I’ve been reading a paper by Shannon Osaka and Rob Bellamy called Weather in the Anthropocene: Extreme event attribution and a modelled nature–culture divide. I’ve written about event attribution before, and I’m largely in favour of the storyline approach; given that an event has occured, how might climate change have influenced this event?
This new paper is somewhat critical of extreme event attribution. There are a number of aspects that are considered, some of which I broadly agree with (although, some I agree with because they’re true, not because they’re all that relevant – yes, event attributions relies on models, so what?). However, there was one in particular that I found very confusing. The claim is that in trying to separate the human influence from the natural variability of weather, extreme event attribution creates a new nature-culture divide.
Okay, but this is kind of the whole point of event attribution; we’ve gone from living in a world where atmospheric CO2 had been at around 280ppm for a very long time, to a world where it’s at 410ppm, and rising. We’d like to understand how this is impacting, and will continue to impact, climatic events. If you don’t like the terminology, you could change the framing, but the reason that atmospheric CO2 has gone from 280ppm to 410ppm is because we’ve been dumping CO2, and other greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere through our use of fossil fuels.
The paper suggests that
The danger of such approaches is that they might obscure, elide, or distract from the many other forms of causality: for example, human influence that cannot be modelled as greenhouse gas emissions, but which is instead enacted along axes of vulnerability, inequality, and other socio-political dimensions.
The problem here is that extreme event attribution typically tries to understand how the event might be different because of anthropogenic-driven climate change, rather than trying to understand how the actual impact of that event might be different. The above does complicate some events, such as flooding, but – as far as I’m aware – this is acknowledged. I’ll add that anthropogenically-driven climate change isn’t only due to greenhouse gas emissions, but this is the dominant factor.
The paper goes on to suggest that
Modellers could attempt to incorporate other aspects of risk, to make visible those aspects of causality that are currently elided.
I think it would be very good to consider how these other factors influence the impact of extreme weather events, but putting them into models (at least the ones used for event attribution) is extremely difficult. I also think that this is a slightly different question. Event attribution is typically trying to understand how the properties of a climatic event has been influenced by anthropogenically-driven global warming. How this then impacts communities, how we might respond, and the influence of other socio-political factors is a related, but different, issue.
These other factors are clearly important, but it’s not clear why they should really be considered by those doing event attribution studies. I will agree that those who do these studies should think a little about the implications of what they present, but – at the same time – we should be cautious of suggesting that scientists should take socio-political considerations into account. There is a difference between being careful about how you present your results because of socio-political sensitivities, and letting these socio-political sensitivities influence how you do your research.
One obvious concern with what is suggested in this paper is that if we don’t distinguish between natural and anthropogenic influences, how do you then avoid people simply concluding that it’s natural, or using this to argue that it’s natural? It’s bad enough that some already use the complexity of attribution studies to suggest that we still don’t know if climate change is influencing extreme weather events, without also then blurring the distinction between natural and anthropogenic.
Of course, maybe I really just misunderstand what’s being suggested in this paper. If so, I’d be more than happy to have it clarified.
...and Then There's Physics 
Extreme events are rare events. That makes thing dificult. Climate is about average weather over longer periods. Climate change is about averages that change over longer time periodes.
Raymond,
Yes, extreme events are rare and attribution studies are difficult. However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to try to disentangle how climate change has impacted a particular event. Some aspects are quite straightforward (sea level rise, for example) others are less straightforward (precipitation will depend on temperature, but you also need to establish if the enhanced temperature locally is a consequence of anthropogenically-driven warming, or not). This doesn’t mean that I think everything attribution is correct, but I do think it’s a perfectly valid scientific endeavour.
Raymond Horstman says: “Climate is about average weather over longer periods.”
Climate is about the distribution (as in probability distribution) of weather over longer periods. To take a silly example, a place which is 10°C every day has a different climate from one which is 6°C on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 13°C on the other days of the week even though they have the same average temperature.
The proportion of time when weather is extreme (for whatever definition of extreme you choose) is part of what characterizes the climate.
“It’s bad enough that some already use the complexity of attribution studies to suggest that we still don’t know if climate change is influencing extreme weather events, without also then blurring the distinction between natural and anthropogenic.”
Which, I think, was the whole point of the paper.
“Extreme events are rare events. That makes thing difficult. Climate is about average weather over longer periods. Climate change is about averages that change over longer time periodes.”
I’m not sure I agree. Climate is the long term statistical properties of the weather, which includes variances as well as means, and return times of extreme events are statistical properties of the weather system that change as we apply forcings. The problem is that people switch off when you get into more advanced statistical ideas (like probabilities of probabilities), which is presumably why we end up with more “narrative” framings of these things. There is no point getting the science exactly right if it means nobody understands you. You first need to communicate the basic scientific truths, and then tighten up the science as you form a frame of reference with your audience.
“Models not perfect and leave things out – News at 11”?
The Osaka & Bellamy paper appears to come from a Science and Technology Studies PoV. It’s possible no arguments can persuade them that EEA isn’t confounded by social justice issues. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but it seems to me the onus is on them to publish EEA that takes the anthropogenic transfer of petatonnes of fossil carbon to the atmosphere into account but does not “obscure, elide, or distract from many other forms of causality”. That strikes me as an ambitious project!
“Data availability statement: The interview data, audio files and transcripts generated during the current study are not publicly available due to the need to respect participant confidentiality. We will consider requests to make available anonymised survey data and transcripts for research purposes after an embargo period of 3 years, while our research continues.”
I don’t really care about the who/what/where/when/why/how of the so-called “anonymised survey data and transcripts.”
What I do care about is that these two authors have total control over those statements that were included in their paper. No one will ever know to what degree confirmation bias played in the selection of the included statements. Certainly not the peer reviewers. Irony meter at eleventeen. In other words, I’m so-called skeptical that the included statements have any truthful meaning other than the intentions of the authors overall train of thoughts as displayed elsewhere in their paper. Circular reasoning applies here.
Oh and my comment above “Which, I think, was the whole point of the paper.” is wrt a slight rewording of ATTP’s statement … ““It’s bad enough that some already use the complexity of attribution studies to suggest that we still don’t know if climate change is influencing extreme weather events, while also then blurring the distinction between natural and anthropogenic.” Just to clear up any possible misunderstanding of my comment above. And yes, I read the entire paper.
Mal,
It seems to me that they’re confusing how anthropogenically-driven climate influences the properties of extreme weather events, and how this influence then impacts society. The latter can clearly depend on socio-political factors, while the former does not (well, apart from the fact that it’s our emissions that are driving climate change).
EFS,
My working assumption is that this isn’t the case.
ATTP,
Where, or in what areas, has extreme event attribution had the greatest success to date? In terms of some form of consensus.
I can currently think of only one area and that one area is coastal nuisance flooding.
The causality behind extreme events is a matter of attribution, with the relative influence of ‘Natural’ variance and anthropogenic factors in play.
The causality behind the impact of those events on a region, locality or community is dependent on the resilience, vulnerability, inequality, and other socio-political dimensions.
Those factors have NO causal role in the magnitude or frequency of extreme events. Conflating the two is at best a category error, at worst an intentional muddying of the waters.
Everett is braver and more patient than me.
I gave up at the nonsense jargon and scare quotes in the abstract.
Like DaveG didn’t get past the abstract, Event attribution using models is one of the more important climate technical developments of the past decade.
I started a brief Twitter discussion with the lead author, but it hasn’t got very far (yet?). My impression is that they are talking about how one might use EEAs to consider policy, adaptation, etc. This is fair enough. I think these are important issues. If this is what they’re talking about, then I don’t think they’ve made this very clear. As far as I can tell, all research has implications. There’s nothing wrong with considering this. However, I do think one should distinguish between suggesting that researchers consider the broader implications of their research, and appearing to suggest that they use this to influence their research.
@-“Second, we demonstrate that partitioned causality is enabled by the relative hegemony of modelling technologies in climate change knowledge, as scientists retain substantial influence over who gets to “speak for” climate impacts.”
There is where the conflation happens.
The partitioned causality is about the magnitude and frequency of extreme events between internal variation and AGW as a factor.
The impact of the partitioned causality is a whole nother issue.
Its RPjnr’s all the way down….
Chubbs said:
Potentially many future advances in climate science will be made via machine learning, yet much of the attribution will be lost as no one will be able to backtrace the results of the convolutional NN
“Climbing down Charney’s ladder: Machine Learning and the post-Dennard era of computational climate science” V. Balaji — NOAA/GFDL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11862
Good example of this here in this Nature paper from last month: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65070-5
Impressive short-term predictions, but little or no attribution (i.e. understanding) inferred.
This overview from a few days ago: https://eos.org/articles/teaching-machines-to-detect-climate-extremes “Teaching Machines to Detect Climate Extremes :
Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze massive amounts of data from climate simulations, but more training data are needed.”
Based on this paper, which is pretty impressive — using expert-labelling prior to analysis “The labeler chooses the pen-like tool to manually place vertices of a polygon around an event of choice.”
https://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net/gmd-2020-72/
The fact is we do not live in the same climate that we used to live in, we have already changed earth’s climate…, and it continues to change. That means there is no weather event that does not already bear some degree of the change that we have already wrought, be it warmer temperatures, dryer soil and biomass conditions, more intense wildfires or rainfall events, stronger tropical storms. Arguing about “causality” of individual weather events misses, or rather deliberately obfuscates this fact: AGW doesn’t cause wildfires or storms or floods, it makes them worse.
Gosh.
Its been maybe 35 years since I did POMO.
The key to doing good POMO was our specialized vocabulary. Jargon, buzz words, loaded terms.
anyway Let me go through it and pull out the key words that a Student of Derrida would have loved. ( other guys too,)
Using a new modelling methodology known as “extreme event attribution,” or EEA, climate scientists can now connect extreme weather to anthropogenic forcings. This paper seeks to uncover the significance of EEA for the epistemology of climate change, nature, and culture in the Anthropocene.
1. seeks to uncover. we always used the language of covering and uncovering and disclosing
because we were going to bring you some secret truth.
First, we examine how EEA is emblematic of a larger turn in climate modelling, one that seeks to deploy anthropogenic climate change as an explanatory tool for an increasing number of socio‐natural phenomena.
1. Emblematic: we were always about the emblems and symbols
2. Deploy!, one of derridians favorites.!!! google derrida and deploy
for the rest I just list them.
mediate, hegemony,slippage, domesticate!!!, ( all favorites)
dude talk like old school POMOs.
Here is the thing. Deconstruction and POMO was kinda fun when you were working with literary
texts. Why? because it gave you something to do. A new way of tearing old texts apart.
Texts no one cared about. Texts that never impacted anyones life or limb. Do you really care
if there is unstable irony in the Poems of Wallace Stevens? or even in Plato for that matter.
It was harmless fun with texts. Marxist hated it because they wanted to deploy texts for social change.. (haha) and POMO basically made a hash of any string of words. The operations one performs on the discourse are quite regular and predictable.
Not so sure I want people reading science texts this way…. ok.. read some more..
ATTP, dont waste your time
Scholars Osaka and Bellamy have been on a publishing roll this spring, see their articles in Nature Climate Change and Global Environmental Change. I don’t have access to full text for them, or for the Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers piece we’re discussing. The abstract of the latter, however, states:
O&B seem to be arguing against methodological reductionism here. Many natural scientists, however, place their investigations within a hierarchical systems framework, in which causality has multiple layers from ultimate to proximate. On that framework, holist and reductionist perspectives are equally valid. The authors then say:
This sounds like more anti-reductionism to me. What’s the issue here? First we abstract bounded sub-systems within a hierarchical framework representing the universe, then we model them. It’s how scientists get their arms around a problem, with or without computers. The “hegemony” of modeling may largely be a matter of relative productivity: complex simulations can run quickly on fast computers, and answer multiple scientific questions. It also sounds like the authors are explicitly including climate impacts in EEA, wherein cultural factors do matter:
IMHO, this is a useful observation. It’s true that EEA is a “nascent” project, of public as well as scientific interest. Osaka has another recent publication credit, Media Representation of Extreme Event Attribution: A Case Study of the 2011-2017 California Drought, in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society. It’s about varying perceptions of the causes and effects of the drought, in which “epistemic slippage” is obviously a factor. And while anthropogenic global warming was an ultimate cause of California’s recent drought, its impacts on Californians were influenced by economic and cultural factors on multiple scales.
