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.
I’ve had the pleasure, and I mean that sincerely, of arguing/debating with Judy over at CA a few times. She comes across far more willing to hear out opposing views than most AGW proponent climate scientists. I found it difficult to be my normal snarky self with her, because she’s not condescending in any way.
That said, when she leaves the actual science and starts down the path of funding, politics, advocacy argument, she gets herself into the usual AGW proponent self-inflicted wounds. Though her tone was non confrontational in her essay, her belief in the “Big Oil” conspiracy funding right-wing think tanks in “phase I” hurts her case.
Dr. Curry says it’s easy to track down the fact that “Big Oil” has contributed to the “denier camp.” Well, the same can be said of the climate scientists. For example, take a look at the sources of income acknowledged by CRU which includes some government and international agency and advocacy groups that do not provide money to the “denier camp.”
British Petroleum
Greenpeace International
Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates
Shell
Sultanate of Oman
United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP)
United States Department of Energy
United States Environmental Protection Agency
World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
The complete list can be found at the CRU website (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/). Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates includes the Catlin Group, which funded the polar publicity stunt (Catlin Expedition) last year and which is deep into carbon credits and “climate change insurance.” Several of these entities have a clear vested interest in the alarmism perpetrated by the IPCC and some of the big players among climate science.
If you dig, you will find “Big Oil” contributing to many bastions of the AGW camp. Does that then invalidate the AGW research? No. Nor does the funding source invalidate skeptic research.
Personally, I don’t care where a scientist, school, or research institute gets their money. As long as that scientist, school or institute makes their research totally transparent and makes the data, methodology and code available without all the nonsense that we’ve seen from the likes of Mann, Schmidt, Hansen, Jones, Wigley, Trenbreth, Santer, Steig, et al, there wouldn’t be the trust issues that Judy points out.
It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on a flawed study or who funds it. Flawed studies readily available for “audit,” as Judy calls it, will be quickly debunked. And that’s how it should work.
One of the first things I learned as a cadet at West Point was that the mere appearance of impropriety is often worse than the impropriety itself. The actions of the scientists named above, some of their institutions, their blogs like RC, their own words in the “Climategate” emails would lead any rational observer to conclude that there is at least an appearance of impropriety. To date, their reaction to getting called out only confirms that appearance, but also seems to indicate actual impropriety.
Dr. Curry,
One theme that runs through your post is that of the “oil industry” as evil ogre. I recognize that you are, at least in part, quoting others’ charges, but at no point do you take issue with this characterization, other than to note that recent skeptics aren’t actually funded by the evil ogre, despite pro-AGW claims that they are.
Who conferred upon pro-AGW mouthpieces the right to determine who are “legitimate” opponents and who is to be ignored? The energy companies have enormous responsibilities to their customers and their shareholders, and would be remiss if they didn’t make an attempt to influence a debate that will radically change the market they are competing in. The pro-AGW crowd brought significant economic and political pressure upon the energy companies to neutralize their influence. Any process by which dissenting voices are driven from the debate by force is the antithesis of science.
The skeptical bloggers succeeded precisely where the energy companies failed, because the bloggers can’t be neutralized by economic or political pressure. As has been noted elsewhere, many are retired. Others work full-time, and do their research and blogging in their spare time. We’re exceedingly fortunate that this is the case, because otherwise we would already have been overwhelmed by green fanatics pushing supra-national governance and draconian controls that would have made the living conditions described in George Orwell’s _1984_ eerily prescient.
The AGW saga is a catalog of scientific misfeasance and malfeasance, but beyond that is the purposeful suppression of debate by pro-AGW apparatchiks. Until that is rectified, all attempts to find a meeting of the minds will be fruitless.
[By the bye, while my car uses both gasoline and oil, I don’t work for an oil company, nor have I ever done so. I didn’t even have a job in a gas station in high school or college. I’m an electrical engineer who designed electronic measurement instruments for a leading test equipment manufacturer for 24 years and am now writing software for pacemakers.]
Reading through the posts it is pretty obvious most of us skeptics are on to Dr Curry and can see that she is only interested in building trust in “Climate Science politics” rather than building trust in the Scientific Method…. Her summery condemns her.
Dr Curry finishes…. “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.”
It’s a telling difference. She speaks only of Climate Science…. She doesn’t even mention the Scientific Method…. we are awake to her attempt to muddy the waters… This CRU, IPCC mess and AGW exaggeration, wouldn’t have occurred if “climate scientists” had adhered to sound Scientific principles.
