Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Judith Curry posted here on WUWT regarding rebuilding the lost trust we used to have in climate science and climate scientists. This is my response to her post, an expansion and revision of what I wrote in the comments on that thread.
First, be clear that I admire Judith Curry greatly. She is one of the very, very few mainstream climate scientists brave enough to enter into a public dialogue about these issues. I salute her for her willingness to put her views on public display, and for tackling this difficult issue.
As is often my wont in trying to understand a long and complex dissertation, I first made my own digest of what Judith said. To do so, I condensed each of her paragraphs into one or a few sentences. Here is that digest:
Digest of Judith Curry’s Post: On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust
1 I am trying an experiment by posting on various blogs
2 Losing the Public’s Trust
2.1 Climategate has broadened to become a crisis of trust in climate science in general.
2.2 Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. Trust in the IPCC is faltering.
2.3 The scientists in the CRU emails blame their actions on “malicious interference”.
2.4 Institutions like the IPCC need to ask how they enabled this situation.
2.5 Core research values have been compromised by warring against the skeptics.
2.6 Climategate won’t go away until all this is resolved.
3 The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming
3.1 Skepticism has changed over time.
3.2 First it was a minor war between advocacy groups. Then, a “monolithic climate denial machine” was born. This was funded by the oil industry.
3.3 Because of the IPCC reports, funding for contrary views died up. It was replaced by climate auditors. The “climate change establishment” didn’t understand this and kept blaming the “denial machine”.
4 Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere.
4.1 Steve McIntyre’s auditing became popular and led to blogs like WUWT.
4.2 Auditors are independent, technically educated people mostly outside of academia. They mostly audit rather than write scientific papers.
4.3 The FOIA requests were motivated by people concerned about having the same people who created the dataset using the dataset in their models.
4.4 The mainstream climate researchers don’t like the auditors because Steve McIntyre is their arch-nemesis, so they tried to prevent auditors publishing in the journals. [gotta confess I couldn’t follow the logic in this paragraph]
4.5 The auditors succeeded in bringing the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted the auditors.
5 Towards Rebuilding Trust
5.1 Ralph Cicerone says that two aspects need attention, the general practice of science and the personal behaviours of scientists. Investigations are being conducted.
5.2 Climate science has not adapted to being high profile. How scientists engage with the public is inadequately discussed. The result is reflexive support for IPCC and its related policies.
5.3 The public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. More efficient strategies can be devised by recognizing that we are dealing with two groups: educated people, and the general public. To rebuild trust scientists need to discuss uncertainty. [“truth as presented by the IPCC? say what?]
5.4 The blogosphere can be a powerful tool for increasing credibility of climate research. The climate researchers at realclimate were the pioneers in this. More scientists should participate in these debates.
5.5 No one believes that the science is settled. Scientists and others say that the science is settled. This is detrimental to public trust.
5.6 I hope this experiment will demonstrate how the blogosphere can rebuild trust.
Having made such a digest, my next step is to condense it into an “elevator speech”. This is a very short statement of the essential principles. My elevator speech of Judith’s post is this.
Climategate has destroyed the public trust in climate science. Initially skepticism was funded by big oil. Then a climate auditing movement sprang up. They were able to bring the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted them. Public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. To rebuild trust, climate scientists need to better communicate their ideas to the public, particularly regarding uncertainty. The blogosphere can be valuable in this regard.
OK, now what’s wrong with Judith’s picture?
Can The Trust Be Rebuilt?
First, let me say that the problem is much bigger than Judith seems to think. Wiser men than I have weighed in on this question. In a speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854, Abraham Lincoln said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
So it will not be easy. The confidence is forfeit, that ship has sailed.
The biggest problem with Judith’s proposal is her claim that the issue is that climate scientists have not understood how to present their ideas to the public. Judith, I respect you greatly, but you have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. The problem is not how climate scientists have publicly presented their scientific results. It is not a communication problem.
