To Conservatives Who Thought Nate Silver Was An Idiot

Regarding the reliability of climate modeling, maybe you’re right, despite your lack of expertise, and despite the fact that the last time you made a testable prediction about statistical modeling, you revealed yourself to be a great deal less accurate than the much-despised Nate Silver.

Maybe the 98% or so of actual climate scientists who agree about human-caused global warming are engaged in some sort of massive conspiracy to deceive the public so that they can get some government grants, as some conservatives have claimed. Or maybe the overwhelming scientific consensus is simply mistaken. It’s possible.

But it’s also possible – and, frankly, seems much more likely – that science is correct, and people like you and James Inhofe – people who, while extremely intelligent, aren’t experts on climate science – are suffering a horrible case of confirmation bias.

Think of how certain you, and most Conservatives, were that Nate Silver was a fool. “The models are wrong!” you said, absolutely, positively wrong. That was an error with no real consequences for anyone, because election forecasts are trivial. (We could do without election forecasts entirely and be better off for it.)

Unlike Birthers and election forcasts, there will almost certainly be terrible consequences for ignoring reality when it comes to climate. If the scientists are right, extreme weather events will happen more often, as will droughts; people will suffer and die, economies will crash, food chains will break, homes will be destroyed. In response to this, conservatives say it’s worth risking all that in order to avoid the possibility of slower economic growth caused by inefficient spending and regulations.

If you think that there’s even a 50% chance that the experts are right and you (and others, including a handful of scientists, almost none of whom are experts on climate) are mistaken, then I don’t see how obstructing climate mitigation policy is reasonable, or justifiable, or anything other than horribly irresponsible. And seriously: There’s a way, way, WAY more than 50% chance that the experts are right and you are mistaken.

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37 Responses to To Conservatives Who Thought Nate Silver Was An Idiot

  1. 1
    Robert says:

    I know a fair bit about statistical modeling: considerably less than a scientist of any stripe who makes models for a living; considerably more than, say, you.

    There was an intelligent critique of Silver; I made it, among other people. (There were also many, many stupid critiques of Silver.) The intelligent critique was not based on suspicions about his model; his model appears to be a very good empirical one. The intelligent critique was based on the fact that there were two sets of polling data, and there was a pretty large disparity between the data sets. As it turned out, the set of polls that Nate Silver decided were right, were right. But people of intellectual honesty and non-derpitude could have (and did) think that the other set was better; there was an argument in either direction. I personally thought both sets were off, though more on a hunch than on any hard data; I was wrong.

    Though not by much. All of the errors that are being bandied about are small. It’s as though I guessed the next guy to come out of the bathroom would be 5’10”, you said it would be 5’11”, Silver chimed in and insisted it would be 6’0″. The guy came out, he was 5’11.75″. OK, Silver did the best job, but its not like you and I were saying it was gonna be either 2’4″ or 12’6″.

    And the errors didn’t have anything to do with his model; it was just a question of data selection. He’s a darn good empirical modeler, and people with my ideological bent would have done better to pay more attention to that. Water, bridge, goodbye.

    On to ACC. You have a huge logical error in your view. A couple, actually.

    One, what is the cost of doing something that has a real chance of stopping or greatly reducing ACC? If it’s $1 million, then yeah, it would seem to be a real dumbass move to not try. If it’s $40 quintillion, then we can’t afford it no matter how desirable it is.

    Two, what is the chance of stopping or greatly reducing ACC, in the view of the doomslingers? I really don’t know. I’ve had doomy types say “its too late, theres no preventive action that would work anymore, it can’t be stopped” but when I’ve then said we should stop doing anything to prevent it and instead shift resources to adapting to it, they’ve gotten really pissed off. Which, since these were not idiotic people, makes me think they didn’t really believe it about the inevitability, and were just trying to stir action.

    Third, what are the expenses of and benefits from trying to adapt, rather than trying to mitigate, and to what extent are those costs mutually exclusive? Again I don’t know for sure, but I’ll wager that there is SOME exclusivity; if we spend $20 trillion on economically unproductive stuff that tries to prevent ACC, but then fail, that’s $20 trillion we don’t have in the bank to buy economically unproductive stuff that tries to help us adapt to it.

    You need costs and probability assessments for all of those questions before you can say that, for a given doubt X% as to whether the ACC consensus is right, it means we automatically must engage in policies X, Y, Z if we aren’t idjits. It might be that if we engage in X, Y, Z we foreclose later adoption of policy J28B, which turns out to be the best approach of all those available.

  2. 2
    KellyK says:

    While all of that is true, there’s a huge difference between arguing over how best to prevent, mitigate and/or adapt to the crisis (and with any luck, actually coming up with something useful), and completely denying the existence of a crisis.

  3. 3
    Charles S says:

    Robert,

    [I’m not going to use Celcius, USAians don’t think in Celcius- maybe this is why we are less worried about global warming than Europeans, 2 C sounds like a much smaller temperature increase than it does to someone who actually thinks in celcius.]

    It is almost certainly too late to prevent a 4 F average increase in temperature. It is getting close to being too late to prevent a 7 F temperature increase. There is a real risk of an 11 F temperature increase, but we can probably still prevent that (not that we are going to, but we probably could). There is an unknown but small risk of a 14 F increase. That is just looking at 2100. We have plenty of flexibility left on what 2200 looks like, and we may have some flexibility left on whether or not we get 20 m sea level rise over the next half millennium. Yes, you’ll run into some people who believe that we are already locked into a death spiral. They are probably wrong. There probably isn’t a death spiral of positive feedbacks leading to boiled oceans anywhere particularly close to our current path. Probably.

