Warm and Fuzzy Miscalculations and Undeniable Science

[warning: pre-coffee snark]

It's been an amazing week for the Bush administration. Twice in one week, more than double any other time in its history, this administration has admitted to not being 100% right. First, Iraq:

Mr. Bush ... acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be'' in postwar Iraq. But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency that has upended the administration's plans for the country was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory'' against Saddam Hussein's military, which fled and then disappeared into the cities, enabling them to mount a rebellion against the American forces far faster than Mr. Bush and his aides had anticipated.

Then, global warming (although the President himself has yet to read up on this one, according the NYT interview cited above):

In a striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change, a new report to Congress focuses on federal research indicating that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades.

In delivering the report to Congress yesterday, an administration official, Dr. James R Mahoney, said it reflected "the best possible scientific information" on climate change. Previously, President Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of warming as a reason for rejecting binding restrictions on heat-trapping gases.

What's next? Maybe they'll admit there's no proof gay marriage is actually a greater threat to the nation than terrorism. Maybe they'll own up to supporting the Swift Boat Vet's smear campaign. Perhaps they'll announce that they've known all along who outed Plame. Or, maybe, we'll hear a confession that they time their terror press conferences for political gain or that they know the nation's super wealthy profited a hell of a lot more from the tax cuts than the rest of did and that was the idea all along.

Of course, all these, despite not actually being news to anyone paying attention, will make the news and serve to make the Bush administration look a little warmer and fuzzier around the edges as they attempt to bamboozle the undecideds about how moderate they are during the convention.

[/snark]

Off to get some clearly much needed java...

Comments

[Slartibartfast]

Off to get some clearly much needed java...

Clearly. Can I buy you a 1-liter beer stein full of espresso?

Off to get mine, now.

[Jadegold]

BTW, one of the 3 papers Tech Central Station claimed settled the science in favor of global warming skeptics has been found to have a few problems.

[wilfred]

As I've had enough coffee already (decaf italian roast for the curious), can i please have more wonderful posts like this to start my day?

[Edward]

Excellent link Jadegold! Thanks.

[Edward]

can i please have more wonderful posts like this to start my day?

I suspect the coming week will offer plenty of opportunities for dyed-in-the-wool lefties like ourselves to find reasons to roar, wilfred.

[hilzoy]

My favorite bit from the article Edward linked to:

"Mr. Bush also took issue with Mr. Kerry's argument, in an interview at the end of May with The New York Times, that the Bush administration's focus on Iraq had given North Korea the opportunity to significantly expand its nuclear capability. Showing none of the alarm about the North's growing arsenal that he once voiced regularly about Iraq, he opened his palms and shrugged when an interviewer noted that new intelligence reports indicate that the North may now have the fuel to produce six or eight nuclear weapons."

[Edward]

hilzoy,

Does that mean they're no longer part of the axis of evil?

[Slartibartfast]

Great! It's about time substantive criticisms were made of McKitrick, instead of attacking the man himself, his motivations, and his intelligence.

The degrees/radians bit is quite a flub. I can't say I haven't made the same sort of error myself, but then again I haven't done so in publishing what's supposed to be a landmark expose of someone else's work, either. If you're really interested in some of the other flaws in McKitrick's work, follow the links he has posted at the bottom.

I once thought McKitrick had some questions that needed to be answered, but now I see that the questions are rooted in sheer incompetence. It's one thing to point out that someone's analysis can't be reproduced; it's quite another to fail to reproduce it because you got the units wrong.

[Edward]

Thanks for the background info on McKitrick Slarti.

Do you, however, believe there was a political agenda behind his incompetence, or, more importantly, those celebrating his erroneous findings?

[praktike]

Aha!

Slarti comes around ... brings back memories of all those times he was wrong and I was right.

But I won't gloat.

I promise.

[Slartibartfast]

Aha!

Slarti comes around ... brings back memories of all those times he was wrong and I was right.

But I won't gloat.

I promise.

Thanks for not gloating. In my defense, you never actually gave a compelling reason why you were right, so it had the argumentative force of a coin flip. Also, I don't believe I'd ever taken McKitrick's side, but had pointed out that his points had never been technically dealt with, and that there was a substantial disconnect between the data cited in Mann's paper and the data actually used for analysis. This may be an innocent oversight, but I found it odd that Mann hadn't ever acknowledged his paper to be in error, in his correspondence with McKitrick.

Do you, however, believe there was a political agenda behind his incompetence, or, more importantly, those celebrating his erroneous findings?

