This is a surprise. Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia suggests that the “I.P.C.C. has run its course”. I agree with him. We really need to remove a wholly political organization, the United Nations, from science.
Republished from New York Times Reporter Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth:
Dot Earth: Insights from Mike Hulme at the University of East Anglia, which was the source of the disclosed files. Hulme, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and author of “ Why We Disagree About Climate Change,” has weighed in with these thoughts about the significance of the leaked files and emails. In November 2009, Hulme was listed as “the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, between 1999 and 2009. (ScienceWatch, Nov/Dec 2009, see Table 2).
Hulme Key Excerpt:
[Upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen] “is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. […] It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science. It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
Full Hulme Statement:
The key lesson to be learned is that not only must scientific knowledge about climate change be publicly owned — the I.P.C.C. does a fairly good job of this according to its own terms — but the very practices of scientific enquiry must also be publicly owned, in the sense of being open and trusted. From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find.
This will blow its course soon in the conventional media without making too much difference to Copenhagen — after all, COP15 is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. But in the Internet worlds of deliberation and in the ‘mood’ of public debate about the trustworthiness of climate science, the reverberations of this episode will live on long beyond COP15. Climate scientists will have to work harder to earn the warranted trust of the public – and maybe that is no bad thing.
But this episode might signify something more in the unfolding story of climate change. This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.
It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
h/t to Marc Morano
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Liked this quote:
“The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.”
And we will continue to demand it. The revolution has only begun.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The problem here of course, is the notion of fungibility; that science, now reduced to an ordinary commodity, is free to ebb and flow with the seasons of acceptability.
It would seem that the higher goal of the realized Theory of Everything has become, Good enough for Government work.
I have to share this post from RCP:
Posted by: zanne
Nov 27, 11:25 PM
Scientists playing the role of politician.
Politicians playing the role of scientist.
What could go wrong?
Recent Climategate revelations are a salient reminder that Truth and Politics have never been good friends. The application of a critical mind in the pursuit of Truth is like a laser beam that cuts through the rigid bonds of habitual ‘wisdom’. It is corrosive, as Socrates found out to his cost when charged with, and ultimately killed for, ‘corrupting’ the minds of young Athenians. Politics, on the other hand, seeks to build concerted action by making appeal to the same habitual wisdom that Truth seeks to weaken. By venturing into the realm of politics, any pretence that CRU has that it is an institution dedicated to the pursuit of Truth must ultimately yield to the paradigm of Politics. If CRU’s scientific integrity is to be restored, it must first divorce itself from political ambition. Post-normal science is a chimera.
“Post-normal science is a chimera.”
…and not even science.
I’m glad the big guns are speaking out since GISS leaves so few clues in their trash:
http://i49.tinypic.com/24xh2q1.jpg
“The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production.”
PERHAPS? Come on Mike! If you can find evidence that humans are the main cause of most of the global warming over the last 50 years to the 90% confidence level, surely you can make a more definitive statement about the IPCC. There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. The entire purpose of the IPCC is to be authoritarian and exclusive about climate change ‘knowledge’.
AGW elitist have a strange affliction that makes them very certain about the unknown and totally foggy about the blatantly obvious.
Hulme, a Post-Normal Scientist, is speaking in code. Under the faux-radical calling for the dismantling of the IPCC, CRU, & co, there is the powerful message that, to quote Tom Wolfe quoting the ‘user’-community:
“The fix is in ”
– to the political sphere, so no need for those useful idiots like CRU /IPPC right now, they have done their job and are disposable; sacrificial, even.
Well, Hulme is a very mixed bag. I am afraid that this current attitude is just about opportunism and populism because he feels that most people really don’t like what was found.
In the past, he has criticized “climate porn” but he has also opposed the idea that science should be left to scientists because “it’s too important”. See the quote above (search for Motl in this thread).
Hulme appears to have been central to the plot to oust von Storch at Climate Research.
Nick wrote:
“Will the skeptic blogosphere examine its own role in creating the defensiveness in some scientists?”
