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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So by staking this middle position, i pretty much am getting tomatoes thrown at me from both sides, but I am hoping to provoke both sides to think about productive ways of moving forward in getting climate science back on track.
I prefer to throw tomatoes at bad ideas, Dr. Curry., rather than at the people who throw the bad ideas at me. Except for the few who have engaged in yelling Fire of a crowded planet, most positions are amenable once everyone can calm down. The 1st step, it seems to me, is a do-over as regards to raw data. That should be the common ground.
There has to be an effort to diffuse the sense of catastrophic emergency that has fallen into the hands of some politicians eager to wield new power.
Those types will misuse both sides of the debate, and once having spoiled it, will throw rotten tomatoes at the well-being of both science and the populace.
[quote Judith Curry (04:34:45) :]
But no one person can sort through everything, so we have to trust the process and institutions of science to support the scientific progress.
[/quote]
The point is, Dr. Curry, that under the current system no 100,000 people can sort through _anything_. Data and code are hidden away under lock and key.
This is what needs to change.
And we skeptics will change it. Through careful collection of the data that is available, through collaboration via blogs, and through court order.
What you currently considered to be “science” is going to end and is going to be replaced by an open system that anyone can take part in. You’re not going to stop it. RealClimate isn’t going to stop it. Obama isn’t going to stop it.
Mainstream scientists can help us end it or you can try to stand in our way and get taken down.
The choice is yours.
Willis Eschenbach (14:36:35) :
Anger [without action] is a wasted emotion. Yours is clearly not wasted.
It was Openheimer who quoted “I have become death”… and his science was sound. But the scientists could not just walk away from the consequences.
How do the AGW scientists now feel? Their ‘science’ was wrong and yet they have unleashed a global disaster: from pensioners dragging recycling bins through their front rooms to the street to third world countries trading their ability to develop for iniquitous carbon credits and their own people dying for want of basic amenities fossil fuels could have provided.
Partial repentance by Judith Curry and others is a start and to be accepted, but I doubt they have yet grasped the full enormity of the ‘monster’ they helped to create.
They really do need to step aside or they are likely to make a whole lot of new mistakes.
“The public, it turns out, has a much better bullsh*t detector than the mainstream climate scientists do”
Amen, Wills.
Willis,
Thank you so much for eloquently articulating the feelings of many of us ‘lurkers’ in the “silent majority” who do not comment on this and other skeptical blogs.
Hank McCard
Josh says @1:34 am
I put the cartoon here – top of the page
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com
mega kudos on the cartoon, Josh!
And respect to mr Eschenbach, u managed to capture my anger and frustration in words perfectly. Combined with the awesome cartoons of Josh (all three I’ve seen) it fills me with relief knowing that I’m not some conspiracy theorist. That there really is something very wrong going on here. Sometimes I get that feeling, when I carefully -probingly- (is that a word?) try to discuss this in public. A lot of people I greatly respect on a professional level are so into the AGW dogma (so many people…) that sometimes I get the feeling that I am a crazy conspiracy nut! Thank Mother Earth for all you peeps here, oh and for climate…
“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”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Scheider only does this because he isn’t smart enough to know how to accomplish things without doing it.
Paul Vaughn writes:
“The main thing is that whatever gets published needs to sensibly qualify conclusions. For example, “If assumptions A, B, & C hold, then …”, etc.”
Last time I looked, this was a core value of scientific method. Science, at least since Galileo, is first and foremost a critical enterprise. A scientist has a duty to publish not only the results of experiments, but data, methods, and hypotheses with all assumptions explicit. Then other scientists can replicate the work. Climategaters have violated scientific method from day one and have moved into advocacy. Look on any Climategater website and you will not find one word about scientific method. There is not one of them who will address the topic.
bobdenton says, “Your precondition for the restoration of trust invokes scenarios not very different from the public humiliation of professors by the Red Guards during China’s Cultural Revolution”
Not at all. In this present case, the Red Guards are beginning to lose. Had they won, the result would have been, as you say, “not very different.” We may have been saved from the “Cultural Revolution” planned for us by Gore, Soros, Hansen, Pachauri, and the other “Red Guards.”
Willis, Absolutely cognizant and analytical response to Dr. Curry, and responses to follow-on posts here. Makes an old logicians heart warm here on a cold evening in Florida. You have also managed to capture and express (as evidenced by the great majority of responses here) what we feel has been AND continues to be done to the reputation of the scientific process in general and specifically in the climate science area.
Dr. Curry, thank you for your equally mindful response. I truly think the two of you could be co-leaders in fight to put science back in science and the start of something great and beneficial to the whole scientific community AND the rest of us. Lead the way together! I know most of us will follow the TRUTH no matter where it takes us.
Steve Goddard (11:38:27) :
“ Obama says that he has “only a few years to save the planet” but personally I think the planet is completely oblivious to his existence.”
Damn shame the humans that live on the plant CAN’T be oblivious to his existence!
I am amazed by the number of people appearing here who do not seem to have read what came before, in this same thread. Why, I wonder, are there people who still don’t know that carbon dioxide is a minor greenhous gas, because increasing its quantity over a certian amount cannot possibly make it absorb more energy from the Sun. This has been explained twice here today. The physics is undeniable.
