candidate for the Scottish Green party. He has worked in the wind industry, has knowledge of precision temperature controllers and is a blogger. He is also interested in how:
“The two sides in the climate debate look at pretty much the same information and come to very different conclusions. Having met both sides, and tried to understand their motivation and outlook, I am thoroughly convinced that both approach the subject in what they think is the right way and both are horrified at the antics of the other.”
But Mike has gone further than just pondering (or asking the respective camps to complete a Myers Briggs profile), he has started compiling his own table of key differences between the two sides based on categories such as employment sector, definitions of ‘quality’, experience in decision making, ‘main focus’, and more.
You can examine Mike’s categories here…
http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/sceptics-vs-academics/
There are several issues that Mike raises that I find particularly interesting. But let’s start with just one:
Having studied evolutionary biology as an undergraduate and postgraduate, I initially found Mike’s somewhat casual use of the term ‘natural variation’ annoying – because he was not being honest to the Darwinian definition. But thinking about ‘natural variation’ as a popular concept (as Mike does), perhaps there is something important here if we are to understand how two sides can come away with different interpretations of the same information.
I’m going to at least explore the potential for a variation in point of view on this issue to be important.
In particular Mike suggests that sceptics see natural variation everywhere, while the non-sceptic might considered it a 'measurement error'.
Not so long ago, a young Sydney lawyer said to me that he was agnostic about climate change until he read Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers. He said that the book made him aware of just how much climate change there has been in the past as recorded through the geological record, and so he became sceptical of Professor Flannery’s overall conclusions.
Did this Sydney lawyer have a predisposition to accepting variation as natural? Was this predisposition a consequence of his upbringing or his genetics? When most people read the Weather Makers, I assume they come to an altogether different conclusion. I assume they come to understand the variation from Professor Flannery’s perspective because they are perhaps more focused on the message than the evidence as presented?
A propensity to see, and accept difference as natural and real, can extend beyond data to people.
I’ve read somewhere that some people believe everyone should be treated equally, while the other perspective tends to believe people should be treated as individuals. Of course a central premise of the writing of Carl Jung is that the individual (the self), continues to drown in a sea of collectivism. Could the relevance of variations in the temperature records, both proxy and instrumental, depend on an individual’s predisposition to accepting variation as natural or not, not only within the human population, but also within the temperature record?
I’m going to give Mike Haseler the benefit of the doubt and try a thought experiment…
I’m going to ask all INTJ’s to try and be ‘empathetic’ (borrowing a word from Mike Haseler’s table) to the alternative perspective…
Let’s consider for a moment the hockey stick: that iconic graph which purports to show that after centuries of stable temperature, the second half of the twentieth century saw a sudden and unprecedented warming of the ‘planet’ (borrowing a word here from Clive Hamilton).
The hockey stick featured in the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report as figure 2.20: a Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. It is now etched into many minds as a symbol of unnatural and unprecedented warming.
But can someone tell me by how many degrees Celsius the shaft of the hockey stick points up? How many degrees has the planet warmed since 1900?
Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.[1]
I hear one INTJ cry, irrelevant!
In fact, if you can’t read a chart, and many people can’t, then such a statement is telling someone something about natural variation since 1900.
Further how does the Medieval Warm Period fit into the hockey stick?
According to the official science it is just a ‘putative climate epoch’ that needs to be adjusted for. [2]
There is no Medieval Warm Period in the global temperature record as represented by the hockey stick. And the Little Ice Age, which of course followed the Medieval Warm Period, is described as a period where temperatures were only 1 to 2 degrees Celsius below normal. [2]
But with the shaft of the hockey stick representing a temperature increase of 0.74 degrees Celsius then a period of cooling of up to 2 degrees should show up in the stick?
I hear a non-sceptic explain: But the hockey stick is really just a symbol. It was never meant to be completely accurate representation of temperatures over the last 1,000 years. We know there are many problems with it. We know there are issues with smoothing the data so that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age disappear, so to speak. But we should nevertheless appreciate that the hockey stick is an effective way of conveying complex science to the public. The hockey stick emphasizes that the last 150 years represents a period of unprecedented warming.
I can see that attitudes to variation in the temperature record are important. But perhaps this little thought experiment just illustrates a contrived confirmation bias and groupthink, rather than the effective treatment of a data set that shows measurement error?
How difficult it can be to try and explain something from a different perspective?
***********
Links/Reference
1. National Climatic Data Centre, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/globalwarming.html . Viewed 10th October, 2012.
2. IPCC, 2001. Third Assessment Report, Section 2.3.3.
Bazza?
I think I agree with Cohenite re your recent comments.
You are now becoming rather confusing.
You say here that:
" I quoted peer reviewed research which showed not surprisingly Aus farmers were not great intuitive statisticians in general"
Yet the comment before you wrote:
You wrongly conclude there is a Kahneman study on Australian farmers.
