Further Discussion on the Narrow Process of the AGU Review of Climate Change
Guest essay by Roger A. Pielke Sr.
With the appearance of the new 2013 WG1 IPCC report, it is useful to visit my recent experience with the American Geophysical Union (AGU) assessment process that I had not commented on before.
My experience exemplifies how the climate assessment processes has been “colonized” [using Ross McKittrick’s terminology – http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/16/ipcc-models-getting-mushy/] to promote an inappropriately too narrow (and often incorrect) assessment of climate science.
To place the issue in context, I will first present the “charge” and “guidelines” presented to our Committee [highlighting specific text]
Next, I present the AGU guidelines that were provided to us [highlight added]
Guidelines for AGU position statement panels
• Following appointment to the panel, each panel member will receive a list of names and contact information of their fellow panel members.
• The AGU Council and membership will be informed that the panel is working on a statement and that comments are welcome. The staff liaison will forward relevant comments to the panel and members shall consider them as they see fit.
• Each panel member should first review the charge to the committee (written by AGU public policy staff for each statement), and AGU policy on its role in advocacy of public issues and its procedures for developing Union positions (available on the web).
• The panel should begin its deliberations with a planning conference call. The panel should discuss the charge to the panel and the AGU policy on position statements so there is no misunderstanding amongst panel members. The panel should also discuss the timetable for completing a draft statement for Council review, and roles and responsibilities for panel members. AGU Public Affairs Coordinator Erik Hankin (ehankin@agu.org, tel-202-777-7523) will serve as staff liaison to the panel.
• The panel should identify the primary audience or audiences for the statement as part of the preliminary discussions to help focus the writing effort. Panel members should be aware of expressions and uses of language that may not be appropriate for or may be misinterpreted by a non-scientist audience. For example, when speaking of what scientists do, avoid the verb “believe” and the noun “belief” because they are more appropriate to religion than to the scientific process. Instead, it is acceptable to use the verb “think” and, if needed, the noun “concept”.
• Typically the panel can conduct much of its business via e-mail or with additional conference calls. At least one face to face meeting is very useful to bringing diverse views into the discussion. More meetings may be required to resolve disagreements that cannot be worked out over the phone or via e-mail.
• When the panel has completed a draft statement, the AGU Public Information Manager, Public Affairs Manager, and an Eos editor will review the draft statement with the panel and offer suggestions based on their expertise that may strengthen the statement.
• When the panel is satisfied with the edited statement, the chair will submit the statement to AGU Council for their vote or comment.
However, my “comments” were not welcome. In the article by Carol Finn [highlight added]
AGU Updates Climate Change Position 20 AUG 2013
DOI: 10.1002/2013EO340006 Statement http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EO340006/pdf
which presents the accepted final version of the AGU Statement, this is what she wrote
The draft statement was published in Eos in November 2012 (Eos, 93(48), 502, doi:10.1029/ 2012EO480009) for member comment. The panel addressed the comments and submitted the statement for approval.
The panel did not review the wholly separate statement he drafted because it did not meet the charge from AGU’s Board.
In other words, despite stating it is AGU policy to address comments, they failed to discuss mine as summarized in my minority statement (which clearly is a “comment”).
This failure to review by the Panel is yet another example of how parochial the climate assessment process has become.
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No-one who matters is listening to the skeptics.
Jim Cripwell:
OK, so you think you don’t matter. In that case there is no point in your posting here.
Richard
Haha Jim, no one who matters listens to anyone
Comments are welcome as long as they support the right view.
“Skeptics” is a term about those who find reason (good or not) to disagree with a claim. “Deniers” is a term for those who reject that which is determined and has no reason for questioning.
This is why no one listens to the other side: as long as those who disagree are labeled “deniers”, and not “skeptics”, there is no reason to listen. One may argue with a man who says the sun’s light is more red than yellow, but not one who says it is dark when it is clearly light. The warmists have cleverly redefined their opponents into not the unconverted, but the unconvertible.
As a geologist I have to register my incredulity that AGU even issues statements on this topic. Ditto GSA and other so-called scientific organisations. Science organisations should have a single policy. To promote scientific research wherever it leads. This kind of thing highlights just how far our scientific organisations have strayed from what they were intended to be: places where scientists in the same discipline would be able to vet their research and get feedback and input to hone their results and conclusions, and thereby add to the body of knowledge.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see what the “charge” is in this posting.
Friends:
Those who want to know how the AGU and similar organisations were usurped may like to read this account by Richard Lindzen. It is a shocking read which names names
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
Richard
Depart the AGU, open a new association, bleed them of members until they collapse.
steveta_uk:
At October 14, 2013 at 10:53 am you say
Perhaps you failed to read the final four paragraphs (each an individual sentence) of the essay.
The charge is
It cannot be known how many other comments were also ignored.
Richard
Dr. Pielke, Sr. should reflect on just who is in a position of powerful influence on the AGU’s ethics panel.
It is not at all surprising that an organization that would consider Peter Glieck as a legitimate member, much less one involved with ethics, would also have a less than ethical stance itself.
