I asked Dr. Judith Curry if I could repost her letter which she originally sent to Climate Progress, here at WUWT. Here was her response:
From: Curry, Judith A
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 2:10 PM
To: Anthony Watts – mobile
Subject: Re: request
Hi Anthony, by all means post it. I am trying to reach out to everyone, pls help in this effort. Judy
Dr. Curry gets props from the skeptical community because she had the courage to invite Steve McIntyre to give a presentation at Georgia Tech, for which she took criticism. Her letter is insightful and addresses troubling issues. We can all learn something from it. – Anthony
An open letter to graduate students and young scientists in fields related to climate research – By Dr. Judith A. Curry, Georgia Tech
Based upon feedback that I’ve received from graduate students at Georgia Tech, I suspect that you are confused, troubled, or worried by what you have been reading about ClimateGate and the contents of the hacked CRU emails. After spending considerable time reading the hacked emails and other posts in the blogosphere, I wrote an essay that calls for greater transparency in climate data and other methods used in climate research. The essay is posted over at climateaudit.org (you can read it at http://camirror.wordpress.com/ 2009/ 11/ 22/ curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/ ).
What has been noticeably absent so far in the ClimateGate discussion is a public reaffirmation by climate researchers of our basic research values: the rigors of the scientific method (including reproducibility), research integrity and ethics, open minds, and critical thinking. Under no circumstances should we ever sacrifice any of these values; the CRU emails, however, appear to violate them.
My motivation for communicating on this issue in the blogosphere comes from emails that I received from Georgia Tech graduate students and alums. As a result of my post on climateaudit, I started receiving emails from graduate students from other universities. I post the content of one of the emails here, without reference to the student’s name or institution:
Hi Dr. Curry,
I am a young climate researcher (just received my master’s degree from xxx University) and have been very troubled by the emails that were released from CRU. I just want to applaud and support your response on climateaudit.org [95% of it 🙂 ]. Your statement represents exactly how I have felt as I slowly enter this community. The content of some of the emails literally made me stop and wonder if I should continue with my PhD applications for fall 2010, in this science. I was so troubled by how our fellow scientists within the climate community have been dealing with opposing voices (on both sides). I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years.
At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics. I have served my time in the “trenches of the climate war” in the context of the debate on hurricanes and global warming. There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence that feeds on research and statements from climate change skeptics. In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with skeptics:
1. Retreat into the ivory tower
2. Circle the wagons/point guns outward: ad hominem/appeal to motive attacks; appeal to authority; isolate the enemy through lack of access to data; peer review process
3. Take the “high ground:” engage the skeptics on our own terms (conferences, blogosphere); make data/methods available/transparent; clarify the uncertainties; openly declare our values
Most scientists retreat into the ivory tower. The CRU emails reflect elements of the circling of wagons strategy. For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, which I think is a method that can be effective in countering the arguments of skeptics, while at the same time being consistent with our core research values. Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit, and inviting prominent skeptics to give seminars at Georgia Tech. I have received significant heat from some colleagues for doing this (I’ve been told that I am legitimizing the skeptics and misleading my students), but I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically.
If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.
So with this reaffirmation of core climate research values, I encourage you to discuss the ideas and issues raised here with your fellow students and professors. Your professors may disagree with me; there are likely to be many perspectives on this. I hope that others will share their wisdom and provide ideas and guidance for dealing with these issues. Spend some time perusing the blogosphere (both skeptical and pro AGW blogs) to get a sense of the political issues surrounding our field. A better understanding of the enormous policy implications of our field should imbue in all of us a greater responsibility for upholding the highest standards of research ethics. Hone your communications skills; we all need to communicate more effectively. Publish your data as supplementary material or post on a public website. And keep your mind open and sharpen your critical thinking skills. My very best wishes to you in your studies, research, and professional development. I look forward to engaging with you in a dialogue on this topic.
Judith Curry
Chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
References:
My past public statements on climate change can be found at my website http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/policy.htm
My paper on “Mixing politics and science in testing the hypothesis that greenhouse warming is a causing an increase in global hurricane intensity” can be found at
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Curry_BAMS87.pdf
My presentation on the integrity of climate research can be found at
http://www.pacinst.org/ topics/ integrity_of_science/ AGU_IntegrityofScience_Curry.pdf
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Either your with science, or against it!