Maybe the definition of EEA is simply ambiguous? A recent article in Climatic Change by D. Frame et al. is titled The economic costs of Hurricane Harvey attributable to climate change. Abstract:
Can Frame et al.’s work be labelled “EEA”?
The authors have another very recent paper over here …
“Natural variability or climate change? Stakeholder and citizen perceptions of extreme event attribution”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378019307939
Abstract
Scientists can now connect extreme weather events with climate change using a methodology known as “extreme event attribution”, or EEA. The idea of connecting climate change and extreme weather has long been heralded as a panacea for communications, connecting the dangers of climate change to real-world, on-the-ground events. However, event attribution remains a nascent science, and attribution studies of the same event can sometimes produce divergent answers due to precise methodology used, variables examined, and the timescale selected for the event. The 2011–2017 California drought was assessed by 11 EEA studies which came to varying conclusions on its connection to climate change. This article uses the case study of the drought and a multi-methods approach to examine perceptions of EEA among key stakeholders and citizens. Twenty-five key informant interviews were conducted with different stakeholders: scientists performing EEA research, journalists, local and state-level policymakers, and non-governmental organization representatives. In addition, two focus groups with 20 California citizens were convened: one with environmentalists and another with agriculturalists. While climate change was viewed by many as a mild contributing factor to the California drought, many stakeholders had not heard of EEA or doubted that scientists could conclusively link the drought to anthropogenic climate change; those that were familiar with EEA felt that the science was generally uncertain. In the focus groups, presentation of divergent EEA results led participants to revert to pre-existing ideas about the drought-climate connection, or to question whether science had sufficiently advanced to analyze the event properly. These results indicate that while EEA continues to provoke interest and research in the scientific community, it is not currently utilized by many stakeholders, and may entrench the public in pre-existing views.
I think the authors see EEA as just another means to an end, as in, those who say do something now about climate change, and that this so-called ‘nascent’ EEA strategy isn’t working, for certain groups, such as policymakers. And no, I have not read this paper (although I do have a copy sans Appendix via teh hub).
MA,
Thanks. That;s now three papers by the lead author on the purported California Drought of 2011–2017 and EEA.
They always come in threes, I’ll tell you something, tell them and I told you..
“Second, we demonstrate that partitioned causality is enabled by the relative hegemony of modelling technologies in climate change knowledge, as scientists retain substantial influence over who gets to “speak for” climate impacts.
This sounds like more anti-reductionism to me. What’s the issue here?”
The issue ( For them) is how the science is used to re establish/control a “nature/culture” divide.
down at the local level ( in space and time).
the concern, as I read it, is that ‘Science’ or more specifically scientists, will be given a privileged voice that cannot be challenged in stakeholder conversations at the local level. Once the science says “this much is nature” and this much is “human” ( culture), that will be the end of the conversation ( they would fear) and then the institutions that control the models control the truth.
So, imagine an institution that ran an epidemic model as an example of what can go wrong.
Extreme event attribution and the nature-culture duality.
How can you justify a percentage of attribution?
You cannot pick out an extreme hurricane and say this one was because of human activity but all these other smaller ones were not.
It seems a bit like being 20% pregnant.
Either you haven proven attribulation or you do not.
–
Since it is not easily proven, or worse, even provable we can all attribute any thing we want to such both extreme and rare events.
Much better to stick to the humdrum, boring but possibly provable temperature rise and concentrate on genuine scientific proof of that.
@-“So, imagine an institution that ran an epidemic model as an example of what can go wrong.”
For an example of what can go wrong if an institution ignores a scientific model because it presents an ‘inconvenient truth’, see Brazil.
sorry to be so narky.
“ Much better to stick to the humdrum, boring but possibly provable temperature rise and concentrate on genuine scientific proof of that.‘
Err, no. There are people called “scientists”, who are capable of dealing with concepts like changes in statistics of extreme events, and it is hubris for us to tell them what to do Just because we can’t.
And how many times do we need to point out that science isn’t about proof? Of course if you just want to avoid accepting what the science actually says, then making narky requests for impossible levels of certainty is a pretty standard approach.
I agree with much that has been written in this article, and I certainly wouldn’t attempt to defend the Osaka paper. If the abstract is anything to go by, it does look a little odd. However, I still think the issue here would benefit from being looked at from the perspective of structured causal analysis.
Under the assumption of monotonicity, and in the absence of confounders acting on greenhouse gas emission and its outcome, the Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR) becomes the Probability of Necessity (PN), i.e. the probability that X is a necessary cause of Y. However, knowing the PN only provides half of the causal narrative. To complete the picture one also has to know the Probability of Sufficiency (PS), i.e. the probability that X is a sufficient cause of Y. Note that, given the two assumptions mentioned above, the PN can be calculated from climate models alone, but a structured causal model (SCM) is still required to calculate PS.
One should expect the PN and PS values for the anthropogenic explanation of an extreme whether event to be noticeably different. For example, for the European heatwave of 2003, the PN with respect to anthropogenic global warming was calculated as 0.9, whereas the PS was only 0.007 (A. Hannart et al, Feb 2015). This discrepancy appears to provide lots of scope for dispute, with those calling for climate action focussing upon the apparently high PN and those less concerned focussing upon the apparently low PS. In fact, neither focus is justified, since both values are equally significant from a risk management perspective.
Whilst one concentrates upon events that are entirely meteorological, the calculation of PN and PS values remains a subject for climatologists and meteorologists alone. However, from a risk management perspective, such a focus is usually too narrow. For example, in the 2003 heatwave the event of interest was the spike in deaths amongst the older generations. The scale of this event had as much to do with sociological factors as it did climatological or meteorological ones. Similarly, extensive bush fires do not have an entirely climatological or meteorological explanation. When this wider perspective is taken, the PN value with respect to anthropogenic global warming remains unaltered but the PS becomes lower still. Not only that, PS becomes a whole lot harder to calculate. Nevertheless, it retains its central importance alongside PN if a full causal analysis is to be provided for risk management purposes.
In conclusion, the distinction between the natural and the anthropogenic may be what most concerns the paper’s authors but the more important distinction, as far as causality and risk management is concerned, is that existing between the necessary and the sufficient. Between PN and PS, it is PS that can be the most difficult to calculate but that hardly matters whilst EEA specialists remain focussed upon PN.
Everett F. Sargent, quoting abstract of O&B report Natural variability or climate change? Stakeholder and citizen perceptions of extreme event attribution:
That’s probably the “epistemic slippage” they talked about in the TIBS paper. Are they suggesting that climate scientists doing attribution should agree on methodology (or at least vocabulary) if they want the public to take them seriously?
@-Maladapted
” Are they suggesting that climate scientists doing attribution should agree on methodology (or at least vocabulary) if they want the public to take them seriously?”
Apparently climate scientists need to abandon the idea that extreme events have more than one cause and that the multiple factors can be attributed percentages.
If they want angech to take them seriously. (/s)
John Ridgeway: Thanks, interesting comment. Especially this:
Here we see how cognitive motivation leads to epistemic slippage 8^). As you say: depending on the event, PS is harder to calculate than PN, and offers more scope for dispute, honest or otherwise. Apparently O&B are calling for EEA to include PS, making divergent results more likely. If their focus group research is good, that has negative implications for the hegemony of science. Take that, scientists!
But seriously, I’m past my earlier reflexive hostility to STS. Uncovering the cognitive motivators built into scientific culture is worthwhile, at least judging by the column inches Nature and Science have lately devoted to gender and ethnic bias in the profession. It’s telling, however, that politically and financially motivated science deniers so readily incorporate deconstructionism into their disinformation strategies. FWIW, Bruno Latour, a founder of STS, acknowledges that deniers have hijacked critique. In an interview a while back, he told Science he has a new mission:
In all sincerity, Dr. Latour, good luck with that. I’m still not exactly sure what O&B are on about, though.
New paper by Gerald Browning claiming indirectly that climate modelers are using the “wrong atmospheric dynamical system”. He’s not saying this directly in the paper but via Curry’s blog.
He really can’t say it in the paper unless he wanted to get his submission rejected.
So the post on Curry’s blog is “Structural errors in global climate models” but his paper is called “The unique, well posed reduced system for atmospheric flows: Robustness in the presence of small scale surface irregularities”. From what I understand on this topic, perturbations typically cause a divergence in a solution, but under specific topological constraints they can get filtered out as the system seeks a stable state. So robustness means that the system will try to maintain the stable dynamics in the presence of irregularities. But Curry is trying to spin it in her own way:
In my own observations, it is better to not live within the 500-year floodplain then to not live within the 100-year floodplain, due to so-called “epistemic slippage” because of the so-called slippery slope fallacy. When it rains the slope becomes slippery and if you fall down that might muddy the waters once you stop sliding down at the bottom of the slope where you might then drown. If you are already at the bottom of that slippery slope, before it was a slippery slope, then you live in The Bottom
Humans usually build stuff on the ground. Who knew that that would change the 100-year floodplain to something less then the 100-year floodplain. Meteorological changes due to climate changes notwithstanding.
As an engineer, I say it is time to stop with assuming stationary and ergodic behaviors.
RE: JC
So-called “big time” just sounds most sciencey or would that be more sciencer?
“@-“So, imagine an institution that ran an epidemic model as an example of what can go wrong.”
For an example of what can go wrong if an institution ignores a scientific model because it presents an ‘inconvenient truth’, see Brazil.”
PRECISELY.
And now you must see the problem.
What science do we believe and when do we believe it. What experts do we believe? How do we judge experts? Do we let experts judge themselves?
what if they tell us to stay in our own lane? who decides lanes? are lanes of expertise natural? or sociological?
maybe you think the problem is resolved by just doing better science. This is just another one of those Englightenment fantasies. What if you think this problem is a permanent feature of the human condition?
Go back to something as basic as masks. Go back to our discussions of masks here long ago.
I won’t embarrass some people by reminding them that they got it wrong, and people died.
I guess I could put it this way. It appears to me these guys come out of a tradition that does not want to surrender authority in any discussion or conversation to any pre-ordained party.
How can I put this
The difference between “Listen to the science” and “obey the scientists”.
So here is the concern. In discussions of local weather and local disasters from extreme events the question is how far do we want to trust the science? This goes BOTH ways, meaning if the science says it is safe or more dangerous.
” It’s telling, however, that politically and financially motivated science deniers so readily incorporate deconstructionism into their disinformation strategies. FWIW, Bruno Latour, a founder of STS, acknowledges that deniers have hijacked critique.”
Ya so back in the day the Marxists went bananas when a few of us on the right picked up the tools of deconstruction to undermine marxism.
At the bottom the “tools’ of deniers are no different than the tools used in everyday critique in science. go look at the contrarian matrix.
the question is when do you stop using the tools of doubt.
Steven Mosher,
There is a much simpler philosophy, cherished by mostly conservative or regressive thinkers, it is called procrastination (or the do nothing alternative also sometimes called gridlock).
Oh and it is the fools of doubt.
See also Member Berries …
MAGA!
> Do you really care if there is unstable irony in the Poems of Wallace Stevens?
I do, as I prefer my poems with as less irony as possible.
