How It All Ends: Risk Management (pt 2 of 7)

[MrMentalflossed]

can clearly see tho why the system breaks down for science in important areas,..

by the time they get an idea through that system to compete against another that has been through the same process that entrenchment of bias is a given.

the failing of this matrix is that by it's operation much more of the possible rights get discarded or not looked at as they get up the ladder, ending up with the best solutions wasted or not explored. the rush to prove kills the best solution many times.

[MrMentalflossed]

@MrMentalflossed add into that the corrution factor of finance and what the outcome fo the research may be then leads to not only a bias but in many cases deception,.. thats not only bad science but dangerous science.

however best system we got atm lol

[MysterousBear]

His voice reminds me of Brad Pitt in Fightclub talking about melting fat...

strangly soothing to me 0_o

[bassackward360]

Was that a 'typo' at the end of this video? The text on screen reads "Continued in ' How It All Ends: Risk Management (pt 2)." AS this is part 2 of 7, I'm going to take a 'flyer' and head to part three.

BTW: Your lectures are deserving of a wider audience than they receive here on YouTube. Give me a shout via the email function. I'd like to introduce you to a couple people in public television (Seattle).

[tarcal87]

how about putting a link to the last 10 seconds of each video that points to the next part, as an "announcment"...? you're lucky if you find the next part in the related videos or you can go copypaste the title to search for the next part yourself

[Kukkii1337]

I wish you were my science teacher and maybe i'd have passed with a decent grade :D, interesting video :)

[FLPman]

wish you'd link your vids together or make playlists!

[KawaitaSakebi1]

One problem with your rule is that peer-review is also, to some degree, self-selecting. If his or her viewpoint is too far from the norm, that scientist is not going to review anything.

Does that get rid of a lot of rubbish?  Of course it does...but it makes it very difficult toshift a paradigm that needs shifting. (Think heliocentric solar system or round earth.)

What am I trying to say? I dunno...something about assumptions that are so deeply held that peer-review isn't going to help.

[cmoleon]

great to see someone doing what he does with some enthusiasm; however he cannot be expected to apply equal criticism, as he's obviously comfortable with government education/indoctrination and political agenda determining the course of action in the end, regardless of scientific reasoning; he is prepared to be wilfully blind and expects same of everyone else, in the face of global power mongers and their pet projects.

[doctorsamadams]

18 minutes and still nothing about global warming and all about which scientific club you should listen to. i used to believe but now im turning atheist.

[8RJ88]

this part is about risk managment not global warming go watc the mechanics of GCC videos

[doctorsamadams]

yes, you are right, it's about risk management, not global warming. nothing in risk management says that you should blindly act on or believe in something that you don't know is true without evaluating the risks first. so why does he spend so much time trying to convince us that risk management supports blind action and belief instead of evaluating the actual risks and likelihood of them?

[8RJ88]

because despite being an intelligent man he's looking at a situation in a completely scientific way because so many people got up in arms about his incredibly simple grid so he decided to take it to the extreme and made a 6 hour long lecture

[doctorsamadams]

Taking it to the extreme is his favorite arguing tactic--but it doesn't always apply in real life. Anything you take to the extreme can be made to seem so terrifying that you have to focus all your efforts on preventing it. Applying ideas to the real world means you actually have to study the world and not just take things to the extreme in an abstract fashion. His whole argument is based on taking it to the extreme, but he doesn't justify why we should except because some scientists say so.

[dbrotman]

Of course it doesn't always apply. Remember that being weighed here is also the preponderance of evidence. If you wish to discard the evidence, you have to present something convincing to the contrary, something you haven't done in any of your posts.

[doctorsamadams]

The problem with climate change is there is not enough evidence to constitute a "preponderance." 100 years of spotty data is nothing compared to stable climate periods of 10s of 1000s of years. Some past ice ages are believed to have lasted 50000+ years--we have 1/500 as much data, at best. Climate science now is the same as medicine in the 1800s--just starting. Every source is as ignorant as the rest so citing big name journals helps little. AGW may be true, but we haven't proved it yet at all.

[dbrotman]

You don't think there is enough evidence? How much more evidence do you need? Is Nasa unreliable? Are all the thousands of measurements of core ice samples, air temperature, water temperature, observed ice melting and other natural phenomenon somehow not good enough? You haven't named even one respected scientific journal that supports any of your claims. And don't come back with the Cato Institute. That is not a scientific journal.

[doctorsamadams]

"How much more evidence do you need?" I need a predictive model that, when fed the existing (unreliable, but all we have) data from 1900 can reproduce (to a reasonable degree of accuracy) the subsequent data that we have for the 109 years that follow. Ice core samples are unreliable, air and water temperature and natural phenomena are all too short term on the scale of climate change. Global warming is not proven by naming scientific journals, you can find some yourself that have skeptics.

