My friend in Australia, Joanne Nova, has come up with an interesting essay on why it is so hard for many professional scientists to come out against climate consensus. In fact you might say in this case study it is un-bearable.
For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here
The way some people get treated for expressing a different viewpoint rather reminds me of what Sethi says to Moses upon announcement of exile in the movie The Ten Commandments:
Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of man, for all time.
Nova writes: The price for speaking out against global warming is exile from your peers, even if you are at the top of your field. What follows is an example of a scientific group that not only stopped a leading researcher from attending a meeting, but then-without discussing the evidence-applauds the IPCC and recommends urgent policies to reduce greenhouse gases.
What has science been reduced to if bear biologists feel they can effectively issue ad hoc recommendations on worldwide energy use? How low have standards sunk if informed opinion is censored, while uninformed opinion is elevated to official policy?
If a leading researcher can’t speak his mind without punishment by exile, what chance would any up-and-coming researcher have? As Mitchell Taylor points out “It’s a good way to maintain consensus”.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, describes Extremistan as that place where sensational success comes from luck alone. (He reads a bit like a grumpy old man, and would no doubt be grumpy about my summary, but there it is.)
Taleb describes areas in life where Extremistan dominate, like the success of a pop song, and areas where Mediocristan dominates, like the average height of a human.
Perhaps, the further we get from simple tangible physical objects, like rocks hurtling through space, or chemicals interacting in a test tube (the ones where science has been very good), the more we get into larger, complex, dynamic processes, the more we get into the social dynamics of science, and the more “the science” relies on consensus, the more a school of thought becomes a victim to accidental fame and success, ie. the more the rules of Extremistan govern the outcome.
In other worlds, the more people claim that AGW is correct due to consensus, the more it becomes likely that it is the product of accidental success.
(If simple falsifiability was available then the matter could be decided concretely and the situation would be more like Mediocristan. But when scientists start saying it is naive to expect a smoking gun, then the more we are heading towards Extremistan).
In Extremistan, two things which are of very similar quality, where perhaps one musical recording is only slightly better than another, leads to one of the two gaining the lion share of attention and the other fading into obscurity–and not necessarily even the slightly better one.
The lack of simple falsifiability, and the “weight” of consensus, is indicative of the situation being governed by the rules of Extremistan, where the winner is simply the one that got lucky, not necessarily the one that was right.
The internet however, can help people discover that which would have faded to obscurity. Remember that the AGW insiders would dismiss this blog as merely an accident of attention lavished on a lower quality idea, but that same accident of social attention could just as well be what led to AGW theory gaining the upper hand in the first place (or is that second, after ice ages of the 70s… which we are told never received widespread support… or as they say in Extremistan: “never got lucky”.)
Anthony,
You ask for suggestions on improving WUWT. I often recommend it to contacts, but I feel they rarely become regular readers. I think your blog has become rather arcane, with all the acronyms litttering every post. It would be very helpful if say every Monday someone from a small team of experts you know could do short piece summarising the evidence on a series of topics, aimed at interested but not currently up-to-date readers. Say on sea levels, ice extent, actual warming/cooling, state of instruments etc etc. I’m thinking of people who don’t know terms like Stevenson whatsit, DDT, GISS, and the like.
Rob Phelan, Savethesharks and others on the sociology of groupthink:
All my professional life as an ecologist/biologist I have been plagued by a second degree in social anthropology – with a special interest in science, scientists as a ‘tribe’ and the linguistics of knowledge. Despite my appreciation that scientists could not hope to operate without group-think bias (from wider social, political, religious and financial pressures, as well as institutional prior-commitment and suppression of dissent), I still operated as a scientists active in policy formulation – believing strongly that with the right institutional safeguards science was an essential foundation for action.