    Hey, but before we go further, maybe you could summarize your relationship to reality, :p. Could you summarize what you believe is the state of the science, and what the best estimates are of the economic costs of preventing a 7 F increase by 2100, versus the economic costs of having a 7 F increase by 2100. I’m curious if you are going to advocate covering Arizona in tinfoil and other unserious positions (yes, you once argued for this as a mitigation strategy) , or if having children has made you take a little bit of the future after we are both dead a little more seriously.

  4. 4
    Mokele says:

    Robert,

    I’ll go point by point and try to stay on topic.

    One – doing anything will be quite expensive, but how much depends largely on the severity of the situation. Fortunately, reducing our carbon footprint to sustainable levels needs to only be done once, and any mitigation is made cheaper as a result (we’re putting less CO2 in, so there’s less to take out).

    Two – most climate scientists don’t think we’ve crossed the point of no return yet, but we are approaching it, and will cross it within a few decades. As you might expect, the farther along we get, the lower the chances and the more expensive it gets.

    Three – I would actually suggest the adaptation is more expensive, quite simply because the effects will continue to intensify without a reduction in CO2 output and the worst of these effects are unpredictable. Reduction and trying to bring things back to normal reduces both the total damage and variability.

    It’s easy to get carried away with the doom and gloom, but beneath that tendency is an important truth – previous, prehistoric global temperature rises, though due to different causes, have ranged from highly unpleasant to outright apocalyptic. Given the extremely high proportion of our species that lives in coastal areas, as well as the immense economic impact of those areas, it doesn’t take much to cause a whole lot of problems.

    Most importantly, your calculation about costs, benefits, and uncertainty is right, but hides a serious issue, namely that none of these are linear. The optimal choice can change a lot when certainty shifts from 40% to 60%, but stays pretty much the same for a shift from 95% to 99%. And that’s the range we’re in.

    And frankly, all of the typical injections to such high certainty are horseshit. Anyone who thinks there’s a deliberate conspiracy among all climate scientists has never tried to deal with a group of scientists – herding cats would be much, much easier. Nobody gets rich off government grants, especially since most climate folks are in “hard money” positions (salary paid by the school in exchange for teaching) and are funded by agencies that only allow minimum salary supplementation on grants (in contrast to the NIH, which allows you to put your whole salary on the grant, leading to “soft money” positions where you’re dependent entirely on grant funding). And given the sadistic glee with which we rip into each other’s work over the slightest fault, it’s unlikely that errors will persist for long.

    IMHO, one of the most compelling bits of evidence for certainty is this: in the early 80’s, a now-prominent climate scientist wrote a bare-bones model on a computer probably a millionth the power of an iPhone, with predictions for the future. Looking back, we find that this astoundingly simple model has performed very, very well. If 30 years of research, arguing and refining haven’t substantially changed the outcome, it’s unlikely anything will.

  5. 5
    JutGory says:

    Amp:

    If you think that there’s even a 50% chance that the experts are right and you (and others, including a handful of scientists, almost none of whom are experts on climate) are mistaken, then I don’t see how obstructing climate mitigation policy is reasonable, or justifiable, or anything other than horribly irresponsible. And seriously: There’s a way, way, WAY more than 50% chance that the experts are right and you are mistaken.

    Do I see the Ghost of Pascal’s Wager?

    What I don’t like about climate scientists is that I do not trust them. To believe what they say requires me to do what they say, and this quote exemplifies that. There is a not-so-hidden moral imperative that must be followed if you believe what they say. If I believe, then I must turn in my 200-Watt Beacon of Freedom for the Soft White Light of Tyranny.

    This is in contrast to other scientific theories, which have no moral imperative. The Theory of Relativity requires only that I avoid black holes and make sure I obey the rather generous speed limit it imposes.

    The Theory of Evolution pretty much lets me do my own thing and it will take care of the rest.

    But climate change science requires me to give up my freedom now, so that something won’t happen in 3 decades. By then, it won’t matter to me whether their predictions were right or wrong; they will be dead and I will be a serf. At least Einstein could say, “hey, next Tuesday, I will show you light curve around a celestial body.” The predictive ability of climate science is far less impressive.

    Even Doomsday Theorists and End-of-Time Christians are willing to give you a firm date. Sure, the Mayans may have hedged their bets by giving themselves a few millenia before the world ended, but they probably did not let it affect their day-to-day life. At least we will know the outcome of their prediction.

    So, yeah, if I believed climate science were all about a quest for knowledge, that would be one thing, but your quote shows that it is a quest for power and control.

    So, I remain skeptical.

    -Jut

    P.S. I did not and do not have any opinion on Mr. Silver.

  6. 6
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    Speaking of statistical models, does anyone else think Global Warming provides a good application of Pascal’s wager?

    Let us consider the following:

    -Fossil fuels are finite and will therefore run out eventually. If we do not convert at some point to alternative/renewable sources of energy, we’re screwed anyways. Society would be forced to adapt to being solely driven by human/animal labor, at the very least a world without fossil fuels driving our energy needs would look very different to what we have now. Plus we either don’t have to deal with the catastrophic draughts/floods/storms that global warming is expected to cause or we have to deal with them anyways because they were going to happen regardless of what we did. (I’m including here the possibility that Global Warming is real, but not caused by humans) This is the equivalent outcome to Pascal’s wager if the Atheist is right, we still end up dead and oblvious by doing nothing/not believing.

    -If Global Warming is real and caused by humans, then the only difference is we’re getting screwed much earlier and probably much worse, by doing nothing/not believing.

    -There are costs to converting at any stage of the game. The longer we wait to convert to alternative/renewable sources of energy, the higher they go up. The material/energy costs of extracting fossil fuels from the earth have been increasing dramatically for some time now, which in turn means that trying to continue to extract them will become harder on the economy anyways.

    -In other words, whether one is an Atheist or a believer in Global Warming, converting now to alternative/renewable sources of energy, makes more sense in the long term whether or not Global Warming is real. Global Warming just provides an extra level of incentive to do so.