“I do, as I prefer my poems with as less irony as possible.”
irony poor diet is dangerous
“Oh and it is the fools of doubt.”
when ATTP and James doubt and challenge the Imperial college model is that doubt allowed?
maybe you missed the earlier fights here over masks when some folks had doubts about masks.
were those doubts acceptable? why why not? when is a question valid and open and when is it jaqqing off.
can we only have doubt when P <.95 why?
Again the issue isn't so much science as it is about GOVERNANCE. the governance of inquiry, the governance of doubt, the governance of who can speak for science and who cannot.
For the most part I think POMO folks and STS folks care about governance more than the specifics of any science program.
Thats kinda my read on all epistemology. Its about governance in the end
@-W
“I do, as I prefer my poems with as less irony as possible.”
Then stay well away from Shakespeare’s sonnets.
@-SM
“Thats kinda my read on all epistemology. Its about governance in the end”
“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
D.A. – HG2G
> stay well away from Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Even Captain Picard failed to convince me:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-sahara-blankets-caribbean-air-quality.html
Attributable to climate change?
Mal Adapted,
Thank you for the interest shown in my comment. Though you may not need me to do so, I would like to take the opportunity to labour an important part of my argument.
Causality is a concept that requires one to conjecture about the counterfactual. Consequently, it is determined by asking two counterfactual questions:
a) Given that X and Y have happened, what is the probability that Y wouldn’t have happened if X hadn’t happened?
b) Given that neither X or Y has happened, what would be the probability that Y would have happened if X had happened?
The first question determines the Probability of Necessity (PN). The second determines the Probability of Sufficiency (PS). Since neither question is more fundamental than the other, it follows that PN and PS are equally legitimate expressions of causality, though neither is complete without the other. The mistake commonly made, however, is to believe that causality can be captured using a single parameter (let’s call it ‘probability of causation’, or ‘PC’). When confronted with a PN or PS value, somebody who believes in the existence of PC is likely to misinterpret that value as applying to PC. Hence, they will draw very different conclusions depending upon whether PN or PS had been presented to them. However, they should not do so. A low PS is entirely consistent with a high PN, and neither is a competing candidate for PC. In fact, there is no such thing as PC and the mistaken belief in its existence is the real problem here, rather than any confusion over who to believe, or the conflation of cause and impact.
So if anyone wants to balance an obsession with PN by emphasising the equal importance of PS, I say more power to them. If, however, they are using PS as a counter-argument to PN, then I say try again. Furthermore, whilst I accept that PS calculations are problematic, I would not go so far as to suggest that ‘epistemic slippage’ or the potential for dispute is a good enough reason for not attempting them.
Incidentally, as far as anthropogenic heatwaves are concerned, I might be more worried about PS=0.007 than PN=0.9 if I were you.
“Even Captain Picard failed to convince me:”
63 interesting choice, texts that reference writing and self reference are prime targets for
deconstruction. The deconstruction matrix would focus on the themes of writing (black lines), presence and absence, and memory. Too easy. Recall that in the pharmokon Plator criticizes writing because it will lead to forgetfulness ( as opposed to an oral tradition in which verse is memorized) The principle irony is that Shakespeare claims to immortalize the lover in the poem, but it’s rather Shakespeare words that are immortalized and we are forever aware that the lover is absent and not present. The poem celebrates itself and not the young man and it entombs him before he ias actually dead. See sonnet 126 for the final audit
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self growest.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee
But audits neverend
wait for the court case in 152
How one de centers the bard is pretty straighforward. First it is important to understand that deconstruction for the most part comes on the scene in opposition to New criticism
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism#:~:text=New%20Criticism%20was%20a%20formalist,%2C%20self%2Dreferential%20aesthetic%20object.”
so in New criticism you were trained to find that moment in the text where the text refers to itself.
All poems become about poetry once you find this moment. The job of a new critic is to show
how the work of art is self referential. Further, you try to show how every piece works together in an “organic whole” in short if you change a single word the whole meaning changes. the work of art as an “organic thing” is not like a machine which has replaceable parts. Once you have describe, via close reading, how everything works together, the meaning is fixed and settled. Self contained. the poem is a “new word”. Sidebar: historicist, Marxists, feminists, didn’t like new criticism either because it basically cuts art off from praxis.
In Deconstruction you go to that same point in the text and show how meaning is uncontrolled.
New criticism aims at finding a controlled central meaning, deconstruction denies that any such thing could exist.
So if you are a graduate student faced with a pile of old texts whose meaning has been “settled”
by the science of formalist new criticism
and you need something to say, one way is to attack the notion of settled meanings. It made for writing easy dissertations and articles. Basically you could go to any “new critical” reading,
and unwind it, show how the meaning wasn’t settled.
This may help
Click to access %5Bpp3-pp12%5D_ARTICLE_1.pdf
Herd immunity @ 43%?
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-herd-immunity-threshold.html
Antibody levels in recovered COVID-19 patients decline quickly: research
David –
Seroprevalence suggests they reached 57% in Bergamo.
De’construction’ep Thoughts by Jack ‘Derrida’ Handy:
“A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text‘s critical difference from itself.”
dang
https://news.psu.edu/story/623797/2020/06/22/research/initial-covid-19-infection-rate-may-be-80-times-greater-originally
“A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text‘s critical difference from itself.”
its not that hard
“Against my love shall be as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn;
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age’s steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.”
new critical reading: the lover is preserved in verse ( these black lines) and never dies.
deconstruction: it’s Shakespeare and the poem that are preserved against time not the beloved.
So ironically to “preserve” the beloved the author imagines him as dead (kills him) and instead of preserving him in verse, preserves himself. the beloved is absent from the text which argues the beloved is present in the text.
These kind of unintended ironies are great because it brings up the issue of the supplement or the surplus of meaning in a text. The supplement
Click to access derrida-key-concepts-the-supplement.pdf
‘At this time other
philosophers still insisted on reading the canonical texts of philosophy
according to the imperative that contradiction cannot be tolerated, with the
consequence that there was a hermeneutical imperative to do whatever one
could to reunite seemingly inconsistent claims.”
so a new critical reading is going to argue that the author is in control of the meaning and so we should read with a principle of CHARITY. That is, read a text so that it makes sense –controlled meanings, created by the all powerful author and his intentions. we are supposed to read to understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity#:~:text=In%20philosophy%20and%20rhetoric%2C%20the,its%20best%2C%20strongest%20possible%20interpretation.
Deconstruction is going to argue that signs can never be tamed, that they are always open to interpretation,that they are are not controlled by authors, history, psychology, gender, or the reader.
Instead of “charity” you practice strategies of find how a text works to undermine itself, how it works to critique the very argument it is making. Instead of reading to understand we read to entertain, to play.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_play_(Derrida)
Instead of getting one meaning you get an uncontrollable surplus. dissemination
Deconstructionism was to the 20th century as anarchism was to the 19th century.
But seriously, who knew that words were ambiguous?
Even more seriously, something as meaningless as deconstructionism, isn’t even intellectual given its very foundation of ambiguity.
No two deconstructions will ever be the same, each is a one off, each a non sequitur as it were.
Why no one had the brains to call shenanigans from the very get go on that steaming pile of BS is beyond me.
Human beings behaving as pretentious pricks.
Moshpit, it ain’t difficult to see through the 100% bullshit that is deconstructionism.
But the main topic of this thread is NOT deconstructionism. So stop moving the goal post and stay ON the topic of EEA, as literary deconstructionism has nothing in common with with scientific EEA.
Oh and you were right. it is not the fools of doubt it is the fools of denial.
If you wish to continue to bog down this thread with your continued prattle on deconstructionism, I would very kindly suggest that you take it elsewhere, I’d very gladly really give you a much more crude piece of my mind over at Stout, RR or JA.
HINT: Yow are as boring as all get out.
Now this I do admire greatly … analyze this … deconstruct that …
Two guitars sold at auction, one ~$2M the other ~$4M, currently record holders at #2 and #1. Now that is one 70 year old dude that KICKS ASS!
For those who remember about Steve Keen and the nature of money and its relationship to climate policy – he has a new presentation out.
He is moving towards thermodynamics as a neglected input. He also demonstrates his modeling tool – which some here might find interesting.
– and he invites science to invade economics. I expect he’s right about the need.
Paul – Re Climate etc. Funny that the models vs observations crowd are avoiding recent observations like the plague.
“But seriously, who knew that words were ambiguous?”
Many politicians, who excel at saying profound-sounding ambiguous statements. That way, a gazillion listeners who fervently hold vastly different opinions (to the point where they’d fight to the death against each other) can all hear the same statements and think “this politician is on MY side – he’s telling MY story”.
…and when reality shows the obvious interpretation to be wrong, the politicians can say “that’s not what I meant” with a straight face.
Like in Monty Python’s The Oscar Wilde sketch. “Your Majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss”. Sometimes the thing that initially appears to shine out like a shaft of gold really is just a stream of bat’s piss.
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/oscar.php
Everett F. Sargent:
That’s about what my reaction to literary deconsructionism is, too. Nonetheless, Steven’s comments on it are interesting to me. Whereas I’ve been a little vague on the literary origins of Post-Modernism, Steven has evidently put some time into it. I appreciate his insights here. I did pause at his remark:
I think that’s a little self-congratulatory. AFAICT, Marx was an early proponent of historical deconstruction. His tactic was to expose the contradictions in cultural narratives that support capitalism. The same tactic serves to expose the contradictions in proposals for alternatives to capitalism, “Marxist” or otherwise. It’s not hard! On this blog, however, Steven’s mild narcissism is easily forgiven 8^}.
EFS:
Not so fast. The OP is about a challenge to the “hegemony” of science in estimates of the economic and social cost of AGW, from a couple of scholars in the academic field of Science and Technology Studies. The challengers employ the language of literary deconstruction, so they must think it has something in common with EEA. I’m as skeptical as you are about that, and Steven has helped elucidate the reasons. IMHO his comments are on topic.
MA,
The OP is about two STS-types who have absolutely no working knowledge of what EEA is to begin with in the 1st place. My view is that EEA should only account for meteorological changes due to climate changes (wind speeds, rainfall and all other physical properties of the atmosphere/oceans proper). I said as much upthread in a very civil engineering sort of way. Cue Junior AND Senior. What we do on the ground is very different given how meteorological events change. But once on the ground, that is the primary domain of the civil engineer. That much I do know with absolute certainty.
And what is happening now is based off of infrastructures that are mostly O(50)-to-O(100) years old. Do I need to recite chapter and verse of the ASCE grade given to US infrastructures? Infrastructure ratings became a thing in 1988 (based on a 1984 Act of Congress). Right now IMHO, LULC is much more important than anything that EEA can tell is in terms of impacts since all those impacts happen to people who mostly live on the ground with aging infrastructures.
STS should have a name change to STEMS. That way they can also complain about engineering and mathematics too. 1+1=???, I mean how could it possibly be 2 once it has been thoroughly deconstructed? Perhaps you can see where I’m coming from now. Humans don’t build much relatively permanent stuff in the oceans (on top of the oceans is a slightly different thing) or the atmosphere as we are land mammals.
I did ask ATTP upthread about any emerging consensus on EEA. So that I am coming at EEA from a significantly different angle then the STS types. I want to see the bonafides on changes to physical properties of extreme events as they occur in the atmosphere and oceans. That means statistical moments and distributions and temporal/spatial evolution thereof. That will then lead me to justified true beliefs.
@Steven Mosher – Thanks for that bit of a lesson about what deconstruction is about. Now I understand what to call this peculiar form of analysis that I despise so much.
The purpose of writing or speech is communication – and it is difficult enough to get an idea from one human mind into another more-or-less intact.
Purposely attempting to break it into conflicting pieces so that it can be “deconstructed” and misconstrued is a form of dishonesty that cannot be justified in a society that already has difficulty with honesty and truth.
I have to wonder if this “literary” concept may not be in some manner the precursor of the alternative facts we are afflicted with today.