You’ve gotthe wrong end of the stick. The scientists hide the data, and then complain that they’re being attacked and pestered. That’s the way a bully behaves–he claims that someone is looking at him cross-eyed and he’s being disrespected
Similarly, they want to hid the data and are looking for an excuse to be uncooperative, so naturally they claim that if they accede to a request for data, the requests will be never-ending. But that’s because their initial data release was inadequate.
“Can skeptic culture resist the temptation to bold keywords and phrases in an attempt to provide interpretive guidance?”
I agree with your general point that our side needs to cut down on its more extreme statements, and exclude political comments, or accusations that “they’re in it for the money.” Most evildoers aren’t in it for the money–motiveless malignancy explains most of their actions. (I think CA attempts to do a good job in filtering out “attributions of motive–it should be given credit for that). But I don’t think that bolding is a bad practice. It’s generally done throughout the internet in order to draw the eye of a skimmer to the key passages.
==============
ROM (16:05:45) :
“The real revelations are just starting, the personal stories of scientists who were quite deliberately threatened by the reptiles of Climate Gate, …”
Let’s have a congressional hearing where all the aggrieved can testify and confront their persecutors.
===============
Varco (16:57:22) :
Off topic (again) but interesting explanation of the way in which public opinion has been manipulated by Climate Change evangelists….
http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/crudgate-why-this-cant-be-swept-under.html
Agreed. Well worth reading.
Vincent Gray on Climategate: ‘There Was Proof of Fraud All Along’ (PJM Exclusive)
IPCC expert reviewer Gray — whose 1,898 comments critical of the 2007 report were ignored — recently found that proof of the fraud was public for years.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/vincent-gray-on-climategate-there-was-proof-of-fraud-all-along-pjm-exclusive/
Here is the concluding passage from his article, which discredits the “peer reviewed, peer reviewed” parroting of the warmists:
what about Jones and Karl?
In 1999, I had a stroke of luck. I asked one of the IPCC officials for the data from which one of their maps was compiled, and I received it. I wrote a paper analyzing the results and submitted it to Geophysical Research Letters. They just sat on it. I instead published it on John Daly’s website. Today, it is still the only paper recognized by Google on “Regional Temperature Change.”
I now know my paper was not critical enough, since we have proof that the basic data and its processing is far more dubious than I had envisaged.
I tried to update my paper and resubmit it. Nothing doing. Since the small group — revealed within the CRU emails — control most of the peer reviewers, very few peer reviewed papers which criticize that group are allowed to appear in the most prominent published literature which dominates the academic establishment.
I have only been able to find a place to release my criticisms on the internet, now the only realm where unfettered scientific discussion is possible.
If Mike Hulme could conclusively prove from first principles that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels in the atmosphere results in a 2C – 4C rise in earths temperature, would he need to resort to ‘post normal’ science?
Fundamentally, Mike’s problem is that he can’t prove it. He is left with a hunch, a theory, an idea. Thus, his ‘post normal’ science construct is simply a vehicle to legitimise his approach in promoting his theory in order for it to gain traction. No matter that he swaps truth for influence as he an unwavering belief that his theory is correct.
Unfortunately as soon as you drop the pursuit of truth what are you left with? The very thing that Mike now criticises and of which he was a part of.
Apologies to the proprietor for editorialising.
Trev (15:52:54) :
Again
Philosopher Jerome R. Ravetz introduced the concept of ‘post-normal’ science, which is not the good, old-fashioned science that seeks truth. While we are angry that scientists have been cooking the books, our outrage and response is according to ‘normal science’, which Ravetz and Hulme consider ‘obsolete’. Ravetz and this new breed of ’scientists’ are on a different track – one with a lust for political control. Ravetz, drawing on neo-Marxism, showed them the way.
Ravetz is a philosopher of science, who sat on bio-science ethics committees back in the 70’s/80’s. I’m not sure how much he was an advocate of post-normal science rather than a social commentator on his identification of it in action. He probably saw it as a necessity in the heat of decision making of the ethics committees he was a part of, and maybe his personal view of climate change would have led him to believe it was a legitimate approach to climate change policy too – I don’t know. My impression of him in the seminars he gave in which I took part was that he was a subtle and wide ranging thinker, and a believer in “non-scientists” having a legitimate voice in decisions about the application of scientific knowledge.