The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The lack of trust is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of lack of substance. Results are routinely exaggerated. “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”. Advocacy is a common thread in climate science papers. Codes are routinely concealed, data is not archived. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and censor opposing views.
And most disturbing, for years you and the other climate scientists have not said a word about this disgraceful situation. When Michael Mann had to be hauled in front of a congressional committee to force him to follow the simplest of scientific requirements, transparency, you guys were all wailing about how this was a huge insult to him.
An insult to Mann? Get real. Mann is an insult and an embarrassment to climate science, and you, Judith, didn’t say one word in public about that. Not that I’m singling you out. No one else stood up for climate science either. It turned my stomach to see the craven cowering of mainstream climate scientists at that time, bloviating about how it was such a terrible thing to do to poor Mikey. Now Mann has been “exonerated” by one of the most bogus whitewashes in academic history, and where is your outrage, Judith? Where are the climate scientists trying to clean up your messes?
The solution to that is not, as you suggest, to give scientists a wider voice, or educate them in how to present their garbage to a wider audience.
The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard. When Climategate broke, there was widespread outrage … well, widespread everywhere except in the climate science establishment. Other than a few lone voices, the silence there was deafening. Now there is another whitewash investigation, and the silence only deepens.
And you wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s a clue. Because a whole bunch of you are guilty of egregious and repeated scientific malfeasance, and the rest of you are complicit in the crime by your silence. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes.
And you still don’t seem to get it. You approvingly quote Ralph Cicerone about the importance of transparency … Cicerone?? That’s a sick joke.
You think people made the FOI (Freedom of Information) requests because they were concerned that the people who made the datasets were the same people using them in the models. As the person who made the first FOI request to CRU, I assure you that is not true. I made the request to CRU because I was disgusted with the response of mainstream climate scientists to Phil Jone’s reply to Warwick Hughes. When Warwick made a simple scientific request for data, Jones famously said:
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
When I heard that, I was astounded. But in addition to being astounded, I was naive. Looking back, I was incredibly naive. I was so naive that I actually thought, “Well, Phil’s gonna get his hand slapped hard by real scientists for that kind of anti-scientific statements”. Foolish me, I thought you guys were honest scientists who would be outraged by that.
So I waited for some mainstream climate scientist to speak out against that kind of scientific malfeasance … and waited … and waited. In fact, I’m still waiting. I registered my protest against this bastardisation of science by filing an FOI. When is one of you mainstream climate scientist going to speak out against this kind of malfeasance? It’s not too late to condemn what Jones said, he’s still in the news and pretending to be a scientist, when is one of you good folks going to take a principled stand?
But nobody wants to do that. Instead, you want to complain and explain how trust has been broken, and you want to figure out more effective communication strategies to repair the trust.
You want a more effective strategy? Here’s one. Ask every climate scientist to grow a pair and speak out in public about the abysmal practices of far, far too many mainstream climate scientists. Because the public is assuredly outraged, and you are all assuredly silent, sitting quietly in your taxpayer funded offices and saying nothing, not a word, schtumm … and you wonder why we don’t trust you?
A perfect example is you saying in your post:
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 …
For you to say this without also expressing outrage at realclimate’s ruthless censorship of every opposing scientific view is more of the same conspiracy of silence. Debate is not “alive and well” at realclimate as you say, that’s a crock. Realclimate continues to have an undeserved reputation that it is a scientific blog because you and other mainstream climate scientists are unwilling to bust them for their contemptuous flouting of scientific norms. When you stay silent about blatant censorship like that, Judith, people will not trust you, nor should they. You have shown by your actions that you are perfectly OK with realclimate censoring opposing scientific views. What kind of message does that send?
The key to restoring trust has nothing to do with communication. Steve McIntyre doesn’t inspire trust because he is a good communicator. He inspires trust because he follows the age-old practices of science — transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting of results.