Yet another COVID-19 model:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-epidemic-covid-deaths-october.html
Detailed.
> AFAICT, Marx was an early proponent of historical deconstruction.
No “marx” has been harmed in the writing of the “Deconstruction” entry you cite, Mal. Please advise.
Willard, I cited the entry to support my claim that Marx’s upside-down Hegelian “dialectical materialism” could be described as historical deconstruction:
It’s not a direct link, to be sure.
“The purpose of writing or speech is communication – and it is difficult enough to get an idea from one human mind into another more-or-less intact.”
err no its not.
two clowns walk into a bar…
“But the main topic of this thread is NOT deconstructionism. So stop moving the goal post and stay ON the topic of EEA, as literary deconstructionism has nothing in common with with scientific EEA.”
1. the authors use the language ( concepts/ themes) of a post modern analysis.
2. you guys ask what is meant by things like SLIPPAGE.
you guys read a text that has some words that might trip you up, or that you might understand better if you take some time to learn the jargon. Shit I had to learn what ECS meant.
So here is the 100K view. The issue at stake is authority and governance. And they dont want to cede authority in discussions to climate models that are barely there epistemically — local SKILL.
The language they use to question/undermine authority has a history. It’s a good thing to understand the history.
“I have to wonder if this “literary” concept may not be in some manner the precursor of the alternative facts we are afflicted with today.”
1. Its not a literary concept.
2. It is about WHO gets to decide what a text means and how they decide that.
3. This has application in law, in science, in philosophy, in everyday life.
4. It has always been with us.
also, I don’t suggest you practice this method. I do suggest you understand it and what is really at issue.
basically who gets to decide what facts are facts.
today you may like a Facebook that “decides” that some Trump stuff is not a fact.
So you are happy with FB deciding what is a fact.
Tommorrow Someone else may decide what facts are publishable. and you may not like it
“I think that’s a little self-congratulatory. AFAICT, Marx was an early proponent of historical deconstruction. His tactic was to expose the contradictions in cultural narratives that support capitalism.”
the difference is that the marxist will, in the end, reassemble history so that it has a meaning and direction. and they will focus on serious praxis. This is why they hated deconstruction which kept texts and meaning open. when a marxist finished with the text it had a clear meaning. a meaning one could act on. a meaning that justified action. decon aims to prevent that.
Sorry – You have communicated to me an imaginary scene in my own mind, of two clowns walking into a bar. You have not specified the clowns – they and the bar are supplied by my own prior knowledge and may not match your own at all.
If you want to argue that communication is not an integral part of what allows us to have a working society and a complex civilization you are going to have to communicate rather more than that imaginary scene.
I am not at this point, impressed with “deconstruction” as a useful tool for any purpose except “arguing” about what someone just said and implying that it actually meant something other than what they intended it to mean.
The problem with that POV is that the intended meaning in their mind is the only valid meaning in that communication. They may have stuffed up their transmission – but they are the one who knows what they intended to get across.
I know you intended to make some sort of point with that one-liner but you didn’t. So I am asking you for clarification. Which is what I should do in all cases when a meaning is unclear actually. Unfortunately we get a lot less of that in our society than we ought to.
——————————————-
I had to wander back towards the top of this thread to recognize that what is being touted here is actually about EEA which is a topic on which I tend to regard as being a poor way to think about demonstrating anything (which is how a lot of people do try to use it in argument). It is not that it cannot be done at all, merely that there is no way to have any great confidence in the results and it is certainly not possible to use such events to say “see – this is happening”. One has to have reliable observations over a much longer period to do that than one needs in order to observe the change in the climate.
I was simply discussing the “appropriate use of deconstruction” – with the quoted words comprising an oxymoron in my opinion. The importance of NOT listening to some reporters interpretation of the meaning on some scientist’s paper and instead heading for the paper itself is built into that opinion.
A scientist who messes up his/her comms should catch hell in review, but the reporter will get rewarded for miswording things just enough to get a lot of clicks and eyeballs.
I really do want you to explain why communication is for some purpose other than to get an idea from one mind to another.
nice pledge bj
why do you violate it?
““The purpose of writing or speech is communication – and it is difficult enough to get an idea from one human mind into another more-or-less intact.”
re-read your pledge.
see if you followed all the rules.
google purposes of writing
ask yourself if you are an expert in rhetoric.
your view of writing and meaning is that meaning is an idea you have in your head. and the
sole purpose of writing is to transfer your idea into my head. ( I would guess you might
be an engineer, but it doesnt matter, many people hold this idea of how meaning and writing works)
it’s fancy plumbing. there’s a meaning in your head, there’s a language pipe, and the sole purpose of the pipe is to faithfully transfer your head contents into my head contents.
you dont even have to be a POMO type to challenge this. Your view of language and writing is
not a fact. It’s not even a good opinion. writing is more than communication of ideas
one of my favorites
you might like this as well
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/word-and-object-new-edition
we will see if your response is in accordance with the pledge you took.
audits never end.
Steven Mosher:
Ah, that’s clear enough. Thanks.
> It’s not a direct link, to be sure.
Thanks.
FWIW, deconstruction comes from Derrida, who took it from Heidegger but filtered it through Husserl, whom is a guy who’s as rationalistic as one can get, e.g. he tried to bootstrap Descartes’ meditation by situating the Cogito within the meditation and by extension the world itself. Heidegger was Husserl’s student, but the difference between both is large, both intellectually and the fact that the former was a Nazi and the second a Jew. If deconstruction is POMO (it’s more a special case and may be more related to hermeneutics), then it’s important to note that Marxians fought them tooth and nails since, well, before it was born.
However, that one can see conceptual similarities is fairly natural:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-6893-7_8
That being said, Mosh is doing a fairly good job at trying to convey the point of that kind of conceptual analysis. So I’ll cede my time to him and return to my TV program.
Steven Mosher,
“1. the authors use the language ( concepts/ themes) of a post modern analysis.”
Really? I never would have guessed. So that qualifies as a non sequitur, That they even use the language that they do use is a dead giveaway. As in, only read this if you are a geographer reading this in a very minor journal. As I see it no harm no foul, as in it will never have any impact to those who actually do EEA, it is not even directed in any way-shape-form to those doing EEA. It is a critique by STS’ers FOR STS’ers only. That is why it is in such a backwater specialist journal.
“2. you guys ask what is meant by things like SLIPPAGE.”
WhoZ guys? Certainly not I. You will need to deconstruct someone else on that one.
“you guys read a text that has some words that might trip you up, or that you might understand better if you take some time to learn the jargon. Shit I had to learn what ECS meant.
So here is the 100K view. The issue at stake is authority and governance. And they dont want to cede authority in discussions to climate models that are barely there epistemically — local SKILL.
The language they use to question/undermine authority has a history. It’s a good thing to understand the history.”
Mostly just another harmless non sequitur. Second time with the youZ guyZ even.
I have no interest in what you don’t understand, which appears to be quite a lot from our previous interactions and for reading you tests in general.
As to your opinion on whatever EEA is trying to covet, as purportedly expressed by said authors in said article, I read the whole thing and it was such a very easy read to boot. I did find it rather trivial simply because of their lack of 1st hand experiences with EEA. They did read alot and asked questions to others not dirextly involved in EEA though.
You are even starting to sound rather conspiratorial in your own theory of the paper. I do know that that observation has gotta hurt, as you were a formal denier and still express yourself via conspiratorial meanderings such as this one on deconstructionism.
So, in closing, no, that paper is not about power control as that is just your own confirmation biases showing through. Paranoia will destroy ya. That paper is a critique of EEA by abjectly those two authors that don’t have a lick, or standing, as they are not and never were subject matter experts of EEA.
I might add that I am rather interested in EEA. However, papers such as these, are rather tangential to my gaining a much better understanding of the very mechanisms of EEA.
If EEA fails/succeeds on scientific/technical grounds, then I have much more interest in those failings/successes, then I do about those who think about EEA without 1st rolling up their own sleeves as it were.
@-EFS
“If EEA fails/succeeds on scientific/technical grounds, then I have much more interest in those failings/successes, …”
Unfortunately the most significant aspect of EEA is whether it will prompt policy decisions that lead to greater safety and resilience of the communal infrastructure when challenged with extreme events.
And that has more to do with the battle over who gets to control the narrative than the scientific/technical grounds.
EFS.
You can of course persist in willfully misunderstanding.
Hint 1. I stopped being POMO in around 1985 or so. yet, I still get the arguments.
My goal is to let others know the tradition this style of thinking comes out of. If that doesnt
interest you, cool. go in peace
izen
‘And that has more to do with the battle over who gets to control the narrative than the scientific/technical grounds.”
ya.
izen,
Which I pretty much said upthread …
“I think the authors see EEA as just another means to an end, as in, those who say do something now about climate change, and that this so-called ‘nascent’ EEA strategy isn’t working, for certain groups, such as policymakers.”
I’m not into fake (or motivational) science at all. Sorry. Speaking as a coastal engineer, I need the best observational data available. Specious model data on sea level rise not so much. I pretty much follow whatever the current IPCC guidance is. You can argue that their numbers are conservative, but you will have to prove it with very high p-values (which obviously can’t happen given the nature of the IPCC review processes).
Those of us who have to design stuff in the coastal zone always resort to the reasonableness of the propositions in play. It all comes down to justified true belief not make believe.
I hold a different position from most here. I believe almost all that climate scientists have to say. But humanity as a global society is very ill equipped to handle the emissions/climate changes timeline in any meaningful way. So far, humanity has not let me down in that regard. In 2030/40/50, I’d fully expect the same old same old.
As to EEA, like I stated, the method must prove itself scientifically at some level of success. If it is all just a game then I am not at all interested in playing.
“So, in closing, no, that paper is not about power control as that is just your own confirmation biases showing through. Paranoia will destroy ya. That paper is a critique of EEA by abjectly those two authors that don’t have a lick, or standing, as they are not and never were subject matter experts of EEA.”
now, this is claim about the meaning of the text.
its not a claim about science, not a claim about EEA. Its a claim about the text.
And so it requires some evidence. Typically from the text.
lets just go to the abstract
‘Using a new modelling methodology known as “extreme event attribution,” or EEA, climate scientists can now connect extreme weather to anthropogenic forcings. This paper seeks to uncover the significance of EEA for the epistemology of climate change, nature, and culture in the Anthropocene.
1. EAA allows scientists to Connect (find causality) between extreme events and human forcings.
First, we examine how EEA is emblematic of a larger turn in climate modelling, one that seeks to deploy anthropogenic climate change as an explanatory tool for an increasing number of socio‐natural phenomena. While some theorists have argued that the Anthropocene heralds the end of the nature–culture divide, we argue that EEA and similar modelling technologies seek to separate human influence from the natural variability of weather, thus establishing a new form of nature–culture divide mediated by computer simulation: a divide which we call “partitioned causality.”
2. In our first step we show how EEA is emblematic ( a symbolic exemplar) of a TURN in climate modelling, where Climate is used to explain SOCIAL phenomena . this is a form of environmental determinism. Historically you should know that environmental determinism has been used as a justification for colonialism. ( see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003.00354.x). Their argument here is that EEA leads to a different partitioning of casuality
and not an erasure of the nature/culture divide.
“Second, we demonstrate that partitioned causality is enabled by the relative hegemony of modelling technologies in climate change knowledge, as scientists retain substantial influence over who gets to “speak for” climate impacts. ”
3. This new partitioning is made possible by the hegemony (CONTROL) of the modelling technologies and SCIENTISTS who decide what gets modelled, what events get investigated, and who gets to speak for the models. Who gets to publish.
Finally, however, interviews with EEA scientists, journalists, and policymakers on the 2011–2017 California drought reveal that EEA remains a nascent scientific framework, one marked by epistemic slippage and divergent results. Thus, it serves as a powerful example of how emergent attempts to “domesticate” climate often become caught up in socio‐political conflicts around who – or what – has the power to shape discourses of climate change in the Anthropocene.