…. Maybe she is unaware that she is defending an elitist construct when she says “climate science”, for this field falls far short of using the principles that define the scientific method…..?
Willis Eschenbach (13:50:31), I greatly enjoyed your comment.
Note how accurately our comments agreed about a basic proposition, namely that Judith Curry, despite her friendly face and vague memories of some good old positive values in science, something that both of us appreciate, focuses too much on the changes of the image without appreciating the actual substance (or the lack of) that drove the changes. It’s about the makeup that got damaged a little bit, and it must be repainted, and Anthony Watts could help to repaint the makeup and everything will return to the good old IPCC tracks. Now, don’t call me “sexist” because of the makeup: a sexist is the person who thinks that makeup must be connected with women; I haven’t suggested anything of the sort. 🙂
It really seems that e.g. the “open source community” played an important role in her analysis. Why? Because her story is all about image. The old deniers could be more easily connected to “Big Oil”, so they had a bad image and could be ignored. But the new skeptics are closer to the “open source community” which is heroically fighting the “evil empire of the commercial software industry”. The commercial software industry is similar to Big Oil (except that Bill Gates just gave a crazy TED talk about zero emissions in 2050), so it’s a real problem if the warriors against Big Oil lose the support of the open source community. So this support has to be restored by newly engineered changes of the image. That seems to be Judith’s message.
In reality, these political things about software don’t have anything important to do with the essence of the ClimateGate(s). And they shouldn’t have. People use free software to analyze the data because they don’t have to pay for it. Some of them think that the importance of open software goes beyond it, but they know it’s an independent question from the integrity of the climate research. The latter should exist both in the free/voluntary researchers as well as the professional ones – and probably *especially* the professional ones. It shouldn’t be a political question. The open source folks got upset by their findings about the methods of the current climate science despite their being naturally “more left-wing” because politics doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter here. After all, the “mainstream climate science” has grown to an evil big capitalist that exploits everyone else, so it’s natural for the open source community to add some negative emotions to their really damning findings.
To summarize, Judith Curry seems to assume that there can’t possibly exist a rational reason why the “image” has deteriorated. But there exist very serious reasons.
Dear Bruce Kobb, TinyCO2, and Philip,
thanks for your endorsement! 😉 And Philip: although it has been a couple of years, I still remember the same feelings you had to have somewhat more recently. Until 2002 or so, I also thought there were no reason to think that the climate change wasn’t a lethal threat. It was written everywhere in the media and they quoted scientists from another standard scientific discipline, so why should they say incorrect things?
I thought: Can’t they simply measure the temperature change, and extrapolate it (and at that moment, I surely did think that the temperature graphs are linear increasing functions – as the media had done nothing to disprove this blatantly false expectation of mine and others).
In fact, one could even say that I started to look into the “climate change science” with the same motivation and attitude as I have before I look into statements about extraterrestrial aliens or poltergeist. I just like to check things – and especially far-reaching claims. And ET’s would be funny, so although these statements sounded crazy – contradicting findings about the climate that were really everywhere – I just looked into it.
Of course, my conclusion happened to be the opposite one than the conclusion of any research of mine dedicated to poltergeists or UFOs. 😉 Well, I shouldn’t exaggerate this point. When McIntyre and McKitrick, and Willie and Soon, were first comprehensibly heard, my guesses about the odds for the validity of the two “philosophies” were already at least 50:50 in their favor. But before I encountered the first serious people of this kind, I also had an inclination to think that a climate skeptic would probably be similar to an UFO abductee. 🙂
Cheers, Lubos
Judith (and this applies to Prof. Ravetz too), the bottom line is that most of us here think that CO2 is a trace gas with more benefits than threats to humanity and that global climate change (if such a thing exists) likely comes from natural causes we don’t yet really understand. This is an open door to wide research and AN AFFIRMATION, NOT A STATE OF DENIAL.
Those who have closed the door are those who, for whatever personal reasons of ambition or hubris, have tried to force the research through very narrow channels.
They cannot be allowed to continue to do this. There is no negotiation possible; no time to be wasted on philosophical ramblings
The CRUs, the GISSes and their IPCC mouthpiece of this world have done untold damage, not just to public confidence, but to Science itself. They must be swiftly and pitilessly dealt with so that we can try to salvage the bits of data left. The eminent scientists who often contribute here are capable of doing this and it only remains for us to support them, especially morally.
