Foreword – Below is a guest post (by request) from Dr. Judith Curry on the issues we deal with every day here. While I and other like minded bloggers were given the opportunity to have some early input into this, little of it was accepted. This I think puts it off to a bad start in light of the title. One of my issues was that it wasn’t necessary to use the word “deniers”, which I think removal of is central to any discourse that includes a goal of “rebuilding trust”. There’s also other more technical issues related to current investigations that are not addressed here.
I had made my concerns known to Dr. Curry before in this post: The Curry letter: a word about “deniers”… which is worth re-reading again.
To be frank, given that she’s still using the term even when pointed out, and had deferred other valid suggestions from other skeptics, I’d given serious consideration to not carrying this at all. But I had carried Dr. Curry’s original post (at my request) on 11/27/09, just seven days after the Climategate story broke here at WUWT on 11/20/09:
An open letter from Dr. Judith Curry on climate science
Since I had carried that one at my request to Dr. Curry, I decided it only fair that I’d carry this one she offered, but with the above caveat. Further, as Andrew Revkin pointed out yesterday, WUWT is now by far the most trafficked climate blog in the world. With that comes a level of responsibility to broadly report the issues. Readers should give their opinion here, pulling no punches, but with one caveat: make the discourse respectful and without labels or inflammatory comments. – Anthony
Guest post by Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology
I am trying something new, a blogospheric experiment, if you will. I have been a fairly active participant in the blogosphere since 2006, and recently posted two essays on climategate, one at climateaudit.org and the other at climateprogress.org. Both essays were subsequently picked up by other blogs, and the diversity of opinions expressed at the different blogs was quite interesting. Hence I am distributing this essay to a number of different blogs simultaneously with the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them. I look forward to a stimulating discussion on this important topic.
Losing the Public’s Trust
Climategate has now become broadened in scope to extend beyond the CRU emails to include glaciergate and a host of other issues associated with the IPCC. In responding to climategate, the climate research establishment has appealed to its own authority and failed to understand that climategate is primarily a crisis of trust. Finally, we have an editorial published in Science on February 10 from Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Science, that begins to articulate the trust issue: “This view reflects the fragile nature of trust between science and society, demonstrating that the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole. What needs to be done? Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” While I applaud loudly Dr. Cicerone’s statement, I wish it had been made earlier and had not been isolated from the public by publishing the statement behind paywall at Science. Unfortunately, the void of substantive statements from our institutions has been filled in ways that have made the situation much worse.
Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust. The fallout from climategate is much broader than the allegations of misconduct by scientists at two universities. Of greatest importance is the reduced credibility of the IPCC assessment reports, which are providing the scientific basis for international policies on climate change. Recent disclosures about the IPCC have brought up a host of concerns about the IPCC that had been festering in the background: involvement of IPCC scientists in explicit climate policy advocacy; tribalism that excluded skeptics; hubris of scientists with regards to a noble (Nobel) cause; alarmism; and inadequate attention to the statistics of uncertainty and the complexity of alternative interpretations.
The scientists involved in the CRU emails and the IPCC have been defended as scientists with the best of intentions trying to do their work in a very difficult environment. They blame the alleged hacking incident on the “climate denial machine.” They are described as fighting a valiant war to keep misinformation from the public that is being pushed by skeptics with links to the oil industry. They are focused on moving the science forward, rather than the janitorial work of record keeping, data archival, etc. They have had to adopt unconventional strategies to fight off what they thought was malicious interference. They defend their science based upon their years of experience and their expertise.
Scientists are claiming that the scientific content of the IPCC reports is not compromised by climategate. The jury is still out on the specific fallout from climategate in terms of the historical and paleo temperature records. There are larger concerns (raised by glaciergate, etc.) particularly with regards to the IPCC Assessment Report on Impacts (Working Group II): has a combination of groupthink, political advocacy and a noble cause syndrome stifled scientific debate, slowed down scientific progress and corrupted the assessment process? If institutions are doing their jobs, then misconduct by a few individual scientists should be quickly identified, and the impacts of the misconduct should be confined and quickly rectified. Institutions need to look in the mirror and ask the question as to how they enabled this situation and what opportunities they missed to forestall such substantial loss of public trust in climate research and the major assessment reports.
In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. Much has been said about the role of the highly politicized environment in providing an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct science that produces a lot of stress for the scientists. There is no question that this environment is not conducive to science and scientists need more support from their institutions in dealing with it. However, there is nothing in this crazy environment that is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. And when your science receives this kind of attention, it means that the science is really important to the public. Therefore scientists need to do everything possible to make sure that they effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints. This is an important responsibility that individual scientists and particularly the institutions need to take very seriously.