  7. 7
    Jeremy Redlien says:

    What I don’t like about climate scientists is that I do not trust them. To believe what they say requires me to do what they say, and this quote exemplifies that. There is a not-so-hidden moral imperative that must be followed if you believe what they say. If I believe, then I must turn in my 200-Watt Beacon of Freedom for the Soft White Light of Tyranny.

    This is in contrast to other scientific theories, which have no moral imperative. The Theory of Relativity requires only that I avoid black holes and make sure I obey the rather generous speed limit it imposes.

    I’m not sure I see the difference between:
    -Human behavior is causing global warming. Burning fossil fuels will get us all killed someday, somehow
    and
    -Flying into a black hole will get you killed.

    Neither fact technically implies a moral imperative. The only way a moral imperative gets written onto either one is if someone comes up with a moral rule that says “destroying society is wrong” or “committing suicide is wrong”.

    The facts of the universe are not relevant to determining what our goals are, but if we think not destroying society as we know it or avoiding suicide are worthy goals then global warming/the facts surrounding black holes do become rather relevant.
    -Jeremy

  8. 8
    Copyleft says:

    The ‘moral imperative’ objection is just the same ‘how dare scientists tell us what’s what’ attitude, moved back by one step.

    If your doctor diagnoses you with cancer, you don’t HAVE to follow his instructions on treatment, chemo, radiation, etc. You can decide to die if you want. But you don’t get to take the rest of us with you.

    Science tells you what reality is and what can be done about it. Ignoring the advice of experts in climate change is every bit as idiotic as ignoring medical experts when you have appendicitis.

  9. 9
    Mokele says:

    Jut:

    What I don’t like about climate scientists is that I do not trust them. To believe what they say requires me to do what they say, and this quote exemplifies that. There is a not-so-hidden moral imperative that must be followed if you believe what they say. If I believe, then I must turn in my 200-Watt Beacon of Freedom for the Soft White Light of Tyranny.

    Horseshit.

    Climate science is no more prescriptive than evolution or ecology or geology. Consider the following 3 statements:

    Climate science: “The planet is warming due to human carbon emissions, and unless those emissions are curbed, serious damage and death will occur.”

    Ecology: “Fertilizer and manure runoff from farms causes massive ecological damage in watersheds and wetlands where many species breed. Either curb their use, or the entire local fishery industry will go under, causing mass unemployment.”

    Evolution: “Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics, leading to MRSA, XDR-TB, and more. Either stop giving antibiotics to every kid with a sniffle, or we’ll reach a point where formerly preventable diseases are once again killing millions.”

    Geology: “This city is on a major fault line with a history of earthquakes. If you insist on staying, adopt these building codes and you’ll greatly reduce the damage and death.”

    Science, any science, describes the state of the world and predicts the outcomes based on current knowledge. Sometimes the news is bad, that we’re facing various problems whether due to our own actions or simply bad luck, and science suggests mechanisms to avoid, minimize or mitigate the problems (though strictly speaking this more “applied science” or even “engineering”).

    But climate change science requires me to give up my freedom now, so that something won’t happen in 3 decades.

    First off, have you NOT seen what’s happening to the Arctic sea ice? Have you not been paying attention to the warming oceans and land? It’s not happening in 3 decades, it’s happening NOW.

    Second, as they say, “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. You don’t have a freedom to adversely affect others, whether that’s by pumping vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere or driving drunk or dumping nuclear waste in the local lake or using antibiotics for every cold. Your actions affect more than just you.

    Lastly, this “freedoms” horseshit is vastly overblown. We don’t hear people crying about their freedom to use leaded paint or leaded gasoline or mercury thermometers or coal-fired ovens. Why? Because those things are a) terrible and b) have been replaced with new technology that’s either equivalent or better.

    In what way has your freedom been impinged if you drive a hybrid rather than gas car? You still have a car, you can still drive, and you can still do everything the same – total effect on your life = zero. Same for light bulbs – people made the same silly argument about light color when Edison was suggesting we switch from oil lamps. Nobody is suggesting you lose the ability to do vital things, just that you use different technology to accomplish the same ends. Are the freedoms of people in LA seriously infringed by earthquake-resistant building codes?

    Be totally honest – the only reason you object to these changes is because they’re being suggested by those you disagree with.

    Plus, as Jeremy said, we will have to make this change one day, and it’s just a question of when and why. Do we tolerate climate change and wait for gas to totally run out, or do we just do it now and save the trouble?

  10. 10
    Ben Lehman says:

    The knowledge of global warming no more restricts your freedoms than the knowledge of others’ being capable of feeling pain restricts your freedoms to hit them.

  11. 11
    Charles S says:

    Jut,

    I agree with Mokele’s answer, but it goes even further than that.

    Mokele answers the question of how much climate science says, but you claim that it is climate scientists who say what you must do if you believe them.

    This is fundamentally wrong.

    While almost all climate scientists are convinced the anthropogenic climate change is happening, with disastrous effect, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists don’t say anything about what we must do. Partly that is because they don’t want to be slandered, have their email hacked and be subjected to baseless hearings, but mostly it is because what we should do isn’t their area of expertise. They are climate scientists, not economists or technologists. They are busy researching what has happened, what is happening, or what will happen (and almost all of them research one small part of one of those things). Only a small portion of them are even in the field of forecasting what will happen if we keep CO2 to X level or if it goes to Y.

    But taken as a whole, these individual scientists have developed a field of knowledge that gives all of us a clearer understanding of what is happening, unless we stick our heads in the sand and go “La la la, I can’t hear you, I want my transatlantic flights and my SUV and my 2700 sq ft home, and I don’t want to know they are contribute to what will drown most world cities in a few centuries (assuming there are cities left in a few centuries).” If you want to honestly argue that FREEDOMS is better than avoiding an enormous disaster, then make that argument, to yourself and others, but don’t decide that because FREEDOMS is good that therefore the body of knowledge that says there is an enormous disaster coming must be wrong. That sort of profound dishonesty is a grave threat to us all.

