Also, in yesterday’s Fin, Geoffrey Barker accused Abbott of going for the bogan vote (paywalled), where bogan is taken to mean ignorant. Leaving aside the class/cultural analysis implicit in the term “bogan”, which I think is wrong, the argument is the same as I made in my post on agnotology, as his characterization of Rudd as a technocrat, not really at ease with the kind of politics that includes demands for authenticity and so on. Coming back to “bogan”, the big issue in agnotology is not ignorance in the ordinary sense of the term (people who don’t know much about political issues, and don’t care to learn – that is certainly part of the stereotypical bogan image, and may perhaps be descriptive of the actual demographic groups commonly associated with the term, though I don’t know of any evidence of this).
The ignorance associated with climate change delusionism and other rightwing factoids is metacognitive and has much more to do with the Dunning-Kruger effect of overestimating one’s own competence. The classic example is the kind of person who eagerly circulates reports that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995. The only information content in such a report is that the person doing the reporting doesn’t understand the concept of statistical significance[1], and therefore is incapable of assessing any issue involving statistical analysis, of which climate change is a prime example.
The stereotypical candidate, in relation to climate change, is that of a 50+ male[2] with a business background in engineering or some similar field where practical judgement is accorded more value than theoretical expertise, and where a willingness to push on regardless is an important element of success. Journalists and opinion columnists[3], accustomed to “mastering a brief” at short notice are also highly susceptible – lawyers who may actually have to master briefs involving technical issues seem mostly to recognise that this is the kind of problem where expert judgement is required, as does the more sensible kind of economist[4]
fn1. Note for pedants. A Bayesian statistician would say that confusion over the concept of significance reflects the logical problems of the concept and the underlying classical theory of statistics. But that only makes sloppy misuse of the concept even worse. I’ll have more to say on this soon, I hope.
fn2. A demographic group to which I belong
fn3. This one, too.
fn4. This one, too, I hope.
John Quiggin 
something i wondered john is if there is a questionnaire you could hit people with,
for example,
if a person said to me “i dont believe in the value of professional graphic design, and i wanted to know whether they knew anything about the topic, i could ask
– what programme do you use,
– if you were producing something for print, what colour scheme would you use,
– are pixels or vectors better for large scale printing
– what bleed would you set and why would use registration or crop marks
– how do you deal with over-print
– would use rich-black for text
etc, etc, etc
i know nothing about statistics except that clever people say they lie,
what questions could you put to people to ascertain immediately if a person knew anything about statistics and was therefore in any qualified to make judgements
Definitely you belong to fn(4). You dont need us to tell you this.
I fail to understand why those on the left have to resort to labelling climate change deniars as ignorant. Climate change deniars are those that are willing to ask questions, research and form their own opionions on the matter. Clearly those that are aware and informed about the matter cannot be labelled ignorant. This is in stark contrast to those on the left who accept the highly questionable science because it conforms nicely with their progressive, big goverment ideology. If anything it is those on the left that are ignorant.
Heh! Dunning-Kruger strikes again.
@E.M.H
Well EMH…on a stack of numbers alone…when you pit thousands and tens of thousands of reearchers over many years against the pit of a well funded vocal noisy denialist minority then I guess Ill take the majority consensus…if the market the advancement of mankind is a product of our collective intelligence…then you are losing very badly and are a supporter of ignorance.
@E.M.H
It’s either that or deluded or lying. Certainly, if we take you at face value, that you are ignorant is the least unflattering inference.
Projection. This is your methodlogy with a different cultural perspective. You persuade yourselves that this is the outcome and then take your position on the science from that.
You don’t “form your own opinions” but borrow them from others barfely better informed than yourselves.
Alert Alert…it appears at last that people have voted on which economists are to blame for the GFC..
It appears there are more than two kinds of ignorance but they all came from one kind of school…
Oh the link…http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/greenspan-friedman-and-summers-win-dynamite-prize-in-economics/#comment-757
Im not swamping JQ. The link didnt work
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/02/25/two-kinds-of-ignorance/comment-page-1/#comment-256306
@Alice
Well Alice I guess your are, by definition, ignorant. By accepting the supposed majority consensus at face value without actually informing yourself of the facts, is of course ignorance.