Interesting question. As I've made clear on several occasions (including this one), I've got much more regard for substantive arguments than arguments that deal with motivation. One can have what you might consider to be improper motivations, and still be right. McKitrick is either wrong with no political agenda, or wrong with a political agenda. For me, the compelling common ground between these two possibilities is that he's wrong.

[Bogbudsman]

I'm with the President. 'Likely' and 'unlikely' don't appear to be scientific findings. Sounds like more bureaucratic paper pushing. It happens all the time.

[Jadegold]

Notwithstanding McKitrick's fundamental math errors, it is wholly fair to examine his motivations and political agenda. It's impossible to pretend someone who has quite often hosed up the math, derived findings not supported by his evidence, and played very fast and loose with the data (one example: assigning a value of zero to missing data points), yet has the audacity to declare the science is settled in his favor, doesn't have an agenda.

[rilkefan]

"Great! It's about time substantive criticisms were made of McKitrick, instead of attacking the man himself, his motivations, and his intelligence."

Awful problems were found (by Lambert and others) in the paper soon after it came out. Of course the quite unusual venue chosen to publish the work (which if valid would have been of great interest to the field) and the failure to allow review by the original authors was suspicious.

[Slartibartfast]

It's impossible to pretend someone who has quite often hosed up the math, derived findings not supported by his evidence, and played very fast and loose with the data (one example: assigning a value of zero to missing data points), yet has the audacity to declare the science is settled in his favor, doesn't have an agenda.

On the other hand, it's quite possible that he's, as has been amply pointed out, simply a bungling incompetent. Must one have an agenda to be a bungling incompetent? Does having an agenda in any way change that he's a bungling incompetent?

[von]

Ooops, Ed, I missed your post (when I posted my on Global warming myself). Sorry; it's been appropriately updated.

[Edward]

Not at all von...mine was more a partisan rant than indepth look at the issue.

I had wanted to write something about this yesterday, bringing up the need to rethink the laughable "Climate Leaders" alternative, but why correct your opponent when they're doing that themselve?

[praktike]

In my defense, you never actually gave a compelling reason why you were right, so it had the argumentative force of a coin flip.

Well, I suppose I didn't delve into the math and all that, so that's fair as far as it goes.

However, there are proxy indicators we can use here, such as the fact that Mann's work was peer-reviewed to death and formed the backbone of the world's largest collaborative scientific effort whereas M&M's paper was published in a journal of ill repute.

[sidereal]

"I'm with the President. 'Likely' and 'unlikely' don't appear to be scientific findings."

Confidence intervals, hypothesis test power, and certainty (which are fancy ways of saying 'likely') are fundamental to scientific findings. While I can live with your being wrong about this, I'd rather the president was a little more up to speed.

[rilkefan]

The NYT notes,

The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."

[praktike]

actually, rilkefan, the transcript is far more damning:
---------------------------------------
Ms. Bumiller: Mr. President, why did your administration change its position on what causes global warming?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think we did.

Ms. Bumiller: According to --

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so, Elisabeth.

Ms. Bumiller: You said that it's almost certainly carbon monoxide -- which you hadn't said in the past, carbon dioxide.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that was my position during the campaign, if I'm not mistaken.

Ms. Bumiller: It changed --

MR. McCLELLAN: You're talking about the National Academy of Science report?

Ms. Bumiller: Yes, yes.

MR. McCLELLAN: We've always talked about how that would - we'd be guided by their science on the issue, and that's why the President has done a lot in terms of climate change, advancing the science of climate change, and also doing more research --

THE PRESIDENT: Let me get back with you on that, because I think you might -- I don't know why you said what you just said.

Ms. Bumiller: Well, we had a story in the paper this morning saying that you issued a report saying --

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, okay, well, that's got to be true.

[rilkefan]

praktike, that's comic, not damning. Give the guy a break. It's a tough job being president, and he doesn't care any more about global warming than I do about who won the Indy 500 this year.

[CJM]

rilkeman, this:

he doesn't care any more about global warming than I do about who won the Indy 500 this year

should probably be manifestly obvious by now. But given that the overwhelming evidence points towards the fact that global warming is real, the result of human activity, and a serious danger to human life and civilization - far more so than, say, gay marriage - it should be the president's job to care about it.

It should also be the president's job, incidentally, to give more thought to North Korean nukes than just a half-hearted shrug. But this president has never devoted much thought or caring to protecting America beyond the brainpower necessary to strike a brow-furrowed pose.