And until mainstream climate science follows his lead, I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored. I don’t want you learning better ways to propagandize for shoddy science. I don’t want you to figure out how to inspire trust by camouflaging your unethical practices in new and innovative ways. I don’t want scientists learning to use clever words and communication tricks to get people to think that the wound is healed until it actually is healed. I don’t want you to learn to use the blogosphere to spread your pernicious unsupported unscientific alarmism.
You think this is a problem of image, that climate science has a bad image. It is nothing of the sort. It is a problem of scientific malfeasance, and of complicity by silence with that malfeasance. The public, it turns out, has a much better bullsh*t detector than the mainstream climate scientists do … or at least we’re willing to say so in public, while y’all cower in your cubbyholes with your heads down and never, never, never say a bad word about some other climate scientist’s bogus claims and wrong actions.
You want trust? Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well. It’s that simple. Do good science, and publicly call out the Manns and the Joneses and the Thompsons and the rest of the charlatans that you are currently protecting. Call out the journals that don’t follow their own policies on data archiving. Speak up for honest science. Archive your data. Insist on transparency. Publish your codes.
Once that is done, the rest will fall in line. And until then, I’m overjoyed that people don’t trust you. I see the lack of trust in mainstream climate science as a huge triumph for real science. Fix it by doing good science and by cleaning up your own backyard. Anything else is a coverup.
Judith, again, my congratulations on being willing to post your ideas in public. You are a rara avis, and I respect you greatly for it.
w.
PS – In your post you talk about a “monolithic climate denial machine”?? Puhleease, Judith, you’re talking to us individual folks who were there on the ground individually fighting the battle. Save that conspiracy theory for people who weren’t there, those who don’t know how it went down.
This is another huge problem for mainstream climate scientists and mainstream media alike. You still think the problem is that we opposed your ideas and exposed your errors. You still see the climate scientists as the victims, even now in 2010 when the CRU emails have shown that’s nonsense. Every time one of your self-appointed spokes-fools says something like “Oh, boo hoo, the poor CRU folks were forced to circle their wagons by the eeevil climate auditors”, you just get laughed at harder and harder. The CRU emails showed they were circling the FOI wagons two years before the first FOI request, so why haven’t you noticed?
The first step out of this is to stop trying to blame Steve and Anthony and me and all the rest of us for your stupidity and your dishonesty and your scientific malfeasance. [Edited by public demand to clarify that the “your stupidity” etc. refers to mainstream climate scientists as a group and not to Judith individually.] You will never recover a scrap of trust until you admit that you are the source of your problems, all we did was point them out. You individually, and you as a group, created this mess. The first step to redemption is to take responsibility. You’ve been suckered by people like Stephen Schneider, who said:
To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
That worked fine for a while, but as Lincoln pointed out, it caught up with you. You want trust? Disavow Schneider, and STOP WITH THE SCARY SCENARIOS. At this point, you have blamed everything from acne to world bankruptcy on eeevil global warming. And you have blamed everything from auditors to the claimed stupidity of the common man for your own failures. STOP IT! We don’t care about your pathetic justifications, all you are doing is becoming the butt of jokes around the planet. You seem to have forgotten the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Read it. Think about it. Nobody cares about your hysteria any more. You are in a pit of your own making, and you are refusing to stop digging … take responsibility.
Because we don’t want scientists who are advocates. We’re not interested in scientists who don’t mention their doubts. We’re sick of your inane “simplified dramatic statements”. We laugh when you cry wolf with your scary scenarios. Call us crazy, but we want scientists who are honest, not scientists who balance honesty and effectiveness. You want trust? Get honest, kick out the scoundrels, and for goodness sakes, get a clue about humility.
Because the truth is, climate science is one of the newest sciences. The truth is, we know little about the climate, we’ve only been studying it intensely for a couple decades. The truth is, we can’t project the climate of the next decade, much less that of the next century. The truth is, we have no general theory of climate. The truth is, we don’t know if an average temperature rise of a couple degrees will be a net benefit or a net loss. The truth is, all of us are human, and our knowledge of the climate is in its infancy. And I don’t appreciate being lectured by infants. I don’t appreciate being told that I should be put in the dock in a Nuremberg style trial for disagreeing with infants. You want to restore trust? Come down off your pedestals, forsake your ivory towers, and admit your limitations.