In my work on ocean protection (as part of a global but small team that prepared the way for the Precautionary Approach to dealing with toxic wastes) I saw how such group-think operated at the highest levels within the UN system. The science was modified by the ideology and impervious to argument: the dogma was that any toxic material could be diluted and dispersed in the vast oceans, and if we got it wrong, we could always turn off the taps. New (in the mid-1980s) computer models of global circulation predicted the eventual concentrations and safe limits. Vast resources were devoted to these models – and very little to actually reviewing the evidence upon which they were based. A model constructed in 1980 could still be in use in 1990 (with add-ons), but its modellers completely out-of-touch with new data (the reality). Where big investements had been made (industrial processes disposal pathways and monitoring) there was clearly a vested interest in not-finding evidence that might contradict the model and in not highlighting avenues of inquiry that might lead in that direction – appropriate statistical checks on the reliability of monitoring were not made.
Only a handful of concerned scientists stood against the consensus science and policy – and they would have had no leverage at all (easily ignored) despite many peer-reviewed papers, without the support of firstly, Greenpeace International (through my work with that organisation, and then the more radical countries party to the UN ocean treatises (e.g. Germany, Denmark and Sweden).
Eventually we prevailed politically and got the laws changed. In the final year, I went before the key UN panel – GESAMP, Group of Experts on Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution, with the intention of providing them a critique of their errors and suggestions for avoiding such in the future. The Panel refused to engage in detailed discussion and suggested the peer-reviewed literature was the appropriate place for such a critique (they were all competent scientists) and I knew they thought – fat-chance he has of that! Actually, the editor of the top journal in marine pollution had sat with me on a UK government commission – and he invited me to publish.
It took a year to properly prepare the paper – and cost about £20,000 in 1992 money. That’s what it really takes for a complex review paper properly and fully referenced and up-to-date.
The paper met a wall of silence – except, postcard after postcard came in from marine labs worldwide requesting a reprint – over 100. Mostly from junior scientists letting me know they were reading the paper.
After publishing that, I left the field – as an ecologist I had other fish to fry – we had won the battle. I hoped the UN would take note of the recommendations.
Ten years later, whilst leading on a government agency project to integrate renewable energy supplies into the British landscape (and community) – I came to look at the climate models (a development of the 1980s GCMs) – largely because I realised that you could not integrate renewable energy on the scale envisaged without enormous environmental damage. I began to find all the same errors and lack of safeguards I had challenged before –
group-think/suppression of dissenting voices/selective participants at meetings/false consensus building on the science/pressure on dissidents – including funding, ridicule, exclusion…………
and with one very disturbing difference – there were no powerful environmental campaign groups or dissenting governments to fund the critics!
I checked then to see the citation index of my paper:
P.Taylor (1993) The State of the Marine Environment ‘A critique of the work and the role of the Joint Group of Experts on Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP).
Marine Pollution Bulletin 26, 3: 120-127.
It had only three citations! It had been completely ignored by the establishment it was aimed at reforming.
At first, the group-think ignores criticism. When it simply cannot, it attacks the critic. It ignores new data and chooses to believe the virtual reality of the model.
In my book ‘Chill’ I devote a chapter to this collective ‘delusion’. Then I look at the sociology of ‘collusion’ – the vested interest in not engaging with the dissenting voices, pretending either they do not exist, or where they do, they are cranks, mavericks, politically motivated….whatever necessary not to actually deal with the science.
My book is published by a small house. My normal publisher (of my contribution to ecology) Earthscane, declined on the grounds that it criticised the IPCC (whose work they also publish) and that my arguments should be first published in a peer-reviewed journal. As I pointed out – that takes time, and whereas I have a good reputation in marine protection, I am unknown in climate policy – and reviews of this nature are always invited from acknowledged experts. Its a slow process and I may yet get a paper together, despite no funding or institutional base.
Recently, it was suggested that I take up debate with George Monbiot, a prolific writer on the environment, and defender of the AGW orthodoxy – he had offered to debate Ian Plimer, but that foundered for some reason. I offered to take up the challenge after several people asked me to post on the Guardian blog.
Monbiot’s reply has been that he would debate my ‘novel’ ideas (they are, of course, not novel – but a critical review of the published papers and data – and lay bare the internal lack of consensus even within the IPCC on key aspects: cloud behaviour, ocean cycles, water vapour amplifiers, solar output and climate links etc) – but only after they were published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal!