[dbrotman]

I find it interesting that you still have not come up with a single unbiased source that supports what you are saying. Not one. The data from 1900 are temperature data. You never mention why Ice core samples that go back 160,000 years are unreliable. Basically what you are doing is attempting to discredit the evidence without holding yourself accountable for your claims.

[gazmaticc]

hmmm.... the 1800's you say? i think the christians(not blasting the christians) actually condemmed surgery and experiments involving human tissue. as a result, thousands of years of resaerch and improvement were lost. they once said dat an atom is unable to be split, the heart is not operable, brain surgery is bad, stem cells are bad and dat u hav to stay wid da diseased organs u were born wid cuz u were made perfect. no blood transfusion no kidney liver etc transplants. wanna do dis wid gcc?

[doctorsamadams]

Also, I don't see any evidence in his videos. There is no discussion about the greenhouse effect or what calculations have been done to create these doomsday scenarios or even what evidence was gathered. All he is saying is that we should believe whatever doomsday scenario is out there based on the credibility of scientific journals. If you want more evidence against AGW, just type "climate change skeptics" on Google.

[dbrotman]

That is just plain false. How many of the videos have you watched? He is telling us quite clearly not to believe him. You are plenty skillful enough to post comments on his videos so it shouldn't be too hard for you to search for scientific journals regarding global warming.

My question to you is if all the scientific journals and organizations are unreliable, what do you consider reliable as a source of unbiased information?

[doctorsamadams]

There are currently no reliable sources of information in the field of climate prediction. When it comes to what the global climate will be like in 50-100 years, your guess is as good as mine... and as good as the National Academy of Sciences'.

[dbrotman]

"There are currently no reliable sources of information in the field of climate prediction."

That's fine. You are welcome to make any claim you want, even one as general as that. However, your posts carry no weight because you have not provided any unbiased source that supports anything you have posted such as the supposed unreliability of ice core samples or the alleged unreliability of climate prediction models. This has nothing to do with guessing. Still waiting...

[sniped101]

im watching it to learn.. what about you?

[doctorsamadams]

i had to watch one of his videos as a class assignment and was stupefied by the lack of substance. so then i wanted to see if the real substance was in these other seven videos and this was as far as i got before i decided it was a waste of time to look for something that is clearly either not here or buried under too many layers of salesmanship.

[sniped101]

well think about that when the changes are irreversible ( or if you have gotten that far already) oh wait... some changes are already irreversible.. now lets hope it doesn't snow in Georgia in may again or.. hail in a northern part of California in march.. not really salesmanship.. more like trying to help out the people of this world...

[spitfireXVIb]

asses: What is the meaning of life.

[darkciti2]

Someone give this man a TV show.

He's a very compelling. I've been watching for a few hours now.  ;)

Perhaps we've found our next Mr. Wizard?

Please keep up the great work!

[112048112048]

you're right! this guy should be on discovery channel or something

[doctorsamadams]

hes a great salesman

[Commentism]

I agree, he's incredibly geeky, but in an intelligent and understandable way.

[nobagav]

Ha... love the cliffhanger. Nice technique.

[FSEffect]

Just nit pickin, but the discussion of credability and bias seems out of place for something on risk management. Seems more suited for Nature of Science. But I guess it does flow better.

[itCameFromEarth]

So because a peer reviewed journal publishes papers with contrary views to your own on climate change then that journal is no longer credible... sounds like selective thinking based on preconceived biases to me.

[wonderingmind42]

Go look up it's impact factor. Then compare that to Nature, Science, and the others I mention.

[itCameFromEarth]

Impact factor is pretty cool; kind of like how Google rates the quality of web pages based on the number of links it finds to those pages in other pages.

well ok i found -

"bioscience(dot)org/services/i­mpact15(dot)htm"

which is a list of the top 1500 journals in order of impact factor and "nature" and "science" are at the top... "energy environment" isn't even on the list, so it seems you are correct; it's articles must not be widely recognized as valid.

Thanks for responding.

[D4N1CU5]

I'd just like to point out that impact factor has nothing to do with the quality of the work contained in the journal. More prestigious journals like science and nature tend to have higher impact articles like, discovery of a new hormone, new hominid species, new kingdom of life etc. Showing that your experiment works in a different cell line to the last paper you published won't get you into science but it is still valid work.

[D4N1CU5]

Impact factor also has a lot to do with the size of the field that the journal is in. For example, Oceanography might be a small field with few journals, so if you publish in an oceanography journal with an impact factor of 1.0 or 2.0 that might still be the most prestigious journal in that field but you wouldn't say that the work is less valid because it wasn't in Science or Nature with their impact factor of 30-40 or whatever

[darkciti2]

I would think it depends on how esteemed the journal is.

