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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With the majority of signs reading at Copenhagen: “Rich Nations, Pay your Climate debt”, and the ubiquitous presence of the “Socialist World Workers Party”, the BS meters of the world were, and should be PEGGED!. Repeating lies, and circling the wagons is not going to help you now. We tore down the wall to set people free, and now we will destroy this PoliClimate crap, and return the topic of climate back to science.
Further, that CO2 is the target, instead of water vapor, is so blatent in its attack against human beings and their lives, the Ecobabble industry has finally hung itself. So many of the climate cabal have openly printed… that it did not matter if the science was wrong, because redistributing wealth via climate controls was the right thing to do….. When we revisit this, there will be only one route to take, and that is to prosecute and punish Climate liars… for their willful acts.
When anyone – however noble their cause and pure their motives – commends the Real Climate blog for anything other than pulling the plug on themselves, I’m afraid they still don’t comprehend the reality of what Climategate has revealed. The Augean stables of Climate Research need to be thoroughly cleansed. This cannot be accomplished by cooperating with anyone who – after all we now know – still respects those whose sole aim was to arrange the horsesh*t in neater piles.
Dear Dr. Judith Curry….Maybe you can help a regular guy (with no scientific background) like me better understand how and when this AGW theory was conceived. For me to understand I must insert a little history. On March 1, 1975 Science News wrote this, “Most climate scientists now expect a full blown 10,000 year ice age.” International Wildlife wrote this in July of 1975 “The world climatologists are agreed that we must prepare for the next ice age.” Newsweek and the N.Y Times wrote similar stories. These scientists had all the tree ring, ice core proxy evidence prior to the mid 1970`s. How did they come to these conclusions? Where are they? Did they just disappear? Amazingly, just a few short years later, the AGW movement was hatched. Can you explain to me how, in such a short span of time this coming ice age was eradicated?
Willis et al., the comments here are definitely getting interesting. In terms of discussing the overall credibility of climate science, we need to distinguish between the physical basis of climate change (IPCC Working Group I report) and the impacts of climate change (IPCC Working Group II report).
The physical basis of climate change has been the focus of most of the debate and scrutiny. Yes there are the now obvious issues with the hockey stick type analysis and and surface temperature record. But if you dig into the meat of the 1000 page report (written by atmospheric chemists, oceanographers, meteorologists, solar physicists, etc), and ignore the executive summaries and summary for policy makers, it is probably a pretty accurate summary and description of climate research. Some of the executive summary for each chapter tend to overstate the case and perhaps draw conclusions that are unwarranted. Then the summary for policy makers is prepared in collaboration with the policy makers and advocacy groups (from both sides), and while this seems like it would torque the summary in an alarmist direction, the opposite is actually true, this overall has a moderating effect. Note, the IPCC scientists that prepared the Copenhagen briefing billed it as the real truth by the scientists uncensored by the policy makers (this apparently didn’t play very well in the immediate wake of climategate). The terms like “likely” and “very likely” are negotiated between expert judgement by the scientists and the policy makers (scientific uncertainty analysis is presumably incorporated into the judgement of individual experts). Is this process perfect? Apparently far from it, but the Working Group I report has received an enormous amount of scrutiny. Should we reject the Working Group I report out of hand because of what has been revealed in climategate? Personally, i still find the meat of the 1000 page report to be credible, but the executive summaries of the individual chapters are a mixed bag, and the Summary for Policy Makers overstates the level of certainty in a number of places, in my opinion.
Now the Working Group II Report on Impacts is an entirely different story. The scientists involved in this report are biologists, public health experts, etc. Climate change impact assessment is in its infancy. It is difficult enough to attribute a surface temperature to change to CO2, volcanoes, ocean oscillations or whatever. It is way more difficult to attribute kidney stones, species extinction, etc to CO2. This report (until very recently) received much less scrutiny than the physical basis report (astonishing that the Himalayan glacier issue etc are just now being spotted). This report focuses on identifying “dangerous” human interference with the climate system. The most important and nuanced part of this report is chapter 19
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter19.pdf, which explains what they are up to. I would say there is an element of “alarmism” in this report plus disturbing inaccuracies (many of which have been identified but presumably not all). I assume there must be defensible parts of the report, but I personally don’t know how to identify them, and this particular report has low credibility.