And through all of this, be aware that you have a long, long, long climb back up to where we will trust you. As Lincoln warned, you have forfeited the confidence of your fellow citizens, and you will be damn lucky if you ever get it back.
[Update: please see Dr. Curry’s gracious response below, at Judith Curry (04:34:45)]
[Update 2: Dr. Curry’s second response is here, and my reply is here]
[Update 3: Dr. Curry steps up and delivers the goods. My reply.]
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Nicely said Willis. Captures my feelings and frustrations on this issue perfectly.
IsoTherm, let me fix that for you:
… can I remind everyone that there is ____ scientific evidence that CO2 is a MINOR greenhouse gas. It is therefore logical to expect that an increase in CO2 should lead to an MARGINAL increase in GREENHOUSE EFFECTS _________, and therefore as burning fossil fuel does produce AN MINOR AMOUNT OF CO2 to go into the atmosphere, and the increase in CO2 appears to have occured in correlation with an CYCLICAL AND EXPECTED increase in SOME MEASUREMENTS OF ______ temperature, there is ___________ circumstantial evidence of a link, BUT WE MUST REMEMBER THAT CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.
BOLD = adds, _________ = deletions
Iso Term: “Before I get totally brainwashed by the overwhelming dismissal of the theory of manmade global warming, can I remind everyone that there is good scientific evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is therefore logical to expect that an increase in CO2 should lead to an increase in global temperature, and therefore as burning fosil fuel does produce CO2 to go into the atmosphere, and the increase in CO2 appears to have occured in correlation with an increase in global temperature, there is strong circumstantial evidence of a link.”
This “argument” is not an argument but red herring. Nobody denies that CO2 is a GHG, nor that increase in CO2 would cause SOME warming. But, the problem is how much, and whether the doubling of CO2 would mean a “crisis” and “catastrophe” or not? There is a very significant difference between 1 degree K warming and 4 degrees K warming per doubling of CO2. IPCC favors the latter without any evidence and contrary to most of what we know about the past climate and about the physical processes in the atmosphere.
Further,as for the statistical correlations, Sun’s activity correlates MUCH better with the global temperature. (And the number of Republican senators in the last 30 years appears to correlate even better).
I liked Dr. Curry’s posting, and I like this posting. Both are looking at the same problem from different angles. For years I have been asking any of the AGW crowd this question: What could happen, in the next 5 or 10 years, that would negate the premise of AGW? I’ve never ever gotten an answer to that.
However, perhaps the root-cause-analysis of this mess comes down to a more basic problem. Why are scientists doing science? It is always assumed that they are doing it for the advancement of knowledge. That is horse-pucky. They are doing it to earn a living. In the old days of science, scientists were independently wealthy, or being supported through religious work, or simply doing science in their backyard after working at a paying job. Currently science is something that people use as a career.
Now, how do people decide what they are going to do as a scientist? Generally, they are told what to do, what to study, what to test. The use of public money to fund science was probably one of the worst ways to do it. If we look back in history, much of our scientific and engineering knowledge came because people were trying to enhance how they did some job or task. Our knowledge of vapor pressures and steam tables came about partly because the whiskey industry required it. Our knowledge of metal fatigue came about partly because of boilers on the Mississippi steamships exploding, and Liberty Ships breaking in half in the North Atlantic. If a scientist gets the attention of a politician through some study that they do, it is because the politician sees some political value in it.
The real problem with science, transcending the current problems with climate studies, and involving all science, is that science is now being done for political gain rather than scientific gain. Science being done in and for industry is probably the least corrupted, because it will be immediately evaluated for whether it actually works or not, whether it is valid, or whether it makes any sense.