If it was a major scientific journal, there is a conflict.

[Aanthanur]

@itCameFromEarth when Greenpeace publishes a paper that is peer reviewed by Greenpeace members, how much is that peer review worth?

[lovelifeforever5]

omg just because ur amican does not mean your dumb im very smart i hate my county for what they are doing but dont think all amicans are dumb i have like a 147 iq score i fell that i am smart.And i hate Bush as much as anyone

[KID433321]

i fell that i am smart? Amicans?

well for one you can't spell =P

[iLikePokemons]

With a 147 iq, you might as well put some of that intelligence toward your spelling. It can help show that you're as smart as you claim you are.

[KID433321]

I m flattered, really, that you wish for me to view your account...but I do not like americans, so no mate...maybe sex?

[Environfreakfourtwo]

omfg you said "the google"

[FormidableFoe1]

I have one question. Did you wear those hats the entire time you were doing this, even during the reserch? If not you should have

[guffpot]

Science is not about journals(like passing a school test). Publication is the start of peer review, not the end.

Doubting E&E destroys the claim that peer review is a mesure of anything. Either peer review works or it doesn't.

Good for E&E if it gives an outlet to sceptical scientific work. Otherwise we should just accept peer review as defender of orthodoxy.

Individuals with an agenda? Quite!

[TempestStormwind]

Have you ever been involved in academia?

Publishing is the *last* step of "peer-review". Nothing gets published by these journals that isn't peer-reviewed.

AFTER it's out there, past peer review, others can read it, and conduct their own research, and reply to it -- and those replies are *also* peer-reviewed.

It isn't perfect (for instance, my first publication was responding to shoddy peer review missing a critical math flaw in one paper), but it's certainly a barrier to bad reasoning.

[guffpot]

Tempest. Firstly - yes!

We agree on the procedure, but differ on the names for the stages. Think about journal quality control (not that hard), followed by acceptance by peers (much harder). You have replied to a paper and that illustrates my point.

The MBH98 Hockey Stick got into Nature and then into IPCC TAR3. It was debunked in a eply by M&M and then Wegman. It was left out of the fourth assessment report. QED?

[TempestStormwind]

1) "journal quality control" is done by peers, and is nowhere near as easy as you make it out to be. That's kind of the point.

2) The hockey stick was hardly debunked. They (rightly) contested it, but it was exonerated all but completely in an NRC review in 2006:

(tinyurl com/2th9yh)

Nor was it left out of the AR4. Drawn from Chapter 9:

(tinyurl com/8op25)

MBH99 is the hockey stick. Note the dozen other studies (with other methods that M&D have no issue with) that come to the same conclusion?

[guffpot]

I never said "easy". Just not the end, or the gold standard, or anything like it. And tends to reinforce orthodoxy.

Maybe best to agree to disagree on the Hockey Stick.

Why not check out climateaudit on the spaghetti graph (really, please do). Look back to 28 December and find out abut truncation of Briffa. Prepared to be shocked. What objective scintific reasoning was going on there?

[TempestStormwind]

Will do.

In exchange, explain to me why, if you throw out all the studies that MacIntyre has his crusade directed against (that is, MBH 98/99, and Briffa, and I think one more), you still get the same conclusion. (The link I provided in my earlier reply -- which includes the hockey stick, straight out of AR4 -- summarizes this.)

You act as if paleoclimate is the key here. It isn't. It's just part of the whole.

I'd love to hear your responses to Myth 0 and Myth 4 here (tinyurl com/2m3hgx).

[guffpot]

I'll take as look at the "myths" and respond later.

I'm concerned that you say McIntyre is on a crusade AGAINST anything. I think he is on a crusade FOR:

Openness/disclosure

Consistency

Valid Methods

Proper use of methods

Thoroughness

STANDARDS

In other words, the kind of we should expect from science. Reasons to make us neglect as whole lot of nonsense that proclaims itself to be "scientifically poven".

[guffpot]

Myth0. I assure you that I do not believe that the HS is the only piece of evidence. (Myth0 is therefore a myth in itself).

Myth4. The HS was unveiled as the "smoking gun" of AR3. Problems with the HS certainly have not helped the cause. So when RC says "undermined", I would say - yes, to some extent it has. It causes doubt and raises the bar for everything else.

[KID433321]

...

[KID433321]

U TALK SHIT CUNT

[guffpot]

Well thank you kid for an interesting and thought provoking contribution.

Clearly you have tested your intellect to the full and I, for one, would like to let you know that I recognise that.

What can we expect from you next ... words of more than one syllable?

[KID433321]

stop trying to sounds intellectual, , u are american lol...that says it all

[guffpot]

KID

Have a look at my account. You will find a little Union Jack flag there. Here's another clue - the words next to it say "United Kingdom".

I guess that means I'm not from America. 