Dr Curry may be an outstanding scientist, but I feel at heart, Dr Curry is a politician
BarryR: “Try to discourage ad hominem attacks on website where you have any influence…”
Good call. Better still, perhaps the major climate blogs could agree to a protocol where they agree to censor such terms as denier, alarmist, ecofacist etc, and require posters to refrain from accusations of fraud, lies and corruption, from whichever quarter.
The posters could then concentrate on the science, and the enforced civility could in time enable both sides to understand that they share a common goal of fostering good science.
Roger Knights: I agree with Bob.
Don’t get into ever decreasing circles of rebuttal on individual points. Point out the crux of their argument, and don’t be distracted from it.
If someone was to answer each of your points, they would be best to say something along the lines of:
“Quite a few scientists believe that sun-spots are a primary cause of the current global warming. The science on this is still uncertain, although some of the evidence does point in its favour. It should be realised though that this mechanism for warming, if shown to be wrong, does not prove CO2 warming correct.” Then list some citations for further investigation.
I wrote the following letter to Dr. Curry. I am reproducing it here so that a) others may feel free to critique my critique, b) perhaps find it beneficial. The Zen of climategate would be to not so concentrate on the finger that they forget to look where it’s pointing to. Unless that “heavenly glory” is appreciated and put right on the public discussion table both at Copenhagen and at all discussion events of ‘carbon credit’ by the rightly-credentialed peoples, this opportunity to resist the real agenda is lost to fait accompli. I can already see it… Thank you. Zahir
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Date: Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 2:06 AM
Subject: Re: An open letter…By Dr. Judith A. Curry
To: curryja@eas.gatech.edu
Dear Dr. Curry,
Hello,
I read your letter here: …
Upon reading it, and with my own children studying very high-tech stuff in prominent universities in the US requiring continual sanity-checking to rein in their at times blind pursuits for their respective science without regard to the political container within which all science is situated, I feel that both your goodself, and your students, might find my article to be of some pertinent value. I hope more than zero.
Letter to a ‘co-conspiracy theorist’: Reflections on Modernity, Climategate, Peer Review, and Science in the Service of Empire
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/11/let-co-conspiracy-theorist-climategate.html
Best wishes,
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
http://humanbeingsfirst.org
California, United States
—
This letter is also submitted to climateprogress.org
Cromagnum (21:59:49) : O/T … is this video a good easy to ready summary of the Urban/Rural TEmp Issue?
This is the simplest piece of evidence I’ve seen, that might enable folk like Judith Curry and George Monbiot to turn 180 degrees not just 90 degrees, to see that ClimateGate is not just about bad behaviour, it’s also about bad science, and to see that some ordinary folk have seen this before the professionals have been able to realize or admit it.
I think this deserves a post of its own but I also want to explore how to enable busy scientists and MSM like Judith Curry and George Monbiot to actually take time off to view it. Perhaps that will just happen.
This is a dangerous lady.
SABR Matt (21:54:42) :
Agree
ha! meant to say, also,
Thank you Dr Curry for posting both here, at Climate Audit, and at Climate Progress. I know you will get a lot of flak and attack from all sides for opening the doors to discussion both ways, and for holding up for integrity in Science. Despite the fact that I don’t agree with your classification of “deniers” I warmly applaud your action.
Cromagnum (21:59:49) :
O/T … is this video a good easy to ready summary of the Urban/Rural TEmp Issue?
Great Job!
“It is sort of like Exxon owning all the oil on the planet, refusing to let anyone look at their data, and then claiming that there is going to be a shortage starting right now and oil prices will have to double. Would you trust that kind of announcement under those conditions?”
De Beers does that with diamonds!!
Meanwhile, another snowball has started rolling down the mountainside:
“[T]he Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal–for nearly three years–to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574557583017194444.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Avalanche warning signs will be posted outside the local ivory towers…
I think it is easy to forget how hard it is to speak counter to one’s peer group, even more so when the group’s core function is to provide expert opinion. You simply can’t go counter to the group’s principles unless you’re willing to leave the group. I think this is true of any group. You can’t go out with your drinking buddies if you think alcohol is a dangerous drug to be avoided.