Steven Mosher writes:
“I think you are imprecise here willis. Dr. Curry was not silent back in 2007 and supported our cause for free access to data and code. She did so on a thread at RC.. the 1934 thread see the comments.”
Excuse me. The woman is just as tongue tied about scientific method as any other Climategater. If any one of them took scientific method seriously, as the duty it is for scientists, not one of them could look herself in the mirror. If you want to speculate on what caused her to be deficient in scientific method, go right ahead but it is irrelevant to everything in this Climategate affair.
On rereading this post, I’m not thrilled with the title. In context, it sounds somewhat sexist and condescending.
I also agree with Dr. Curry that her use of the d-word was clearly not intended to offend, as used in her original post. Unfortunately, it’s become a “loaded word” (ala Hayakawa), best eschewed in all contexts, similar to another infamous word.
I hope that these comments and emails will assist Dr. Curry in further understanding the nature and magnitude of the problem.
Lucy Skywalker (01:55:40) :
Oh crikey, another religious parallel, but it fits. It’s like being able to read the Bible in your native language, rather than it being behind a paywall in Latin.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Which translation of your language is important too. There’s that translation problem of “day” in the creation account for starters.
Oh, the planet will be fine. Some days I like George Carlin’s idea that it spawned us because it wanted styrofoam.
Philip Foster (15:34:52) :
Yes, I agree, a Monster has been unleashed and handed over to those who have no business messing with things way beyond thier understanding.
As the mayor of Moscow found out to his horror, messing with controlling the weather is dangerous business and full of unintended consequence.
As for the rest of them out there contemplating forcing the climate/weather…
-what else can it be? – leads straight to – what could go wrong?
Science, Politics and the Chernobyl Disaster
Communist Russia was not a good place to speak Truth to Power. The story goes that Stalin asked his generals how many soldiers it would take to stop the Nazi advance. Upon being told 1 million, he ordered 1 million soldiers to the front. The top general advised that they didn’t HAVE 1 million soldiers. Stalin pulled out a gun and shot him dead. He turned to the next general and ordered 1 million soldiers to the front. He was promptly told that his orders would be carried out, and no doubt supplied with paperwork to show that they had. I don’t know if the story is true. But that was the climate of fear that prevented Truth from being spoken to Power.
Fast forward to Chernobyl. America was way ahead in building nuclear reactors. The communist government demanded of their scientists that they start building reactors. The scientists didn’t have the know how, but there was no way they were going to say so. What they did have was stolen copies of plans for a nuclear reactor. They were under orders to build a better one.
They didn’t have the know how to build a better one, so instead they built the same one, but made it look different. The American reactor looked like a teepee. The fuel rods met at the top. As the rods were pushed upward, their tips neared each other, causing fission that could be ramped up or down by adjusting the height of the rods. The Russian design looked like an inverted teepee which the Russiann scientists claimed had all sorts of advantages. It had no advantages, and it had a serious design flaw.
In the American design, if anything really bad happened, the electromagnets that pushed the rods upward would fail, and the rods would slide downward, stopping the fission process. In the Russian design, any loss of power resulted in the electromagnets releasing the fuel rods, and gravity slid them right to maximum fission. When some genius decided to run an experiment that exceeded the safety limits of the reactor, the safety systems shut it down safely. Determined to run his experiment, he disabled the safety systems. The rest is history.
I’ve read many versions of this story too, and I don’t know how accurate it is, but there is a gigantic kernel of truth that has everything to do with the climate debate. The generals and scientists in communist Russia who feared to speak Truth to Power had their lives on the line. The scientists who have aided and abetted politicians with asperations of power have no such excuse. They gave the answers that Power asked for like they were speaking to Stalin or Kruschev. I have every right to be angry.
Willis, let me be the (apparently) 500th-and-change to congratulate you on your excellent essay. Where some see a rant, I see a passionate and eloquent point-by-point rebuttal of Dr. Curry’s article (and a lot of work for the moderators, bless ’em).
The only fault I can find is that it apparently omits the “digest” version requested yesterday by Dr. Svalgaard. If I may presume:
“If you want me to ‘trust’ climate ‘science’, this is where to start!”
Willis,
To some extemt your emotion is shared by me.
You have previously led with numerous cool and reasoned posts. They set up your ability to be justifiably angry at this point.
A scientist’s tool is exactly the same as a non-scientist’s tool. Mind. We can understand the same things equally. A scientist should know this and be humble.
John
Dear Mr Eschenbach,
thanks a lot for this. It was a pleasure to read – well roared, lion.
Like you, I think the problem with established climate science is they don’t follow the scientific method. Which is: you can never prove a theory; science progresses by getting rid of falsified theories.
I somehow like Phil Jones’ answer to Warwick Hughes for its unmasking naivety. Compare this to what Sir Karl Popper had to say about the method of science, it being
“the method of proposing bold hypotheses, and exposing them to the severest criticism, in order to detect where we have erred.”
(Unended Quest, London 1992, p. 86)
Keep up the good work!