I don’t think he can be painted with a single color, or ‘blamed’ for letting some kind of ‘postmodern’ genie out of a lab bottle.
In 2007 Mike Hulme wrote this “The appliance of science” piece in the Guardian, which Anthony reproduced here on WUWT some time ago:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
In it Mike says a couple of interesting things about Fred Singer and Denis Avery’s book “Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1500 years. At that time he definitely still believed in AGW, and painted Singer and Avery as the ‘post-normal’ scientists. Mike was then saying that climate change was happening, and that the ‘normal science’ of the last hundred years proved it.
His views seem to be shifting to point the finger at the IPCC as promoting the ‘post-normal’ science now. Or perhaps he feels that both skeptics and the IPCC have left ‘normal’ science behind.
Personally, I think it’s more of a ‘wheat from chaff’ issue on both sides of the debate.
In the 2007 article, Mike Hulme said:
“Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent,”
The identical phrase occurs in the wiki page on ‘post-normal’ science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-normal_science
Post-Normal Science is a concept developed by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, attempting to characterise a methodology of inquiry that is appropriate for cases where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent”. It is primarily seen in the context of the debate over global warming and other similar, long-term issues where we possess less information than we would like.
Clearly, the phrase is lifted from Jerry Ravetz, and maybe Mike Hulme wrote the wiki page? (note the ‘s’ in ‘characterise’). The discussion page and history page are interesting too.
I think we should remember the context in which Ravetz formulated the phrase and some of his ideas. The Ethics around bio-science, gene therapy, embryo research etc, were pressing problems at the time for which pragmatic consensus decisions had to be made in a climate of scientific disagreement. Maybe in the end, Ravetz can be given credit for the fact that he recognised that the societal dimension of science practice and application was an important element to be taken note of.
Unfortunately, the public’s perception of issues is so molded by the media, which has itself fallen into the hands of individuals with a political agenda, that the checks and balances to knowledge production and policy direction are not as they were when Ravetz formulated his thesis.
The glimmer of light is that the media seem to be getting their teeth into ClimateGate, and for totally self interested reasons, may now champion Joe Public in order to win back lost credibility and increase sales.
Some relevant quotes from Jerry Ravetz website:
http://www.jerryravetz.co.uk/work.html
“we embarked on a project that combined practical application with a fundamental analysis of mathematics. This culminated in our joint book “Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy”. There we developed a notational scheme which encompasses the different sorts of uncertainties, social determinations and implicit value-loadings in quantitative expressions. Of course, a statement like the above might seem outlandish to many readers, who have never had occasion to question the faith that numbers are not merely necessary for scientific truth, but also sufficient. Silvio and I share the conviction that so long as people are deluded about the information conveyed in numbers, there can never be an effective management of the the scientific and practical problems where uncertainty and value-loading are significant.”
“Wherever we turn, be it in global climate change, new-variant CJD, weakening of male sperm in many species, or the rising incidence of asthma, we find serious, perhaps very threatening problems, for which science provides no easy answers. The situation might be summed up in two epigrams. One, from Robert Sinsheimer, is that formerly we asked what science is doing for us, while now we ask what science is doing to us. The other, from myself and Silvio, is that formerly science was considered as having ‘hard facts’ in contrast to the soft, subjective humanities, while now we confront hard policy issues for which the scientific inputs are frequently irremediably soft.”
“non-scientists are given confidence to join in the debate on matters which until recently had been the exclusive domain of accredited experts. The basis we chose for Post-Normal Science is in methodology. We argue that the quality-assurance of scientific inputs into policy processes requires an ‘extended peer community’, including all the stakeholders in an issue. This new peer community can also deploy ‘extended facts’, including local and personal experience, as well as investigative journalism and leaked sources.”