This is why it is so important to have multiple groups with transparent access to information. That puts groups on the same open playing field.
Of course, we can then worry that the public might be influenced by the “wrong” ideas and opinions. However, this is not your problem. If you live in a country where people are racists, then they will carry on being racists regardless of whatever enlightened opinions are available. Likewise, if people lack rationality and objectivity, then they will not be influenced by rational arguments, however right they may be.
Climate scientists may seem condescending because they seem to worry too much about the public not being able to tell the difference between genuine experts and quacks. They worry the bad skeptics who just make up sprious arguments might influence the public. Well the fact is, if the public really is stupid, then the enlightened opinions will never gain influence anyway. sure there is a percentage of the peopulation who would rather go to a “healer” than a doctor because they believe in magic. And sure there are people who would rather worship Gaia than learn to understand complex systems of systems of systems. But if the irrational people are the majority, then we’re all sunk anyway.
You actully have to trust that the public is SMART, if you’re ever expecting them to do the right thing, so you should be giving people all the transparent and detailed information all the time anyway.
And you know what, if the rational public ends up ignoring your wise expert advice, perhaps they have noticed something that you haven’t. After all, being an expert gives you a very detailed but narrow focus. The general public has multille competting life issues to deal with, and who are you to judge them?
I do not know if anyone else has brought this to your attention. There is now an on line petition for Uk citizens and those living in the UK at :
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/UEACRU/
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to suspend the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from preparation of any Government Climate Statistics until the various allegations have been fully investigated by an independent body. More details
Submitted by Mike Haseler – Deadline to sign up by: 24 February 2010 – Signatures: 1,937
Certainly it is good that somebody in the scientific academia from the AGW side wants openness of data and methods.
I take exception in the Manichean view of the world presented as “scientists” on one side and “skeptics” on the other. As a retired particle physicist with many publications in the field, I certainly consider myself a scientist, and having spent two years wading through what is purported to be “climate science” I have become a strong skeptic; I am skeptical of even if climate studies can be considered as science, even if scientists are working on them. I had never before seen such cavalier treatment of data, errors, model outputs and inferences as exist in the AR4 IPCC report. While reading the “physics justification” part of the report I would stop reading and walk around pulling my hair at the sheer enormity of the gross misshandling of data and model outputs ; mind you I have been fitting data to theory with computer models for over 40 years.
So maybe this response is good advice to graduate students in “climate studies”, but it certainly is not addressing the basic credibility problem these studies have for the rest of us “scientists” once we decide to look into the matter.
Again, I’m not sure why you think this message is insightful enough to post. She says,
There is no acknowledgement of the reverse actually being the case and of “post-normal” scientists actually being a part of it.
Her call for scrutiny is admirable and as person sceptical of the AGW hypothesis, all I really ask for…. I would like people like Steve McIntyre to have access to CRU’s data and methodology, GISS’s data and methodology, etc. I would like for my politicians to be able to stand up in Parliament and question bad science where it is found and to support good science based policy when it is needed.
… It can’t be done when scientists like the CRU mob operate like they have.
SABR Matt I agree, and stress that I think Dr. Curry obviously seperates herself from the ‘sceptics’. A precarious position for doing real science.
Einstein worked for a _patent_ office (Swiss patent office), not the post office as suggested by Ms. Curry.
How ignorant.
Dr.Curry,
When you refrain from phrases like “dealing with skeptics” than I’ll take your message a bit more than a PR excersise.
On the plus side, she is against cap and trade too, like most rational individuals. Extremists on both side think the extremists on the other side are evil, deluded or misinformed. Therefore we need to ignore extremism. And that includes those who say that this is a left-wing takeover. Like it or not, this type of self-feeding consensus is normal for science and it has impeded scientific progress in many spheres. Eventually the science is corrected but quite often there are muddy compromises made to align the data with the theory. In most fields of course that doesn’t matter but sometimes it matters a lot because people can be sent to jail and enormous sums of money can be wasted based on the dubious science of a few deluded individuals who thought being dishonest was ok if it was for the greater good.