Both individual scientists and the institutions need to look in the mirror and really understand how this happened. Climategate isn’t going to go away until these issues are resolved. Science is ultimately a self-correcting process, but with a major international treaty and far-reaching domestic legislation on the table, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming
Over the last few months, I have been trying to understand how this insane environment for climate research developed. In my informal investigations, I have been listening to the perspectives of a broad range of people that have been labeled as “skeptics” or even “deniers”. I have come to understand that global warming skepticism is very different now than it was five years ago. Here is my take on how global warming skepticism has evolved over the past several decades.
In the 1980’s, James Hansen and Steven Schneider led the charge in informing the public of the risks of potential anthropogenic climate change. Sir John Houghton and Bert Bolin played similar roles in Europe. This charge was embraced by the environmental advocacy groups, and global warming alarmism was born. During this period I would say that many if not most researchers, including myself, were skeptical that global warming was detectable in the temperature record and that it would have dire consequences. The traditional foes of the environmental movement worked to counter the alarmism of the environmental movement, but this was mostly a war between advocacy groups and not an issue that had taken hold in the mainstream media and the public consciousness. In the first few years of the 21st century, the stakes became higher and we saw the birth of what some have called a “monolithic climate denial machine”. Skeptical research published by academics provided fodder for the think tanks and advocacy groups, which were fed by money provided by the oil industry. This was all amplified by talk radio and cable news.
In 2006 and 2007, things changed as a result of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” plus the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, and global warming became a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. The reason that the IPCC 4th Assessment Report was so influential is that people trusted the process the IPCC described: participation of a thousand scientists from 100 different countries, who worked for several years to produce 3000 pages with thousands of peer reviewed scientific references, with extensive peer review. Further, the process was undertaken with the participation of policy makers under the watchful eyes of advocacy groups with a broad range of conflicting interests. As a result of the IPCC influence, scientific skepticism by academic researchers became vastly diminished and it became easier to embellish the IPCC findings rather than to buck the juggernaut. Big oil funding for contrary views mostly dried up and the mainstream media supported the IPCC consensus. But there was a new movement in the blogosphere, which I refer to as the “climate auditors”, started by Steve McIntyre. The climate change establishment failed to understand this changing dynamic, and continued to blame skepticism on the denial machine funded by big oil.
Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere
Steve McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog realclimate.org with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there. Climateaudit has focused on auditing topics related to the paleoclimate reconstructions over the past millennia (in particular the so called “hockey stick”) and also the software being used by climate researchers to fix data problems due to poor quality surface weather stations in the historical climate data record. McIntyre’s “auditing” became very popular not only with the skeptics, but also with the progressive “open source” community, and there are now a number of such blogs. The blog with the largest public audience is wattsupwiththat.com, led by weatherman Anthony Watts, with over 2 million unique visitors each month.
So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have developed substantial expertise in aspects of climate science, although they mainly audit rather than produce original scientific research. They tend to be watchdogs rather than deniers; many of them classify themselves as “lukewarmers”. They are independent of oil industry influence. They have found a collective voice in the blogosphere and their posts are often picked up by the mainstream media. They are demanding greater accountability and transparency of climate research and assessment reports.
So what motivated their FOIA requests of the CRU at the University of East Anglia? Last weekend, I was part of a discussion on this issue at the Blackboard. Among the participants in this discussion was Steven Mosher, who broke the climategate story and has already written a book on it here. They are concerned about inadvertent introduction of bias into the CRU temperature data by having the same people who create the dataset use the dataset in research and in verifying climate models; this concern applies to both NASA GISS and the connection between CRU and the Hadley Centre. This concern is exacerbated by the choice of James Hansen at NASA GISS to become a policy advocate, and his forecasts of forthcoming “warmest years.” Medical research has long been concerned with the introduction of such bias, which is why they conduct double blind studies when testing the efficacy of a medical treatment. Any such bias could be checked by independent analyses of the data; however, people outside the inner circle were unable to obtain access to the information required to link the raw data to the final analyzed product. Further, creation of the surface data sets was treated like a research project, with no emphasis on data quality analysis, and there was no independent oversight. Given the importance of these data sets both to scientific research and public policy, they feel that greater public accountability is required.