4. HOWEVER, by doing interviews with scientists and other stake holders we find
that there is DIVERGENCE in views about the science. EEA is just starting. there is uncertainty.
5. So. this is an EXAMPLE of how attempts to “domesticate” (control) climate get entangled with
social conflicts around who has the power
in summary.
YOUR CLAIM ABOUT THE TEXT
‘”So, in closing, no, that paper is not about power control as that is just your own confirmation biases showing through. Paranoia will destroy ya. That paper is a critique of EEA by abjectly those two authors that don’t have a lick, or standing, as they are not and never were subject matter experts of EEA.”
The texts claim:
‘Thus, it serves as a powerful example of how emergent attempts to “domesticate” climate often become caught up in socio‐political conflicts around who – or what – has the power to shape discourses of climate change in the Anthropocene.”
Like I said. the text is about authority and control.
Here:
‘The danger of such approaches [EEA] is that they might obscure, elide or distract from the
many other forms of causality: for example, human influence that cannot be modelled as
greenhouse gas emissions, but which is instead enacted along axes of vulnerability, inequality,
and other sociopolitical dimensions. Jasanoff and Wynne argue that “inherent in the
modelling exercise … is a presumption that the system under study can be modified,
managed, or controlled along pathways that the model makes visible” (1998, p. 60). Forms of
attribution such as EEA make visible the role of anthropogenic climate change as an agent of
change, but risk ignoring other complexities in favour of simpler, more traceable causal
chains. These methodologies then spill over into public discourse, into policy, and bring
moral judgments with them: about what constitutes a “human-caused” or “tough-luck”
weather event, about the difference between nature and culture, and about who should be
compensated for damages wreaked by extreme events. ”
lets take a simple example like the Virus so we can avoid your sensitivities about climate discussions that transgress your notions of what should be discussed.
An STS person would want to point out how the discussions of R0 around the imperial model,
OBSCURE, and DISTRACT from the more important issue of the RACIAL inequality in the impact of the disease. The Imperial model doesn’t model race. And so we end up having discussions about R0, about interventions in the model. The ontology of the model directs the conversation
and other factors ( race difference in comorbidities, institutional racism etc etc ) get swept out of the discussion.
Again in simple terms.
1. EAA allows scientists to partition causality . what part is tough luck what part is human caused
2. The ontology of the EAA models may miss out on factors other people want to talk about
( race, inequality, vulnerabilities) because they only represent GHGs
3. That may lead to those other topics (climate justice )being ignored.
4. They dont want the discussion to be “domesticated” ( POMO and derridian buzz word) along
the lines laid out by climate models (only GHGs matter)
now, I don’t buy their analysis, but at least I understand where it comes from and what it is about
at the bottom.
Steven,
I get the basic argument. What I don’t get is why they think that it’s climate scientists who should be incorporating these other issues into their analyses. There’s nothing stopping other people from doing so.
EFS science doesn’t prove anything experimentally or via observation. Proof is for maths, alcohol and typesetting, not science (nothing can be proven, there is always residual doubt). Statistics definitely can’t prove anything, and especially not with a p-value, no matter how “high” (sic).
SM interesting video, but isn’t all they are doing is defining what they mean by their own terms-of-art (without indication that those terms are useful beyond their own framework)?
@Steven Mosher
“why do you violate it”
Nothing I said is in conflict with those references. I was pleased to understand what deconstruction meant – finally – but I am not pleased to be insulted. Neither of the two references you offer has anything to do with writing as anything but communication. One breaks down the forms of communication and the other breaks down the reasons for communication but neither makes writing anything other than communication.
If I am trying to communicate an expression of my opinion, information that explains things to others, a persuasive argument or the instability of the Ringworld – all of these are ideas inside my head which I must manage through speech or written word to transmit to others.
The purpose of writing and speaking thus remains the communication of ideas – which include persuasive ideas, opinions, explanations, fiction and emotion.
There is nothing inside my head but neurons and the brain chemistry that supports and influences them to help me integrate into society. My writing reflects the very complex patterns of operation of those neurons. My next book will explain human consciousness.
You are the only person who knows what the hell you are thinking and there is no method, deconstruction included, that makes it reasonable to pick your words apart to find other meanings. The only authority on what you intend to say is you. It is not related to the detailed breakdowns in the philosophy of language – a course that I took in 1972 when I was studying neurological psychology.
My efforts to write better have not been a constant thing, but I write well enough that some people who are good writers themselves, prefer my work to their own. Nobody is as good at rhetoric in its positive meaning – the ability to write and speak persuasively – as they might wish to be.
My opinion of deconstruction was initially that it is a poor way to argue, as it attempts to find the foibles in another persons words – and in legal and sophist arguments it has a taint of dishonesty that I responded to by explaining that the detailed inner workings of the human mind are not accessible to any other human mind except as communicated through our speech and writing. Hugs and kisses notwithstanding.
On reflection deconstruction has another and more appropriate use, in taking apart a theory to expose a hidden flaw, or an economics definition as I do in the book I’ve written. It is not appropriate to use it on poetry. “Too clever is dumb”.
We are all smart enough to fool ourselves.
I understand that – but I am not convinced that you have considered it.
“YOUR CLAIM ABOUT THE TEXT
‘”So, in closing, no, that paper is not about power control as that is just your own confirmation biases showing through. Paranoia will destroy ya. That paper is a critique of EEA by abjectly those two authors that don’t have a lick, or standing, as they are not and never were subject matter experts of EEA.”
The texts claim:
‘Thus, it serves as a powerful example of how emergent attempts to “domesticate” climate often become caught up in socio‐political conflicts around who – or what – has the power to shape discourses of climate change in the Anthropocene.”
Like I said. the text is about authority and control.”
———————————————
In this respect I agree fairly strongly. EEA is not an appropriate argument for socio-economic change and climate change is barely an influence on our socio-economic problems. The socio-economic problems come from our definition of money and our adoption of a ludicrous variant of Capitalism on top of the wrong definition. Graeber and Monbiot make it quite clear how we got to the point where Piketty and Stiglitz had to write their books.
On a definition of money, Galbraith, Keynes and Friedman were all just – wrong. On climate Nordhaus and Tol got a “Nobel” prize for being criminally misleading and wrong.
ATTP,
“I get the basic argument. What I don’t get is why they think that it’s climate scientists who should be incorporating these other issues into their analyses. There’s nothing stopping other people from doing so.”
I agree, but I think if people were to read ‘The Cure for Catastrophe – How we can stop manufacturing natural disasters’, written by former IPCC Lead Author, Robert Muir-Wood, they might have more sympathy for these STS guys. It is fair to say that the scope of EEA modelling does not include consideration of anthropogenic influences relating to an event’s societal impact, but that’s not to say that risks associated with such impacts cannot be modelled by someone else incorporating EEA output. But if the paper’s authors were looking to the EEA community to do this then they were barking up the wrong bristlecone. They need to be talking to people who are more concerned with managing risk rather than just evaluating the science. That is why I have been at pains to point out the equal importance of Probability of Necessity (PN) and Probability of Sufficiency (PS). You need both PN and PS for a full causal narrative and you need a full causal narrative to decide the best policy for managing the risks.
Mainstream EEA methods such as FAR are very good at calculating PN but they cannot determine PS (a structured causal model is required for that). So it’s not just a case of EEA being unconcerned with anthropogenic influences relating to an event’s societal impact. Even if the EEA folk had wanted to extend their scope of interest, they do not have enough practitioners within their ranks who are aware of the methodologies required – and those that are aware distrust them (cf. epidemiology, economics and social sciences, within which structured causal modelling has become an established practice). I’m not sure whether the STS guys were even aware of structured causal models when they wrote their ‘deconstruction’ but, in effect, that is what they were calling for. However, rather than ragging on the EEA community, the authors needed to step back to take in a wider target. Maybe then all this talk of hegemony and controlling the narrative would have seemed unnecessary.
A widening of scope to encompass calculation of both PN and PS is to be encouraged. I don’t care who does it, and I don’t care how much deconstructionist bullshit is used by those encouraging it, as long as it is done. The problem, as I see it, is that one cannot modify a PS calculation to incorporate anthropogenic influences relating to an event’s societal impact if one hasn’t got a PS calculation to modify, and I don’t see much effort in the EEA community aimed at providing such baseline PS calculations.
> That is why it is in such a backwater specialist journal.
Talk about non sequitur.
***
> The socio-economic problems come from our definition of money and our adoption of a ludicrous variant of Capitalism on top of the wrong definition
Is this POMO?
***
> The problem, as I see it, is that one cannot modify a PS calculation to incorporate anthropogenic influences relating to an event’s societal impact if one hasn’t got a PS calculation to modify, and I don’t see much effort in the EEA community aimed at providing such baseline PS calculations.
That’s POMO.
The latest issue of Nature carries a germane Comment article: Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto, by a long list of alia including RPJr. They use covid-19 models as examples. Their recommendations:
“Mind the {assumptions, hubris, framing, consequences, unknowns}”.
Upon skimming the “manifesto”, my first reaction is “duh”. I may or may not read it more closely.
@bjchip, thanks for food for thought.
Moving on, I was irked to have someone point out this Tamsin Edwards article as an exemplary example of moderation. She doesn’t outright lie, but there is an emphasis that I find misleading in these parlous times. I’d be the first to claim that I am an alarmist, and I believe it is right to be so.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/25/arctic-heatwave-38c-siberia-science
1. “Does climate breakdown make this “blocking” more likely? Maybe.” – though her link to Carbon Brief – https://www.carbonbrief.org/jet-stream-is-climate-change-causing-more-blocking-weather-events – is excellent if she hadn’t ever so slightly implied that it supports her point.
2. “But it’s not irreversible. It’s not a tipping point. The sea ice would return if we could cool the climate again. Unfortunately we know only three ways to do that: extract vast amounts of CO2 from the air with trees or technology; reflect the sun’s rays at a planetary scale; or wait, for many generations.”
It’s a tiny bit misleading if not technically wrong. it is perhaps not feasible to talk about the deficiencies of tree planting and carbon sequestration, or the side effects and impracticality of current plans to reflect the sun, or the implied understatement “many generations”.
3. On methane this is dishonest: “for several years there has been growing evidence that this risk is less than originally thought”
One can’t fault the attempt at optimism in the final paragraph, but playing nice has not produced necessary action.
Just to be clear, I’m all for tree planting. However, this means planting them in the right places, not cutting down huge amounts of rainforest to please our appetites and make money for exploiters and their victims (poor people who can’t be blamed for needing to put food on the table), and nurturing them. Hypothetical trillion tree plantings are window dressing.
i have always thought attribution studies a rather niche sport in climate science, quite technical, based on complicated statistical analysis of often sparse datasets
but crucially and inevitably weaponized by the same old same old loonies as a “wedge issue”
EEA is crap as a climate science communication gambit – people should stick to simple stuff like the earth is accumulating more energy ergo a more volatile climate .
Just a general comment.
The paper never separates physical changes in the atmosphere/oceans, what I consider to be pure EEA, from things that happen on the ground, e, g, other anthropogenic factors like LULC.
So, for example, an economic analysis, is not EEA in my book, at least.
To me, EEA is all about the physical properties or attributes of the atmosphere/oceans, temperature, pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall-frequency-intensity-duration, things that are objective metrics using the SI metric system.
I read the paper and the authors cannot even define EEA properly, IMHO. They imply that EEA must include all factors, like economics (a very human thing but not measurable unless the SI system defines money, ha, ha, ha).
So that over here others are also confusing what EEA is or should be. EEA is any measurable quantity of the system in SI units only.
I think I indicated this at least twice above in my previous comments. EEA is physically measurable properties of the atmosphere/oceans. EEA is not economics or social or inequalities of the human condition.