EMH…if you dont mind Ill take the majority view on that…yet Id rather get my link working…on other majority consensus
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/greenspan-friedman-and-summers-win-dynamite-prize-in-economics/#comment-757
Must, coming from the “agnotology” thread, refer to tonight’s 7 30 Report on the sackings resulting from the abrupt cessation of the Insulation program.
The first thing I read coming here, is Prof. Quiggin’explanation of the Dunning Kruger effect; “over estimating one’s own competence” and find meself unable not to extend his thesis to the current state of play as described by Heather Ewart, concerning the aborted Insulation program.
Particularly after the subsequent interview with Rudd.
As to other point, re Abbott going after the bogan vote, of course he must go after the boganist/ Hansonist vote in the maginals, because Rudd has these just now. Not least because of his obvious embrace OF boganism; the corpuscular clinch of its essential plank; anti intellectualism, science and logic, that so appeals to these folk.
@Fran Barlow
Fran I enjoy how you swiftly jumped to the conclusion that I am either deluded or lying because I question the climate change orthodoxy. I would, however, expect nothing more from someone who is evidently uninformed and who simply hides behind thinly veiled insults.
Pr Q said:
I think that climate skeptics follow Mark Twain’s version of the twin ignorance theory:
But the GOP was led by Lincoln during Twain’s time. The degeneration to Bush might account for the change of hearts and minds.
EMH, since you appear to be one of the subjects of our agnatological inquiry, I’d be interested in your response to the claim about “No significant trend in temperatures since 1995”. If you can’t see why it’s silly, we have our answer.
If you can see why it’s silly, can you point to instances where you’ve set your fellow sceptics straight on their error? Again, if not, we have our answer.
If you have attempted to point out to fellow sceptics what’s wrong with their meme du jour, I’ll (a) be the first to withdraw any suggestion that you are deluded or lying (b) be fascinated to see how you went with them.
I find the demographic profiles particularly interesting. I should point out that I also know many people who fit into those categories who do except current climate science so they don’t go deep enough. It’s also quite a big step from not excepting the science to spending lonely nights posting the same old discredited memes on blog sites or swamping online newspaper comment threads. The overwhelming majority seem to be angry men who are authoritarian in their attitudes and prone to abusing people. They don’t display much curiosity about why so many people except the science and intensely dislike being analysed and catergorised as you have been doing on your site. Why should they care to spend their time like this if they have solid science to back up their theories? I suspect that they find AGW to be some kind of attack on their identities.
“the person doing the reporting doesn’t understand the concept of statistical significance” otherwise he would realise that the indicated increased temperature trend represent a Type 1 error.
“…otherwise he would realise that the indicated increased temperature trend represent a Type 1 error”
Tony G conveniently provides a demonstration of John’s point.
Type 1 error is relevant, but not in the way you suggest, Tony. The absence of a statistically significant trend (at a significance level of 5 per cent) means that if the null hypothesis true, there is at least a 5 per cent chance of a Type 1 error. the year 1995 has been chosen in the construction of the meme because it gives the longest period when this is true, so the chance of a Type 1 error is very close to 5 per cent, which in turn is a lot closer to zero than to one.
So, the delusionist who quotes this claim is saying (roughly), “some say we ought to act now to protect ourselves from disastrous climate change. But (at least if we ignore the data on the warming trend before 1995), there’s still a 5 per cent possibility that we might just be observing chance variation” which doesn’t sound like good ideas.
This is, of course, pretty much exactly what the IPCC says when it concludes that is “very likely that observed warming is caused by human activity” with very likely glossed as “more than 90 per cent.” (There’s also the possibility of a warming trend caused by some other factor, such as cosmic rays – as with chance variation, unlikely but not impossible).
To repeat, anyone who uses this line as suggesting there’s a problem with AGW theory is demonstrating that they don’t understand first year stats.
