Seeker Blog

My prescription is for restraint among scientists who publish these studies: slow down and do a better job, include estimates of uncertainty, better emphasize limitations, and honestly describe what good might arise whether AGW is true or whether climate change is natural and expected. I predict, however, like the majority of medicinal regimes directed by doctors, that my patients will not be adherent.

Some people thought Dr. Briggs’ zombie/warming post was a joke — it wasn’t. Here is his explanatory followup post:

…The post was in earnest and was an attempt to put into perspective the hundreds, if not thousands, of “studies” that purport to show the ills that will befall us when global warming finally strikes. There are three problems with these studies.

The first is their ridiculous variety, nowhere better cataloged than at NumberWatch’s “Warm List“. That page contains links, mostly to news reports to studies that ask us to believe that, for example, lizards will undergo sex changes, there will be “waves of rape“, a rash of camel deaths will occur, the Earth will spin faster (hold on!), and, worst and most frightening of all, there will be an increase in lawyers (to handle all the “who’s fault is it?” litigation, you see).

I listed only five of the hundreds on that page, which no doubt represents an undercount of the true number of worrying research reports. New ones appear daily. If you wanted to adopt a cynical attitude, you might think there is an unstated competition among researchers to see who can get the most of these or the most shocking of these things to press.

Can these studies all be true? Yes, it logically is possible, only it is absurd to think so. The probability of each and every one of these calamities coming to pass is as close to zero as you like. But that’s not the real problem. It is that each of these studies is usually taken as further proof, albeit indirect, that significant man-made temperature change (AGW) is true. “Why else, if AGW was not true, would these respectable scientists publish these studies?” people ask themselves. Only, it’s the wrong question.

Each of these studies claim to show a danger that might come to pass given that AGW is true. That is exactly backwards to answering the question of whether AGW is true, however. If instead these studies showed that these maladies already occurred then it might provide some evidence, however weak, to support AGW. But then again, it might also support the theory that the observed climate change is natural and expected. Few or none of these studies show what results to expect given that AGW is false (and climate change natural etc.). To be useful research both scenarios must be analyzed, else we are right to suspect the researcher has been sloppy and perhaps not a little biased toward a specific conclusion.

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