    As Copyleft says, if your doctor diagnoses you with cancer, that doesn’t mean you must pursue treatment. It also doesn’t mean you have any excuse for deciding that the entire field of cancer diagnostics is a scam, nor will deciding cancer diagnostics is a scam do you any good.

  12. 12
    Eytan Zweig says:

    The way I see it, we’ve had two responses from people who disagree with Amp.

    Robert responded with a series of hypotheticals that aimed to defuse what Amp said by muddying up the picture, and with the argument that while his criticisms of Silver were factually wrong, they could have been right, and therefore that shows that he knows what he is talking about.

    JutGory responded by saying that if climate scientists are right, then he doesn’t like what that means for him personally, and therefore, he prefers to believe they are wrong.

    I’m not entirely sure how to address Robert’s arguments, because they seem to me to be irrelevant to what Amp was saying, but Jut’s response is actually a pretty straightforward answer to Amp’s plea. He’s not debating the evidence, he’s rejecting the very notion that actions have consequences. I think that is a pretty good explanation to what puzzles Amp about conservative response to climate change.

  13. 13
    Copyleft says:

    “I don’t want it to be true, therefore it’s false” is a depressingly common reaction to unwelcome facts. (And it’s not limited to conservatives, either.)

  14. 14
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Oh, of course it is. I’m probably as guilty of it as anyone else. What makes JutGory’s response remarkable is that he’s proudly advocating this response as a reflection of his principles.

  15. 15
    marmalade says:

    The commonality between Silver’s skeptics and climate change deniers is that when they don’t like prognostications (or their policy implications) they tout armchair talk-radio-influenced predictions over forecasts of people who’ve spent their entire careers understanding (in nauseating detail) factors and interactions that influence outcomes (1). And sometimes the skeptics are really loud and belligerent about it and mostly turn out to be wrong. And when specialists try to argue from a fact-based position the skeptics get louder and more belligerent and start drifting off to pseudofactual fantasy land. It’s irritating.

    But at the same time I think the climate change foot-draggers have a point. ‘Cuz carbon forcing on the climate is probably not linear and believers can’t say to the skeptics “Yeah, see, if we spend 10 kazillion dollars before 2020 everything will be OK. Let’s all hold our noses and get through this.” There are probably unknown thresholds for all hell breaks loose but specialists have no idea if we’re close to the thresholds or past or not even warm. I think that’s why climate change believers often come across as zealots – we’re all born sinners and can never do enough to mitigate our transgressions and are probably going to hell anyway.

    So believers yell “WE ALL GOTTA DO SOMETHING NOW!!!” but also say “whatever we do isn’t going to be enough anyway” And some believers say stuff like “CHANGE YOUR LIGHTBULBS NOW!!!” when changing your light bulbs is not going to solve the problem (2). It’s irritating.

    And I think – deep down – we all know there’s never ever gonna be anything as yummy as fossil fuels. They’re the best! Solar, wind, algae, nuclear – all just pale substitutions for the smelly black stuff. I mean, we managed to root our economy in something with an ability to fundamentally alter the biosphere via relatively minor changes in atmospheric chemistry. That both sucks and is ridiculously clever of us.

    My irritating armchair-liberal-media-influenced-hand-waving prediction? We’ve got lots of fossil fuels in the ground and we’re gonna keep burning them until we fry the planet (3). Unless someone clever figures out how to get rid of the carbon we emit, or we get some kind of huge breakthrough on “green” energy, AND we all (4) agree on really expensive carbon pricing (hard to imagine how we get there from here).

    But changing light bulbs and buying Priuses won’t do much except to make believers feel like we’ve done penance. And telling foot-draggers to do so just irritates them. I guess we’ve got to keep shouting for big policy changes . . . but I think fossil fuels are going to (tragically) take out many of our close cousins (i.e., vertebrate species) and lots of our more distant kin. Last ditch, I hope that some rich humans will hole up somewhere relatively comfortable and save knowledge-based civilization for the future.

    And maybe the foot-draggers are right, we could just sit back and enjoy the champagne . . . the train left the station long before we were born and there doesn’t seem to be much of a steering mechanism. Those of us reading this blog ended up with a really good seat, even if the tracks are heading toward a cliff.

    (1) It’s not that high end science is free of group-think, it’s certainly not . . . but any scientists that show definitively that climate change is all hooey will be uber rich and famous. And all the others will breathe a big sigh of relief and go back to counting butterflies.

    (2) And social science shows that if you don’t offer a solution people are strangely less likely to even believe there’s a problem

    (3) global warmings terrifying new math and record jump in emissions

    (4) And by “all” ofc that includes the US, China, Europe, India, Russia, etc.

  16. 16
    Mokele says:

    Marmalade:

    There are probably unknown thresholds for all hell breaks loose but specialists have no idea if we’re close to the thresholds or past or not even warm. I think that’s why climate change believers often come across as zealots – we’re all born sinners and can never do enough to mitigate our transgressions and are probably going to hell anyway.

    Not actually. We have a pretty good idea where the “tipping point” is (about 2C global temperature change).

    And while I agree that there can be a “penance” vibe in some areas, it’s neither impossible nor even unfeasible for humans to produce CO2 outputs that are within the safe limits of what the planet can handle.

    And I think – deep down – we all know there’s never ever gonna be anything as yummy as fossil fuels. They’re the best! Solar, wind, algae, nuclear – all just pale substitutions for the smelly black stuff.