Linkspam deleted – please don’t post just to promote your site – JQ
In a statistical test, the null hypothesis (H0) is considered valid until enough data proves it to be wrong. When this occurs H0 is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (HA) is considered to be proven as correct. (i.e warming is PRESUMED to be occurring in the absence of other data)
But, if data does not give us enough proof to reject H0, this does not automatically prove that H0 is correct. If, for example, Professor Jones wishes to demonstrate that the atmosphere is warming, he then conducts a test with a small sample, say 15 years, 50 years or 150 years in relation to a reasonable time frame say 2000 years (manipulating the shorter term data to supposedly filter out heat islands and station changes etc) , he then uses a comparison to a proxy temperature reconstruction of the last 2000 years, because he doesn’t have accurate data for that longer timeframe. The best proxy records contain far fewer observations than the worst periods of the observational record.
Therefore it is likely – even when there is no warming – that our test will not reject H0. If H0 is accepted it does not automatically follow that warming is proved. This is because of the small sample size, the test is having a too small of power to be able to reject H0 and therefore the test is useless and the value of the “proof” of H0 is also null.
This does not prove warming, but only that there is not proof enough to disprove warming. In other words, “absence of evidence” does not imply “evidence of ‘normal’ absence”
@Tony G
JQ has identified that many delusionists seem to have difficulties with statistical concepts. They also seem to have problems with logic. With the one sided test (in this case) if the null hypothesis of no warming is rejected that provides evidence for the alternative hypothesis of warming. The basis of climate scientists claims are not, however, founded on any simple (and somewhat ignorant) statistical analysis of the data.
Their claims are based on their understanding of physics and chemistry and of the processes of climate. These have allowed them to construct models which replicate the historical record and which show the difference between what is happening and what would have happened without anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
As for the statistical test, what it does show (if various assumptions hold and if the null is rejected) is that the pattern of temperatures was quite unlikely to have been produced if there was no warming during the period.
It is always interesting to observe how desperate people cling on to what they want to believe long past the point at which they ought to have conceded, and the muddles they get themselves in in that process.
Tony, you’re almost there, and it will be interesting to see if you can make it all the way. As you say, the data for the 15 years or so since 1995 is not enough to reject the null hypothesis of random variation[1]. But of course we have 40 years of data showing a rising trend (and a good explanation for trends earlier in the 20th century). So, armed with an understanding of statistical significance you can now draw the following conclusions
(i) We can reject the null hypothesis that the observed warming trend since 1970 has arisen by chance
(ii) We can’t reject the hypothesis of a stable positive trend of about 0.15 degrees per decade since 1970.
If you have understood these points, we will actually have achieved something here.
fn1. That’s why, in the first IPCC report in about 1990, they did not reject this null, and argued only that we should be getting ready in case the trend was confirmed by more data, as of course it was.
Tony G, as JQ indicates in (i), you have your hypotheses around the wrong way. The null is to be the more epistemologically modest of two competing hypotheses. That is, the burden of proof is on the scientists to demonstrate that warming has occurred rather than the skeptics to show it is not. So a lack of evidence helps, rather than hinders your argument. Take the data JQ suggests and regress it against a time trend and you will be able to reject the null that the parameter equals zero (i.e. no warming/cooling) at standard levels of significance.
If scientists were mixing their hypotheses around in the manner you are claiming you would be right to be dubious of the results. I have read a number of papers on the issue and have never seen a schoolboy error like this though.
I am sorry. I am new to this blog and I am from old parts of Europe. I have followed JQ for quite a while now. I agree with you, but my perception from here is slightly different. There are at least two types that you mention but that are stronger than you seem to think. First, sorry but in my experience economists (I am an economist) are probably the worst, both in agnotism and in Dunning-kruger effect. Put it in another way: it seems to me that “the more sensible kind of economist” is basically a tiny minority. Am I correct? Second, here, outside the commonwealth, there is also decent number of left-wingers that, if not delusionist (and some are), are, let’s say, at least strongly skeptical (and certainly not in an informed way).