Public grants of money are nearly always (probably 99% of the time) expecting certain results. If you find those certain results, then you get more grant money. The people granting the money are not really looking at whether your science was done well, as much as they look at whether you kept all the receipts, and your work was done neatly and within the time limits. This has reduced science to little more than grade-school activities. Stay quiet, don’t make a mess, and you get a gold star on your forehead.
The universities bear some of the blame for this situation. They give full professors a light teaching load, but then expect them to publish several papers every year. These professors originally had to get funding for their projects from private companies, but as public money became easier to get, they found they could publish more papers every year, with less effort. Thus the universities attracted and kept people who were not really contributing to scientific knowledge, as much as they were contributing to political power (both of politicians and their particular university).
Is there any way out of this morass? We focus on climate studies, and pour out anger on them, but isn’t this simply the tip of the iceberg, as far as all science is concerned?
Scepticism about anthropogenic global warming isn’t monolithic, it’s organised, and reflects in that the AGW conspirators, in the same way that the only way New Labour could beat the Conservatives in Great Britain was to base itself on its opponents organisation.
Very well said, too bad they won’t heed your advice.
I’ve read in some of the comments that Prof Curry is getting lambasted by the warmist side as well.
Prof. Curry, I want to caution you that this is not necessarily a sign that you have hit the mark. What you must remember is that the warmist orthodoxy does not tolerate dissent in any form. The warmists will attack you for leaving the orthodoxy, and we are attacking you for still being obtuse, though less so.
As to the idea that the warmists just haven’t been good at communicating, well lets examine that:
-Kyoto treaty
-Billions of dollars spent
-UN IPCC for the past 10 years? More billions spent.
-Vast amounts of legislation world wide to reduce carbon emissions.
-No extraction of US natural resources in the US, so we pay more billions to the middle east. More billions spent, and supporting terrorists besides. And it also means higher prices.
-Vast amounts of money wasted on wind farms. Billions more spent, millions of birds killed.
-Copenhagen climate summit. Hundreds of millions spent.
-Small flourescent bulbs, filled with mercury and an environmental hazard down the road.
-Biofuels, ethanol, which results in diverting food production to fuel production, causing a world wide increase in food prices and the resulting impact on the worlds very poor. All 2 billion of them.
-US supreme court say CO2 a pollutant.
-US EPA to regulate emissions of carbon. End US economy as we know it.
-Carbon trading, carbon offset schemes. More billions spent, on a fictional product. Widespread corruption.
-Time. The one thing we can’t get back is time. We could have been building reactors and refineries.
And you think that the climate scientists haven’t been good at communicating? Look around you. You literally, and the warmists as well, have the deaths of thousands on your hands. Perhaps millions, for we have spent years and incredible amounts of resources on what is a monstrous fraud. We could have spent these vast amounts on something that would have bettered humanity, and not just a small group of climate science rent seekers.
When in five years the world is noticeably colder, which really isn’t a
bad bet considering the world’s climate history, the warmists will deserve having all of their funding cut, their tenured positions eliminated, and spending the rest of their lives in civil and criminal court. Ever heard of CYA? You better start documenting your ‘climate science’ now because karma really is, and I hope that you will pardon the profanity, a m***** f*****, not to mention the discovery process. Count on your science being audited, and if a court order is necessary, so be it.
If I had the money, I’d be suing all of you now. Better hope that I don’t win the lotto.
I find nothing OTT about this. It’s time someone stated the obvious, well done. Sometimes the truth hurts. Too bad.
The cover up is always worse than the crime.
ClimateGate was about disclosing the cover up.
OK I broke my rule and came back – but really the 95% who like the rant are doing “non AGW believers” no good at all. Reasoned argument will win the day because you have to win over a majority in the middle who are not sure.