The emotional impact and “alarm” and “dangerous” part of the climate change issue are associated with the impacts part of the argument, whereas it is the physical scientists (working group I types) that are taking most of the heat. The biggest problem in the overall climate research enterprise is with the Working Group II efforts on impacts. My suggestion to the AR5 (trust me, they’re not listening) is to eliminate the working group II, and have a policy assessment integrated into the Working Group III report that combines adaptation, mitigation, and geoengineering. Then each country can analyze its own impacts (india has already broken from the IPCC over the himalayan glacier issue, and is doing its own impact assessment).
So the main point i am making is that it is not useful to place all the blame and heat on the physical scientists working on the climate problem. Yes there are a whole host of issues to be addressed and resolved related to the physical understanding of climate change, and I am hopeful that this part of the issue can be turned around relatively quickly. but the “alarmism” is derived more from the non physical scientists describing the impacts which is the more highly politicized and polarizing issue. Convoluting the two and then asking a physical scientist to defend the IPCC will not really get to the core of the problem which is in my opinion in the Working Group II Report on Impacts.
Ah,
Dr Curry’s plea for trust?
What A Coincidence!
From today’s Guardian :
” UN climate heads call for consensus and urge attempts to rebuild trust
….. UN climate chiefs meet in Bali, admitting they face ‘existential challenge’ after failure of Copenhagen climate change talks”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/un-climate-existential-crisis
RichieRich (23:41:37) : “But one can imagine an alternative high-growth world less concerned with AGW where 840ppmv, or at least some very high concentration, might happen.”
Well, one can imagine such a future quite easily, but getting there is something else. If fossil fuel use is responsible for all of the assumed 100+ ppmv increase in CO2, then we’d have to burn more than four times the quantity already consumed to add another 400+ ppmv. While there’s probably plenty of fossil fuel left, it’s unlikely to be available at today’s prices. Alternatives like nuclear and solar are becoming cheaper, and well before we reach 3X “pre-industrial” CO2 levels, they’ll probably be more attractive even without government intervention. Note that China is building a number of nuclear plants (16 IIRC) in addition to its coal plants.
In short, I see “the CO2 problem”, if there is one, as a temporary self-correcting situation.
Judith, nice to see you back here at WUWT and I believe most posters here appreciate your willingness to respond to Willis in the spirit of his essay.
However, I still think you’re not looking deep enough into the soul of climate science, which means you need to look deeper into your own. And, I’ll provide an example using your own science and words.
Here’s a couple of reasons why you, and the climate science community, need to undertake the equivalent of a community 12 Step Program (your addiction is believing that AGW has been “proven” by the research done to date):
(1) that climate scientists are allowing their work (even if their work is reasonable science, which my point 2 will address) to be misrepresented by IPCC is a fundamental flaw in the science itself. Climate scientists, knowing their work is being misrepresented in ways that have such immense policitcal/ economic impact have a moral obligation to “just say no,” which means disavowing the IPCC mechanism completely because it cannot and will not properly use your science.
(2) You say, …i still find the meat of the 1000 page report to be credible..
How can you possibly say that when the data for the primary dependent variable (i.e., global surface temperature measurement reconstructions for the last 150 years) is questionable?
How can you possibly say that when all models (an important part of what the 1,000 pages depends on directly or indirectly) as clearly flawed beyond use because they are (a) way over-determined, and (b) make dubious assumptions about how critical variables function (e.g., climate sensitivity to certain forcings, the hydrological cycle, the various ocean oscillations, etc.)?