Its avoidance, of course. Ian Plimer has no climate papers to his credit, but gained enough publicity so that he could not be ignored. I have yet to review his work – but Monbiot dismisses it as full of ‘schoolboy howlers’. He would not read my book, and I doubt he actually read Plimer’s. This is typical of the dogmatist – but it creates ripples throughout the science world, where those who might usefully contribute some critical awareness, are scared to enter the heated controversy. Monbiot then unwittingly contributes to the atmosphere of repression.
I drew his attention to the endorsement on Chill’s cover by Jackson Davis, whom I have had a long-term working relationship and enduring friendship – even though on climate issues, he has been a member of the UN framework convention on climate, and was the drafting author of the Kyoto Protocol – he says my book is a must-read for all on either side of the debate and that the questions must be answered before global warming can be taken as truth. That counts for nothing in the eyes of a non-expert like Monbiot, who is concerned to defend the monolith.
I am at a loss now to know what forums might exist to advance the current situation. Petitions and alternative conferences are simply ignored. Only the dubiously motivated Business-As-Usual brigade in the right-wing press take up the banner and usually in ways readily dismissed as biased. My motivation has been that a global cooling will render all the billions spent on mitigation completely useless – and the real focus on food, agriculture, water and the quality of life under a cooling scenario, is not addressed.
OT
Talk about global warming. It’s here! In spades! AMSU is reporting a 40+ F temp increase over this day last year.
Hope they correct that before they publish the monthly figures.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_chLT.r001.txt
motd1=The temperature on 09/24/2009
motd2=is 40.13 deg F warmer than
motd3=this day last year.
Philip_B @15:46:02
As others have noted AGW is a socio-political phenomena. But we shouldn’t forget that the AGW phenomena was engineered by the United Nations
…under the guidance of the Evil Canadian Maurice Strong who organized the Rio summit leading to the Kyoto treaty. The one who hides from international corruption charges in China and wants to destroy Western industrial society.
(If you can imagine an Evil Canadian:-)
Regarding Maurice Strong; Is it not hypocritical that someone who has made millions of dollars from industry wants to stop it all? He (and Soros) have more money than anyone could ever possibly need. Now they want people to restrict their lives to a bare minimum. Al Gore as well. Do as I say, not as I do. Strong now lives in China under diplomatic immunity (as a member of the UN). In theory, the world governance is a great idea. Unfortunately, due to human nature (absolute power, etc.) this is a slippery slope. I would love to see all people of all nations work for the betterment of mankind. I do not believe we are ready yet for such a world. Once we sort out the problems of energy and governance, crime and punishment, and a plethora of other issues (there are still pirates on the oceans for crying out loud), perhaps this step can be taken. To hand over world power to someone like Strong or Soros (both are self serving sociopaths, in my opinion), is indeed asking for trouble.
Peter Taylor:
“I am at a loss now to know what forums might exist to advance the current situation. Petitions and alternative conferences are simply ignored.”
Do not be too despondent, for to borrow words from Karl Marx, the AGW ideology contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
As authorities move ever forward into the abyss, as the rationing of energy is ratcheted ever more tightly, the sinews of society will snap one by one. First, the tax take will fall as unemployment climbs forcing governments to create ever more “green” jobs with the result that real purchasing power falls, leading to – a fall in tax take. Government will struggle to find recources to pay for welfare, education and infra structure. More and more of the services will fail, until the they turn finally to the architects of global misery – the AGW scientists themselves, and cut the support from under them. Facing their own anihalation, the world will discover that, suddenly, they admit that they were probably wrong.