If they see “rants” like Willis’s and then look at RC they will not know what to believe. I understand the frustrations, but guys you have to turn the other cheek. Prof. Curry is wrong to put the emphasis on communication but at least engage in a civil dialogue with her. A lot of AGW believers are looking to bail out with minimum loss of face and 95% of you are making it a lot more difficult.
Enjoy your rants – but it wont advance the downfall of Mann one bit.
Well done, great post and direct to the point. Gloves off.
The ball is now in the climate scientists’ court to make the next move. How long do we wait Judy?
PS definitely not coming back!
Willis,
Excellent write for skeptic side, but am I wrong pointing out that many years back in the ‘darkness’ of climate science didn’t Dr. Curry and another researcher in Georgia first ‘open the door a crack’ to let McIntyre speak at their university….that took real guts at the time in my opinion.
Also she would lose all support from her ‘peers’ if she grabbed the other end of the stick and would be no use to this skeptical side. Let her keep just opening the door a crack with ‘common sense’ to her RC friends because smashing the door in their face will just get her trashed.
Spencer and Christy can’t do that kind of work because unfortunately they are ‘skeptical’ outsiders. Just maybe in her ‘quiet’ way she can possibly be trying to convince from within….and that is where the truth will have to emerge.
I also believe that it is much less a factor of scientists being the problem as opposed to ‘social’ scientists’ – media, journalists, politicians, enviormentalists that our just activists, those in charge of journals and science organizations that cling to management more than being a skeptical physical scientists. You have to agree these people will listen to Judith’s slow conversion process over you ‘hit with a stick approach’, but please continue with well thought out ‘outsider’ perspectives.
If this is the person who let McIntyre speak years ago, she is light years ahead of the RC crowd.
Isotherm:”Before I get totally brainwashed by the overwhelming dismissal of the theory of manmade global warming, can I remind everyone that there is good scientific evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is therefore logical to expect that an increase in CO2 should lead to an increase in global temperature, and therefore as burning fossil fuel does produce CO2 to go into the atmosphere, and the increase in CO2 appears to have occured in correlation with an increase in global temperature, there is strong circumstantial evidence of a link.”
It is logical to expect a rise in temperatures as CO2 rises, and the rise in temperatures with the rise in CO2 would be a good place to start, especially as they can only find 50% of the warming through other causes. Trouble is they stopped there. Increases in CO2 should raise the temperature, all other things being equal, so in the absence of any mathematical relationship the best place to look is in the past, just like we do for the Theory of Evolution. However, when you look in the past you find that there is no relationship between CO2 and temperature, there is, however, a relationship between Temperature and CO2, CO2 rises around 1000 years after a rise in temperature.
OK, let’s look at the present and try to form a relationship based on our observations. Pretty clear correlation between about 1980 and 2000, but, inexcplicably the temperature as near as damn it stops rising while the CO2 goes on rising. Clearly there are forces at work the climatologists don’t understand, instead of admitting to that the persist with the mantra “of the last ten years have been the hottest on record”, yes they have, but by hundredths of a degree.
In short, unlike the Theory of Evolution, there is nothing in the historical records, and there is nothing in recent observations that would pin the blame for GW on the increase in CO2. Doesn’t say it’s not the cause but it’s really bad science to be definitive that it is the cause.
Re: “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”.
Yes, yes, and yes!!!! Sites like WUWT have made me aware of that phenomenon in climate change reporting. Nowhere else in the news do we accept a constant stream of uncertainty, even in other sciences like medicine or technology. But in climate science reporting it’s the norm and readers don’t question it. Dig into the IPCC reports and those same phrases are present there as well. That’s shocking to me.
Some posts have been overly generous to Curry. This is a mistake. She is simply a frightened rat realising the ship is sinking fast, and eyeing a lifeboat for herself.
Let’s nail ALL of the bas###ds and show no mercy. They plotted to throw us and our grandchildren back to the Dark Ages, and I for one will never forgive them.
@IsoTherm (06:50:50)
Possibly feedback from the resultant changing mix of clouds and water vapour. (Possibly not).