    Of course not – fossil fuels are free! All you have to do is dig it out of the ground and all that stored energy is yours. No need to harvest it or convert it back and forth to different types for storage and use.

    The problem is, we *will* run out, global warming or not.

    One thing I will say is that I think some of the folks who are further towards the doomsayer end of the spectrum aren’t fully aware of just adaptable life really is – this planet has been through a lot worse than we can put it through, and while there have been resulting extinctions, life persists quite well.

    Conversely, warm-blooded animals, and particularly large ones like us, have always fared badly in mass extinctions. Life will carry on even in the face of global warming, but we might not be so lucky. We may be smarter than the average bear, but we’re also a lot more fragile than a bear, and need a ton of food just to survive.

  17. 17
    Robert says:

    Robert responded with a series of hypotheticals that aimed to defuse what Amp said by muddying up the picture, and with the argument that while his criticisms of Silver were factually wrong, they could have been right, and therefore that shows that he knows what he is talking about.

    No. Crushed by deadlines right now, so I’m not going into global warming argument again (always a massive time eater), but no.

    I argued that my criticisms of Silver were not a criticism of his model, but of his choice of dataset to favor. I was wrong, but I could have been right. EITHER WAY, I would not have been criticizing Silver’s model. Therefore, Amp’s argument “you were wrong about criticizing this model, therefore your criticisms of this other model are probably also wrong; I deride your model-criticizing skills and your mother smells of elderberries” is immaterial.

  18. 18
    Eytan Zweig says:

    What do you mean by “his choice of dataset to favor”? I can interpret that in multiple ways, but the only one that seems to be pertinent is that he excluded any poll that was explicitly commissioned by either of the two candidates’ teams. Other than that, his dataset consisted of *all* the publicly available polls – the decision on how to weigh those polls *is* the core of his model.

    So, just to clarify – when you say “there were two datasets”, you mean that you thought that Silver should be looking at the polls commissioned by Obama and Romney, not at the independent polls? Because any other criticism is a criticism of his model, not his dataset.

  19. 19
    Ampersand says:

    I have the same question as Eytan. I understand you’re busy, but if you could at least say what, specifically, the alternate dataset you favored was, that would be great.

  20. 20
    Robert says:

    My understanding of the issue is that the individual state polls favored Romney a bit more than the national-level polls. Silver had both polls in his model; he weighted the national polls more heavily (because he thought they were more reliable).

    That’s the only thing that I ever criticized Silver for, to my recollection.

  21. 21
    Eytan Zweig says:

    But – and this is worth stressing – Silver’s model isn’t a model of who will win elections. It’s a model on how to best weigh polls in order to get the most accurate prediction. Thus, as I state above, any criticism of that sort – a criticism of how he assigned different weights to different types of model – is a direct criticism of his model. Saying “I’m not disagreeing with his model, I just think some of the weights he assigned are wrong” is the same as saying “I’m not criticizing Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, I just think the way he designed houses is wrong”.

  22. 22
    Mokele says:

    Robert:

    But isn’t that the best option, since I’d imagine national polls have larger sample sizes?

    Plus, I’d imagine they’re harder to screw up – I got several polls about politics in Ohio during this election, even though I haven’t lived there in 4 years.

  23. 23
    Charles S says:

    Robert has it backwards. State polls favored Obama more than national polls.

    State polls are far more valuable than national polls for predicting what happens on a state by state basis (‘Obama leads nationally by 1%’ doesn’t tell you how he is doing in Colorado or Ohio particularly well, you need state polls for that). State polls in aggregate also involve far more people than national polls. I don’t know of any election prediction sites that used national polls to predict the state-by-state results (maybe there is one), but there were sites that used purely state polls (e.g. Sam Wang’s site at election.princeton.edu).

    Silver’s model actually includes a ‘what if all the polls are biased in the same direction’ component, so his win-percentage numbers included a hedge against all of the polling he was using being off.

    I also don’t think Robert’s description of re-weighting state vs. national polls based on accuracy is correct. I’d go confirm it is wrong, but 538 is crashing my browser for some reason.

  24. 24
    Charles S says:

    After spending too much time on this, this is the clearest statement I could find of how Silver’s model used national polls:

    “…when the model detects an overall discrepancy between state and national polls, it adjusts both of them in opposite directions to bring them closer to one another. If after that adjustment the model still finds evidence that one candidate is performing especially well in the most important states, it will then attribute the remainder of the difference to a potential popular vote and Electoral College split.”

    So, no, Silver’s model did not down-weight national polls because he thought state polls were more reliable. What may have confused Robert and other folks is that Silver commented on multiple occasions that state polls were more likely to accurately forecast the election result than national polls. That was his personal estimation based on the historical record as he read it. It was not description of what his model was doing.

  25. 25
    Harlequin says:

    Mokele @16: thank you, you have given me a reason to link to this Humon cartoon. :D

    On a more general note, people–even very science-friendly people–have a tendency to be unreasonably skeptical of statistical predictions. It’s just not a thing our brains are built to do well. I work in a statistics-oriented science subfield and I’ve heard what I do called hocus pocus by fellow scientists on more than one occasion…it’s getting better now, but we have lots of concrete results to show off. I would rather not have climate change results even more undeniable than the ones we already have to prove a point, however.

  26. 26
    JutGory says:

    Eytan Zweig:

    He’s not debating the evidence, he’s rejecting the very notion that actions have consequences.

    Copyleft:

    “I don’t want it to be true, therefore it’s false” is a depressingly common reaction to unwelcome facts.

    Eytan Zweig:

    Oh, of course it is. I’m probably as guilty of it as anyone else. What makes JutGory’s response remarkable is that he’s proudly advocating this response as a reflection of his principles.