A big shout out to all you Winnipegers out there, especially those from the Schmidt clan!! Hope you are all healthy and happy !! It is a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it !! All the best to you folks. Glad to see you are getting a bit of nice weather in Winnipeg. It was a brutal winter and a fairly dismal summer. Here in Calgary, it has not been a tremendous summer( we finally got to 30C in late September). We can easily cope and adapt (my little ones had a great summer!!). Changes aren’t permanent, but change is. Much love to all those in Winnipeg ( a town of unbelievable music and restaurants). I never let derogatory comments about Winnipeg slip by unchallenged. It is a wonderful place.
At (15:47:53), King of Cool said “If science is on your side all you need is a sales department to demonstrate it.”
I couldn’t agree more. In a way, it is sad to even consider the need for a PR machine to distribute good science. However, the AGW community has not shown any restraint in selling their positions using whatever PR is available. Unfortunately for the skeptics, that includes most of the formerly mainstream media. While the media buzz, with few exceptions, is decidedly pro-AGW, we should not forget that there are many information outlets available that are not controlled by Big Media and I would argue that is where you will find most of the readers, anyway.
What we need are more people the prototypical American can-do attitude that looks for creative ways to bypass the roadblocks and achieve their goals (this is certainly not limited to those of us in the U.S.). There are more ways to distribute information and build influence now than we would have ever dreamed of even ten years ago, so if the message isn’t getting out, it is our fault. This blog site shows that there is significant interest in the skeptical point of view, and I’ll venture a bet that the influence of this site goes well beyond those who read it directly. I wouldn’t be surprised if talk around the water cooler at work is much more effective than anything printed in the New York Times or spewed on CNN.
When I graduated from engineering school 15-20 years, ago, we had been instructed to find creative ways to achieve our goals. We were taught that nothing was an impediment to progress…it was the engineer’s job to find ways around the roadblocks and make it work. I’ve seen a disturbing trend in the last 5 years or so, in that the new engineers we hire do not seem to have been given the same fire and determination. Honestly, a significant number of them appear to have the attitude that it probably won’t work, so why bother trying? Maybe it is a generational quirk but we need some leadership, both in the AGW discussion and in many other areas, to bypass the elites that seem bent on imposing their plan for this great nation.
There is hope, out there, though. The supposedly uneducated backwoods “hicks and hillbillies” get it. In all my years living in small farm towns, I’ve seen the local average Joe ignore much of what happens in Washington D.C. because regardless of how it swings left to right, the impact at the local level has generally been small. Having said that, I have never seen the level of “pitchfork” energy so high as it is now. Cap and Trade may unleash the slumbering giant, and unfortunately for the folks in charge, the giant is armed to the teeth (and getting more so every day). It is going to be an interesting couple of years coming up.
Peter Taylor (06:35:06)
Its avoidance, of course. Ian Plimer has no climate papers to his credit, but gained enough publicity so that he could not be ignored. I have yet to review his work – but Monbiot dismisses it as full of ’schoolboy howlers’. He would not read my book, and I doubt he actually read Plimer’s. This is typical of the dogmatist – but it creates ripples throughout the science world, where those who might usefully contribute some critical awareness, are scared to enter the heated controversy. (my emphasis)
I am no fan of Monbiot, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to state that his questions have merit and cannot be ignored. Pilmer has chosen to ignore the questions, and therefore has lost credibility, IMO. I may be wrong as I have not read every single exchange.
If you read Monbiot’s questions, you can see that he has read the book (or at least someone has and fed him the topics to challenge – it makes no difference). We should all stand up and be available for challenge, lest we fall into the same court as the Al Gore Warmers.
jmrSudbury (04:00:25) :
While I don’t mind typos on websites as much, this pdf looks like it should be more professional. Can anyone contact Joanne, and let her know that her third paragraph has the incorrect PSBG acronym? — John M Reynolds
It’s SPPI, they use gloss to distract from the content, like they do with all Monckton’s polemics. I see Joanne has adopted his style of ad hominem attack too.
REPLY: Phil, why not show us one of your publications from Princeton to show us and Ms. Nova how it is done? – Anthony
That is my fear as well. If people in general don’t recognise the pseudoscientists of today for what they are, how can we expect people to recognise the real scientists of tomorrow?