How can you say that when science and scientists who would provide data and analysis contrary to the AGW have clearly been supressed because of (a) lack of funding (such research findings would undermine politicians’ ability to accrue more power to themselves), (b) active suppression by the elite climate scientists who control much of what gets published in that field
Finally, how can you say that when you yourself have said, to quote from your Nature paper, “There is a robust signal behind the shift to more intense hurricanes,” given recent findings about hurricane intensity over time?
On this last point, your statement is an example of so many in climate science research papers that say the research has, without a shadow of a doubt, considered all possible effects on the dependent variable under all possible conditions and the “signal” could not have any other explanation. Donald T. Campbell, my experimental and quasi-experimental design professor, would roll over in his grave to read the “conclusions” climate scientists reach from their research. Even though I am not an expert in your field (but with a PhD in science), I can say such a statement in a field such as climate science (with so many unknowns, such little historical data, and with so few even quasi-experimental designs) is on its face unacceptable scientific commentary. My point is: these are the kinds of statements made regularly in climate science papers. And climate scientists seem to think that’s how findings should be construed/ conveyed.
Until you, personally and as a profession, deal meaningfully with these fundamental issues of what constitutes science and how climate scientists think about and present their science, there will not be meaningful discussions between those who challenge the current climate science orthodoxy and those who are enmeshed in it.
Bottom line, Judith, you cannot take a middle ground by saying, “Let’s have a dialogue so you skeptics can understand better that our science is, er, robust.” It’s not. For so many reasons. I’ve just pointed to one core epistemological one. Start there.
Until you (and others in your profession who have argued in favor of the AGW hypothesis) start calling out where and why your science is not “robust” (because inherently it is not), looking for and pointing out the fundamental flaws in the research that has been done (and there are many), and start admitting the inappropriate way in which your research has been presented (i.e., which is: unambiguously, including your own), and in the the way climate scientists have allowed their research to be used (which is much of the research, including your own — will you be the first to publicly and vocally decry Al Gore’s use of the hurricane data as “evidence for” AGW?), then you can expect the climate science community to be viewed with skepticism and rightfully debunked.
While I applaud your desire to reach out to the skeptic community, accept that they have good intentions, and accept that they are doing meaningful science, you need to (1) accept that there are far more failings in climate science than you have accepted (from what I can tell in your comments), and (2) reach out to your own brethren to try to get your community to recognize it has been way off the science rails for quite a while and needs some deep change to get back on them.
The day the climate science community consensus admits that those 1,000 pages of Working Group I Report do not make anything close to a convincing case that man-made CO2 influences climate to a meaningful extent is the day the climate science community will get the respect it deserves — and the day the “skeptics” will either desist or become one with the climate science community, which is the way climate science should be.
Again, I applaud your efforts — but dig deeper, Judith, dig deeper.
Judith, this is the kind of thing we expect from scientists really committed to SCIENCE.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/27/16772/
Re: JP Miller (Feb 27 11:34),
What he says.
I have read through the 800 page working group I report. As a particle physicist with long experience in fitting models to data I can state that the methods described are good for video games, not for solid science.
1) there is no error propagation from the large number of parameters used in the fits. The spaghetti lines are chosen by the feel of the modelers, not by any statistical criterion. I suspect that if error propagation were enforced the future projection results would become meaningless.
2) Linear approximations are used all over the place in the GCMs for what are in reality solutions of numerous coupled non linear differential equations. This may work for a number of time steps after the fit, but then non linearities become important, as we learn every day from the similar models that predict the weather.
3)The spaghetti graphs are used to confuse the eye of the casual reader with a scientific background that they are error bands. If one looks in plots other than the temperature anomaly and follows individual model predictions , they are all over the plot, some fitting one hemisphere, some the other and the over all spaghetti gives the impression of a reasonable fit. I consider this dishonest.
etc, because I read this report when it first came out two years ago, and my little gray cells do not remember further details, just the gross reasons I was upset..