So why do the mainstream climate researchers have such a problem with the climate auditors? The scientists involved in the CRU emails seem to regard Steve McIntyre as their arch-nemesis (Roger Pielke Jr’s term). Steve McIntyre’s early critiques of the hockey stick were dismissed and he was characterized as a shill for the oil industry. Academic/blogospheric guerilla warfare ensued, as the academic researchers tried to prevent access of the climate auditors to publishing in scientific journals and presenting their work at professional conferences, and tried to deny them access to published research data and computer programs. The bloggers countered with highly critical posts in the blogosphere and FOIA requests. And climategate was the result.
So how did this group of bloggers succeed in bringing the climate establishment to its knees (whether or not the climate establishment realizes yet that this has happened)? Again, trust plays a big role; it was pretty easy to follow the money trail associated with the “denial machine”. On the other hand, the climate auditors have no apparent political agenda,
are doing this work for free, and have been playing a watchdog role, which has engendered the trust of a large segment of the population.
Towards Rebuilding Trust
Rebuilding trust with the public on the subject of climate research starts with Ralph Cicerone’s statement “Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” Much has been written about the need for greater transparency, reforms to peer review, etc. and I am hopeful that the relevant institutions will respond appropriately. Investigations of misconduct are being conducted at the University of East Anglia and at Penn State. Here I would like to bring up some broader issues that will require substantial reflection by the institutions and also by individual scientists.
Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance. How scientists can most effectively and appropriately engage with the policy process is a topic that has not been adequately discussed (e.g. the “honest broker” challenge discussed by Roger Pielke Jr), and climate researchers are poorly informed in this regard. The result has been reflexive support for the UNFCCC policy agenda (e.g. carbon cap and trade) by many climate researchers that are involved in the public debate (particularly those involved in the IPCC), which they believe follows logically from the findings of the (allegedly policy neutral) IPCC. The often misinformed policy advocacy by this group of climate scientists has played a role in the political polarization of this issue.. The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists.
The failure of the public and policy makers to understand the truth as presented by the IPCC is often blamed on difficulties of communicating such a complex topic to a relatively uneducated public that is referred to as “unscientific America” by Chris Mooney. Efforts are made to “dumb down” the message and to frame the message to respond to issues that are salient to the audience. People have heard the alarm, but they remain unconvinced because of a perceived political agenda and lack of trust of the message and the messengers. At the same time, there is a large group of educated and evidence driven people (e.g. the libertarians, people that read the technical skeptic blogs, not to mention policy makers) who want to understand the risk and uncertainties associated with climate change, without being told what kinds of policies they should be supporting. More effective communication strategies can be devised by recognizing that there are two groups with different levels of base knowledge about the topic. But building trust through public communication on this topic requires that uncertainty be acknowledged. My own experience in making public presentations about climate change has found that discussing the uncertainties increases the public trust in what scientists are trying to convey and doesn’t detract from the receptivity to understanding climate change risks (they distrust alarmism). Trust can also be rebuilt by discussing broad choices rather than focusing on specific policies.
And finally, the blogosphere can be a very powerful tool for increasing the credibility of climate research. “Dueling blogs” (e.g. climateprogress.org versus wattsupwiththat.com and realclimate.org versus climateaudit.org) can actually enhance public trust in the science as they see both sides of the arguments being discussed. Debating science with skeptics should be the spice of academic life, but many climate researchers lost this somehow by mistakenly thinking that skeptical arguments would diminish the public trust in the message coming from the climate research establishment. Such debate is alive and well in the blogosphere, but few mainstream climate researchers participate in the blogospheric debate. The climate researchers at realclimate.org were the pioneers in this, and other academic climate researchers hosting blogs include Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr and Jr, Richard Rood, and Andrew Dessler. The blogs that are most effective are those that allow comments from both sides of the debate (many blogs are heavily moderated). While the blogosphere has a “wild west” aspect to it, I have certainly learned a lot by participating in the blogospheric debate including how to sharpen my thinking and improve the rhetoric of my arguments. Additional scientific voices entering the public debate particularly in the blogosphere would help in the broader communication efforts and in rebuilding trust. And we need to acknowledge the emerging auditing and open source movements in the in the internet-enabled world, and put them to productive use. The openness and democratization of knowledge enabled by the internet can be a tremendous tool for building public understanding of climate science and also trust in climate research.
No one really believes that the “science is settled” or that “the debate is over.” Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.
And finally, I hope that this blogospheric experiment will demonstrate how the diversity of the different blogs can be used collectively to generate ideas and debate them, towards bringing some sanity to this whole situation surrounding the politicization of climate science and rebuilding trust with the public.