Before forgiveness must come repentance.
What Curry is attempting to communicate is not that climate scientists regret their complicity in breaches of scientific processes, they just regret having been caught.
If climate scientists were bank robbers, then Curry’s post would be tantamount to a proposal to better case the joint first, wear thicker stockings on their heads and disable the CCTV cameras next time.
What would have been better received, here, would have been a proposal to move into more legitimate lines of work, to go straight and contribute honestly to society. This sadly is not Curry’s proposal.
This is an important read. Not just for climate scientists but for mankind. Everyone at one time or another embellish their stories or facts to try to impress or bend others to their will. To get that they want. Enlarging a fish story and talking of the one that got away usually does no real harm. No money is involved. No economic changes are made. No government mandates created.
But science has to peel away this human weakness. Cast off the good story telling. The language of computers are ones and zeros, on or off. Scientists have to be as clear as this. No gray areas, no fudging.
There are times for tall tales, like around a camp fire. Science is not the time or place. Scientists must not only be honest in the work they do and the papers and statements they make they must also keep a close eye and ear on how their work is used by others. If a reporter or politician misquotes them or stretches the facts then the scientists must loudly speak up and demand a correction.
Only then will they be trusted.
Exactly, and why would anyone want to “build a bridge” to these charlatans ?? Replacing them with principled scientists will be far more efficient – and that day is coming.
TinyCo2 (07:05:06) : IsoTherm (06:50:50) : Nothing wrong with ‘good scientific evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas’. This is not at question. What is an issue, is climate feedback. Positive or negative?
But, we know that the cyclic changes in the earth’s orbit aren’t sufficient to explain the occurence of the iceages. This suggests that whatever the actual cause, the underlying feedback mechanism tends to exaggerate changes in climate forcing due to changes in solar intensity. By inference this would tend to suggest that any impacts of CO2 would amplified by the climate and result in larger temperature changes than you would expect from the direct influence.
We did see a sharp rise in temperature in the 1970-2000 period which is coincidental with rises in CO2, and which would suggest that the amplification factor is positive.
Wow! A very passionate and hard hitting response their, sir – one which I wholeheartedly agree with.
Except …. it’s not just climate science that will lose public trust, it is science in general. The problem for science in general is that the AGW theory has, by invention, been made very public and the rest of science will be tarred with the same brush.
The implications for science are enormous and set back the cause for 200 years – or more. Forget “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” or “Chicken Little” – the fairy tale they need to take heed of is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
AGW will not be laid bare by sceptics or proven by models – but by facts, observations and time. So far it’s not looking good.
“Now can anyone tell me where this argument is wrong?”
Why, sure, Isotherm, glad to oblige, you see, that by looking deeper than the surface of it, there is no physical basis for the correlation between CO2 level and temperature, moreover additional consequences of the possible correlation between the two are neither discussed nor observed, furthermore there are explanations for troposphere temperature variations that do in fact explain the observations, and there is about a billion years of geologic history of the Earth that can be accurately discerned that shows that such a correlation never occurred in the history of the Earth and lack of an explanation of why such a correlation should be observed now.
Looking deeper than the surface is needed, rather than the psychological tendency to stop looking or bother to look farther when an emotionally satisfying explanation has been reached.
That’s why, Iso, and I can’t give you a better answer than that. And if you want a better answer, then all I can say is, you probably have ulterior motives for wanting it
Lucy Skywalker (01:23:37) :
Finally, there are the “Post-normal scientists” who have arrived via a Trojan Horse,
That sound like a description of Gavin Schmidt.
My first post here, and thank you to Judith Curry for this (buried amidst the rest of the comments) when she replies
“I am angry as a scientist, since I may have been using unnecessarily inaccurate surface temperature data in my research. Ecologists, chemical engineers, etc. who have made career decisions in directing their research toward climate change impacts or mitigation have been trusting the system to work. Etc.”
You should be angry! More of this, please.
-Mitsouko