Dr. Curry,
Thank you. Your post was most interesting to me
Two points I suggest that form the fundamental concepts of the controvesy involving science applied to climate.
””’Dr. Curry
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.””
First-Fundamentaly,some key scientists involved in prominent climate organizations no longer possessed intellectual integrity and an independent mind. They compromised their scientific behaviour. It is not relevant what their motivations were. They voluntarily crossed a professional line. Their profession must judge them swiftly and harshly to protect the profession itself. As long as the scientific communittee does not censure the individuals publically and strongly then efforts to rehabilitate science will be only very marginally effective.
Second- fundamentally, the way science is now predominately funded by government inherently politicizes the scientific process itself. This means watchdog citizen scientists are an absolute requirement to ensure the maintenance of strict scientific behaviors of scientists when their funding comes from the government. These watchdog citizen scientists may or may not be academics or have degrees. That does not matter. The key element for them is they are interested in scientific method and will not accept scientific compromise.
Note: once again I am doing this from my Blackberry while on Taipei public transportation. Grammar & spelling are challenged.
John
Big Oil?
What about Medium Oil and Small Oil? You forgot to include them. They will feel left out.
Wonderful thread!
One small point: “the truth as presented by the IPCC” can be read more than one way. It could imply that “the IPCC presents the truth”, or it could imply “the truth (as the IPCC sees it)”.
Also, the fact that warmists are having paroxysms over Dr. Curry’s essay does tend to suggest that she isn’t playing deceitful games. It probably took a lot of guts to post it. Okay, so maybe she “sinned” in the past, but I don’t see an awful lot of AGW scientists making ANY concessions. We all know how difficult it can be to begin to admit even the faintest possibility of error; but gradually, bit by bit, we may be able to see the full extent of that. So give it time…
Writing this late, it is very unlikely that I read all the comments to the post, and I didn’t, so I may repeat, but I must suggest that Dr. Curry is not admitting that the seemly incomprehensible actions of her colleagues were actual and intentional. Dr. Curry, the damage is far worse than you seem to allow.
We are not simply talking about public distrust of AGW and the associated science, we are talking about the return to superstition and religious dominance of scientific investigation. It applies to the general perception of all science. People currently see science as for sale to the highest bidder and as simply a political and religious tool.
While you and other readers probably acknowledge my political tool assertion, I’ll be surprised to know you did not scoff at my assertion about religion.I offer the following in support of this assertion.
Consider, AGW proponents talk about settled science and consensus the same way the Pope talks about church doctrines, the same way Mormons talk about the covenants, the same way young earthers talk about the dictates of anti-Darwinian dogmas. It is all the same. It is based on faith in received truth. The skeptics are skeptics, not some reprehensible word or other. The AGW advocates are not scientists, but true-believers, just the same as the young earthers who proclaim the earth is only 6000 years old and Darwin was the great satan. I fear my bold assertions will turn readers off and bring flames my way; so be it.
The damage to humanity is fearsome. People have lost what faith they had in science.
How could the actions of only a few AGW researchers do such damage and have such broad effect? I see it as mostly having to do with arrogance, and it has to do with liberty and independence. Arrogance on the part of the elites, and Independence on the part of Americans who generally refuse to be told what to do (at least when tossed in the hot water, versus being lured in while the pot warms slowly).
Anyway, whether I am correct or not will become self apparent over the next few years. But anyone who knows young earthers should know that AGW advocates are the same.
Check information from the various young earth organizations. They have many lettered researchers and mountains of peer reviewed publications and research. The problem lies in their fundamentals. They twist everything to fit their preconceived notions of Truth. AGW is the same.
The young-earth perspective is so out of the mainstream that few people are likely to understand my point. As an example, the YE apologists point out the concentration of aluminum dissolved in the ocean, they assert an estimate of influx of aluminum dissolved in fresh water, and then assert that the current concentration would be reached in only a few hundred years. Ignoring equilibrium and saturation, they then conclude that all dating methods are invalid.
Similar disjointed facts, indefensible calculations, and absurd dismissals are abundant in AGW publications. Skeptics are ridiculed and declared blasphemers by both YEs and AGWs. It is blind faith religion. It is superstition at its worst.