The only thing that will save Climate Science from itself is a full on FAA/FDA audit of data and procedures. I can tell you for true that the kind of mistakes made in the whole field of Climate Science would never be tolerated in aerospace engineering. And still mistakes in aerospace engineering are made from time to time.
But think of it: how often do you hear of a major airplane crash? Do you feel safe getting on a plane? That my dear is predictive ability.
Now how about going at it in the same spirit with climate science. You start with an objective. You determine a plan to reach it. Then you implement the plan auditing along the way. And the most critical job re: climate science? A keeper of the error bars. I’d get the best industrial SPC guys you can find and put them on the job. They are bulldogs.
====
And I know this is not your field of expertise but why do we have to go to Brit papers for news of the biggest scientific scandal of our time? Wouldn’t you say that the dysfunction was not only scientific. The scientists got cover from their media friends.
So would I say that scientists have an image problem? Yes. But it is one they created.
Dr Curry continues to be an apologist for bad science and the corrupt actions of global warming scientists while still accusing critics of being deniers. It is not up to critics to prove global warming isn’t happening, it is up to those who claim it is to produce the evidence. They haven’t shown significant warming, they haven’t subjected their work to proper peer review and they have allowed hysterical exaggerations of the impact of climate change to be made without censure. It is the global warming scientists who have brought science into disrepute with the public not their critics. This is the admission people like Curry refuse to deal with as well as admit that to date their science does not stand up.
It’s too late now for repentance, as innocent CO2, the gas we exhale and green plants breath and enjoy, has been already declared as POISONOUS by EPA.
Any way, here is a guide:
Six Steps of Repentance:
-Feel Godly Sorrow
-Confess to God
-Ask for Forgiveness
-Rectify Problems Caused by the Sin(s)
-Forsake Sin
-Receive Forgiveness
Sorry…Too late!
This is one of my pet peeves: “Those who make extraordinary claims are obliged, if they are to be believed, to provide extraordinary evidence.”
No, they don’t. Extraordinary claims can be proved by perfectly mundane evidence. History is replete with examples of seemingly intractable problems that, once solved, had a solution that seemed simple and self-evident.
When you remove the hyperbole, what’s left is “Claims require evidence.” Hardly profound.
This is just father-knows-best mumbo-jumbo intended to browbeat people into doubting themselves.
It is no more of relevance what Dr. Curry writes. Even the wildest AGW scare stories are no more of relevance. Only a few people take AGW seriously, probably even among the Hockey Team. Make peace with her, it doesn’t matter. Tell her everything’s OK.
The next scare is still the economy. The AGW narrative can’t compete anymore even when they double their efforts in creative writing.
And BTW, the science is bogus anyway, it just doesn’t matter. If she still cares, tell her to tell the other Hockey Team members to try to disprove Miskolczi and when they’re done i’m interested but i don’t think they’ll pull that off, how could they…
Did my link to Monte Hieb send it to the junk bin? His calculations are worth looking at, regardless of the fact that he is an engineer…in mining.
But let’s be democratic about this. Pachy is a…train engineer…and everyone hangs (oops, pun alert) on his graphs as gospel truth, to be trusted, because he is a…train engineer…and he has settled the science because he studied…trains.
Monte rules on his open and clear explanation and calculations of anthropogenic CO2/water vapor coupling forcing. He goes off the deep end on the Sun but that is not included in his CO2 calculations.
….Step out with trust by all means but expect to be savaged by the truth. Why would you want it any other way?
Don’t answer that.
After reading the article my BS meter went out of range.
Dr Curry, before trying to clean the “atmosphere” around AGW please try to clean the “house” of AGW.
“Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust.”
There could not be a more perfect statement to reveal, inadvertently, the writer’s acceptance that politics is at the heart of climate science.
Scientists should not concern themselves with their credibility – or believability. Their work stands or falls on evidence and reasoning. Their expertise arise from experience at doing science correctly, which assumes correcting errors, which assumes permitting errors to be noticed by others. At no time does a scientist – or his work – become “credible” based merely on prior work. “Believe me on this one, friends, as I have been right before,” or, even worse, “Believe me on this one, as I have been paid to do this job for 20 years,” are appeals to credibility. The content of each piece of new work must be evaluated for its scientific soundness.
Expertise is the very aspect of science that must never be trusted, but is always on trial. It is not even a question of “trust, but verify” – but “always verify.”