Judith, I just posted without first seeing your latest post.
I am afraid I cannot agrre with you at all.
All of the work done in Part 1 is to try and prove (without success) and support that CO2 has been driving the recent warming period. Where is the balance that is required.
Let’s just take 1 example, do you stand by Frequently Asked Question 10.1 on Hurricane frequecy and Extrmeiy in light of current conditions?
Please just answer Yes or No, no long winded explanations.
Sorry should read as
Judith, I just posted without first seeing your latest post.
I am afraid I cannot agrre with you at all.
All of the work done in Part 1 is to try and prove (without success) and support that CO2 has been driving the recent warming period. Where is the balance that is required.
Let’s just take 1 example, do you stand by Frequently Asked Question 10.1 on Hurricane frequency and Extremity in light of current conditions?
Please just answer Yes or No, no long winded explanations.
Apparently there was too much nuance in my previous statement. I stated that the meat of the WG1 report was credible, in the sense that it is a credible assessment of the state of climate science. There are many unknowns and uncertainties and many of these are acknowledged. The problem with the WG1 report is how it is integrated into an overall argument to support its conclusions (very likely and all that). Stating that climate research is of poor quality and missing the mark is one thing, but stating that an assessment of the present state of climate research was incorrectly done is very different. Many skeptics such as Richard Lindzen and John Christy have made the same point: that while the main text of the assessment is appropriate, the conclusions drawn in the summaries are not.
With regards to the hurricane issue that several of you raise, here is what the IPCC summary for policy makers says:
““There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. . . Based on a range of models, it is likely [>66%] that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.”
This is actually quite a conservative statement that the various hurricane experts on different sides of the issue did not object to.
So in this instance, i would say that the assessment of hurricane research at that time was appropriate. This does not mean in any way that the science is settled. The debate in the hurricane community is about how much you would expect the hurricane intensity to increase with increasing sea surface temperature, not whether you would expect an increase. And while there has continued to be research activity in this area, i would say that we haven’t really moved in any significant way away from what the IPCC assessment says.
So there are many pieces of the IPCC that provide accurate assessments, it is how this is all woven together to address the issue of “dangerous climate change” that the UNFCCC is looking for to inform its policies is where things get dodgy.
So my point is that serious skeptics should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about, but should investigate a specific topic, do some work, read the literature, analyze data. This is what Steve McIntyre has done, and is why he has credibility.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/11/noaa-more-tropical-storms-due-to-better-observational-tools-wider-reporting-greenhouse-warming-not-involved/
Remember, Landsea resigned.
No way, Prof Curry. Fundamental principles of Natural Philosophy, enunciated long ago by Francis Bacon, say examine ALL the hypotheses and try to prove them false. Share the data and experiment description with all. Instead, the IPCC is chartered to prove global warming is caused by human CO2. That’s anti-science, and the refusal of CRU et al to share is a natural consequence of a corrupt process.
Here’s a specific topic, as you suggest: radiative transfer and the greenhouse effect. It doesn’t work as claimed by AGW. CO2 is a minor GHG, there’s little of it, the impact is logarithmic, humanity’s contribution is trivial, its radiative effect is near saturation, and its history doesn’t correlate with climate change. Miskolczi’s experimental results say the flux optical depth hasn’t changed in 60 years; his theoretical results say it shouldn’t. (Radiative transfer was my thesis research.) Miskolczi’s paper was initially suppressed by NASA.
The discussion of science is interesting – since I study other scientific topics as well- but climate science has been sold on a sliver platter to politicians and media morons. The Judas Moment was acceptance of the Hockey Stick, in contradiction to hundreds of previous studies, oxygen isotope analyses, and two previous ARs. Mann and his fraud have just been whitewashed again by PSU.
A collective Academic fault, and it’s not getting any better.
Allan M (14:48:47
“Remember, Landsea resigned.”
Yup.