But I'll let you have another go - remember, it's a tough game all this guessin' an' stuff. No foul language now, you ready ...

Where am I from?

[KID433321]

as i said...damn gringos x0)

[KID433321]

maybe some LSD will help define who you are...try it sexy

[KID433321]

guff pot thinksd he is kool because he is from the UK...havent u seen these videos?? the united kingdom will be the FIRST PLACE destryoed...DAMN HOOLIGANS

[asdfhrvfsdu]

ur a good for nothing pothead stfu

[guffpot]

"shoddy peer review". Yep. That makes my point just nicely.

A "barrier to bad reasoning" - who's reasoning? Who reviews the articles submitted to Nature et al? A bunch of "skeptics"? Or the high priests of AGW and defenders of the orthodoxy?

[iandarken]

Look up Milankovitch Cycles (how eccentricity, obliquity, and precession affect solar exposure).

The "hotter" sections of the Milankovitch Cycles have always coincided with increased CO2 atmospheres. CO2 levels on earth do not control our orbit. It's the other way around.

[TempestStormwind]

Actually, CO2 can be both a cause and an effect of increased temp. By your logic, since fire causes heat, heat can't cause fire, so all those Boy Scouts with magnifying lenses are doing it wrong.

The CO2 lag was predicted a decade before it was confirmed in a paper co-authored by Hansen, and the amount of temperature increase is far beyond what the solar forcing from the cycle alone could have done (but not what the sun+CO2 could have done). The increase actually supports the GHG theories.

[vladsilvacce]

"Whose right?" The source that is pointing at the 'uncertain' science and saying, "Look, it's uncertain." We can trust that source. That is Crichton's book "State of Fear". That that uncertainty means that we should NOT waste resources on the claims of gw hysterics -- that is just good sense.

[TempestStormwind]

Except State of Fear is so chock-full of mistakes, misrepresentations, and fabrications that it shouldn't be taken for anything more than it is -- a work of FICTION.

Look into what the climatologists HE INTERVIEWED had to say about it. The only one who doesn't say he misrepresented their research is Lindzen.

(Also note, for instance, that he confuses weather and climate. The well-known "There's your global warming" line refers to a single regional temperature dip!)

[pdptexas]

Um - for some reason this cut out at 3:47, despite showing that it's a 9:51 clip... what happened to the rest of it?

[Killroy1999]

Great vid!

[senoirem]

Nice presentation, couple words of peer-review articles (from my own experience in publishing and reviewing and reading them).

Peer review is the best the science can provide, yet, in practice, it is far from perfect. The quality of the review depends highly on the journal and on the field. One possible measure for reliabilty may be how many times the paper has been cited in other papers. Obviously, it has its own flaws but it is a start.

[senoirem]

You can also rank journals by looking how many times an average article in that particular journal is cited (aka. impact factor).

Having said all that, if you see an article in Nature saying A, and an article in MumboJumbo saing not A, you should probably trust the article in Nature.

[stoli4]

Do you have alot of people around you who LOVE you?

[JimmytheWalrus]

what purpose is there for that question

[stoli4]

Well in one of the part of this series, he states that his motivation was, in its essence, were his children and wife.

I'm just wondering if that was the total of the people who love him, (of which i highly doubt,) he's brilliant and i think that that brilliance comes from a nucleus of love. And that i want to weigh my question logically like he does. So my purpose for asking that question is to illuminate the power of love :D

that's all Jimmy

[JimmytheWalrus]

...o-kay...

[stoli4]

did that answer ur question jimmy??

[duffster17]

Wow. Good job. I know how hard it is to just stand or sit in front of a camera and talk for any amount of time. And I like your arguments.

[RoelGeurtsen]

What price is this ticket going to have,And when we're all betting on the same horse ,with what kind of a profit do we end up!!

[TempestStormwind]

The lottery ticket analogy is pretty poor, actually. In the lottery, if you're the only one that chooses the winning choice, you rake in a huge reward. Here, if only one person chooses to take action, it isn't enough and everyone suffers. Furthermore, "I don't choose" in the lottery results in no gains or losses (because you don't start out engaged). Saying "I don't choose between action and inaction" in climate change is the same as choosing inaction.

[krabstarr]

The text at the end of this video seems incorrect. It currently tells us that this is continued in "How It All Ends: Risk Management (pt 2)" when this video IS part 2. It should point us to part 3 instead

[jthomp3120]

is that the mistake he was refering to in the index video?

[iiopen]

No.

[greendracobob]

Michael Crichton's State of Fear actually got me really thinking about this issue. It definitely leans toward an anti-human-caused climate change, but it more focuses on the politics and media of the change.

In the end, I could care less about the causes and results of the change, but the effect of what we do about it. In the end, taking action seems to lead to a better outcome.