I can’t say I see much hope for the discourse you propose. With over 30 years of trying, I have yet to convert a young earth adherent, and I have yet to see evidence that AGW true believers will back down. The sad part is that it will take more than one generation of debate to truly settle the issue. Eventually, the weight of reality will force AGW assertions into the dim remembrances of history, and the world and civilization will continue as it has for so many millenia, but until then, we who refuse the notion that mankind is destroying life on earth will be scoffed at, ridiculed, demonized, and compared to those who deny that the Holocaust occurred.
Finally, Dr. Curry, and anyone who might care to answer, what is so bad about warmer? How can a couple of degrees change in average global temperature be so adverse to all of us living things who tolerate daily swings of temperature of up to dozens of degrees, and annual shifts of scores of degrees? As Scotese has shown for several years, earth is cold right now. Earth is warmer on average. How can getting back up to the average be bad? Life on earth has weathered the changes of global average temperature from ~10C to ~27C since the beginning. Life, even humanity, will continue. In fact, it would seem that primates and grass eaters emerged on the scene during the early Eocene, which was probably the hottest epic on earth since life began. Again, how can warmer be so bad? I don’t accept notions of angry Gia. I also hold with the researchers who say hurricanes are not increasing, and weather pattern changes are likely to help more people than they hurt. I also note the factual data that records global sea level rise rate as decelerating, not accelerating.
Again, where is the problem? The proposed solutions have dire and sever consequences, are almost certainly unachievable, and likely to have no significant effect on carbon levels anyway. I just cannot find the ground you and other AGW claim to stand on. I only see true believers shaking their walking sticks at the eclipsed sun.
One last comment, I know you, Dr. Curry, are an expert regarding hurricanes. If you can show me my errors, please do so. I would be most appreciative. Really. No sarcasm. I live my life by the adage, I hate to be wrong–I’d rather be corrected. You can confirm this assertion with my children. I have tried to teach it to them by all means, including being an example.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” (Upton Sinclair)
Jeff L — It is interesting that neither side is too fond of Dr Curry’s posting. Again showing that this is purely about politics not science.
Incorrect. Where politics rears its ugly countenance is the threat of policy creation based on effective advocacy since politicians don’t want to be perceived as enemies of furry cuddly things.
Unfortunately the skeptical position has been hamstrung quite effectively by the politically motivated denier aka the “it’s all a hoax” crowd, not unlike the problem of millions of sane and smart people go to church every sunday and yet are painted with the “ignorant bible thumper” brush when e.g. the KS school board takes it upon themselves to proclaim evolution is a trick of the devil.
As such one popular perception and abused by the Romms of the world is that skeptics are indistinguishable from politically motivated deniers, and like evolution deniers, they ain’t bright enough to grasp much. This works only because of idiocy like the KS school board and amplified by certain porcine radio commentators — the more they bluster and get attention, the easier it is for the AGW establishment in general to claim evolution deniers and climate skeptics belong to one ignorant pile. Read Romm and that ilk and you’ll see that this is a common theme — according to them, what little valid climate skepticism exists is funded by nefarious oil barons who are puppeteering their minions via the vast right wing conspiracy.
Where Dr. Curry did make a valid point here was recognising that skeptic ranks contain some savvy people despite the (sometimes well deserved) bashing skeptics can get due to the political nonsense strapped to their feet. (Good grief, read some of the posts here or any of the right wing blogs comparing climate advocacy to religion where the writer seems to think these are dueling concepts.)
Academia vs a ragtag group of skeptics; science vs religion, whether you like it or not. Much of the disparity occurs along these division lines whether they are out front about it or not.
W. Eschenbach points out that Academia has its own baggage to deal with and hasn’t; the skeptical ranks have a similar problem. What Dr. Curry advocates is that Academia clean up its presentation, giving the image that the problem doesn’t exist. At that point Academia will look great and we skeptics still have to lug around porcine radio bloviators. Who wins then?
As such Dr. Curry’s position is quite threatening.
Willis Eschenbach, you are the man! I would adopt your post as reflecting my own views, but I do have a couple of things to add for Dr. Curry’s benefit.