The link to the Dunning-Kruger effect made interesting reading. Another demographic which seems particularly prone to Dunning-Kruger effect are ALP Right student politicians at Griffith University in the period 1991-2006. This may not seem like a terribly important demographic until you realise that the older ones among them are now moving into positions of considerable power and responsibility in the Queensland government, Labor Party and labour movement.
sim #25, you make a good point about certain kinds of leftists who are delusionist or sceptical on climate change. In Australia they tend to fall into two main categories:
* “Old Labor” people in the more conservative unions and the Labor Party who take a narrowly economic view of workers’ interests and have a dislike of environmentalists and other new social movement activists which is affective rather than intellectual – indeed, is anti-intellectual. The current Resources Minister Martin Ferguson is an example of this type.
* Orthodox Marxists who dogmatically reject the concept of ecological or biophysical limits to the scale of human economic activity, who are uncritical optimists about technology, and who, through a very crude form of “class analysis”, have come to regard the environmental movement as a “bourgeois” or “petit-bourgeois” movement. The Strange Times website is an example of this type.
The types of leftists who are most inclined to accept the reality of AGW and support environmentalism are:
* The Greens (obviously).
* Modernising social democrats in the Labor Party.
* People who were old enough to have been in the milieu of the strongly Eurocommunist Communist Party of Australia prior to its dissolution in 1991, who were influenced by its openness to new social movement politics, and who have carried this into their subsequent political commitments (mainly in the Labor Party and the Greens).
* On the far left, less dogmatic Marxists who have attempted to incorporate ecological concern into their critique of capitalism, and libertarian socialists and anarchists.
@Paul Norton
Where do the La Rouchites and the LM Trotskyists (spiked online) regularly aired on counterpoint fit into this? Have you heard Austin William’s strange take on AGW and the selfishness of solar panels? There are some strange forces out in the extremes.
What seems to be in common in all these groups is the dogmatic rejection of
In fact mainstream economics also seems to be built on this moronic falshood.
Michael #28. I’d fit the LM Trotskyists and their associates such as Martin Durkin into the second of my two left-delusionist categories. The La Rouchites are generally on the right but some of them in Australia have formed a thing called the “Chifley Labor Party”.
Michael #29, the classical economists of the 18th and 19th centuries (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill) all wrestled with the problem of limits to growth and came up with scenarios for the human future ranging from extreme pessimism (Malthus) to optimism (John Stuart Mill’s expectation that at a certain stage of economic development human society would cease to grow in material scale and reach a “stationary state” where the emphasis would be on qualitative human, social and cultural development. Neoclassical economics proceeded to overlook this issue in favour of concentrating on marginal analysis.
Neoclassical economics doesn’t entail uncritical optimism about technology. Most C20 growth models incorporated continuous technological progress because that was, broadly speaking, the C20 experience. But the literature on sustainability, starting from the 1970s, uses the same basic model with more pessimistic assumptions about the substitutability of produced for natural capital.
Michael, by mainstream economics do you mean the ecoonmics whose textbooks all begin by defining it as the science of scarcity?
On your other point, I think Paul’s ‘old Labor’ and ‘Orthodox Marxist’ positions are essentially the same, and that Spiked and Michael Durkin subscribe to it too. Michael Costa is another good example. The idea, immortalised in Orwell’s crack about vegetarians and sandal werarers, is that environmentalism is just an update of nineteenth century romanticism — a foolish fantasy at best and a middle class cause at worst.
one thing I would like challenged (from a philosophical standpoint) is the view that acceptance of climate change science is an ideological choice. There are plenty of moderate right-wing sorts out there, that vote for the Liberal party, that accept climate change as a fact. Just because you read the Australian doesn’t make you a gullible fool (though it helps).
@Paul Norton
@jquiggin
Thanks for your replies. I’m not an economist or historian, just an interested reader, so excuse my ignorance. I accept what you have said, but there doesn’t appear to be much policy making that is informed by a careful analysis of the limits of the ecological services that are being run down or degraded. It seems that whenever a range of scenarios are presented by researches on the ground the most optimistic ones get acted on if at all in policy (see commercial fishing).
