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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“PS definitely not coming back!”
Don’t let the door knob hit ya…..
This response by Willis Eschenbach is very forceful and unequivocal, and does a great service by correctly rejecting and then reframing the context that Dr. Curry had presumed in her experimental essay. The climate science pig does not need lipstick, it needs major surgery.
I only hope that Dr. Curry does not feel burned by his response, or by the vitriol of Romm et.al., and continues her experiment. Because no matter the weakness of her context, the dialogue has taken a step forward merely by her continued willingness to engage skeptics.
As an aside, there will likely be many honest researchers and scientists who will be uncomfortable with what I am about to say, but I believe it is accurate.
History is repleat with examples of powerful institutions funding, twisting and suppressing science for political purposes. The current AGW debate is but the current example. History being something that we are supposed to learn from rather than be condemned to repeat it, what is the lesson that we can take from both history and the matter at hand?
Theoretical research can only be funded by the public sector. The private sector has no interest in anything that cannot produce an ROI in a respectable period of time. It is vital that we fund theoretical research however, because it is the foundation for revolutionary new practical applications of science. When it comes to the production of practical products however, governments have repeatedly proven themselves to be abysmal failures. Even if one were to accept Al Gore’s argument that he invented the internet, it was the likes of Xerox, 3Com, Digital Equipment, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Google, Netscape and many many others that made what we call the internet today, practical.
The attempt to produce climate models that are of practical use with public funding has resulted in a repitition of history. The funding, twisting, and suppression by political interests is in full flight. The theoretical research must continue. The production of practical products from which results may be drawn belong in the private sector where all the severe penalties for producing faulty or dishonestly represented products are swiftly, and viscously, applied.
Hello Dr. Judith Curry,
He gets a little steamed under the collar about it, and getting steamed can & does lead to general steaminess, which can (dis)serve to obscure, distract, and divert from the intended goal of our efforts.
But the blunt truth is, Willis Eschenbach’s effort is superior to the effort you made. You made an effort that certainly took bravery – and I see around the blogosphere that you are taking flack from all quarters – but your presentation clearly needed a lot of red-pencil mark-up, and extensive marginal annotation. Escherbach does a pretty thorough job with the red pencil.
I agree that it really is now out of Science’s hands, how to go forward. Science blew it, and both the power & the authority to call the shots going forward, belongs to constituencies outside the institution. Science can probably be profitably consulted, but they are the ones ‘in violation’, and as such, this is no longer a ‘science problem’, but a societal problem. Science will now answer the questions, “Yes, ma’am; no sir”, provide additional information about the incident, as requested, provide expertise as they are able – but science is really no longer “in charge”. They blew it.
Science drove their vehicle into the ditch. As a police officer pulls up to the scene, the science-driver hurries to the officer, gesturing and talking rapidly … intent upon relating what has happened, describing what will now be done about it. However, actually, it is the police officer who is now in charge, not the driver.
Taking the driver gently by the elbow, the officer points to a location on the other side of the ditch, up underneath an interchange street-light: “I want you to get away from the highway, go up there and stand where I can see you clearly, and stay there. You will have an opportunity to make a statement for the report. But right now, you need to get off the road, and stay out of the way. We’re in charge, now. Thank you.”
The officer then calls into headquarters, making a quick voice-report. HQ then calls for a tow-truck, using their own ‘formula’: the driver generally does not have the opportunity to decide which tow-truck will come for the vehicle, how the cable will be attached to it, or the route the tow-truck will use to return to the tow-yard.
For the driver to insistently try to “define the situation” for the officer, is inappropriate. The officer can see quite well enough, what has happened, and knows what needs to happen to move forward. For the driver to hurry to the officer, saying; “I’m so glad you’re here! … There was a bee flying around in my car! It might have cause me to collide with other traffic on the road! I barely managed to avoid something much worse …”, may or may not be interest to the judge (or the history books), but certainly, none of that kind of stuff has any bearing on the responsibilities & duties of the attending police officer.
Science drove into the ditch. The institution is no longer in charge of their oiwn situation. It is now, in all & every pragmatic reality, “the public” who is charge, going forward.
Ted Clayton
P.S. Judith, I shouldn’t “have to”, but there are recurring signs that we do have to remind, that neither our nation nor our culture is a “Scientocracy”. It does not matter, that individual science professionals and institutional science bodies possess superior understanding on specific topics: nonetheless, they are not in charge. Whatever the issue of interest, it is not science’s role, to make the decisions respecting it. We are not a scientocracy, never have been, and I think it is safe to assert, never will be. This is an important ‘point of order’ that may slip from view, for some folks, in some situations.
Great read. Thanks Willis!
True passion brings out some penetrating analysis and terrific writing.
Willis Eschenbach for President 2012!