Unfortunately, Dr. Curry, your view of the history of the AGW movement (as I refer to it for reasons stated below) and its opposition is highly skewed and distorted, as is evident from your references to earlier research done by those “funded by oil companies.” If you followed WUWT and other AGW opponent sites, you would have seen very early on that none of these accusations were true. Indeed, the oil companies have been more on board with the AGW alarmists (e.g. Shell and BP, to name just two), and with entities like Enron, GE, and other corporate “rent seekers” who played this side of the fence because they found the seeming economic opportunities irresistable, and because they feared the consequences of what they began to see as a tidal wave of wrath and hysteria they didn’t want to get crosswise with. The problem at the time was they had no framework within which to pursue their various business ambitions.
That necessitated coalescing with the various environmental and other groups (such as Greenpeace, NRDC, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club) who raise their world view to the level of a religion. To raise the conciousness of the public to their point of view that modern industrial and post-industrial society in general was a snare and a delusion, a hellhole that was raping and pillaging the planet, these groups believed that the idea of warming had to be promoted as a world-level crisis. Otherwise, people wouldn’t understand the issues; they would be complicated. And if the crisis were presented with the usual tone and reserve of most scientists in other disciplines, people might fall asleep and not understand the need for the kind of radical change these groups want to impose upon the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the scientists who were doing all of the work allowed themselves to be co-opted. Why and how were they co-opted? Simple. The only way a crisis could be promoted as a world-level crisis was to convince the world’s governments that it was so, and to give those governments a rationale by which they could take the kind of decisive action the non-governmental organizations had been advocating for years.
Science was the vehicle, the authority behind which the rationale could be articulated. Most average people trust in the general authoritative statements of the average scientist; they had no reason in the past to believe otherwise. Now, how to co-opt scientists? Through that vast network of government science grants and funding that had originally been used for the more traditional and mundane public issues (health, space, etc.). Those who control this funding have to this date dictated the issues, and effectively the research, surrounding AGW (and produced the junk science that Willis Eschenbach has so eloquently referred to). And so it goes, until the present day.
The irony of your history, indeed, is striking. Because the funding flows in the opposite direction. And the agenda is actually dictated not by scientists as much as by these non-government organizations and the bureaucrats in both our own U.S. government as well as the UN.
The AGW affair, as I call it, has always been about power, sheer naked political power, and never about science. Science has allowed itself to compromise truth and free inquiry for the sake of being “on the right side of history.” Trouble is, it’s not the right side of history at all, and the BS meters are off the charts now. I would trust that you now know enough to begin to see why climate scientists are now not trusted. Until you and the rest of your colleagues separate yourselves from the political cartel and the crisis mentality that has arisen in connection with this subject, separate good science from junk science, and move off of the strident insistence on refusing to debate and suppressing in various forms the evidence that contradicts the AGW thesis, the public will continue to question the credibility of the science community. And rightfully so. No amount of “improved communication” will help you if you don’t do these things.
Post the exposures of the Cru emails, Dr Curry finds climate science has lost public trust. Many of us came to WUWT, Climate Audit and elsewhere, over the past few years seeking answers concerning the various ‘Tipping Point’ scenarios broadcast through the MSM. Posters at this site have revealed their motives came from environmental and social concern, a rational response to what seemed a major problem. We wanted to discover how great was the environmental problem of co2 warming as revealed by reliable data. One wonders, given those dire warnings, and as a scientist, that Dr Curry has taken so long to get around to critically reviewing the evidence herself. Does she now begin to see that what was occurring in the climate ‘science’ was brought about because science was overtaken by advocacy?
Here we go again, with Dr. Judith Curry attempting to put on a white dress of innocence and professing to assume the high ground in the toxic debate on AGW.
The same Judith Curry is in fact responsible for the toxicity she now seeks to probe (spin…?) in this column.
In 2006, she unleashed her vile tongue on the legendary William Gray when she sought to dismiss Dr. Gray’s doubts about AGW. This episode is identifed by Dr. Pielke Sr’s., blog: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2006/06/29/on-professor-bill-gray-and-the-debate-on-climate-changge/
Judith Curry is a prominent source of the problem. If she wishes to be part of the solution, she should apologize to Dr. Gray, and everyone else for that matter, for abandoning objectivity and civility not that long ago. It would also help if she were able to abandon — no, repudiate — the oil-companies-are-the-root-of-all-evil thinking.
I have the sense she is only trying to develop the current line of thinking for her own self-promotion.
geo:
Dr. Curry may be wrong in points, maybe even seriously. . .but to think “the cabal” sent her out to do it is just nutty.