Maybe the blame is more fairly placed at politicians feet than economists. I’m optimistic about technology creating solutions to many of the problems associated with AGW mitigation and adaptation, but I’m not optimistic about them being used to achieve the mitigation. Technology has improved fuel efficiency since the 70’s but not fuel consumption per km or overall growth in car trips.
@James Farrell
The science of scarcity seems to be mostly applied to pricing and distributing scarce resources not managing the ongoing renewable supply of them or understanding their cultural importance (traditional land owners). I’m also referring to the practise of acknowledging in theoretical terms that externalities exist and then not bothering to actually define them in reality and do the hard yards of solving them fairly. Nick Stern and Ross Garnaut being notable exceptions on AGW. There are many others to, but in practise their advice isn’t being put into practise so in my opinion neither are really mainstream.
@wilful
That’s true. Where the ideology comes in is at election time. Ultimately you have to decide how you are going to apply your acceptance of the science. To vote for a party that is in practise rejecting the science and continuing to promote a high carbon economy is ultimately placing ideology ahead of science.
This unfortunately might include labor and the coalition.
JQ @ #23,
I appreciate your discussion of the finer points of accepting or rejecting the ‘Null Hypothesis’, but I’m just sitting here thinking to myself: So, if an expert fireman came and inspected my house and told me that his best judgement, based on years of evidence, is that there’s a 92% chance that my house will burn down, then I’m fully justified in not rejecting the H0 that “there’s an insignificant chance that my house will burn down”. And I should wait until the fireman can tell me that it’s now a 95% chance before I do anything about it.
I also think that a tad too much fuss is made about Dunning-Kruger. The work of Carol Tavris re Dissonance Theory is also highly relevant, as is the idea of ‘belief complexes’ which has been discussed, albeit not explicitly by that title, in the preceding interchanges.
So, as I see it, it is forces such as Dissonance Theory and ‘belief complexes’ that establish people’s ‘beliefs’ about particular things (eg AGW), and then it is in the stage of ‘post belief rationalisation/defence’ that Dunning-Kruger has its day. But it all comes down to the fact that the ‘normal’ human process of acquiring beliefs (yes, even for me and thee) is largely epistemologically vacant, and that leads to ‘complexes of belief’ that are, to all intents and purposes, ‘evidence immune’ – largely because no real evidence went into the acquiring of the ‘belief’ in the first place.
Lastly, no response so far from E.M.H. which, though not unexpected, is sad, because I was really looking forward to his attempted ‘post belief rationalisation’.
Grim, your first paragraph hits on a very important point which I made in a different form in a letter to The Australian which went unpublished there, but which I reproduce in this comment:
“Despite my disagreement with much of Don Benjamin’s letter on climate change, I agree with him that it makes better sense to approach the debate in terms of different estimates of the probabilities of anthropogenic global warming and associated climate changes, rather than dogmatically insisting that AGW is either certainly happening or certainly not happening.
“That said, what happens if we assume, for the sake of the argument, that Don’s hypotheticals are all correct and that the probability of AGW is 30 per cent rather than 90 per cent? This would mean AGW still being much more probable than many risks which individuals, companies and governments go to a lot of expense and effort to insure ourselves against.
“Most people are discouraged from commuting by bicycle by a probability of an accident which is very much less than 30 per cent. Those, like me, who are not so discouraged nonetheless don’t begrudge the expense of a helmet as insurance against this contingency. People swimming at unpatrolled beaches have much less than a 30 per cent risk of drowning, yet authorities go to some lengths and expense to preach the ‘swim between the flags’ message. The likelihood of Australia being invaded by a foreign power this century is probably less than 30 per cent, yet we spend and will go on spending more on defence than on any conceivable climate change mitigation policy.
“I think we should be prepared to pay the insurance premium for the planet and the future generations.”
Norton’s presentation is typical waffle.
Why should those who scientifically understand that global warming is definitely happening put up with Norton’s imputation that they are implicated in some “dogmatically insisting”.
