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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Willis:
Thanks so much for this post, which together with Judith Curry’s original outreach now graces my office door and adjacent wall space. I am overjoyed to report that my departmental colleagues no longer treat me like I’ve gone bonkers and become a conspiracy theorist in proclaiming AGW climate ‘science’ to be a massive fraud.
“However, it honestly didn’t seem to me self-evidently true that climate scientists routinely (and entirely knowingly?) exaggerate their findings (“I know my findings only allow me to conclude X, but, heck, I’ll go ahead and conclude X and Y…just like I did in my last three papers”). And, thus, it seemed reasonable to ask for some evidence. And surely on a point of logic, it’s true that a few exaggerated papers don’t conclusively demonstrate that most of the thousands out there are.”
One could honestly question whether, for instance, Mann is a scientist.
A true climate scientist does not routinely exaggerate their finding. Though a true scientist may elect to remain quiet when others make wild claims. It is not really a scientist’s job to wade into pseudo scientific arguments, though at some point it probably is their duty to do so as citizens.
Of course another point is that most papers regarding climate science, have little do to with the “science” of AGW.
Tom FC:
What an articulate, beautifully phrased and gentlemanly letter you wrote to Dr. Curry. It was a pleasure to see the ‘layman’s’ perspective so clearly, passionately, and yet gently presented. Despite your disclaimer of any expertise, your nuanced and principled understanding of how science should be conducted should be required reading for science students (and practitioners).
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (07:48:15) :
Your posting is definitely much appreciated by several people here. The wider political perspective is needed, and is indeed central to the climate science fiasco. I’ll be looking up your work as I wrestle with my own historical research on the messy history of recent fisheries science, which is similarly entrapped in the bowels of government and I suspect also bound up in the slimy entrails of post-normal science, and shows some forms of advocacy shaped by the proximity of senior scientists to bureaucrats, and the like. On top of that, even government scientists are focussed on ‘publish or perish’ probably to the detriment of being open about data and problems. In mitigation of these problems, however, as far as I can tell, the scientific methodology — eg population models and their assumptions — is still being questioned and debated, especially in light of the serious stock declines of the 1990s and 2000s. There are many parallels with climate science in terms of the uncertainties and unknowns, but no comparison at all with regard to the lashings of money that have been lavished on the latter. Fisheries science is very poorly funded.
I’m glad that people are waking up to the fact that government-funded science and the funding methods entailed are not guarantees of objectivity, or quality or even of veracity. The problems with pharmaceuticals sponsoring science are well-recognized, because they fit the popular academic narrative (i.e. the politically correct left-wing narrative). But this has left academics blind to the inbuilt bias in much of government funded environmental, sociological and other science– both in: 1) the required terms and stated outcomes for requests for proposals; or in 2) the adjudication of grants; and 3) in the recipients’ own assumptions and agendas. I suspect that this bias was mild prior to the 1980s, but has become increasingly ingrained as a result of changes in science policy in several countries (US government funding pushing applicability – eg human genome project, biotech; Canada under Trudeau reducing the independence of government science organizations, which probably occurred in the UK too) in the 1970s and 1980s).
Excellent. Willis “… should get a medal or be even made a knight.”
It would be helpful for someone or entity to discuss yet another elephant in the room – the grant-fueled profit motive. It seems that many people have adopted climate science as a field simply because that’s where the money is. This is the result of an unholy alliance of government, academia, and media. NOTE: this is not a conspiracy – just three big industries working together to meet a political agenda and line each others’ pockets.
In the U.S. a good candidate to take a stand would be the now chagrined American Physical Society. Their leadership has carefully avoided any semblance of balance in the discussion – going so far as to claim indignantly their statement on climate change needs no change (it is AGW vanilla.) If the APS does not want to be considered a collection of hapless toadies incapable of independent thought – they need to come forward and confront the rooted corruption that climate “science” has infected their organization with.
The British Institute of Physics has broken the ground. It is high time for APS to show some backbone and smash the yoke of consensus. APS should have put an end to this tripe years ago. But then that could only occur after a complete and thorough housecleaning. Get to it APS!
Amazing post!
To lighten up, a real story – today I worked toward making my university colleague, an icon of AGW, into a folk hero.
I was passing by an exhausted neighbor and his sons shoveling snow. “Is spring ever going to come?” he asked, without much hope.
“Ask Michael Mann to drop by,” I said, and he understood right away.