Science will suffer,
Phil, the ad hominem attack was perfected by your side decades ago. A little late to whine about its use now, don’t you think?
Jo Nova is sadly right that Science is the truly endangered species here.
— E pur, si muove!
— Galileo
Phil. (09:41:58),
If you don’t like Viscount Monckton’s ‘gloss’, simply read the regular link instead of the more professional looking [glossy to you] pdf.
Admit it, Phil, you’re just jealous because skeptics have a real Viscount, and all you’ve got is Al Gore and company. [Oops, I forgot. You’ve got the believer in the “grey goo” that’s gonna eat civilization: the truly weird Prince Charles The Certified Moonbat.]
.
Also, Jennifer Marohasy has posted more info on the odious censorship actions of Mr Derocher, who refused credentials to a long time polar bear expert from attending the conference, specifically because he had questioned the AGW=CPO2 conjecture:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/exile-for-non-believers-polar-bear-expert-told-to-stay-home/#more-6465
Derocher makes a swell little goose-stepping brownshirt, doesn’t he?
Because the warmists lack the science, the so called “consensus” has become the last frontier.
They simply send out those who threaten the consensus.
What should worry us is the fact that these are practices that were common in socialist societies like the USSR, Nazi Germany and China.
It’s a strong indicator where we are heading
“Point to mistakes by individual scientists, and they answer the culture keeps things in check. Point to bias in the culture, and they answer the scientists are expert individuals.”
Science has gotten a swelled head and convinced itself that it is infallible, because it has an infallible method and procedures. This position is explicitly maintained, though without the red-flag word “infallible,” by science-groupies who constitute most of the capital-S Skeptics movement (CSICOP, etc., for instance is a supporter of AGW, as are other Skeptics organizations). The Pranksters on Olympus have taken note and given Science an opportunity to make a cosmic jackass of itself, like its “it’s-all-settled” predecessors. In twenty years, when all the AWGers’ excuses have run out, the scientific pretension to authoritative knowledge, good faith, self-correcting processes, objectivity, etc. will be a joke for the ages.
Phil. (09:41:58) :
Our Phil is an academic? At a prestigous institution of higher learning? How cool is that? And I thought only quacks like Svalgaard, Archibald and Spencer commented here. UUUhhh… I can find those guys with a Google search, Phil, just who are you?
Phil. (09:41:58) : It’s SPPI, they use gloss to distract from the content, like they do with all Monckton’s polemics. I see Joanne has adopted his style of ad hominem attack too.
“ad hominem attack” Phil? Your comment above on Joanne and Monckton sounds to me rather like one.
From what I have read Mitchell Taylor seems to be an eminent Polar Bear researcher. To focus back on content and substance, which your post above seems to be lacking, do you have anything to say about why Mitchell Taylor should be excluded from a conference on Polar Bears because of his views on human induced climate change?
Specifically it seems, whether human induced climate change is real or not, he has found that the survival on thriving of Polar Bears is linked to conservation and human hunting rather than Global Warming.
Do you think this view is unreasonable in the light of his research and in the light of the fact that Polar bears survived the Eemian period when it was warmer than today?
Cooperation is becoming ever more important as people realise that all nations have to work to clean things up.
This puts exceedingly high value on the principle of cooperation and human bonding as something desirable in its own right.
Maybe the scientific details suffer, but what is gained, what environmentalists and concerned scientists are aiming for, what they value most, is reaching a place where humans cooperate naturally and hold cooperation as their core principle.
So if you are trying to build cooperation as the basic ethical outlook that people have on life, so that it becomes the natural order of things, then dissenting views are not welcome. I have seen exactly this in large group psychology/spiritual exercises, where problems are glossed over and those who point to the problems are accused of “taking energy from the space”, or of being “unhelpful”, or of “sabotage”.
When people refer back to “the literature” what they are saying is “the group” (printing something on paper doesn’t make it more real or correct by virtue of it being on paper, the paper is just the medium).