I submit that Jerry Ravetz is much more with us than against us.
lets put here some of his emails:
-” About EU politics, Balabanis is the guy for ESCOBA, but that doesn’t
mean he is necessarily the one for us.” – 848695896.txt
-“With this background I do not want SCENGEN (and especially the old DOSversion) ‘leaking’ out into the climate training community at this stage. […]Mean temperature in C.England during 1996 was 0.3degC below the 1961-90 average.“ – 853426848.txt
-“I like the curve as does Mike Mann, but its not for any scientific reason.Any jury is still out on whether this is right, but I’m glad someone has tried the approach. It is a quantification of what people have assumed, but there likely isn’t enough detail in the paper to show how it was done.” -510
actually i got tired of reading their emails… ;] but what strikes me is that only a handfull of people seem to control the whole thing, and even so, they agree on sighning all kinds of papers just so it looks like they all agree on it.
i forgot i had this open doc before hitting the submit button ;]
I’m sure that Pat Michaels does not have the primary source data used in
his Ph.D. thesis. Perhaps one of us should request the datasets used in
Michaels’ Ph.D. work, and then ask the University of Wisconsin to
withdraw Michaels’ Ph.D. if he fails to produce every dataset and
computer program used in the course of his thesis research.
I would be very concerned if the material comes out under WWF auspices
>in a way that can be interpreted as saying that “even a
>greenie group like WWF” thinks large areas of the world will have
>negligible climate change. But that is where your 95% confidence limit
>leads.
Dear Mike, […]
In my case, I bypassed the “IPCC process” by obtaining permission, in
writing, from the 4 groups who produced the marker scenarios. I did not
acknowledge the CIESIN web site. In your case, apparently, you did. The
problem here is that this site stated very clearly that the data were “not
for citation or quotation”. Did you take notice of this? […]
I hope you can see that there is an important
difference between what you did and what I did. At face value, it would
appear that you have ignored the clearly-stated message that the CIESIN
site data were “not for citation or quotation”. – 941483736.txt
ps fyi I counted the average spacing between the warm and cold
>oscillations in the iron oscillations illustrated by Broecker. Regardless
>of whether warm or cold are used, the mean spacing is indeed 1.5 k,
>although the s.d. is 0.4k HOWEVER, the mean spacing between the four main
>warm phases illustrated by Broecker on the same figure is, believe it or
>not, 2.15! much closer to the solar peak. This calls to mind the
>interesting (and clever) Wigley and Raper paper in Proc. Roy. Soc. (1990)
>indicating that, given the uncertainties in chronology, solar forcing plays
>a role i n Holocenn climate change. It therefore seems that the conveyor
>is indeed oscillating but the time scale of the larger scale CLIMATE shifts
>may be more regulated by solar, with volcanism adding some stochastic
>contribution. Something like this is worth adding to the proposed Eos
>piece. – 983552403.txt
No matter what the political spin or philosophical niceties politicians have 2 options.
Either they make a decision through considering open scientific evidence or they make a decision for some other reasons.
They tell the voter why they’ve made the decision and in the future the voter can vote them in again or out.
Science can continue doing what science does which is to challenge scientific hypotheses based on untainted data.
I have taught a basic research course to graduate students at a small college in the western US. Science is about the search for objective truth, nothing more, nothing LESS.
In my opinion, there is a special place in Hell for people who believe in anything called “Post-Normal Science.” Post-Normal Science leads to “Post Hoc” fallacies and to superstition. Post-Normal Science elevates theory to the level of established fact and introduces logical errors like the supposition that correlation and causation are the same.
These people are not scientists; they are used car salesmen. At the very least, they should be promptly removed from their University posts in disgrace. If East Anglia doesn’t do it, then the university should follow them onto the trash heap.
This is simply nonsense. It’s shameful.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with Mike Hume you have to respect for him two things:
1. Unlike other climate scientists in the tribe he is willing and able to step back and try to understand the unique interaction of science, politics and culture.
2. He has done this with some consistency for many years both in public statements and in his book “Why we disagree about climate change”.
Jay (05:24:37) :
I have taught a basic research course to graduate students at a small college in the western US. Science is about the search for objective truth, nothing more, nothing LESS.
In my opinion, there is a special place in Hell for people who believe in anything called “Post-Normal Science.” Post-Normal Science leads to “Post Hoc” fallacies and to superstition.