“He’s going to take a look at three of your trees and tell you that you’re too warm already.”
Gary (17:42:25)
World population is predicted to increase substantially by mid-century to around 9 billion. Economic growth in China and India is very rapid. China is building many coal-fired power stations. The developing world understandably wants to raise its standard of living and to some extent at least are pursuing a fosil-fuel fuelled development path. There’s plenty of coal in the world and plenty of unconventional oils.
Clearly, if the current consensus amongst governments re AGW holds, then it’s unlikely that concentrations of GHGs will reach 840 ppmv. But one can imagine an alternative high-growth world less concerned with AGW where 840ppmv, or at least some very high concentration, might happen.
Most discussion of AGW tend to focus on what might happen with an increase in pre-industrial temperature of around 2C. But it seems to me that, at very high GHG concentrations, temperature could go way higher.
I’ve never been clear whether those folk more skeptical of AGW think its OK to move to very high concentrations. For example, do they hypothesize that its OK because, even at these very high concentrations, temperature will increase (very) little and adaptation will therefore be something of a piece of cake? Or do they hypothesize that temperature may increase substantially but that adaptation will nevertheless be (relatively) unproblematic?
As a thought experiment, say there was many times more fossil fuel in the ground and so GHG concentration could rise to, say, 2000ppmv. Would skeptics hypothesize that even if concentrations were to rise to this level by, say, 2200, there would really no problem?
And I guess my final question is even if the hypothesis is that there will be little or no problem at very high concentrations, is this a hypothesis worth testing? It seems not unreasonable to suppose that there might be something of a significant down side if the hypothesis proves to be wrong.
Judith Curry (04:34:45)]
“we have to trust the process and institutions of science to support the scientific progress.”
——————
Yes, except that the “process and institutions of science” do not automatically assure, nor restrain the progress of science. They serve to provide a formal culture for both substantive and insignificant accomplishment. They provide a ‘professional’ (subjective) mechanism for justifying credibility and success.
Climate science stridently protests it’s own credibility. There is much self promotion and little tangible product.
“When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad I’m better.”
-Mae West
Nevermind all this talk about “iffy” papers, I must say what worries me is the complete lack of any real research on the carbon dioxide issue. All that I could find in my 3 month search is this experiment: Let us have a planet, add some carbon dioxide (i.e. 70 ppm since 1960), see if the temperature goes up, it did, so that must be it. There never was any real research at the relevant concentrations of CO2 (0-500 ppm) unless you want to count Svante Arrhenius work 100 years ago? But people just carried on believing that there must be some truth in his work, even though he was wrong. From then on it just became a belief system. Simple tricks with 100% CO2 were used to make you believe.
Thus, having found the “cause” of the problem, they used 1750 as the year 0 to calculate weightings and forcings. Rediculous…. but this is it. This all the research on this important issue that I could found.
Not that it matters anymore, (because I am now 100% with Willis on the thermostat idea- global warming is improbable) ) but at this stage I am not even sure that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Namely, it also has certain cooling qualities, i.e. having a number of absorptions in the 0 to 5 um band it must cause cooling by deflecting sunlight. They recently determined new absorptions of CO2 even in the UV range. This radiation from the sun deflected by the CO2 is so apparent that our equipment can measure it as it bounces of the moon back to earth.
So now, who of you can prove to me from a scientific paper that the cooling of CO2 (by deflecting sunlight 12 hours per day) is less than the warming caused by CO2 (by deflecting earthshine in the 14-15 um band 24 hours per day)?
Re: vigilantfish (Feb 26 20:02),
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (07:48:15) :
Your posting is definitely much appreciated by several people here.
Yes.
A year or so ago we had had a discussion on the way science is financed.
It is inevitable that it has to be financed by the taxpayers if we are not to revert to nineteenth century patronage and elite only science.
For a long time research was financed by universities which were privately financed . There might be specific endowments for specific issues but all in all the professors were free to research what they wanted as they wanted as long as they could convince their universities bureaucracy that they should be funded. That bureaucracy was mainly colleagues in other disciplines and the system worked more or less democratically on the principle of ” to each according to his needs and his abilities”.
There were problems, maybe even personality problems, but the fact that each research institute was independent allowed for independent schools of research and thought to develop in a healthy competition that avoided the high jacking of whole subjects by a few world elite, as has happened with climate.