Then maybe Dr. Curry should “lose the propaganda”?
geo, I don’t believe in conspiracies which can neither be proven nor disproven. That’s the kind of explanatory schema which characterizes CO2 AGW Climate Science, and hence its reliance upon Propaganda.
But if you don’t want to consider Dr. Curry’s statements and actions to this point as tactics which are in fact quite chacteristic of a propaganda operation – which again just happens to be what the whole of the ipcc’s Climate Science is, complete with at least a de facto cabal, and a large one at that – you may do so.
Me, I’m going to continue along with my hypothesis – which I formed only after reading her first Editorial at Climate Audit and seeing her responses in comments.- that Dr. Curry is in effect no more than an apologist for the Climate Science status quo, because that hypothesis has worked perfectly for me so far, and I’ve certainly seen way too much propaganda to ignore its telltale signs, which are also manifested in her Editorial above.
Surely you must have noticed Dr. Curry’s myriad and mostly trite diversions from the main point which got us here, that Climate Science is not doing real Science? Nor has she ever addressed the charge that what she is arguing to us at WUWT and CA is mainly diversionary. Why not? Nor has she heeded explicit warnings to the effect that such diversions don’t work, at best. Why not?
When Dr. Curry finally admits that the ipcc’s Climate Science is not real Science and demands that it follow the processes of the Scientifc Method, then I will be happy to abandon my view, and I’ll be happy for her. Otherwise, I have no idea what the downside of my assumption is, so long as I don’t use it as an excuse to not listen to what she says and see if her arguments have merit. So far they don’t come anywhere near to explaining why the ipcc’s Climate Science is not doing real Science, and they instead function as rather obvious propaganda tactics. Why is this?
I too want to tip my hat to Willis’ excellent comments and to Larry (23:44:24).
Yes, ultimately they just don’t get it and they are damaging all science the longer it takes for them to clean house.
Absolute farce, the phrase kissin cousins comes to mind. Instead of conservation we now have enviromentalism, a psychosis driven by a real desire to dissociate ourselves from the day to day real and actual damage that humankind exact on the real planet, the real debate has moved from the pragmatic to the psychotic world of pseudo academia all form and no substance like the mythology that surrounds Co2.
Its a real shame that all of the energy expended in the pointless debate that generates more hot air than any amount of methane means Orang Utans in Borneo will most likely become extinct, 50,000 have been destroyed already because palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil and you all drive that when you buy cosmetics or eat biscuits or margerine, do you care no, all you want to do is bark on endlessly about whose temperature readings are correct, who said what and when, boring pedants with no real interest in the enviroment whatsoever.
Endless debate about a bunch of nonsense statistics will not make one jot of real difference, if Americans were not so disposed to eating an endless diet of revolting hamburgers made from 4th grade industrial beef reared on land that was once prime rainforest would have made more difference that all of the hot air expended over whether Gore was right on wrong. The argument should never have been about who made the most pointless claims the argument should have revolved around the pragmatic versus the pseudo “G” grade climate science idiocy, for goodness sake get a grip and do something usefull with your lives, make a real difference, campaign for real conservation, eat sustainable food instead of cheap crap that destroys the real environment, make a real difference instead of being besotted with spending hours looking at a computer screen trying to solve a problem that will never ever change anything in the real environment or is that concept too difficult for you mutants to comprehend?
David Wells
Yeah, except when he gets grumpy and snarky when some troglodyte doesn’t get it! 🙂
I was thinking as I sat on the throne …
Assuming Dr Curry’s approach is part of a revamped and more professional response to the “problem” of the sceptics, I was pondering what else would be part of their strategic plan. A classic approach in the past has been to “cut off the head” – find the leaders a lucrative government post or e.g. find funding for their favourite scheme and encourage them to devote a lot more time to it.
So, I won’t be surprised when several high profile sceptics find the climate community “reaching out” to them and the prospect of prestigious but ultimately meaningless jobs being touted. Similarly, I think Lord Monckton is going to find there’s a sudden vacancy for EU commission for lost passports.
However those who can’t be persuaded will find themselves the target of a very professional convert campaign to keep them busy. Of course, they wouldn’t want to give anyone any more respectability, but it won’t give any more respect to include in the process those who already have public respect. Clearly there’s a lot more that you can do to destroy a community like ours, but I wouldn’t want to give them too many ideas.
All I want to say, is when the approaches come, beware of climate scientists baring gifts Remember you are far more valuable to them than you can conceivably imagine, so push them really hard and then be prepared to walk away, because they will come back!