I guess its a good thing very few people even know who the AGU is and hardly anyone cares what they have to say.
richardscourtney @ur momisugly Jim Cripwell:
OK, so you think you don’t matter. In that case there is no point in your posting here.
Sceptics are a bit like CO2 molecules, do not matter to climate change, but are of vital importance for growing plants.
Most of us (myself included) don’t matter to the powers to be, but are of vital importance for the growing public opinion.
First, Roger, my thanks to you for your continued fight for transparency in the science. You have stood up for it on many fronts, including the one you detail above.
People usually think of “transparency” in science as meaning showing all of your data and code, detailing all your assumptions and logic, that kind of thing.
But there is another equally important transparency—revealing the minority view, the alternate hypothesis, the stubborn disagreement.
For me, the AGU has no business taking a position on climate science, any more than they should issue position papers on relativity. It’s not their job, and by becoming activists they dimish their own credibility, and harm science itself.
What the scientific associations at all levels could do is honestly poll their members on the subject. To me, this omission by virtually every professional scientific association is very telling. Think about all of those organizations, scientific societies and academies and associations all over the world, and hardly a one of them dares to actually ask their members what they think about the climate …
Quite the contrary. As you detail above, Roger, far from asking their members what they think about climate, they violate their own procedures to deny a voice to their members who disagree with the revealed wisdom.
Pathetic. Bad AGU. Go take a time out in the corner.
And stupid, too. Didn’t I just read a study saying that alarmism turns people off, makes them less likely to do what the activists want?
Anyhow, Roger, keep up the good work. It’s much appreciated.
w.
vukcevic:
Thanks for your post addressed to me at October 14, 2013 at 11:20 am.
For clarity, I write to say that I fully agree with what you say. Indeed, I thought I was making the same point as you have explicitly stated by my post you have answered. Clearly, the fact of your post demonstrates that I was not clear and, therefore, I copy your comment to here for the benefit of others.
Again, thankyou for your post.
Richard
Perhaps Jim Crimpwell needs to re-read this article about Dr. Barry Marshall, http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery#.Ulw4glAsmMF No one who mattered thought that this skeptic of the theory that stress induces ulcers needed to listen to him either. A lot of well connected vested interests in supplying a treatment vs. a cure got it wrong.
Willis tkhx for your comments, as usual thoughtful and to the point. If some of these organizations have membership lists that are publicly accessible, why cannot WUWT do a few polls of them to get to the core of their members’ beliefs?
Jim Cripwell says:
October 14, 2013 at 10:40 am
You think reporters & commenters in the media, the rate-payers, consumers & voters they influence & the public officials elected by the latter don’t matter? Just whom do you suppose does matter? Under the current administration public opinion may not matter, but the people won’t stand for economy-trashing, anti-scientific bureaucratic meddling forever.
Or if they do, then we deserve the financial & energy catastrophes that follow.
Cancelation of free speech, suppression of opinion, ad hominem attacks…
All we need is the return of show trials.
Looks the NAZI’s or the Stalinists have taken control over the AGU.
Is this the same AGU that had a chairman of ethics in science ctte that admitted wire fraud?
Is this the same AGU that welcomes the now ex-chairman of said ethics committee at its fall meeting last year?
What has current chair-person of ethics commitee said about self-confessed wire-fraudster and and ex-chairman addressing fall meeting?
Just wondering.
I’ve often thought about the pitfalls of religious orders that allow representatives of congregations to come together in annual meetings to hammer out social commentary statements largely outside the purview of the membership. That is bad enough but at least they are not trying to reset the core belief system at these meetings. In the case of the AGU, they appear to be undermining the core of science methods as a religious exercise in social commentary. As in the case of religious orders, the membership does not think much of the sausage factory process or results and routinely dismiss them as the noise of those that commandeer group meetings. At some point though such annoyances can lead to splintering into more orders and groups. When they start selling indulgences from on high, the process accelerates.
Willis writes “For me, the AGU has no business taking a position on climate science, any more than they should issue position papers on relativity. It’s not their job, and by becoming activists they dimish (sic) their own credibility, and harm science itself.”
I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps they’ll receive better funding is why?
To my many critics. Science can move slowly, and in the end, the empirical data will rule who is right. I am fully aware of scientific history. The current situation is that what I term the “scientific establishment” has firmly aligned itself behind the CAGW movement, sponsored by the IPCC. The question to me is, do we wait for the empirical data, or do we try to do something now, to try and show that the AR5 is load of scientific nonsense. If we are going to adopt the latter course, then we have to do something more than preaching to the choir. We need someone who has the ear of the “scientific establishment” in order to make any progress.
Jim Cripwell says:
October 14, 2013 at 12:25 pm
The empirical data already show CACA to be a load of caca.
When governments start funding real science again instead of CACA, then the “scientists” will follow. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Right now regimes have a vested interest in CACA. That may change when their subject peoples are freezing in the dark.
Milo, Maybe. But until the warmists and the “scientific establishment” admit and agree, then no-one who matters is listening.