When grants became centralized, in Greece it happened with the EU attractive research budget , centralized bureaucracy gained power, and scientist who had the ear of this bureaucracy could get better grants, and that escalated to what we see now in climate research. In addition this way of financing destroyed the hierarchies within the institutes : a young brilliant associate could bring in enormous amounts of money out of which the whole institute benefits by percentage cuts. So older and wiser heads within an institute lose part or maybe all of their relevance and the decisions of a body far removed from the institute affects its research directions.
This also has allowed the personality cult room to develop, people with strong charisma to talk to bureaucrats ( usually failed scientists) get the money, often not the best of the crop. This is human behavior, but when it was fragmented into the multitude of institutes it could be corrected within the discipline . The stranglehold on the money source that developed when centralized bodies decided on the scientific merits of research is what has brought us to this pass . It probably is true in many other disciplines, that are not in the political limelight.
The solution lies in decentralizing research decisions and funding. Fund institutes and let the internal peer group fight over the disposition on research projects. Competition between institutes will keep the health of the disciplines better than centralization of decisions.
Willis,
As hard as it is to add anything to your brilliant analysis, I would like to bring up one more point.
Climate scientists like to talk about the future, but they seem to have forgotten the past. A case of group amnesia.
They seem to view the world through the scared big eyes of a newborn baby.
Every temperature is unprecedented, never mind that it is part of a hundred year old pattern.
Every hurricane is due to recent warming, forgetting the one which wiped out Galveston in 1902.
The Arctic cap melt in 2007 was unprecedented. Except of course that there was a more serious, well documented one in 1922.
For the Arctic there is also a Peter Pan syndrome – time has stopped to that September 2007. No news or pictures from later years, when the ice started to grow back.
It is very hard to find common points with people who forgot the past.
RichieRich, I noted that the block quoting of your post seemed to be wrong, and I believe I fixed it. If I was wrong let me know and I’ll change it back.
w.
Henry Pool (07:47:50) : We were all victims of the brainwashing that was going on, myself included.
Leave me out please, Henry. I have often been suckered in my lifetime; but not in this. Ever.
Willis Eschenbach (18:16:47)
Willis, my apologies. I entirely misread the tone of your remark and was seeing snark where there was none. Clearly, it was past my bedtime!
I agree that contradicatory claims don’t look at all good. But I’m unsure if this constitutes “exaggeration”. If some economists claim that, following a period of recession, an economy will grow slightly whilst others claim the economy will remain in negative growth, then we have contradicatory predictions but I wouldn’t say that either side was exaggerating. There models are simply throwing out different predictions. But I agree that one can legitimately ask how much faith we can place in climate change predictions that veer off in opposite directions.
I accept that the models aren’t perfect (and given the complexity of the climate system one should not expect them to be). However, Hansen claims to have done a reasonable job with a prediction made in 1988. And, as I understand it, the earth’s total heat content has continued to increase since 1998 and there is a long-term upward trend in surface temperatures over the last 15 years.
I take your point about the “sniff test” and the Nature article and will check out your essay on the subject and also on the thermostat hypothesis.
Many thanks for your lengthy response to my posts. They have given me much to mull over.
Willis (00:25:46)
Many thanks for the fix. You got it spot on.
I enjoyed the article for its insight and passion.
I don’t agree particularly with the idea that Scientists such as Mann should be “outed” in some way. What needs challenging is poor science. That will lead to progress.
The danger with challenging poor scientists is that the whole affair becomes a witchunt like that of politicians caught with their hand in the till.
I think a large percentage of published science in any field is low value junk driven by the need to keep publishing to retain funding. That doesn’t negate the good stuff produced by the same authors although it may obscure it.
I do agree that there are many scientists who have lost touch with the need for scepticism, the need to take aboard a new theory, understand it, take it home to tea and then to test the limits of it, find out where it fails and develop new theories based upon that failure.
The evidence is that this scepticism is sadly lacking in many fields and blogs like this are needed to challenge that lack.
nevermind the all the “iffy” papers
There is not one paper that can give me the balance sheet between the cooling and warming properties of CO2.
Not that it matters much to me (anymore), as I am now 100% with Willis on the thermostat hypothesis, i.e. global warming as such is improbable.
Re Judith Curry (04:34:45) :
> With regards to “trust”, I am not talking about smooth talking snake oil “trust”,
You were talking about the IPCC, CRU and climate science in general, right? You talked about how they lost credibility and trust and that it should be restored, right?