He needs to decide; what his knowledge and interpretation of the evidence is, and not play the “I’m too pure to be sullied” game of perpetual fence sitting.
These drifters are just a waste of space.
More nonsense. It is just such simple stock-in-trade I reckon it was drafted by a Turing Device. Anyway here is the superior Turing reply.
I fail to understand why those climate deniers have to resort to labeling climate scientists as conspirators. Climate scientists are those that are willing to ask questions, research and form their own opinions on the evidence. Clearly those that are aware and informed about the evidence cannot be labeled ignorant. This is in stark contrast to those denying climate change who accept highly questionable skepticism because it conforms nicely with their economic, neutered government ideology. As we have seen it is the deniers who are ignorant.
Norton @27 thus;
“…old enough to have been in the milieu of the strongly Eurocommunist Communist Party of Australia prior to its dissolution in 1991, who were influenced by its openness to new social movement politics, etc.”
Most of these are now regarded as dim-witted Aaronite fools who promised the world but delivered nothing.
As with Tony G and sXh on the other thread, EMH seems to have gone quiet when asked to endorse or reject the delusionist meme of the day.
Chris W, please tone it down
John,
You might be interested in the links in the following post in the Climate-L mailing list on behalf of Clive Hamilton. Some of the comments on these pieces give a sobering indication of just how entrenched the denialist position is becoming in Australia.
“Dear Climate-L readers,
Below is a link to a series of articles I have written on the impact of climate skeptics on Australian policy.
The first, published on Monday, exposes the campaign of cyber-bullying directed at leading scientists. The second and subsequent articles consider who is behind the spread of denial, how it has become linked to right-wing populism, where the “information” comes from, how public perceptions are diverging from scientific facts, and what the effects are on politics and public debate.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2826189.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2827047.htm“
Chris W,
Though you and I, and many, many others, may be in agreement that the evidence is in and that at least the ‘core science’ is well and truly settled, I still think I’d prefer to deal with any number of Paul Nortons than even a single Viscount Monckton or Ian Plimer. At least we might get somewhere with AGW amelioration. But yes, it does grate to have very good science denoted as mere “dogmatic insistence”.
Paul N,
In my former career, which involved quite sizable and costly IT projects, my employer insisted that, as standard practice, all projects maintain a ‘risk register’ that contained a list of all of the things we could think of that might negatively affect the project. For each risk we had to do our best to compute two quantities: probability of occurrence, and impact (generally based on cost of fixing but including the possibility of significant delay which may not be able to be recovered – like myki 🙂 – etc). The ‘risk factor’ was then calculated as ‘probability of occurrence’ x impact.
Clearly, even a low probability event but of very high impact was a serious risk requiring amelioration strategies to be devised and contingency plans to be generated. Mostly, the risks never actualised because we did execute our amelioration strategies, but I think the ‘probability’ of AGW is very high and the impact enormous.
I have occasionally wondered what a ‘risk register’ for Project Homo Sapiens on Planet Terra might look like. I think AGW would be well and truly way out in front in terms of both ‘probability of occurrence’ and of ‘impact’.
@sim
Sim – in answer to your question – you are correct but it was ever thus.
“business background in engineering or some similar field where practical judgement is accorded more value than theoretical expertise,”
As an engineer I would like to point out, yes we get our jollies by turning dreams in reality and yes we are allowed to use any trick in the book, including I might add theoretical expertise in our chosen field. Generally that includes a solid understanding of what statistical significance means, and the consequences of outliers, and I might add, how to fudge the figures to ran any dam argument we please.
My own view is the weather is a complex non linear system, and that if you push such a systems out of it’s chaotic but stable state you really don’t know what is going to happen ( like economics really). Currently we are pushing the system.
If you look at the historical data, when the system we are discussing has been pushed with increased CO2 levels, the planet first seems to heat and then it plummets into an ice age, and the plummet seems to happen very quickly. I’ve seem very little discussion at to why.
Further the historic data leads me to believe your better talking about climate change, global warming could be very short lived.
So what if anything do you think should be done?