Judith Curry
” 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”
You would think, since the question about surface data had been going on for a long time, since so many people depend on it, since it is the basis and so important, that one of you guys might have checked.
If it hadn’t been “outed”, would you still be going on your merry way producing bad science?
Judith, I don’t mean for that to sound unduly harsh, because I really do appreciate you and what you are doing.
I know, in my field, I trust nothing. Before I would waste my time or put my name on something, I’m going to check my own data. If a source has been questioned, I’m going to use a completely different source and triple check it to death.
Science is science, we all value science and need to preserve its integrity. But we are all human, and trust and irrationality play a role in our thinking and discourse. Does this help scientific progress? No. But but we need to recognize their importance in human interactions. Two examples here: allegedly “rational” skeptics here go ballistic over the “d” word and reject all of my arguments because of the “d” word. Look in the mirror, I have certainly forced myself to confront my own biases and prejudice in not rejecting others arguments, otherwise i wouldn’t spend any time here at all.
With regards to trust. Many of you have stated in your comments that you don’t trust me. Trust is obviously not irrelevant here. Trust is part of the reason that Willis and I can carry on a relatively civil conversation about this topic. I first encountered Willis over at climateaudit in Aug 2006 when my “mixing politics and science” paper (on the subject of hurricanes) was being discussed. Two people that I particularly remember from that encounter were Willis and Bender. The “warmer” blogs thought it hysterically funny that I suggested to Bender that we write a paper together, and Bender squirmed. Willis impressed me as a sincere and respectful person, who was prepared to do some work and dig into the data. Whenever I subsequently checked in at climateaudit, willis would always say hello and drop a kind word, even if he wasn’t particularly interested in the topic at hand. Several times I noticed a comment of Willis over at a warmer blog, and he was immediately slagged as climatefrauditor, or whatever. I recall defending him and vouching for his sincerity in two different instances. So in this weird blogospheric environment, Willis and I have developed some sort of trust.
Most of you don’t know much about me, perhaps a few words on this would help you better focus your comments and questions. Yes I my undergraduate degree is in geography, but I also minored in math, physics, and chemistry. My Ph.D. is in geophyhsical sciences from the University of Chicago, which is an extremely rigorous and challenging program. So I have a good education, and a good foundation for understanding physical processes in the climate system. My particular expertises include the climate dynamics of hurricanes, arctic sea ice, and water vapor and cloud feedbacks (I know very little about MWP and LIA).
I am NOT one of the real big shots in the climate field, but neither am I a small fry (i’m sort of a medium fry I guess). I do have a “seat at the table” in the sense that I am asked to serve on some of the influential national level committees (e.g. national research council, noaa, nasa). I had zero involvement in the IPCC 4th assessment report, but i was a contributing author (on sea ice) in the 3rd assessment report and also a reviewer on the aerosol indirect effect.
Why am i doing what i am doing in the context of climategate? my main motivation is clearly described in my “open letter to graduate students” post. I am not running scared, or worried about research funding, or trying to cover anything up. I am concerned about the integrity and credibility of climate research.
While I discuss topics related to the politics of science, my involvement in the actual policy process is pretty minimal. I have been asked to testify to congress several times and I have participated in several congressional and state legislative briefings, mostly discussing the hurricane issue. In my public statements, I believe I have been pretty scrupulous in avoiding advocating for specific policies (recently over at climateaudit I did state my opposition to carbon cap and trade.
So I would like to ask all of you to stop second guessing my motives, and discuss my arguments. And irrational responses to my statements do not help further the discussion. Yes we disagree about many things, but perhaps we can find some common ground and maybe some of us will even change our minds based on the arguments, which is the sign of an honest skeptic
Willis Eschenbach (14:44:45) :
ISO Therm, while your questions and the ensuing discussion are interesting, this is not the thread for them.
Willis, I disagree. You and Lucy and others do an excellent job of explaining this to the few who have the motivation and ability to follow your essays. There are a LOT of people who want to see the forest without looking at each tree. Please allow me to summarize the mechanism behind whole AGW thing. I realize it’s an extreme simplification, but I think it sufficiently accurate and not hard to understand.
The Sun heats the Earth in the daytime with lots of radiant energy, mostly in the visible and near infrared wavelengths. At night, the Earth radiates to space in mostly far infrared wavelengths because it’s a cooler body than the sun. Earth reaches an equilibrium.
However #1: Unlike the major constituent gasses (N2, O2, Ar), CO2 absorbs far infrared energy. This traps heat and the result is a hotter planetary equilibrium. This is the basis of the greenhouse effect. CO2 quantity is going up, therefore the planet is getting hotter. AGW in a nutshell.
However #2: The narrow band of wavelengths that is absorbed by CO2 is already completely absorbed by CO2. Adding more mostly just changes the altitude at which this occurs.
So the whole tempest is about the absorbtion and reradiation and how much it matters, if at all.
@ur momisugly kwik (13:20:09) :
I was not aware of his passing. The world will be less without him. I read Andromeda Strain before it was popular, and even though (maybe because) I was in the military at the time I was convinced it was true, not a conspiracy theory, but a factual exposé.