One can recruit the best scientist money can buy. However, that rules out getting the best scientists.
“I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
“Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutsen and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st century (Michaels, Knappenburger, and Landsea, 2005, submitted).
“It is quite beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming.
From Chris Lansea’s resignation letter to the IPCC, Jan 17th, 2005. (sorry I only have a paper copy, but I am sure Roger Pielke Jr. could find the evidence if needed. Emphasis is mine)
Judith, I have read, I guess, all the comments on this thread. I am a regular here, but only a dumb musician who chose to switch from science at age 19. There are many here who understand the science much better than me, but I cannot find one person that you have managed to convince(excepting trolls, who, strictly, you haven’t convinced either).
JP Miller (11:34:33)
JP, the following posts by Tamino(here and here) may be of interest.
Dr. Judith Curry,
Have you read the Institute of Physics statement reprinted early today in a WUWT post?
The scope of their concern runs wide.
Have you written anything about the IOP initiative: do you have a blog or central collection of your writings for this “blog experiment” you are conducting? It would be good to have … at least your more-substantial comments & response all in one place.
I tend to agree with interpretations such as the IOP’s (and the Philosophy of Science Chair at Cambridge), who look at ‘the trouble with climate research’, and say, ‘This is not a matter that is confined cleanly to climatology’.
Good to see you continuing to weigh in & work the process!
Ted Clayton
””””Philemon (15:59:43) : One can recruit the best scientist money can buy. However, that rules out getting the best scientists.””’
Philemon,
A) I would estimate that the scientists have a relatively low total compensation compared to other groups involved in the last 30 years of the CAGW agenda era. I think that is inverted from the way it should be.
B) It is morally right to be paid more for being the best scientist. Yes, I said morally, not economically right.
No, let’s discuss how to pick the best scientists and get them some really good money for their efforts.
John
Let’s see. “The first implies making up a problem that doesn’t exist, …” Not exactly. Here’s what I found by googling define alarmism:
Here’s what I found by googling define denialism:
Here’s what I found by googling define denier:
IOW, “alarmist” is a milder term than “denier.” An alarmist may merely exaggerate something that’s truly there (quite possibly in order to to stimulate the necessary response); a denier uses sophistry to conceal the plain truth of a matter.An alarmist is thus more accurate and more sincere than a denier.
Oops: In the second definition of “denier” above, the last phrase got cut out by WordPress because it was inside angle brackets. It should read:
“one who denies — ‘deniers of the truth’”
Judith Curry:
So my point is that serious skeptics should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about, but should investigate a specific topic, do some work, read the literature, analyze data. This is what Steve McIntyre has done, and is why he has credibility.
That’s fine, but serious scientists, being serious sceptics, should first and foremost not accept any study or analysis as scientific which does not follow and comply with the dictates of the processes involved with the Scientific Method.
And, obviously, any scientist claiming to be a serious scientist, but who does not accept and apply the dictates of the Scientific Method to the alleged “science” of her own alleged area of expertise – broadly, Climate Science – should instead not consider herself to be a serious scientist.
Steve McIntrye did what you did not do, Dr. Curry, and showed exactly why the Scientific Method has its rules – and in the process, that Climate Science is not doing real science.
So it is you, Dr. Curry, who has no credibility. You had a chance to have some, even as late as your first Editorial at Climate Audit and immediately following it, but you did not listen.
So I don’t see that you are sceptical in any valuable way whatsoever.
I came across the following link, that documents that the politicization of climate science has its roots back in the 1995 report that lead to the Kyoto accords.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025294.php
Now that is 15 years of inaction on the part of the collective climate community, and that is not only collusion, but on top a whole generation of new scientists has matured under the misapprehension that it is OK for the end to justify the means, even in “science”.
“and geoengineering. ”
noooooooo don’t even go there. Keep your collective hands off. To this point in time we haven’t seen CO2 levels that are demonstrably higher than historical levels so there is no reason to even be talking about this.