The environmentalists—-the more noble kind, I might add—-value cooperation, and want to build cooperation, and that is actually the aim, more so than any particular theory. It doesn’t matter if the theory has flaws, because if everyone can agree, then you’ve just built a group who work together and who are peaceful together and who can share with each other rather than fight each other, in other world, you’re building a better world.
You’ve actually built a new kind of community.
I would invite any environmentalist to tell me where I’m wrong on this point.
The key concern and aim, is consensus itself, not the technical correctness of any particular theory.
Let’s say people here are right and AGW is just wrong. Fine, you’ve set back environmentalism by decades, some would say. And is that really what you want? Are you perhaps not just selfishly scoring points when there are bigger issues at stake about human global cooperation?
Perhaps environmentalists haven’t articulated this themselves, but as I say, am I wrong on this point?
Thanks to Anthony for his marvelous work and for all the kind comments. Feedback is a powerful motivator.
For those feeling weary: it is bone-sapping if you have to wade through another full gloss Synthesis Report which uses out of date data, logical fallacies, and presents only half the truth, but we are getting somewhere. We don’t have to have the media on our side to slow this gravy train. We have word of mouth. We have the net. People trust those they know… and they are looking for the right way to explain why they are suspicious of the hard sell.
Thanks to everyone for spreading the word on web-sites and blogs, and at dinner parties or schools. We battle against major money and the most powerful institutions in the world (the banks), but we are shifting polls.
Stefan, like you I’m concerned for environmental groups. By advocating policies based on fashion and group-think, who will trust them in five years time? Real environmental problems go ignored.
As for the bigger issues about human cooperation at stake? What’s the point of cooperation” if people are cooperating to solve a non-problem? When this kind of operation “succeeds” hasn’t it just prevented people from working together to do something useful? (Like prevent malaria, or teach kids to reason.)
Jeremy said: “The key concern and aim, is consensus itself, not the technical correctness of any particular theory. ”
So if we are all in agreement that we can breathe underwater, then what matters is not that it works, but that we all do it together?
REPLY: Thanks Joanne, you should see the new UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium report (just a couple of stories up). Like the “Full Gloss Synthesis report” this one takes no prisoners when it comes to the absurd, using graphs from Wikipedia authors and images from WWF. – Anthony
I think there is a significant story brewing on Climate Audit involving Yamal tree proxy data and how it has been fiddled to relate to / agree with the Anthropogenic Global Warming ‘smoking gun’ signature of the Hockey Stick.
A story involving cherry picking of data, manipulation, cover-up and deceit.
“Let’s say people here are right and AGW is just wrong. Fine, you’ve set back environmentalism by decades, some would say. And is that really what you want? Are you perhaps not just selfishly scoring points when there are bigger issues at stake about human global cooperation?”
So, groupthink’s not a bug but a feature!
(Incidentally, doesn’t that recently published book by an English member of IPCC come close to saying this?)
Stefan,
If I understand your post correctly, you are saying that cooperation is a worthy goal in its own right? It is an end unto itself? It is something worthy of striving for? For expending human intellectual capital on?
I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. Apart from the obvious feel-good factor of having the tribe around you, sharing the communal fire, what are the tangible benefits of cooperation as a destination?
I would thoroughly agree that cooperation within a group is an excellent means to achieving a common goal. But for the life of me, I cannot see it as a goal in and of itself.
Science has always progressed through people saying, “Just a minute, that doesn’t look right. Something else is going on here”. That is why the earth is no longer flat, and modern society now enjoys the benefits of gravity.
I am not a scientist, I am a analyst, so my views may be of little import. But as an analyst, it has been my career for the past forty years to look for patterns in events, and in particular, to look for discrepancies in those patterns. I have also used computer models since the late ’60s and am very much aware of their accuracy.
So if the skeptics and deniers are proved right, we may well have pushed environmentalism (as it currently manifests itself) back by decades. But we will have stood up for Science, as the application of rational thought, and struck a blow against science as a religion.
I am sure that environmental science (as opposed to environmentalism) will emerge stronger for it.