Saturday, December 26, 2009

Drama - US without advice by experts

Nation's Experts Give Up: 'From Now On, You're On Your Own,' Say Experts. Klimazwiebel may fill the gap.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah,...per chance to dream! This is the first time in human history when mankind 1) can communicate with anyone anywhere on the globe at the touch of a button and 2) has a large professional class of scientists steeped in the latest concepts of mathematics, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics. As with any advancement in society, we will eventually benefit from this new development but it is too new for us to have learned yet of its inevitable limits. Despite the fact that mankind survived for more than 10,000 years without Newtonian physics, domesticating the horse, creating economies with great cities, and constructing buildings that have lasted for thousands of years, some in our new class of experts seem to believe that the world will end if it does not follow their advice. I am sure that situation is not new in the last 10,000 years.

Anonymous said...

It seems to me these experts from the National Association of Experts are not as smart as they may think. For instance, remember the lots of advices from expert John Holdren during the last decades. Holdren must be a hell of an expert, to be in the position he is now. But his advices, so far, well ...

If you are an expert, and you are talking about expertise, you could show some statistics of former expert advices, and their results. And some classifying too. As small and "reasonable" predictions, predictions of the end of the world, and so on. But they don't. And as they don't, I guess people is doing it intuitively. Not so difficult to understand.

Not the best time to trust experts, I would say. Where not experts those who where talking about the miracles of some financial products, now called toxic investments? Where they not relaying in prodigius mathematical models too?

Anonymous said...

73% of experts should be trusted. And now that you've read that, this has been peer-reviewed.

Anonymous said...

Huh, according to the timestamp, this is a more 10 year old factoid? What gives?

Hans von Storch said...

See, the experts are out, and very quickly first problems show up, for instance people forgetting which time they are in and using wrong time stamps.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said:
73% of experts should be trusted. And now that you've read that, this has been peer-reviewed.

Not quite. As exposed by files in FOI2009.zip, best climate science peer review is as follows:

Sentance 1 is eminently well written and draws on a widely used canon of expert scientific, beauracratic and journalistic statistical practice.
Sentance 2 is incorrect up until the point this comment is posted. Thereafter that is similarly accurate also.
I reccommend publication without delay.

TCO said...

I wasn't sure where to post this, but I would love to have some discussion of the purpose and aims of this blog.

I don't expect you all to have it all figured out. And of course it may change with time. But if you could jot a paragraph or two in a head post and then allow discussion, it would be good.

1. Do you see this as a third world (as compared to RC and CA)?

2. What do you like/dislike about RC and or CA and how does this affect what you will do here. I mean not only the honest broker aspect, although it is important and should be included, but also things like group blog versus solo, how you respond to comments, etc.

3. What do you think of Huybers? (By this I mean, probably how much is he aligned with the team, how much his own man, do you respect him say as one would a natural scientist?)

TCO said...

Also, would not underestimate the effect that having a blog can have on the general discussion. You now will have a greater ability to share opeds that reflect your (I think) more honest and fair POV as opposed to the Manners or McIers. I hope it does not become too much a time suck or distract too much from getting actual real research done (hypotheses tested, papers written, etc.)

Hans von Storch said...

7/TCO - following our concept of an "honest broker", we could initiate a discussion about the relative merits of CA and RC. However, the blog "Klimazwiebel" itself will not have a specific position on RC, CA or any other participant in the discussion - which does not prevent the individuals of having one :-)

For initiating such a discussion, we could have a guest article (from you?) with some theses - and then a discussion here on the Zwiebel plus a vote on doodle.com (an easy-to-use internet survey tool), which you (or somebody else) would have to prepare.

Questioning about specific people - as your question No. 3 suggests - we should not have included.

The guest article should be written in neutral terms. It should try to sketch respectful the different positions of the addressed blogs.

What do you think?

TCO said...

Sounds good. I don't like the part about me doing work, though.

And I like that you don't let lickspittle "sidedness" prevent you from insights (the honest broker), but we should also not be hesitant or ginger in looking for insights just to maintain a tone, either. It is a balancing act. But one that can be done. If you're smart. And honest.

And I am genuinely curious in what you think of RC and CA and of having your own blog.

@ReinerGrundmann said...

@ TCO -7

Most existing climate blogs push a narrow agenda. What unites the Zwiebel bloggers is the wish to defend a middle ground and to allow open discussion.

Honest brokering cannot be done by single individuals. This would require heroic qualities. We need groups and institutions to do this. I see this blog a small step to initiate such a re-thinking of the role of advisory bodies and to gain experience. Maybe this can provide useful lessons for the time ahead.