Credibility – “trust me, I’m an expert” – is a term used by propagandists and politicians. Why else do the alarmists argue so determinedly to authority or impugn the expertise, motives and interests of skeptics ? So-and-so is not an expert climate scientist; the publication that presented his work is not a serious climate science publication:; he is associated with Big Baccy…
When scientists believe that they have not communicated their ideas well enough, they are speaking like politicians. Well enough for what? When alarmists talk about the truth of climate science, they are admitting that AGW is social and political science, born of environmentalism out of social advocacy. No surprise that they should be seeking magic slogans to persuade the public. No surprise that they see themselves as visionaries, data-collectors and verifiers as janitors, the public as the root cause of impending doomsday, and governments as the coercive force to stop the public from ending it all.
When science rests on credibility it is no longer science.
I have to respond to the “science is settled” assertion. [The author is not my target.]
It made me skeptical when I first saw it and it made me angry as I read more and more about the debate, particularly about positive feedback,
The climate alarmist fringe created more skeptics with that one simple easily disproved lie than they can imagine. Keep up the good work climate alarmists you will convert everyone soon.
Aloha:
What academia, and especially the Climate academia, is discovering is what Medicine (I am an Otolaryngologist) has discovered over the last decade or two. One simply cannot make any statement of authority based on one’s presumed position (as a Doctor) of authority.
As Dr. R. Feynman stated on a guest lecture some time back, if your data do not support your theory, YOUR THEORY IS WRONG. It is simply that simple!
To have obfuscated your data, or limit attempts by others – ANY OTHERS – to replicate your work or to evaluate your data, by any means what so ever, is ethically indefensible.
THIS is the lesson that is coming due for academia.
Dr. Curry:
Very nice post.
Thank you for writing and posting this essay.
After the foreward, I carefully read through your essay looking for an instance where you called someone a denier. You did not do that.
I also dislike this term – but do not think you used it to actively label someone with it.
I understand Anthony doesn’t think the term should have been used at all – but in describing how other people have applied labels – it is not hard to understand why the term needs to be used in that context.
I do agree with Anthony that going forward – I would like to see the term denier dropped as a label – and even see scientists decry its usage.
I hope you report back on the results of your “experiment”.
Thank you, Dr. Curry, for sharing your open letter to graduate students and young scientists in fields related to climate research.
In return, below is an open letter that I shared with Dr. Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences, and with members of the Space Studies Board on Thursday, 26 June 2008 at the National Academy of Sciences Building to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of NASA [Space and Earth Science – 50 Years and Counting]:
“Question for the Space Science Board
Can the Space Science Board help NASA move away from the untruths that are wrecking our economy?
* Earth is bathed in a steady flow of heat from Hydrogen-fusion in the Hydrogen-filled Sun.
* Solar neutrinos from Hydrogen-fusion melt (oscillate) away before reaching detectors.
* Earth’s climate is immune from cycles of solar activity (sunspots, flares and eruptions).
* Therefore CO2 from our economic engines caused global warming.
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor and Former
NASA PI for Apollo Lunar Studies”
PS – I am not saying that Western economies were purposely wrecked by the climate scare, but there were obviously reasons to be concerned.
In my opinion, Dr. Curry’s academic and professional
credentials are unassailable.
However her ability to conduct an impartial and
objective socio-political analysis of those folks around her
is diminished by sharing a vested interest with them in
returning their research methods, interperative dialogues,
status and prestige back to normal.
These potential biases represent a wagon full of baggage
that pollute her message.
If “climate science” and it’s observers (like us) weren’t on the
cusp of three or more investigations with the whitewashes
being dealt from stacked decks, Dr. Curry’s message would
be profound.
Her current essay seems aimed to placate rather than move
the many layered problem toward conclusion.
Would that it was otherwise.
I keeping getting stuck on the whole FOIA request thing.
On almost the same day that FOIA2009.zip appeared, the CRU had turned down a FOIA request by Steve McIntyre. If FOIA2009.zip represents the information requested by Mr. McIntyre, exactly what was CRU protecting (other than their good name).
There is nothing that could be raised to the level of dire consequence to life or limb on a short or near term basis in any of these documents or emails.
There was some story about that the FOIA request was going to be fullfilled until Phil Jones (or somebody else) prevailed on the authorities of the College of East Anglia to block the release. On what basis ? Embarrassment ?
And didn’t the legal authorities of the college reviewing these e-mails and documents for release find this material disturbing ? Or is illegality and unethical behaviour the currency of the realm ?