Ok, let us leave politics out of this guys. I am sure your president is a clever guy who will figure this still out. We were all victims of the brainwashing that was going on, myself included. Before I decided to make sure for myself, I was convinced CO2 was a problem. At this stage I even doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Nobody has been able to show me a balance sheet, i.e. how much cooling is caused by CO2 (due to reflection of sunshine resulting from the absorptions in the range 0-5um,) and how much warming is caused by CO2 (due to the reflection of earthshine in the 14-15 um range)
Brian G Valentine, the greenhouse effect of CO2 is real and compelling. So too are the other factors you refer to. I’m not sure about your comments on the troposphere, but I assume you refer to the natural variation in the climate and the CO2 lag with temperature in the ice cores. That is quite a difficult point.
However, on the “normal” temperature variation, how do we know what it is? The best proxy we have is from tree rings, and whilst a range of reconstructions have been produced, they typically do suggest that the change in the 20th century was unprecendented.
An unprecendented change in temperature at the same time as an unprecedented (post ice-age … I may be wrong) change in CO2, would be strong circumstantial evidence of a link.
Judith Curry (04:34:45) :
“So by staking this middle position, i pretty much am getting tomatoes thrown at me from both sides”
Be thankful that watermelons are out of season (h/t to Groucho) because RC would be launching them at you with catapults. Here, our arms tire easily.
What evidence is there to support AGW?
Plenty of pictures of apparently sorrowful Polar Bears, and, and, … ,
… and, lots of stuff, it doesn’t come to mind right now what it is, but there’s lots more, lots of it.
Brian G Valentine to Isotherm;
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>>
I shall give Isotherm the benifit of the doubtm because the simple explanation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas by sources such as Wikipedia are not incorrect, so they make sense. The problem Isotherm, is that these explanations are incomplete.
As Wikipedia claims, CO2 absorbs longwave radiation and re-emitts it. True. But when ANYTHING absorbs energy and becomes warmer than the things around it, it causes energy to be moved around, not just by radiance, but by conductance, convection, evaporation and so on. The spectrum that re-emmission occurs at is different from the spectrum that the earth emitts. and so on. The explanation isn’t wrong, its incomplete. Models based on the incomplete explanation produce results that are wrong, and the more data we get the more wrong they are.
…….. AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE !
Way to go, Willis.
Don’t pull your punches.
Well done Willis, the ring of truth in your post is unmistakable. In fact, what you have done here with the help of modern communications (Internet) is to confirm that freedom is alive and well despite the best efforts of fascism to enslave the entire world. This whole AGW debate is not about science at all in my opinion. It is about political power and an effort by progressive socialists, green party devotees, decedents of the flower power generation and common run of the mill snake oil salesmen to selfishly get their fantasies fulfilled.
My prediction is a tsunami of public outrage is coming and will bring a major political defeat to the perpetrators of this AGW crime against the people of this world. We’re in the stage of the tsunami now where the water has receded from the beach and things appear to be relatively calm. Time to head to higher ground.
Lets cut to the chase. How can you rebuild trust?
You could –
If you frankly admitted that Mann and the team are fraudsters. The very antithesis of what science and the scientific method stands for.
If you admitted that Briffa’s papers, and all such papers published post facto, to prop up the unscientific and fraudulent hockey stick abomination, are a load of junk.
If you didnt try and run down people who discovered and exposed flaws in scientific papers as mere “auditors”, far below the self-proclaimed high priests of science – the climate “scientists”.
If you recognised that an argument rests on its own merits and not on the qualifications or profession of its propounder.
If you confessed, like scientists and other people even wiser than yourself, that you do not know much about how our climate works, and in fact that you do not even know, what you do not know.
If you could do that, yours would be the respect of the scientific community and the greater glory in posterity, and what is more, you would be a man, (or woman in this case), my friend.
IsoTherm (06.50.50)
Try C02 Science, which explains how C02 works. I have done a lot of reading on the subject of how C02 interacts with infra red rays caused by the sun warming the Earth’s surface. Put very simply, it seems that CO2 has a very limited ability to create warming
The first 20 parts per million (we are currently at 388 parts per million by volume of C02 in the atmosphere) – the first 20ppmv of CO2 takes up most of the narrow bands of infra red rays available.There is no more warming to be had, even if you doubled C02, took it to 1,000ppmv. It would simply make plants grow like topsy.
You should also know that water vapour is a much more important greenhouse gas by far, accounting for (depending on who you read) between 80 and 95% of the warming of greenhouse gases. C02 is only 0.038% of the atmosphere. It is a trace gas.
C02 has been much higher in the past. Did you ever wonder why dinasaurs got to be so big and those huge ferns they lived on so vast? There were huge amounts of C02. There was no dangerous runaway global warming. Life thrived.
I hope that this reassures you, and I think I’ve got it right. There are some damned clever chaps on this site who I’m sure could explain it more clearly, but they may be too busy to answer you.