I think there is a major misunderstanding of what Jerry Ravetz means by post normal science here and the context in which it occurs, to some extent compounded by Mike Hulme, due to his conflation of the theory of PNS and the position statements of someone who has a stance on the issues.
I assume Jay would agree that Jones, Mann et al believe that they were doing ‘objective science’ just as those who disagree with them do as well. The point is, they can’t both be right if there is only one truth. However, in climate science, there is no certainty about what is actually going on, the objective truth isn’t accessible, so both sides extend their position with qualitative judgments, ad hoc hypotheses, and politicised statements. Both sides are engaging in ‘post normal science’. The judgment of which is the better or more correct position, is a qualitative on which rests on issues such as integrity, belief, relative merit of ideas and data quality and misrepresentation etc. These factors are to a greater or lesser extent outside the remit of ‘objective truth’.
Expect more from Ravetz on this soon, I have learned he has something on ClimateGate in the pipeline.
PY (01:43:51) :
Fundamentally, Mike’s problem is the red mist in his head. Unfortunately his CV does not describe his formative years or give many clues about the indoctrination he may have suffered over the years or where. However, he looks distinctly like a case of the malleable acquiring the shackles of deft reinforcement by the unscrupulous to me, a sad waste of intellect.
Jay (05:24:37) :
Unfortunately there’s much more that’s shameful in UK universities, particularly in history and political sciences. All of it IMHO is a product of fascist like infiltration and subversion that has been going on for well over a decade, much of it stage managed from beyond our borders. It is not only our schools that lie in ruin having produced a generation of useless water melons, the stench of third way elitist corruption now pervades every institution in the UK and will be difficult to expunge.
If you wish to understand how this has arisen, look at the early political affiliations of members of our current government and beyond that to the centres of their further education. What you see today is a facade.
tallbloke (09:09:37) :
Utter garbage. Given that statement, please stop using the term “climate science” and substitute “climate politics” from now on. Not only does that boil down to simply politics, it alludes to the very essence of corrosive third way politics – rule by populist concensus arrived at by subversion and indoctrination. And that, my friend, is pure evil. Read your history books.
You are either a non-scientist or have been indoctrinated. If you keep that up, in ten years time you’ll be extolling the virtues of eugenics, mass population culling, etc. arrived at by the same methodology. And others will have used you as a useful idiot to further their nefarious ends, themselves driven by the only real evil on the planet – ego.
I respectively suggest you pause a while and examine your inner conscience then consider what you mean by the truth, objective or otherwise. And please don’t come back with similar garbage about “the precautionary principle”. That is simply a canard of the third way.
It appears you are unacquainted with Marxist-Leninist political, propaganda, and indoctrination practices. Hulme’s outreach you are praising is classic Marxist disinformation attempting to manipulate public opinion in support of establishing control over scientific endeavors and thought by a dictatorship of the proletariat falsely masquerading as a beauracracy of a social democracy safeguarding the peoples’ right to social justice and ecological harmony with the planet and its environment. A key to recognizing such ploys is to note the ever abundant oxymorons employed by the practitioners.
For example, you have “democrats” who oppose democratic sharing of public information through a Freedom of Information Act. You have “democrats” who refuse to permit elected representatives of the citizens to read and debate a legislative bill before compelling them to vote for the legislation. Likewise, they refuse to share scientific data and methodology with opponents citing their superior knowledge and duty to what they deem is best for social justice as justification for their actions. You have persons who describe themselves as scientists, yet they deny the validity of Truth Seeking using the scientific method while espousing the adoption of Post-Modern Science as the only genuine science for now and the future.
In each case their actions and/or words are the opposite of what the nomenclature and statements they rely upon to represent who they are and what they do. In other words, when you look closely at their deeds and words, you can see they do not match their promises or realities. They constitute oxymorons.
Richard Lawson (13:41:44) :
“Seems like they are starting to come out of the bunker with their hands up!
I hope they have enough white flags to go round.”
Who cares about a white flag shortage? Prisoners? We don’t need no stinking prisoners!
Again I’m indebted to my wife: “sCRUed science”
That ought to make a nice T shirt slogan.