G.L. Alston (07:37:12)
Ah, yes, there you have it!
And no BIG STATE research organisations trying to decode the data for some political agenda. Its pathetic.
Oh, and I have a degree too.
As far as culpability, Al Baby would be a person unfit to plead as he is not educated in science and he has been deeply and passionately involved so as to provoke the impairment of his thinking (if something left) capacity.
I wonder if Judith Curry still believes what she said about Hurricanes as quoted in the time article.
From a Nature paper
“There is a robust signal behind the shift to more intense hurricanes,” says Judith Curry, chair of the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1839281,00.html#ixzz0gURMei3j
What about separating Weather from Climate
Rhoda R (12:33:27) :
I agree with Anthony – the term “denier” should be deep-sixed. Some people have posited the use of “skeptic” in its place but I disagree – “skeptic” implies potential disagreement with a scientific hypothesis and the AGW assurtions so far have failed to meet the definitions of science. I suggest instead that we refer to ourselves as “heretics” thus placing AGW (Al Gore Warming) into its proper context.
————-
Reply: “Dissident” is another applicable term I like. But “denialist”? No… we don’t deny “climate change”. We look at it realistically.
This lady needs an editor. Also, when one side refused to allow the public to see its data and refuses to allow its critics to be heard and refuse to let their theories raise or fall on the results of independent examinations and demands that trillions of dollars be spent re-modeling civilization on their authority alone, there is only one position a real scientist can take, no matter how many letters come after their name. And that is the critic’s side.
Even Denver’s mayor has become a “realist”:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14457009
My Father (amongst many others) risked his life during WW2 bringing Jews to safety in Sweden. They would, otherwise, have ended up in Auswisch.
I, therefore, take strong offence against the word ‘denier’, unless used in its proper context to describe the scumbags who insists Holocaust never happened.
The notion of “expertise” is something worth considering, but the problem is — and has been for a long time — that climate scientists have made the absurd assumption that statistical discipline is different for climate science than it is for anyone else. I have seen these same scientists pull the “expertise” card on professors with PhDs in statistics! At that point it is clear that climate science has lost all tethers to reality.
I think step 1 on the road to recovery is that every climate scientist must make the following pledge:
“I (Name) do solemnly admit that I am a climate scientist, and as such I am a jack of all trades and master of none. I will henceforth differ to biologists on biology, statisticians on statistics, oceanographers on the oceans, physicists on physics, and only when I have the blessing of the true experts shall I publish.”
JC:
—> “…I have come to understand that global warming skepticism is very different now than it was five years ago…”
Really? How so? It seems to me that the only thing that has changed is the messenger, rather than the message.
—> “No one really believes that the “science is settled” or that “the debate is over.” Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.”
If that’s so, why were valid arguments so universally publicly trashed and ignored for years, (yes, YEARS) with this same phrase over and over and over with no tolerance from the scientists who are supposed to keep an open mind?
Suppose I am a prospective science student looking to choose a university and I ask a professor at a university a question. If the response I get is one of complete dismissal of my perspective on a topic, you can be darn well guaranteed I’m going to go somewhere else and try harder to explain my perspective to myself. If instead of dismissal I get a professor who engages my line of thinking (even for humors sake), you can be damned well sure I’m going to want to go to that university and become part of what they do.
My point? The rift in the climate science vs skeptics wasn’t created by the skeptics. It was created by those who repeatedly publicly rebuked those with valid questions. Your attempts to say, “oh, we didn’t realize there were valid arguments in the skeptics camp, and oh, btw, none of us really believe the science is settled.” are waay too little, too late.
Judith,
You state “Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. ” This is the basis for the alarmist AGW movement. It is a totally incorrect statement.
The masses have assumed that because heads of government departments and government groups, politicians and ex politicians make statements about science, these statements are credible. Senior people are assumed to have expertise and the masses trust them. Senior politicians and government heads make political statements, not good scientific statements.
Credibility must include EVIDENCE !
The CRU, IPCC, Al Gore and the rest of the alarmist community has failed to provide a single piece of actual evidence that man’s CO2 is causing global warming.
There may be global warming or there may not. The data is in such a shambles, no one can say. We do know the earth has warmed since the LIA. Even Phil Jones admits there’s been no warming for 15 years, but that’s about it. There is nothing to suggest that man’s CO2 has any any effect whatsover.
So please Judith, correct your statement to read:
“Credibility is a combination of expertise, trust and EVIDENCE. “