After reading the paper, I went … but what does that have to do with EEA, or physically measurable quantities of the atmosphere/oceans. And how can EEA, measurable physical quantities of the atmosphere/oceans, possibly claim any authority in and of itself. These are just numbers after all, It is rather rich to think that numbers could ever claim authority in and of themselves.
For those who still don’t understand, this is a method called thinking outside the box, the box laid down by said paper. I don’t accept whatever their definition of EEA is/was.
That is why the paper is a non sequitur, Inanimate scalars, vectors, tensors, mass, temperature claiming authority, that is like arguing with the wind.
Now what humans do with those measurements, that is an entirely different matter, as said paper rather vividly illustrates.
Oh and I am s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o out of here!
EFS said:
From your experience as a coastal engineer, have you ever seen something like this?
“High-Precision Combined Tidal Forecasting Model”
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/12/3/65/htm
Model : R
—————
1. Harmonic Analysis : 0.52892
2. Back Propagation NN : 0.61248
3. Particle Swarm Opt-SVR : 0.97381
4. Combined model : 0.99066
It seems like they are able to predict non-astronomical tides accurately without physics or attribution
Related …
Scientists Keep Arguing Over Whether Forests Can Make Wind
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a32935704/forests-generate-wind-theory-science-argument/
“The “reproduction crisis” in fields like social sciences brought issues like cognitive bias and selection bias into the forefront of discussions of those fields of study. But theoretical science can run into problems that look very similar. A scientist who begins with a theory must then develop models and hypothetical experiments or tests in order to validate the theory. After that amount of work, researchers are committed—if not yet scientifically, then just behaviorally.
By arguing a new model can’t be valid because it doesn’t conform to an existing model, colleagues may tip over into displaying evidence of a fallacy or bias. This is one reason why it’s so thorny to pull apart whether a revolutionary new theory is sound or not. And in Russia, where Makarieva is from, her idea has accumulated more institutional and public support. That could help her push back on a field where many colleagues will say publicly that they think her proposed model is “nonsense.””
““The “reproduction crisis” in fields like social sciences brought issues like cognitive bias and selection bias into the forefront of discussions of those fields of study.”
I am thinking that social scientists, e,g, STS’ers in particular, are envious of the physical sciences. Just in my honest opinion. They want to drag everything over to their level of thinking. So that, in this case, they want to drag physical measurements over to their level of thinking.
Do physical measurements think?
I will take the measurements, tabulate those measurements and even sort of write a numbers report.
You all can explain those measurements using the units of money only. Good luck.
Time to relax with two music videos …
Vital Signs
Witch Hunt
“Steven,
I get the basic argument. What I don’t get is why they think that it’s climate scientists who should be incorporating these other issues into their analyses. There’s nothing stopping other people from doing so.”
Yes. However, until “things” get put in a model they don’t get the “science” stamp of approval.
Think of Roger Pielke Sr. For a long time he argued that Land Use should be in models
( cause he thought land use was a big driver) If Land use wasn’t in the models then advocates
of improved land use have a hard time sitting at the table. That is Changing now.
So I imagine that someone could bring to together what the science says ( talking for the models) and what history says ( talking about injustice) but I’m not sure how that works.
Bj reread your pledge.
reread everything you write
you break your pledge constantly
Verify: fact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do not support my opinion
Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts
Now try again.
Here’s the only take I will make on the paper, as I’m still busy with my summer schedule of TV programs.
The paragraph that introduces EEA reads as follows:
I am not a fan of establishing causality of singular events in this context. Most climate scientists I know don’t go as far as to speak of the odds of event E to have occurred because of AGW. Yet that’s the kind of claim for which Judea’s causation calculus is designed. Before requiring climate scientists to abide by it, its proponents might need to reflect on why he still can’t sell it elsewhere.
The next paragraph introduces the authors’ contribution:
DOI: 10.1111/tran.12390
I will make one comment and one observation.
My comment is that the second consequence, i.e. the “division between nature and culture,” offers a weird spin on a trivial point. Think about it one second. Detection and attribution studies are meant to determine the A in AGW. Rejecting this idea goes against the very idea of AGW.
My observation is that the whole paragraph rings hollow. While there are limitations behind the AGW framework, I’d rather focus on making them explicit than to reform that framework for some armchair quarterbacking that rests on a truism and that comes at least 30 years too late.
So my official response to the authors would be to thank them for their concerns and return to my TV program.
“SM interesting video, but isn’t all they are doing is defining what they mean by their own terms-of-art (without indication that those terms are useful beyond their own framework)?”
lets recap.
I describe what Decon does to a text: multiply meanings, expose weak points,
BJ objects to this and says writing is about moving ideas from my head to your head.
arguing that decon is wrong because it violates the purpose of writing, which is communication.
I object to this characterization of writing (language) with 2 examples of non pomo thinkers
Austin, who points out how we can do things with language ( not merely pass ideas around)
and Quine who argues that language is a social art, not some machine.
The point is there is one tradition of language and meaning that views the process totally mechanistically. Language is about moving ideas from my head to your head. Language is then just a purely utilitarian thing and serves purely rational purposes. (Its the kind of thought that tries to fight against linguistic change for example )
Funny aside: one of the reasons I started working on NLG ( natural language generation) and trying to write programs that created text randomly was to show that you could get “meaning” where
the writer had no “mind” holding ideas. If you look at a computer generated text and think that meaning is “what the author intended” then where are you? since the author had no intentions and
no mind to hold the ideas.
The other point was to show that what we can say is
limited , informed and to some extent shaped by the structure (language) that we have to use. Maybe you’ve had the experience of “not having a word” for a thing. The point here is how language can shape what we think. So, it’s not just a passive conduit that ideas pass through.
when we use models to understand social impacts ,the “language” of the model (it only has GHG nouns) limits what the model can say. It can only talk about GHGs, not race for example, not institutional racism for example, because those are not words in model talk.
To ATTPs point , other people not using models could add these words to the conversation.
BUT, they wont have the science stamp of approval.
“My observation is that the whole paragraph rings hollow. While there are limitations behind the AGW framework, I’d rather focus on making them explicit than to reform that framework for some armchair quarterbacking that rests on a truism and that comes at least 30 years too late.”
ya it is the weak link in the argument.
ATTP one way to think about this is what would happen if you included things like race in the Imperial model. Imagine if they modelled what races lived where, how they interacted, and how they were differentially affected . would that even be allowed. To some extent you saw a little of this with the “age” variable. the old are at danger (>50), they young less so. you dont even have to imagine people using science to argue that the young should be free to work and live while the old are isolated. You could even optimize your lockdown strategy to minimize “years” lost rather than
lives lost.
As climate models get more robust regionally and locally, you can also imagine them being used to
calculate climate change winners and losers. In small way that already happened when small island nations used their loser status to gain an outsized voice relative to their numbers.
seems like modelers would be damned if they included these types of things and damned if they dont.
Like Willard said the authors should be thanked for their concerns. I’ll reframe their concerns.
In stakeholder discussions of climate change, one guy sitting at the table will speak for the science in it’s current state. he wont be about to talk about things like justice and fairness and all the factors that combine to establish impacts. Also sitting at the table will be a sociologist, economist, etc
they won’t have the benefit of physics on their side. do they have equal voices? and how are disagreements between them adjudicated? without appealing to some demarcation line between science and non-science or hard science and soft science
““My observation is that the whole paragraph rings hollow.”
Old memory. Sitting in Lisbon with anti authoritarian lefts philosophers.
There focus was that the word “natural” was not an “innocent” term
FWIW
PP sez …
“From your experience as a coastal engineer, have you ever seen something like this?”
No. And I hope to never see such in the future. I would rather deal with wind speed/direction, barometric pressure and water density time series (density time series at multiple locations out to deep water (ARGO)) 1st, then ADCIRC the damn thing.
What external forcing time series was used to drive the ML part? That part of that paper is as clear as mud. Training what on what.
What will the time series look like for that same period (or better yet the other 3 seasons) in 2019 and 2020 (for validation purposes). Or perhaps take their effort to the next level of an open coastline tide gage. Duck, NC USACE FRF will do just fine. If their method is so good and so accurate then I would expect to see a whole series of papers. If not, then cherry picking is not out of the question (e. g. they did the entire set of NOAA tide gages and presented this one gage).
(1) Google Earth “Bay Waveland Yacht Club in Mississippi, USA” zoom in then zoom out. Very shallow and very complex bathymetry. I would take the largest/longest-6-minute time series from that NOAA tide gage and FFT the damn thing and yearly/monthly parts of the overall time series. NOAA uses 37-harmonics, others (CA) use even more …
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/harcon.html?id=8747437
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/inventory.html?id=8747437
So, quite a bit of 6-minute data, a date range from Nov 11, 2005 to Jun 25, 2020 (ongoing). That way you are not fooling yourself with other deterministic lower frequency components. In other words, using ML just to rediscover lower frequency determinism is not really saying a whole lot. The FFT will also be useful for all frequencies in general.
What was their rationalization for selecting that particular gage? Key Laboratory of Navigation Safety Guarantee of Liaoning Province, Navigation College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian 116026, China doesn’t remotely sound familiar … their user profiles (click on their names in the article) do not connote any SME status at all to me at least (and no, I am not an SME either, by any stretch of my own imagination). I will come back in a decade to see additional papers from these authors.
You exhaust all other deterministic methods 1st, gather the necessary time series 0th.
@Steve Mosher
“I describe what Decon does to a text: multiply meanings, expose weak points,
BJ objects to this and says writing is about moving ideas from my head to your head.
arguing that decon is wrong because it violates the purpose of writing, which is communication.
I object to this characterization of writing (language) with 2 examples of non pomo thinkers
Austin, who points out how we can do things with language ( not merely pass ideas around)
and Quine who argues that language is a social art, not some machine.”
But apparently you neither read my response all the way through as I offered up that there is a useful purpose to decon – nor apprehended that communication encompasses both of your examples. Perhaps the difficult bit here is that I regard an idea as a broader category of thing than you do, but the fact remains that you are being needlessly and persistently insulting rather than bothering to try to understand me. I did actually read your links. I did actually try to work out what you meant and why you are disagreeing. I even changed my mind somewhat, as a result of more careful thought.
So be it. I don’t have time for this,
Eventually AI will settle this by accurately predicting the future climate and providing the mathematical proofs for the algorithms it generated for the solution.
Supercomputer and their continuing exponential growth.
https://singularityhub.com/2020/06/25/the-worlds-fastest-supercomputer-is-an-exascale-machine-for-ai/
“For the last two years, the US’s Summit was the fastest supercomputer on the planet. But this week, a new system took the crown. Running 2.8 times faster than Summit, Japan’s Fugaku notched a blistering 415 petaflops as measured by Top500’s high-performance linpack benchmark (HP-L).
That means Fugaku completes a simple mathematical operation 415 quadrillion times a second. ”
This party is just getting started. There should be a fleet of quantum computers coming online in the next few years. modelers got to model.
SM, I was commenting only on that video, which didn’t seem to go with the title. It didn’t seem to be doing much with language, just labelling it (where not too ambiguous) and defining the labels.
‘The point is there is one tradition of language and meaning that views the process totally mechanistically. Language is about moving ideas from my head to your head. Language is then just a purely utilitarian thing and serves purely rational purposes. (Its the kind of thought that tries to fight against linguistic change for example )‘
I don’t think that follows. Poetry is attempting to generate particular forms of neural activity in the reader, which are not necessarily rational, and not all of this is in the information content of the text. The “my dog has no nose” joke is still funny in Latin, even though I don’t speak Latin. But ideas are transferred by it’s telling (in this case a meta-idea about jokes). Language is about transferring ideas, but that does’t mean it is straightforward transfer, or purely rational.