    Except that that is not what I said. Do I want global warming to be true? No. Does that mean I believe it is false? No. I am just very skeptical of all of those people who seem to desire nothing more than that it be true so that they can have a reason to pass so many laws to regulate everyone’s behavior. If I did not see an ulterior motive, I would be less skeptical, but rarely do you see the sort of zealotry that is displayed by global warming enthusiasts.

    And, at what cost? I mentioned CFL bulbs. Mokele says (and I paraphrase), “ain’t it so great that we don’t use mercury thermometers anymore,” ignoring completely that now the government mandates that we use mercury bulbs in our house. Mokele, exactly how many of those damn things do you think end up in landfills? Do you honestly believe everyone recycles them? I had one of those damn things sitting in my house for years because every time I went to the recycling/waste facility, I forgot to bring it along. Do you know how many times I was tempted to just chuck it in the trash? What do YOU think eventually happened to that bulb?

    Mokele:

    Lastly, this “freedoms” horseshit is vastly overblown.

    Yes, the problem is freedom, too much freedom. (Sigh.)

    Copyleft:

    The ‘moral imperative’ objection is just the same ‘how dare scientists tell us what’s what’ attitude, moved back by one step.

    Maybe, but that is one big fucking important step. That was my point! It is the difference between saying, this is what is, and this is what ought to be. I will give you an example to illustrate: Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins, Copyleft (a “fact”); therefore, you, Copyleft, must go to Church every Sunday (a normative conclusion). Now that statement of “fact” is either true or false. Do you believe it is true? Do you believe it is false? Are you skeptical of people who are so determined to prove to you that it is true?

    Okay, I am under deadlines too, so I can’t respond in much more detail right now.

    (And, there was much rejoicing!)

    -Jut

  27. 27
    Myca says:

    I will give you an example to illustrate: Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins, Copyleft (a “fact”); therefore, you, Copyleft, must go to Church every Sunday (a normative conclusion). Now that statement of “fact” is either true or false. Do you believe it is true? Do you believe it is false? Are you skeptical of people who are so determined to prove to you that it is true?

    I am skeptical of people who want to convince me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but not because it would mean, if true, that I must go to Church every Sunday. I’m skeptical of those people because there’s no evidence for it and a lot of evidence against, and I’m baffled that they believe something with so little reason.

    Whether or not I get up early on Sunday doesn’t enter into it. Whether or not they want me to get up early on Sunday doesn’t enter into it.

    Appeal to Consequences and Appeal to Motives are fallacies for a reason.

    —Myca

  28. 28
    Mokele says:

    Jut:

    I am just very skeptical of all of those people who seem to desire nothing more than that it be true so that they can have a reason to pass so many laws to regulate everyone’s behavior. If I did not see an ulterior motive, I would be less skeptical, but rarely do you see the sort of zealotry that is displayed by global warming enthusiasts.

    Sorry, but this is clearly just projection on your part. *Nobody* actively wants global warming to be true, especially in order to push any sort of agenda, nor are global warming folks “zealots”.

    Folks who actually know things about the environment (ecologists, biologists, climatologists, geologists, etc.) have been saying for DECADES that various human activities are damaging various parts of our world (acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, invasive species, runoff, etc.). And, universally, the response has been for the entrenched interests to run vicious smear campaigns while the lazy masses do nothing until the problem becomes so bad that even boatloads of corporate cash can’t hide it. At that point, the bare minimum is done, the problem is declared “solved”, and everyone blindly repeats the same behavior that caused the problem in the first place in a dozen different settings. There isn’t a single environmental issue that isn’t somewhere on this timeline of events right now.

    But now we’re faced with something that’s more than just one polluted bay or regional acid rain or a slight increase in skin cancer. Now we’ve reached the point where humanity’s inability to learn astoundingly simple lessons from experience has put the whole planet in danger, and we’re doing exactly the same thing all over again.

    Nobody’s “zealously” drooling to impose regulations, and nobody’s glad it’s happening. We’re all hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time we won’t fuck it up. Maybe we’ll start acting like grown-ups, maybe we’ll realize that actions have consequences, maybe we’ll be willing to make the tough choices and reject instant gratification in favor of greater future rewards.

    We’re facing down a pattern of failed behavior that’s occurred countless times before, only this time, we don’t get a do-over. It may not be The Apocalypse, but it’s certainly going to be no fun, and like it or not, we’re all going to suffer the consequences – droughts don’t care who you voted for, nor do hurricanes care about your positions.

    “Zealous” isn’t the right word. “Scared shitless” and “depressingly aware of the inevitable failure” are much more accurate.

    And, at what cost? I mentioned CFL bulbs. Mokele says (and I paraphrase), “ain’t it so great that we don’t use mercury thermometers anymore,” ignoring completely that now the government mandates that we use mercury bulbs in our house. Mokele, exactly how many of those damn things do you think end up in landfills? Do you honestly believe everyone recycles them? I had one of those damn things sitting in my house for years because every time I went to the recycling/waste facility, I forgot to bring it along. Do you know how many times I was tempted to just chuck it in the trash? What do YOU think eventually happened to that bulb?

    Nobody mandates you use CFL bulbs. Seriously, go check. Aside from LED bulbs as an alternative it is easily possible to make conventional incandescent bulbs that meet the new efficiency standards. This fact may have had something to do with why lightbulb manufacturers backed the bill to raise the standards in the first place.

    Ditto for cars. Not allowing 5 mpg monstrosities doesn’t mean you can’t drive a big car – I have an SUV myself (for dog hauling), and it gets 20 MPG highway (~17 city).

    Yes, the problem is freedom, too much freedom. (Sigh.)

    Are you seriously arguing that you have the freedom to harm others, so long as it’s indirect? That I can dump cancer-causing toxic waste in watersheds that connect to the local aquifer? That I can emit toxic fumes from my house due to experiments?