Wow,
Sorry Judith, but you were totally outdone, eclipsed and evicerated by the incredibly powerfull riposte of Willis Eschenbach.
Willis, you were at your finest, skewering every argument. It was the beacon of light that exposed the cleverly crafted flaws and misunderstandings of Judith’s essay.
Anthony, I think Willis’ post deserves its own article space.
Dear Dr Curry,
You say:
“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.”
Authority and trust are simply two sides of the same coin. An appeal to authority is all they can do when trust is missing. That’s the simple result of not doing science and prefering the political way.
The problem with authority is of course that it can only be sustained by appeal to a higher authority and that strategy hasn’t worked for some time now (several hunderd years).
Scientists are immune to the problem. They don’t need authority or trust. All they need to do is to show their work.
The problem with your essay is that it is a political essay. And now you have a problem. As a politician you don’t have any authority or credibility, how could you, when you haven’t been voted for by the people who’s trust you need? All you have is a scientific title. Using that title for political purpose does unfortunately not increase your political standing. All it does is diminish your scientific standing.
As far as bridge building is concerned, I simply look at were that bridge leads on your side. What I see is a lot of political creepy crawleys who would love to have authority over me. No, thanks.
Very insightfull comment L.Motl
.
You may put a more human face, such as yours, instead of Michael Mann’s unhuman face as the face of the climate science. But you won’t rebuild the trust in the IPCC if your predetermined plan is to keep all these lies as parts of the IPCC conclusions. One simply can’t trust in the people who end up with conclusions such as “Himalayan glaciers are going to melt soon” because these things are not true. Whoever has followed these “Gates” more properly has not only learned that big mistakes (and misinformation) have been done, but he also learned the right answers which can be obtained from the accessible evidence and that are vastly different than the IPCC report says. Many people have been fooled by this organized misinformation process but I don’t think that there will be too many people who will be fooled twice.
I fully subscribe to that .
.
For J.Curry
.
Are you beginning to feel the heat beginning with Soros’ shill Romm ?
And be very sure that it is still nothing compared to the raging inferno thrown by the globall warming juggernaut at scientists , politicians , businessmen or writers who dared to oppose the IPCC “consensus” .
Which had been actually since the very first day an ADVOCACY GROUP CONSENSUS !
Is some kind of understanding beginning to dawn in you with this heat coming ?
If not yet , then trust me , the heat will increase untill you yield .
.
Of course there is still for me the most probable hypothesis that you play a role for which you have been chosen . Disarm and neutralize sceptics by fake discussion offers .
Be sure that it won’t work better the very reason L.Motl described .
Ah and btw I am a scientist like most posters here too .
Like another poster said – it isn’t science unless someone else can repeat the results. Obvious, but profoundly true. These people are asking us to believe their results not because given the the data anyone else would get the same results, but because they are ‘experts’.
One thing I wonder about.
Suppose Dr Curry was to be more critical of certain individuals
in climate science in her post. Would she be committing
professional suicide? We cannot expect an answer to that
question.
There is an old adage, “Fanaticism breeds Fanaticism”. Some of
the rather here were rather savage. Dr Curry does seem to
be attempting to engage in discourse, rather than staking out
a hard-line position. But the degree of polarization about the
issue, especially in blog-land does act to inhibit engagement.
The tone of some emails that seem to blame Dr Curry for all
the sins of climate science seem a bit excessive, she is only
an individual and not wholly responsible for some members
of the tribe. She is not responsible for all the wrongs in the
world.
Hello Judith,
And thanks for posting. I must say, however, that I find Anthony’s response to you (I haven’t read all the comments in this thread yet) to be very persuasive. Your willingness to “experiment” is laudatory. But anyone who has actually followed the debate is aware how far short of reality your remarks come. As Anthony says, climate scientists should stop looking at the skeptical public as an “experiment” in persuasion and start putting their own house in order. The internet is not just another publication venue to try to influence an intransigent population which refused to “understand” flawed science. It actually *generates* knowledge through lowering cost barriers to communication (see Clayton Shirkey’s *Here Comes Everybody*).
— Psi
PS — Regarding the oil money machine. I must be an agent of “big oil” since I gave Anthony $10. I encourage anyone else who is offended by these kinds of unsubstantiated red herrings to also donate to WUWT. The worse thing that would happen is that Anthony might be able to buy another solar panel.