But before that you commented:
It was in the Int J of Climatology 2013 ‘Farmers’ accuracy interpreting seasonal climate forecast probability’ Coventry and Dalgleish. It supports Kahnemans findings that humans , farmers included without a slur, are generally not very good intuitive statisticians.
Is that an Australian study about Australian Farmers Bazza? Does it compare Aussie farmers with USA students?
A link would help.
Because. . . before that you claimed this:
I have seen his (Kahnemans) findings applied to Aussie farmers and they are no different in respect to some risk aspects to USA students.”
What exactly are you trying to say?
No offense Bazza, but along with your comments about the legal profession and your rather ordinary comments about Jennifer, you also appear to think you're somehow entitled to sneer at Aussie farmers and that you believe Kahneman agrees with your assumptions?
And seriously . . .what do USA students have to with any of it?
As I said earlier. . .some people are rather inclined to wave around Kahneman's popular book like some sort of bible . . .and take home amazingly different messages after reading it.
Now I see where you are confused bazza; you are talking about the capacity of individuals to be biased, which no one could dispute, and I was talking about the mitigation of that bias in systems such as the legal system which can reduce bias, as opposed to the AGW science system which amplifies personal bias.
all nonsense, Deb. I quoted peer reviewed research which showed not surprisingly Aus farmers were not great intuitive statisticians in general . We are all in the same boat. Even Kahneman admitted he was just as prone to common biases as people generally. His results are pretty robust cross culturally.
🙂 🙂 🙂
ROFL!
Bazza concludes that I need sorting and that I wrongly conclude from his earlier Kahneman comment re Aussie farmers & USA students.
What he in fact did was use his own confirmation bias re Aussie farmers and a small section of 'Thinking Fast & Slow' to draw a questionable conclusion, vaguely reminiscent of Kahmenan's concept of WYSIATI.
On being questioned he 'regressed to the MEAN' (as in nasty).
I assure you Bazza, that your 'confirmation bias' re my life and profression is of little interest. . .but you are most welcome to your opinion. . . as I am to mine. In fact, due to my generally libertarian outlook. . .I would be naturally inclined to speak up for your right to form your own opinion. . . even though I may not agree with the actual opinion.
Can the odds of bazza continuing to verbal me be based on the fact he has already verballed me continually?
Conditional probability, a variety of the "Prosecutor's Fallacy", can be seen in law, for instance the Kathleen Folbigg case. Another is the Chamberlain case.
There are mechanisms within law to mitigate this tendency such as the Similar Fact rule.
The reverse happens with AGW; past data is doctored, tortured and adjusted to produce things like the Hockeystick and the conclusion is made that the different circumstances occurring in the present is caused by AGW.
Actually it is not the reverse because the exceptional circumstances are not proved so the probability of future circumstances being exceptional based on the current circumstances NOT being exceptional are unchanged.
Debbie, is it too late to get your dough back on the speed reading course? On your longer one above, it can be summarised by what I said about these biases etc being adaptive. On your OOPS, it is oops to you.
” I have seen his (Kahnemans) findings applied to Aussie farmers and they are no different in respect to some risk aspects to USA students.”
bears very little resemblance to this one:
It supports Kahnemans findings that humans , farmers included without a slur, are generally not very good intuitive statisticians.
You wrongly conclude there is a Kahneman study on Australian farmers. A lot of science is about repeatability, testing if someones findings have a claim to generality. I do know that Kahneman came to Australia, I had dinner with him about a decade ago. Findings in psychology are worth checking given cultural biases exist but as far as I know the findings on humans in general being poor intuitive statistician applies generally. I am responding to clarify the record, not to try and get you sorted- I long ago gave up on that.
OOPS!
Forgot to mention.
and.....
"RE Debbie re your request for clarification on my two statements – tautology is a necessary (apparently) and sufficient response!"
Is that your way of admitting there is NO Kahneman study that compares risk profiles of Aussie Farmers and USA students Bazza ?
I would indeed be interested to see such a study if one existed.
Well yes. . .I now do remember that Bazza was one of those who were waving Kahneman around like a bible some time back, in particular re the WYSIATI concept. . .which is early in the book. . .chapter 7 "A Machine For Jumping to Conclusions".
It appears to me that this may also be a case of different readers taking home quite different messages.
As nowhere did I get this from reading that chapter:
":This describes the phenomenon that we tend to make judgements that completely ignore the fact that we don’t have all the information we would need to make that judgement correctly.”
He does NOT conclude that people COMPLETELY IGNORE that they don't have all the information. . .he instead concludes that there can be a TENDENCY to draw hasty conclusions born from experience and confidence in the subject matter and also from connotative/emotional descriptors. (and of course confirmation bias and hubris).
He does not conclude this as a fatal flaw but rather a trait that we need to be aware of and keep in check and use when appropriate and vice versa.
Later in the book he also examines how this natural ability can be very useful and a can be trained as a skill.