Most people do search for meanings in communications beyond the words, however there are som (e.g, those with autistic spectrum disorders) who have to actively work on it to detect the sub-text present in most human communication. False-positives and false-negatives abound.
“I don’t think that follows. Poetry is attempting to generate particular forms of neural activity in the reader, which are not necessarily rational, and not all of this is in the information content of the text. The “my dog has no nose” joke is still funny in Latin, even though I don’t speak Latin. But ideas are transferred by it’s telling (in this case a meta-idea about jokes). Language is about transferring ideas, but that does’t mean it is straightforward transfer, or purely rational.”
I’m not sure that poetry is an attempt to generate particular forms of neural activity in the reader. Did you ever write a sonnet just to see if you could? did you ever write just to find out what you were thinking? or to get something off your chest. It’s enough, however, that you agree that not all writing is simply about the transfer of “ideas” (whatever those are) and that the text doesnt express all that there is.
to return to what started this digression . In one mode of “reading” or interpretation the goal
of the critic is to work charitably to recover a single consistent meaning of the text. So, in English studies there was this assumption that the critic just passively recovers or explains the meaning of the text in other words. he must work with good faith and efface himself. Kinda like a priest explaining the word of god. And when the author is explained and understood maybe he will go into the canon. Well Devon ( and other forms of reading) wanted to challenge that model.
challenge the model that the author was in control. challenge the model that critics could be objective. Challenge the whole process of building a canon (of old dead white guys). challenge the notion that reading was a passive activity .
Stanley fish ( see reader response theory ,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_criticism)
has a good explanation of decon approach which is “Interrogating” the text not passively translation it into an alternative vocabulary ( finding a “synonym” for the text)
Steven Mosher,
So in summary … and to repeat myself …
“I hold a different position from most here. I believe almost all that climate scientists have to say. But humanity as a global society is very ill equipped to handle the emissions/climate changes timeline in any meaningful way. So far, humanity has not let me down in that regard. In 2030/40/50, I’d fully expect the same old same old.”
Everything you have said in this thread only reinforces and strengthens my rather dismal views of humanity actually doing anything meaningful about climate change anytime this century. Kicking that can even further down that road people call adaptation, so make that 2070/80/90. IMHO, I think that you are doing it on purpose. It has a name and that name is luckwarming.
As far as I can tell, it is the STS types themselves that are now doing this. If you think society is unjust now, oh boy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
” Did you ever write a sonnet just to see if you could? ”
of course I have; it was a Petrachan sonnet about my long-lost bicycle pump. The answer was somewhere between “no” and “yes” – the recipient rather kindly interpreted the meter as a subtle parody of Petrachan formalism (or something like that).
“did you ever write just to find out what you were thinking?”
No, doodling perhaps, writing probably not.
“It’s enough, however, that you agree that not all writing is simply about the transfer of “ideas” (whatever those are) and that the text doesnt express all that there is. ”
It depends what you mean by “ideas”, It is a bit like asking why a joke is funny (or why we tell jokes at all); those who aim for a simple explanation that fits all jokes are going to be disappointed.
BTW the sonnet was intended to carry an idea, but it had nothing to do with bicycle pumps.
Everett F. Sargent (twice):
I can’t speak for “most” here, but my position is not different from yours up to that point. I wouldn’t even argue with
Except for ‘fully’. YMMV, but I see some meliorative economic and political trends. There’s a tiny window for hope offered by “very ill equipped”, that a tolerably elevated equilibrium GMST might somehow be within our collective reach. As daunting as the obstacles to that are, I’m unwilling to close my mind them. I wish to know the political enemy and their tactics, as an aid to overcoming them on behalf of national decarbonization. Deconstructionism is a rhetorical tactic useful to science defenders and deniers alike. The most obvious pro-mitigation use is to follow the denialist money sustaining the flood of disinformation in the public sphere. That includes the purchase of superficial scientific authority along with skillful bespoke rhetoric, generated by professional disinformationists employed in astroturf finktanks, partisan journalism and politics, and all paid with dark money. I urge intelligent adoption of the same rhetorical tactics, aimed back at the AGW-denialists (including luke/luckwarmists). That said, it’s incontrovertible that the financial incentives for well-crafted rhetoric are greater on the side of denial. I’m still not ready to give up, though. I want to know what Steven, Willard, BJ, et al. and you, too, have to say on the broad topic of the OP: STS-based challenges to the epistemic authority of climate science.
EFS, to Steven:
Steven made his ideological motivation explicit on this thread:
To me he has long seemed resistant to collective action against AGW, apparently associating it with leftist political agendas. I doubt there’s a way to convince him otherwise, since ideology = motivated cognition. Nonetheless, he’s forthcoming with intel about right-wing denialist stratagems. He says he “stopped being POMO in around 1985 or so.” He’s demonstrated his genuine skepticism by his participation in BEST. And he’s conspicuously smart. I didn’t value his contributions initially, but I’m almost over that 8^D!
You, OTOH, seem reflexively hostile to the mere discussion of STS. IMHO, that’s where your position is different from most here: most of us are more deliberate about it.
I have to say that in 2030 I expect that hunger will affect many more people than it does now, as a result of rainfall changes over the next decade.
It is the rapidity of the changes that will confound us. The models disagree almost violently about what specifically will change in terms of rainfall, and this leads me to believe that the changes can and will be far more rapid and damaging than we – as a species – have any experience with. People who look at the past 100 years for reassurance are accelerating down the freeway while peering intently at the rear-view mirror.
Increasing food and water insecurity will be apparent before 2030 arrives.
This will affect the stability of nations and the ability of the owning class to effectively prevent action to change things on the basis of ideology.
It also means that by 2040 there will be actions taken that are unimaginable in the current economic climate and far too late to avert catastrophe. This is the laws of thermodynamics operating at the scale of civilizations and planets and in the end it will wreck both our hubris and our civilization.
This will happen because right now, the owning class which hires, supports and believes incompetents like Nordhaus and Tol, are in control of the planet and can still, even at this late date, prevent concerted action to mitigate the chaos.
Real money represents work done. It is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. It cannot work for you. It cannot be stored without suffering from entropy. It is impossible for ownership to make more money. The laws of thermodynamics are at the economic root of the problems of inequality and systematic failure to govern ourselves.
Mal,
Here’s my response to STS-based challengers to the epistemic authority of climate science:
I thank them for their concerns.
If they want to push for another kind of framework, like John does here every season or so, then the onus is on them to make it float. If all they want is to play cop, then I’m afraid they have not chosen the right season to do so. There’s nothing much one can do about these concerns anyway. They won’t disappear any time soon. Just look at Junior.
That being said, we’re dealing with a big problem. Perhaps the biggest we had to face so far. If contrarians are willing to put the hours and help improve science, why the hell not? As long as they stop whining and do some work, everyone should be welcome.
Then I go back to my summer TV programs.
The subtle points about deconstruction are in the end not that important, not important enough for me to translate my go-to guy on this.
MA,
“You, OTOH, seem reflexively hostile to the mere discussion of STS. IMHO, that’s where your position is different from most here: most of us are more deliberate about it.”
You were the 1st one to mention “STS” in this thread. I read the whole paper without once thinking STS. I started reading it thinking how long is this paper and I hope the citations list is very long, I continued reading the paper with that same thought. At one point, about 2/3 of the way in, I said to myself, that the paper had lost its train of thought, a momentary lapse of reason, but I remembered what had been written and carried on reading the paper. After awhile the citations list showed up, what a relief I said to myself, I read the whole paper.
I started to turn hostile TO THIS THREAD when it turned towards what appeared to be a never ending discussion on deconstructionism.
I also started turning hostile towards humanity at the ripe old age of seven (3rd grade). There is even a name for this form of hostility …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
I know that I have mentioned this before, at least once before, in times such as this one, I again mention my lifelong hatred of the human condition. I would like to write/make a book/video of world history published by South Park Studios, but I am afraid that no one would ever read it. I am thinking like Micheal Moore’s Bowling for Columbine or Planet of the Humans …
Humanity does have some redeeming virtues, namely music and humor …
White Jeopardy …
Black Jeopardy …
My sentiments exactly …
What aboot climate change? Hmm, I think we have more pressing problems at the moment and decade. COVID-19. Systemic racism. Small Hands. Get back to us in, oh say, 2120. TIA
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately.
@Everett F Sargent
Do not get too down on the human race overall. It is true that “Homo Sapiens” is an oxymoron and our hubris is apparent in that self-ascribed moniker, but there’s a very fundamental error at work. An error more than 5000 years old and apart from a few hard cases like myself, we still haven’t cracked it.
Money cannot represent debt with interest. Not in any stable civilization. It can’t realistically be represented by debt without interest without completely abandoning Capitalism. The degree to which the current definition provides inequality and power to the owning class and problems for everyone, is almost infinite. The 257 Trillion in global debt that isn’t going to ever get repaid is an indication of how badly this is working, so is climate change. Yet explaining it just causes cognitive dissonance on a massive scale.
Thing is, its my species and survival is the only game in town. So simply hating all the stupid people – and I grant that the number of idiots seems to be increasing faster than the population – doesn’t help. Got to educate and elucidate and explain – over and over and over.
“That being said, we’re dealing with a big problem. Perhaps the biggest we had to face so far. If contrarians are willing to put the hours and help improve science, why the hell not? As long as they stop whining and do some work, everyone should be welcome.”
and chance are when they actually do work they might change their own minds.
“Kicking that can even further down that road people call adaptation, so make that 2070/80/90. IMHO, I think that you are doing it on purpose. It has a name and that name is luckwarming.”
Hmm Luckwarming hasn’t got anything to do with it. Lukewarm (<=3C per doubling) is where I think the FACTS will settle out.
POLICY (what we should do about the facts) is an entirely different matter and
HERE we are talking about something different than policy. I'm talking about GOVERNANCE.
how does the WE who decides and carries out a policy operate.
I'm rather fond of this for a long time,
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781935704010
https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/climatescience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-601
So.
1. I like the adaptive governance approach.
2. I dont know what POLICY will cash out of that because its decentraized with a local focus
what I think a global policy should be is irrelevant
3. I think facts will be lukewarm. This doesnt change my views on policy. If I thought 5C was the future i would have THE SAME attitude toward policy.
"Adaptive governance is defined by a focus on decentralized decision-making structures and procedurally rational policy, supported by intensive natural and social science. Decentralized decision-making structures allow a large, complex problem like global climate change to be factored into many smaller problems, each more tractable for policy and scientific purposes. Many smaller problems can be addressed separately and concurrently by smaller communities. Procedurally rational policy in each community is an adaptation to profound uncertainties, inherent in complex systems and cognitive constraints, that limit predictability. Hence planning to meet projected targets and timetables is secondary to continuing appraisal of incremental steps toward long-term goals: What has and hasn’t worked compared to a historical baseline, and why? Each step in such trial-and-error processes depends on politics to balance, if not integrate, the interests of multiple participants to advance their common interest—the point of governance in a free society. Intensive science recognizes that each community is unique because the interests, interactions, and environmental responses of its participants are multiple and coevolve. Hence, inquiry focuses on case studies of particular contexts considered comprehensively and in some detail.
Varieties of adaptive governance emerged in response to the limitations of scientific management, the dominant pattern of governance in the 20th century. In scientific management, central authorities sought technically rational policies supported by predictive science to rise above politics and thereby realize policy goals more efficiently from the top down. This approach was manifest in the framing of climate change as an “irreducibly global” problem in the years around 1990. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established to assess science for the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The parties negotiated the Kyoto Protocol that attempted to prescribe legally binding targets and timetables for national reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But progress under the protocol fell far short of realizing the ultimate objective in Article 1 of the UNFCCC, “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system.” As concentrations continued to increase, the COP recognized the limitations of this approach in Copenhagen in 2009 and authorized nationally determined contributions to greenhouse gas reductions in the Paris Agreement in 2015.