    How about my right to own specimens on Radium? Seriously, there are plenty of “element collectors” out there whose goal is to have samples of the entire periodic table, including the bottom part, and radium is in there. Does their right to engage in voluntary trade overwhelm my right not to get cancer because I live next door?

    Just because you’re not punching me in the face doesn’t mean your actions aren’t harming me.

    Maybe, but that is one big fucking important step. That was my point! It is the difference between saying, this is what is, and this is what ought to be. I will give you an example to illustrate: Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins, Copyleft (a “fact”); therefore, you, Copyleft, must go to Church every Sunday (a normative conclusion). Now that statement of “fact” is either true or false. Do you believe it is true? Do you believe it is false? Are you skeptical of people who are so determined to prove to you that it is true?

    This is a staggeringly bad analogy. While I grant that motivated reasoning is a supremely powerful human motivator, a better analogy would be that we’re all trapped in a room together with a large, unknown device. The engineers have good reason to believe that it’s a bomb, and thus we should prevent anyone from going near it lest they set it off, while some folks think it’s nothing important and we should use it to climb to the roof.

    Here’s the fundamental question: What would it take to disprove your views?

    Seriously. Any rational view, based on evidence, must have some falsifiability. There must be something that would make you say “OK, that evidence disproves my view.” It could be something big and simple (“>5F global temperature change and the total loss of both ice caps”), or more subtle (I would recant my views on climate change if presented with a superior alternative explanation and/or data that’s clearly inconsistent).

    Any viewpoint which isn’t based on evidence and logic, but instead emotion or faith, is worthless.

  29. 29
    JutGory says:

    Mokele:

    Sorry, but this is clearly just projection on your part.

    Projection, eh? Allow me to respond (spoken in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, a la Pulp Fiction:

    Be totally honest – the only reason you object to these changes is because they’re being suggested by those you disagree with.

    No, Mokele, you be honest, you just think people who disagree with you don’t like you.

    Who is projecting?

    nor are global warming folks “zealots”.

    AGW-supporters comparing skeptics to holocaust-deniers. Heresy? You have the language of religion painted all over your movement.

    And, you don’t think the viewpoint is political? Name for me Al Gore’s two most important accomplishments in his life. By the way, Climate Scientist is NOT one of them.

    Are you seriously arguing that you have the freedom to harm others, so long as it’s indirect?

    Yes, depending on what you mean; if you mean something else, then definitely no.

    Here’s the fundamental question: What would it take to disprove your views?

    Let me ask you this: What would it take to disprove your views? Honestly, I am not sure what would change my mind. But, I think the scientists usually present the theory (Einstein and the Eclipse, or the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle) and the prediction. Climate science has a much more difficult path in that regard because, even if humans are a contributing factor in global warming, there is a lot of other things out there that would seem to be hard to filter out.

    First off, as I suggested, I am agnostic, but skeptical, on the issue.

    Where I live, in the not too distant past (geologically speaking), there was a sheet of ice a mile or more thick. The Earth has warmed a LOT since then. There have also been cooling periods. We understand the cause for some of them (e.g. Krakatoa). Others, we don’t.

    Now, climate change is based upon a complex system, or chaos theory (calm down, you chaos theorists, it is my understanding of something outside my field; but, if you want to critique, explain to me like I am a five-year old, or don’t bother). Climate science is closer to meteorlogy than it is to biology or physics. (Do you agree? If not, we are not even talking the same language, so, why bother?) Cause and effect are much more difficult to show in a complex system. As we know, correlation does not imply causation. Personally, I blame the butterflies in Brazil for Hurricane Sandy (and, if I find them, I am going to kick their butts good). But, whileMeteorologists have difficulties making a prediction more than 5-10 days out, climate scientists think they can make predictions accurately more than 30-50 years out. Yeah, I am skeptical.

    Oh, and as for me harming you, no. If your theory is correct, the people harming you died 20-30 years ago. I am not harming you at all: my actions are just harming your unborn children and grandchildren.

    Outside of a specific moral framework, what obligation do I owe them with respect to the world in we they are born?

    Myca:

    Appeal to Consequences and Appeal to Motives are fallacies for a reason.

    And, Myca, so is an appeal to authority. You can claim, “ooh, the science people tell me so, so it must be true,” and I can safely remain unconvinced that they even know what they are talking about.

    Or, to paraphrase Kant: “I need not think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake the irksome business for me.”

    I prefer to think. And, as I suggested, I question the authorities on AGW.

    -Jut

  30. 30
    Ampersand says:

    Allow me to respond (spoken in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, a la Pulp Fiction:)

    Retort, not respond.

  31. 31
    Myca says:

    And, Myca, so is an appeal to authority. You can claim, “ooh, the science people tell me so, so it must be true,” and I can safely remain unconvinced that they even know what they are talking about.

    Sigh. And that’s a Tu Quoque, which you’re misusing.

    Because I’ve never said anything even close to “ooh, the science people tell me so, so it must be true.” There’s no appeal to authority in my post, and in logic as in science, religion, ethics, and philosophy, you really don’t understand the terms you’re tossing around.

    You’ve given reasons for being skeptical of AGW. Those reasons are logical fallacies. The fact that other people may believe other things for fallacious reasons doesn’t make a difference.

    I prefer to think. And, as I suggested, I question the authorities on AGW.

    This isn’t about believing the authorities. The mechanisms of AGW are perfectly explicable and understandable without having to ‘trust the authorities.’

    —Myca

  32. 32
    Ampersand says:

    (cross-posted)

    By the way, the “appeal to authority fallacy” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

  33. 33
    JutGory says:

    Amp:

    Retort, not respond.

    Yes, “retort” is factually correct, but, euphonically, was not quite right. I thought “respond” was the “mot juste” for my comment.