What is quite clear is that science cannot police itself. However we don’t want to impede science to the extent that form-filling and reviews take all the money. Maybe the only way out is to look beyond the science and see if we can make some headway with win-win energy scenarios.
The left need to stop talking about mythical “action” as if a carbon tax would make any difference whatsoever: It won’t unless the technology to replace coal and oil is here. And the right need to stop assuming that the best solution always arrives by a magical free market invisible hand: In fact we usually end up with well-marketed mediocrity that arrived at the head of the pack by lucky fluke, criminal cunning or shady vested interests.
My own feeling from reading both the information and (lots of) disinformation out there is that there is a future for the following:
– Some nuclear but not the current pieces of crap that were developed to support nuclear weapons and hence rely on uranium enrichment.
– Solar power where there is sun and space and a smart grid system.
– Gas-powered combined heat and power plants that can heat nearby houses and so render 80% efficiency.
– Electric cars that charge up on night-time base load.
– Wind energy to supply a lot of night-time base load.
– Base load backup which makes total sense even for coal fired plants.
– A gradual switch from coal-mining to in-situ coal gasification.
A capitalist system but with a sensibly considered road map might continue to bring worldwide prosperity. The alternative is follow the short-sighted optimism of the wingnuts or the blinkered fatalism of the moonbats.
P Gosselin (02:12:40) :
Yep, and failing to address the data shortcomings and model shortcomings is irresponsible, and that’s above and beyond the failure to admit that there is a big problem with “Warming Science”.
When these people start acting responsibly, then they can be taken as sincere.
Start over.
Show the data.
All of it. Until such time I will continue to urge my Congressman to cut off funding for “scientific” institutions that practice hiding data. In these days of dwindling budgets, there is little justification for supporting elitist programs.
Anthony,
I think is was a a great idea to post this letter from Dr. Curry. Her approch is pursuasive and possibly geared to her audience as all good presentations should be. While I understand some of the posts that criticise the tone of her letter, some thought should be given to the possibility that she might be a clever communicator. If one wants to win someone over to think objectively, the last thing you want to do is to hit them hard with a ton of bricks by taking an adamant position that could immediately turn them off to even consider your points. Keep in mind that the audience probably have been “brainewashed” for some time.
One possible strategy of an effective communicator (that I often forget):
Gear your presentation to the audience, Don’t Pi## them off, respect their positions, give them some facts, convince them to consider all sides of an issue, let the facts change their mind rather than trying to pushing it down their throats. Don’t let your personal beliefs affect the tone of your argument.
Give the good Dr. the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful posts. Of course all scientists are skeptics. Skepticism is alive and well in climate research as scientists continue to question models, theories, and improve datasets. in the public debate on climate, “skeptic” has come to mean someone who is skeptical that increasing greenhouse gases are producing (and will produce) a significant warming of the planet. So I will differentiate between skeptic and “skeptic” here.
Trying to keep “skeptical” papers out of the scientific literature is flat out wrong. There are all sorts of papers in the published literature that haven’t stood the test of time and have proven to be incorrect. Some are actively rebutted, others just fade away and are ignored. The justification over at RC as that they need to keep “wrong” papers out of the published literature is just wrong.
I have to say that the blogosphere has been a real eye opener for me in terms of airing serious “skeptical” arguments. There is of course alot of “skeptical” garbage out there, and I wish the skeptical technical blogs had taken on the papers presented at the Heartland Conference. Peter Webster engaged extensively with one of the authors of a paper at Heartland Conference, and pointed out in detail the flaws in the analysis. The scientist pretty much agreed with Peter, but then continues to present the same arguments. Peter Webster asked Steve McIntyre to do this, but Steve declined saying he wanted to focus on the higher impact papers in the peer reviewed literature. Fair enough, but the stuff at the Heartland Conference feeds the political noise machine.
But the “skeptical” arguments by scientists that are qualified by virtue of the training, hard work in doing analyses, and engagiement in the dialogue by joining the relevant professional societies, deserve to be heard.
The public needs some help in differentiating some of the garbage that is out there from serious skepticism. Some serious critiqing of “skeptical” papers (published or unpublished) by the technical skeptic blogs such as CA, WUWT, Lucia would be very valuable.
To make a long story short, the science is not just there to support AGW.