Adaptive governance is a promising but underutilized approach to advancing common interests in response to climate impacts. The interests affected by climate, and their relative priorities, differ from one community to the next, but typically they include protecting life and limb, property and prosperity, other human artifacts, and ecosystem services, while minimizing costs. Adaptive governance is promising because some communities have made significant progress in reducing their losses and vulnerability to climate impacts in the course of advancing their common interests. In doing so, they provide field-tested models for similar communities to consider. Policies that have worked anywhere in a network tend to be diffused for possible adaptation elsewhere in that network. Policies that have worked consistently intensify and justify collective action from the bottom up to reallocate supporting resources from the top down. Researchers can help realize the potential of adaptive governance on larger scales by recognizing it as a complementary approach in climate policy—not a substitute for scientific management, the historical baseline."
“and chance (sic) are when they actually do work they might change their own minds.”
Said the sample size of two.
I’m of the opinion that there more hard core climate science deniers then there are climate scientists. So that turning even just one percent is less then natural attrition due to death plus the number of new hard core deniers joining the existing rank and file.
Note, that I don’t think of STS types as contrarian and certainly not deniers. They do have their own opinions, mostly due to their training, they can’t help themselves due to those academic stovepipes (or silos), particularly those are not yet through their own academic training.(which I think is the case with the 1st author).
I started to turn hostile TO THIS THREAD when it turned towards what appeared to be a never ending discussion on deconstructionism.
yes it sucks when you cannot control the conversation. what the STS folks are saying is that
they dont want their insights/inputs about inequality sidelined or place in subordination to
guys talking about EEA.
Like I said it’s about control and governance. who gets to speak and how will various inputs be reconciled.
The easiest approach is just to adopt the Willard line. they have concerns. granted. acknowledged!
good concerns. ! Thank you!. But don’t let them give homework to the EEA people or put the burden for their concern on the EEA people. You probably dont want models representing social inequalities. Invite them to propose their solution for the concern THEY raised.
1. understand their concern ( I’ve tried to help you with that)
2. ACKNOWLEDGE their concern. yup, models dont represent the things they care about.!
you guys have a point. yup.
3. Give them THEIR homework. Thanks for your concern, now get to your work while we do EEA.
Remember they are, in the end, your allies, ya might not want to diss them when placation works better.
‘ Remember they are, in the end, your allies, ya might not want to diss them when placation works better.’
I don’t think that is necessarily true. If it were true, they would engage constructively with their “homework” (as you put it). For example those arguing against consensus messaging seem unwilling to discuss how best to address claims that there is no consensus (as well as assuming an intention for consensus messaging that isn’t necessarily correct). It’s like the old statistics joke – statisticians, like artists, have a tendency to fall in love with their models. It isn’t just statisticians that do this. Most researchers have a (non-political) research agenda that they want to push forward and there is not much to be gained by “what she/he said”. So of course the papers suggesting problems are the ones that get accepted and popularised.
Somewhat ironic to suggest the we should placate and not diss them. Surely that works in both directions? If You want things from other people, you are more likely to get it if you avoid being unnecessarily adversarial about it.
I agree with the rest, should have led with that.
I am having a hard time understanding the “control the conversation” point. I would have thought it was easier to take a broader view with some of the details settled. That’s how science and technology generally proceeds, narrow pieces of work are stitched together by others with a broader view.
Tough for domain experts to “control the conversation” outside of their narrow field of expertise – just ask the climate modelers.
“they dont want their insights/inputs about inequality sidelined or place in subordination”
What inequalities exactly? Who decides those inequalities. Certainly not light skinned individuals.
“who gets to speak”
Exactly! But not these two, that is for sure.
Those two authors don’t represent repressed minorities or whatever they think inequalities are being foisted upon whoever because neither has minority status globally speaking. You need to check your own privilege at the door. /: You don’t have the slightest idea about inequalities and neither do those two dimwits.
It is actually rather sad to see someone, you, so out of their depth. /:
> Said the sample size of two.
You mean three:
Time to chill, Everett.
> Surely that works in both directions?
Only when those who raise concerns while pretending to abide by a reciprocal strategy really do. Asking them to scratch their own itch allows one to test that. If those who raise concerns don’t do anything with their own suggestions, then so much the worse for them.
There’s nothing really revolutionary behind the idea. It’s how lead developers of freewares can keep their sanity. Flame wars seldom do any good.
“But don’t let them give homework to the EEA people or put the burden for their concern on the EEA people. You probably dont want models representing social inequalities. Invite them to propose their solution for the concern THEY raised.”
Absolutely, and therein lies the major issue or faux concern. Nowhere, and I do mean nowhere, does EEA include inequalities. It is certainly not in EEA’s purview to even discuss matters of inequality unless the authors themselves twist the very meanings of EEA to explicitly include inequalities, which appears to be exactly what they have done here.
And if one adheres to a well founded objective definition of EEA, changes in the physical measurements ABOVE or OUTSIDE the land surfaces proper, things like rainfall and not things like runoff, then there can be no intersection between EEA and inequalities (unless you can show that rainfall is unjust and seeks out those inequalities).
I don’t even vaguely think that either author has the slightest idea of what it means to be really poor. They haven’t lived it and they don’t know it from a 1st hand perspective. I do.
As Token said to Stan … they don’t get it because they can’t get it … because they have lived rather privileged lives or are of a different privileged race. It is just great to be a SJW, but if you have never been there done that, then you can never truly understand what it is like to be in that skin or to live that life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Apologies_to_Jesse_Jackson
> Nowhere, and I do mean nowhere, does EEA include inequalities.
Inequalities are mentioned in two places in the text, Everett. The two are related. Here is the first:
Here is the second:
You claim that EEA does not mention inequalities. The authors say the same. Therefore your claim does not (and in fact cannot) contradict the authors’ claim to that effect.
Since I don’t want to read that article, I certainly don’t want to read it for you.
Willard,
The 2nd quote starting from “Forms of attribution … ” is merely an opinion and EEA is the only place mentioned after the citation in that part of their opinion. The 1st and 2nd quotes are from a 22-year old edited authors book (e. g. no independent peer review) that would need to be updated (e. g. pre-AR3).
Good use of two word scare quotes too.
Extreme event attribution: the climate versus weather blame game
December 15, 2016
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/extreme-event-attribution-climate-versus-weather-blame-game
“For more than a decade … ”
I will take that to mean less than two decades and even less then 15 years. So that their non-peer reviewed reference predates the entire field of EEA!
“The past decade has seen a remarkable increase in interest and activity in the extreme event attribution field. The first attempt at attributing an extreme weather event to climate change was published in 2004, analyzing the 2003 European summer heat wave that killed tens of thousands of people.”
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852/attribution-of-extreme-weather-events-in-the-context-of-climate-change
Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change (2016)
Classic non sequitur. It is rather hard to say anything about EEA using references that predate EEA. How can anyone mention EEA without citing some seminal references (National Academies and the IPCC).
I can only conclude that they don’t know what EEA is or what its actual applications are. Like I said they read stuff and as a bonus they regurgitated very old stuff. Almost a fraudulent framework as it were.
“Although various EEA methods
exist, most involve quantifying the extent to which anthropogenic climate change – through
greenhouse gas emissions, aerosols, and land-use changes – has increased or decreased the
likelihood or severity of a given extreme event (Jézéquel et al., 2018)”
So at the very start “and land use changes” is not what I consider to be pure EEA.
> Classic non sequitur.
Alright, Everett. You’re on. What non sequitur?
Willard,
Sorry, I’m rereading the paper a 2nd time. Short answer = timelines of cited references with historical timeline of EEA. And they do explicitly state STS (several times), so my bad to MA, I simply forgot. It is kind of hard to argue about EEA using references that predate EEA.
I’m at the start of part 4, and the count is now three (my normal style is to print it out and mark it up), A or B instead of A and B logic fails. I also detest their use of the word Anthropocene as it isn’t “official” yet, but that is their choice not mine to make.
OH, so my definition of EEA is not how Allen (2003) from Jezequel (2018) defines it …
““Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate?” The approach proposed by Allen (2003) takes its roots in a liability perspective. The idea was to compensate the “negative equity” individuals will face when they are confronted to weather-related events linked to anthropogenic emissions. For example, if their house loses value because climate change increased the likelihood of flood, they could sue the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.”
Well that does include LULC and therein lies a very thorny problem. We dam, we develop, we channel, we plumb, we pipe, we dike, we levee, we breakwater, we jetty, we dredge, we beach fill, we clear cut, we farm, we cut, we fill, we river engineer, we do countless things to the land and no one has done that level of historical land form bookkeeping changes ever.
So that changes everything. There is no baseline condition as the land form is constantly changing due to human activities on the ground, We rarely do a new floodplain analysis often enough that we can keep up with all those new LULC changes Which occur, quite frankly, at frequencies higher then those due to climate change.
And we know where all those court cases end up, for many reasons, not just due to LULC, if at all.
So if one does include LULC, then I am more in agreement with the overall approach of the paper.
A very difficult problem indeed.
> the count is now three (my normal style is to print it out and mark it up), A or B instead of A and B logic fails
Saying you count logic fails does not make it true, Everett. That would be a non sequitur.
I do hope you’re not into a Reviewer 3 exercise, for I think that would be more sub-optimal than raising empty concerns:
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12824
Willard,
I’m now in much better agreement with most of what this paper has to say. Those logic fails are all related to [natural or anthropogenic] and [natural and anthropogenic], the latter is my preferred logical statement. You might also look into the background of the 1st author. That explained quite a lot, to me at least, in ways that I am sure … I would say more, but I do not want to waste anymore of my somewhat limited time.
There are a number of types of extreme event that have NO causal relation with weather, climate of AGW.
Examples would be the Boeing 737max crashes, the Grenfell tower block fire in London, the poison gas explosion in Bohpal India, refinery fires and explosions, train crashes,and various coal mining ‘accidents’ down the years.
There are usually investigations that try to attribute cause, and blame. Often it is some combination of human error and economic expediency.
The ‘CONCERNS’ which are expressed by the STS, pomo authors, for which as WIllard suggest we should offer our thanks, would seem to be that the focus on the role of AGW in changing the probability of extreme events that have a significant impact on life or health, is overriding the consideration of the role of human error and economic expediency in the impact of the weather related extreme events.
Izen,
“The ‘CONCERNS’ which are expressed by the STS, pomo authors, for which as WIllard suggest we should offer our thanks, would seem to be that the focus on the role of AGW in changing the probability of extreme events that have a significant impact on life or health, is overriding the consideration of the role of human error and economic expediency in the impact of the weather related extreme events.”
Excellent. As I said in my comment at June 25, 1.13pm, “…if people were to read ‘The Cure for Catastrophe – How we can stop manufacturing natural disasters’, written by former IPCC Lead Author, Robert Muir-Wood, they might have more sympathy for these STS guys.”
All we need to do now is to understand:
a) That it is in the nature of causality that the modelling of such factors has to be treated as an extension of EEA.
b) That one would not expect the EEA community to do this, although their output is required and their involvement would be helpful.
c) That the modelling should take the form of a structured causal model (SCM).
d) That SCMs are not currently common practice within EEA.
e) That the SCM will be restricted to matters of physical causation. Matters of social justice are for others to consider.
f) That nothing in such modelling will alter the probability of necessity with respect to AGW but it will alter the probability of sufficiency as more and more human factors are included in the causal model.
g) That the motives of the STS guys needn’t concern us. All that should matter to us is that the causal model is complete.
h) To reduce the risks, actions should be considered that have the effect of reducing either the probability of necessity or the probability of sufficiency. The latter, in particular, will address anthropogenic factors supplementary to greenhouse gas emission.
> All we need to do now is to understand:
Perfect, John.
As I said earlier:
So I suppose by “we” you mean yourself?
Please report when you make progress with your framework sell.
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