    And, Myca, it is not a Tu Quoque fallacy. Our fallacies (whatever they may be, our completely independent, but, calling someone out on a fallacy does not mean you are engaging in one yourself). Observe:

    And, Amp, the appeal to authority fallacy is not exactly what you mean (notwithstanding the authority to which you have appealed; why “Nizkor” is an authority on anything I have no idea); likewise, though I have not put “climate science” in quotes (except just now), but you want to claim climate as a “science.” I dispute the discipline as a “science” and claim that it has no real authority as a discipline. So, you have made a claim to “authority” that I do not acknowledge.

    You recourse is to prove your own work and not rely on your own authority.

    See, the mistake you have made is thinking that everyone else concedes that “climate scientists” actually have some authority about the things of which they speak.

    Again, as a skeptic on this issue, I am not convinced that it is a “science.” So, no, it means what we (Amp and Jut, so Happy Together, a la The Turtles) think it means, but you and I (so unhappy together, a la Sid and Nancy) do not agree that it applies to those who claim the title of “Climatologist.”

    Though, to be fair, I have tried to figure out what it would take to prove (a la Mokele) that AGW exists. That is definitely a fair question. I do not know. But, in fairness, I will pose the opposite question to both Amp and Myca, now: what would it take to convince you that AGW is not a correct theory?

    If you do not know, you are not thinking hard enough ( a la Jut).

    -Jut

  34. 34
    Charles S says:

    Jut,

    30 years ago, climate modelers predicted that global temperatures would be higher now than they were then. They are.

    20 years ago, climate modelers predicted that global temperatures would be higher now than they were then. They are.

    10 years ago… same story.

    Can you predict the future in an uncontrolled, unrepeatable environment? This is the hardest test of predictions you can get. This is the gold standard of model validation. Even the shoddy climate models of 30 years ago were able to meet this test and successfully predicted what would happen in the uncontrolled environment substantially into the future. The climate models have improved vastly. There is really no excuse for doubting them on the basics (on the details, there is more potential for error, but the basic predictions are really all you need to know that the world is getting hotter, and that it is caused by increased CO2 from human sources).

    In addition, climate models run in historical mode can accurately model the entire recorded temperature history of the world (on a global scale, not on a point by point weather scale). If you include anthropogenic CO2 in the models, then the 20th and 21st centuries behave as observed. If you leave out anthropogenic CO2 from the model, then the model results start diverging in the 20th century and diverge more and more as the century goes on. So the models are predicting higher temperatures in the future (and correctly predicted higher temperatures in the past) because of anthropogenic CO2.

    Yes, there are processes that are not perfectly understood; yes, the system is complex. The climate models have demonstrated clearly and convincingly over the last 3 decades that those processes can be abstracted or ignored and still produce model results that are valid.

    As to the old question of how can we predict the climate if we can’t predict the weather:

    http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/predictingweathervsclimate/
    This talks about how climate models and weather models deal with very different problems, and why that makes long time scales doable for climate but not for weather (basically, butterflies don’t affect the climate).

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/weather-forecasts-vs-climate-models-predictions.htm
    Some of the comments are interesting.

    The basic response is short, but the intermediate response goes into multiple detailed examples of the climate models producing accurate climate predictions on the global scale over periods of several years and periods of decades.

    Also, that site is excellent in general and has an enormous amount of detailed answers to the standard skeptic questions.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120919191216.htm
    Here is some specific research
    Its conclusion? We can predict continent scale climate on a multi-decadal scale better than we can predict it on a single decade scale, so predicting climate is counter-intuitive to what you would imagine if you just imagine climate modeling as really big scale weather modeling (it really, really isn’t).

  35. 35
    Ampersand says:

    See, the mistake you have made is thinking that everyone else concedes that “climate scientists” actually have some authority about the things of which they speak.

    Believe me, I do not think that. The world is full of people who don’t believe in science, like yourself.

    As for what would disprove climate science, I think Lucia’s answer is good. (Note the point about statistical significance, though – in other words, more than a trivial number of data points would be required.)

    So what would it take to convince you that you’re in error?

  36. 36
    Robert says:

    I may have misunderstood the nature of Silver’s model, if what you folks are saying is correct then I was in essence critiquing the model and Amp’s point vis a vis me would be perfectly valid. I stand corrected.

  37. 37
    Charles S says:

    Jut,

    It would be trivial to have proved that AGW was not a valid theory. The numerical models that predicted the rise in global temperatures since 1988 could have gotten it wrong. The numerical models that model the historical record and match the historical record until the 20th century and then either diverge or continue to match the record depending on whether anthropogenic CO2 is included could have failed to produce such a result. The global temperature could have failed to heat up over the last 3 decades without any other changes in conditions. The paleo CO2 and temperature records could fail to align in dataset after dataset, generated by independent groups using multiple methods in multiple fields of research (thereby casting doubt on the entire understanding of the relationship between CO2 and heating).

    None of those things have happened. Instead, the opposite of each of those things has happened.

    Going forward, the next decade could be significantly colder on a global scale than the models predict in a way that is not explainable by any of the other forcings (if we have a series of huge volcanic eruptions in the coming decade, our models now won’t have incorporated them, so the temperature will be cooler than predicted, but re-running the models with the correct volcanic events should remain accurate). Going forward, someone could demonstrate convincingly that there is some missing variable that is not included in the models that actually has been driving the 20th and 21st c climate change (even though it didn’t matter in the preceding centuries). Going forward, we could massively cut CO2 emissions and not have the global warming decrease in anything like the manner the models predict.

    Those are all things that would cast the theory of AGW into doubt and require adjustments and corrections to our understanding of how climate works. Because we now have a large body of evidence of tests that AGW theory has succeeded in, at a policy level we should really not be taking a wait and see approach to this. On a scientific level, every decade will be a continuing test of AGW theory, just as each GPS location is a test of relativity.