> but I am hoping to provoke both sides to think about productive ways of moving forward in getting climate science back on track.
I like it just where it is. A steaming wreckage of the rails. I don’t want it back on track. The whole project of climate change never was about the climate. It always was about giving the appearance of problems so terrifyingly huge that only international cooperation could deal with it.
Marx Hugoson (08:26:48) : I reminded of the “speed of the deer fly” problem.
And I of the common fly, Marx:
From: The consequence of errors
Judith Curry (17:24:13)
Have you studied the papers by Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi? He convincingly argues that water vapour provides a negative feedback to warming, calculating that warming due to a doubling of CO2 would be limited to 0.48C, which corresponds well with empirical evidence of 0.5C. His theory appears to correspond well with current measurements of the real world.
The AGW models, which have water vapour giving a positive feedback to warming, and which predict a rise of 1.5C to 6C with a doubling of CO2, do not agree with observations. This is the primary test of falsifiability in science, so these theories must be discarded as having no basis in reality.
To me this the crux between the AGW theory and the solar driven climate model. On the one hand Miskolczi’s ideas fit current measurements and explain some apparent anomalies, whereas the AGW models are based more on trends.
[I tend to think of it as measuring the temperature of water in a kettle from five minutes before to five minutes after it has boiled, calculating the trend, and predicting it will reach 400C in an hours time!]
Miskolczi’s work should really please James Lovelock, it shows that Gaia is working well!
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Another test for AGW is to consider the atmosphere 4 billion years ago, when life began. It would have contained massive amounts of CO2, methane and water vapour, probably the equivalent of 10,000 to 30,000 times as much GHG that we see today. Yet the most important life was the simple bacteria which lived on the seashore [the seas were not boiling!], and which over billions of rears produced most of the oxygen we breathe today.
What do the models predict in this environment?
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A very readable explanation of Miskolczi’s ideas can be found here [19 pages – best to print it first!] :
http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction
A brief history of the kind of problems you face if your ideas do not support AGW :
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m2d9-New-research-into-greenhouse-effect-challenges-theory-of-manmade-global-warming
His [Highly Technical] papers are published here :
http://met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol108_No4_01.pdf
http://met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol111_No1_01.pdf
Proofreading error! ‘billions of years’ not ‘rears’!!!!
I read Dr. Curry’s recent superficial, perfunctory and hubris filled attempt at tranquilizing the rightfully angered masses, very carefully.
It’s clear she simultaneously aimed to maintain an undeserved amount of respectability for herself, and for her despicable colleagues, while continuing to ambiguously slander.
With that, it’s also clear that her ultimate goal is to salvage, or perhaps even enhance her position at the table of virtue, and at the public funding trough as well, without actually admitting any malfeasance whatsoever. And, without abandoning her very close ties with her fellow apparatchiks’, at least not beyond repair.
That said, it’s paramount that we all keep in mind that in both very large, and many much smaller ways, multiple millions of living, breathing, real people, have been harmed in some fashion, sometimes enormously, by the completely and fully falsified *science* of climate prophecy.
With that so, and fully in mind right at this moment, I consider Mr. Eschenbach’s brilliantly crafted and soundly delivered wholly deserved vituperation posted here, as but a meager down payment of the humiliation, wrath, and ultimate public outrage, that these climate charlatans have genuinely earned.
Is Judith Curry’s a mission quest for truth, or is it something more cynical in nature?
Looking at just a few of her statements from her open letter from Dr. Judith Curry on climate science it would seem the latter:
“At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics.”
“For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, which I think is a method that can be effective in countering the arguments of skeptics, while at the same time being consistent with our core research values.”
“I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically.”
This is why her motives are an issue here, and why people don’t trust her. To her, “skeptics” apparently are just annoyances, like pesky, destructive children that need to be “dealt with”.
Yes, she deserves some points for at least trying to “bridge the gap”. She seems to have vastly underestimated both the nature and scope of the problem, though. Climategate is just the tip of the iceberg.
Judith, you need to understand that the AGW hypothesis is not only dead, it’s a stinking, putrid corpse desperately needing burial. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.
Dave Williams (02/25 01:21:43) :
NPR has an interesting article about the Psychology behind peoples’ unwillingness to listen to the other side’s views/facts/science even if the evidence seems solid.
Considering the ads in the sidebar, I think it obvious who they think is being unreasonably stubborn.