Something like that.
Could you recover my post please
IsoTherm (07:34:15)
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.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but as far as I’m concerned that is an argumentum ad ignorantiam
Take a look at the NOAA temperature record – http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-global-temperature
1910-1945… now *that* was just natural variability, but 1970-2000… *that* is AGW.
I think there is an argument to be made for CO2 having some effect on temperature but it has never been demonstrated in real world climate observations except through various argumentum ad ignorantiam (i.e. there is no other way to explain X without AGW, so therefore AGW is proven unless someone can prove something else explains it)
That’s the real logical trap here, one which Economists are always at risk of catching themselves in… what you can demonstrate in a micro/lab/closed environment is often just noise on the macro/wild/open environment. When you hear an Economist or a Climatologist start an explanation of a causal relationship with predictive value with “it’s simple…”, more often than naught they are about to blow smoke in your face. Simplicity in complex systems is never quite so simple
Magnificent post Willis. We adhere totally to it. No more words needed.
I applaud you.
These are my thoughts exactly too!
Judith’s arm-plus-cane-length attempts at extending out a “handshake” to the skeptic community have always bothered me, and Willis does a great job of explaining why. Her attempts, while commendable, only reveal that her understanding of the real situation is limited by her own unwillingness to accept any responsibility (not that she specifically should be blamed).
It’s so frustrating to accept any sort of apology from someone in this fashion. It’s not unlike a situation where an acquaintance of yours humiliates you in front of peers when you show up for your first day at a new school, and then in trying to mend things says, “ah, I’m sorry you don’t trust me.” It completely misses the point and avoids responsibility for what was done.
It may be that Climate Science, as a community, is so far off course in terms of scientific conduct that they are unable to even recognize the direction they should be heading in. If Dr Curry, after numerous attempts to “build a bridge” still can’t see what the core problems are what hope do any of the more renowned warmist climate scientists have? Willis wasn’t kidding when he said there’s a long road to be traveled in fixing this.
This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. The institutions exist to study the very problem they promote. No problem, no money, no institution. How can you reform an institution in such a way that it eventually gets rid of its very reason for existing? You can’t! No amount of arm waving by Dr Curry can change that fact.
I must add that I agree thoroughly with what Willis has said.
I cannot agree that Judith should be given some slack or credit for having stepped off her pedestal.
This article was not an act of contrition nor an admission of wrong doing or false science.
As Willis pointed out, it isn’t about how to package the AGW myth but about presenting the truth.
It is evident that she believes (belief beingthe operative word) in AGW.
This is, in her words an experiment, an attempt to try and tackle the problem of non-blief through the blogs.
In other wordss, she is trying to make a start on deconstucting the sceptics.
She desreves no credit for that at all.
This is a typical reaction we can see elsewhere… they don’t believe us, lets see if we can find a way to make them believe or to take out the leading non-belivers.
With some it is an attamep to recover some credibility without actually crossing over the fence.
Some points already made by others is that wwhile the medical profession has a oath and an ethics committee (for what good it does), general science has niether.
I believe scientists should never be advocates and should always try to report in objective and non-emotive manner.
It is not the business of scientists to be advocates.
In policy making scenarios, they must more than ever be seeen as impartial unemotional accurate honest and trustworthy.
Policy is decided by politicians who are informed by scientists.
Whether the science is right or wrong, as a scientist, they should allow the politicians to make policy. Politicinas are, in theory, accountable to an electorate which niether the scientists nor the IPCC is.
When they take on an advocay role they usurp the democtartic process.
If they say “these are the facts and the world will end tommorow.” the people have the right to say “Bring it on.” It is not for the scientists to say “No, you must do this.” no matter how much, as indivisuals and not scientists, they may wish to say so.
Informing policy makers they should be saying:
“These are the observations.”
“This is what we think they mean.”
“These are the possible consequences.”
“Here are allof the things you can do and what might happen if you do it.”
Again for the Record:
“I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Monolithic Climate Denial Machine.”
However, should I choose to be, where does one sign up?
Said with Kelso-like fervor: “BURNED!!!”
This was as well written a response as anyone could have done. Willis, you have once again cut through the garbage and broke the entire issue down to how the majority of us in the skeptic camp feel. We don’t know much about the climate’s drivers and forcings, so everyone should just take a deep breath, collect as much (and as reliable) data as possible (without the current automatic introduction of bias) and follow the scientific method to make sense of the collected empirical data. Abandon the models that are inevitably bound by GIGO and have been PROVEN wrong already. Be transparent. Share source data, methods and results with all for confirmation, rebuttal or invalidation.
Unless and until all of those things are done, we will never have any reasonable idea of what is happening, what has happened on and what MAY happen in the future. And you know what? If the answer to what may happen in the future is honestly “We may never know” than I am OK with that, too.