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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Mike Scollard,
Please don’t re-frame the argument. I don’t recall anyone here ever saying we should put hundreds of chemicals into the atmosphere. That’s simply moving the goal posts to a comfortable & easy place to argue. Like saying you support Mom, apple pie, and the Flag. No one outside of China wants to put noxious chemicals into the air, and even they don’t. It’s just that in China, unlike the West, money trumps everything else.
The central question in the entire AGW debate is this: will a rise in carbon dioxide cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe?
FWIW, I have good reasons to think that CO2 is, on balance, harmless and beneficial. If a rise in CO2 results in a slightly warmer, more pleasant world with abundant food production, we all benefit. But the jury is still out regarding the influence of CO2 on temperature. So far, there seems to be almost zero R-squared correlation between CO2 and temperature: click
The strong response of plant growth to increased CO2 concentrations indicates that plants evolved in a much higher CO2 environment. In fact, during the geologic past CO2 was many hundred percent higher than today, for more than a hundred million of years at a time. The planet had Ice Age episodes during those times, which strongly indicates that CO2 has little, if any effect on temperature.
The people pushing the CO2=CAGW hypothesis have much to gain financially by blaming CO2 for global warming, even though the facts don’t support their hypothesis.
So, who are you going to believe? Planet Earth? Or the people who stand to cash in at your expense, based entirely on their false demonization of a harmless and beneficial trace gas essential to all life on Earth?
Smokey:
You write,
FWIW, I have good reasons to think
that CO2 is, on balance, harmless and
beneficial.
Ok. What are they? List:
1. _________________________ …etc
If a rise in CO2 results in a slightly warmer,
more pleasant world…we all benefit.
Oops! Isn’t that a great big “if” at the start, rendering what comes after as speculation and not fact? You aren’t giving a reason here; merely stating an opinion or a wish. Oh. If only….things were as you would like.
Of course if things ARE as you would have them be, we might be in good shape. No disagreement there. But, and it’s a huge, glaring but: what you’re writing here does us no good at all in terms of advancing what we know. And not even in getting us ahead by showing us, convincingly, where we are off-track. You do see that that last does require offering some sort of convincing, testable reason?
The strong response of plant growth
to increased CO2 concentrations indicates
that plants evolved in a much higher CO2
environment.
I think this is a classic example of the logical fallacy known as post hoc ipso propter hoc. Here’s another: humans rapidly gain weight if they eat high-fat diet and get little exercise. This indicates that we will thrive on a low-exercise high-fat regimen, and “indicates” that we evolved in such a dietary and exercise regimen.
See? Doesn’t work….
In fact, during the geologic past CO2
was many hundred percent higher than today….
Fact? “Many hundred percent higher”? Like the atmoshere on Venus? What does and atmosphere of “many hundred percent higher (CO2)” look like?
I’m no mathematician but I recall somewhere that you can’t have more than ONE hundred percent of ANYTHING in a lot of SOMETHING. Or please tell me what I’ve missed here?
The planet had Ice Age episodes
during those times, which strongly
indicates that CO2 has little, if any
effect on temperature.
How?
Smokey: You write,
. FWIW, I have good reasons to think
. that CO2 is, on balance, harmless and
. beneficial.
Ok. What are they? List:
1. _________________________ …etc
And you continue:
. If a rise in CO2 results in a slightly warmer,
. more pleasant world…we all benefit.
Oops! Isn’t that a great big “if” at the start, rendering what comes after as speculation and not fact? You aren’t giving a reason here; merely stating an opinion or a wish. Oh. If only….things were as you would like.
Of course if things ARE as you would have them be, we might be in good shape. No disagreement there. But, and it’s a huge, glaring but: what you’re writing here does us no good at all in terms of advancing what we know. And not even in getting us ahead by showing us, convincingly, where we are off-track. You do see that that last does require offering some sort of convincing, testable reason?
. The strong response of plant growth
. to increased CO2 concentrations indicates
. that plants evolved in a much higher CO2
. environment.
I think this is a classic example of the logical fallacy known as post hoc ipso propter hoc. Here’s another: humans rapidly gain weight if they eat high-fat diet and get little exercise. This indicates that we will thrive on a low-exercise high-fat regimen, and “indicates” that we evolved in such a dietary and exercise regimen.
See? Doesn’t work….
. In fact, during the geologic past CO2
. was many hundred percent higher than today….
Fact? “Many hundred percent higher”? Like the atmoshere on Venus? What does and atmosphere of “many hundred percent higher (CO2)” look like?
I’m no mathematician but I recall somewhere that you can’t have more than ONE hundred percent of ANYTHING in a lot of SOMETHING. Or please tell me what I’ve missed here?
. The planet had Ice Age episodes
. during those times, which strongly
. indicates that CO2 has little, if any
. effect on temperature.
How?
In any enterprise involving many thousands of people – even well-educated, credentialed ones – there will be a handful of cranks and corner-cutters that leave the entire effort open to conspiracy theories. In all of this invective against establishment science, I’ve yet to hear a cogent argument for how the earth’s climate system might possibly be buffered against a 2X increase in CO2. What is your proposed mechanism? Where is your data to support it? The burden of proof here is borne by those insisting that this evolved system (the climate) is somehow resistant to a rapid, man-made perturbation.
The fact that humanity inadvertently stumbled into this problem and is reluctant to alter our energy economy is a separate issue.
god … you sure do make a good case for atheism.
god (05:35:38):
Even a minor god should have all the answers. But this is an informative site, so you may benefit from some education. OK, by the numbers…
CO2 is, on balance, harmless and beneficial… List…
Beneficial: life can not exist without CO2. More is better, as the biosphere is currently starved of CO2. Harmless: there is no empirical evidence showing that CO2 causes global warming. None. The physics supports the possibility, but climate sensitivity to CO2 is grossly exaggerated. Don’t just take my word for it, let’s see what the planet has to say: click
…what you’re writing here does us no good at all in terms of advancing what we know. And not even in getting us ahead by showing us, convincingly, where we are off-track. You do see that that last does require offering some sort of convincing, testable reason?
You misunderstand the scientific method. The hypothesis being questioned is the claim that human emitted CO2 will cause climate catastrophe [CO2=CAGW]. Skeptical scientists are not obligated to provide ‘convincing, testable’ evidence for anything: Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit: The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof.
Regarding the hypothesis that human emitted CO2 is causing “unprecedented” global warming: the burden is on those who say so. The role of skeptics is simply to keep climate alarmists honest; a Sysiphean task.
Since alarmists have failed to provide any testable, verifiable, empirical evidence to support their CO2=CAGW claim, their hypothesis is simply an unproven conjecture.
Next, you state, without any citation, that increased plant growth due to higher CO2 levels is a logical fallacy. I provided graphic evidence showing that increased CO2 is greatly beneficial to plant growth. Where is your evidence to the contrary?
Like the atmoshere on Venus? What does and atmosphere of “many hundred percent higher (CO2)” look like?
Click [click on graph to expand]. And Venus is much closer to the Sun than the Earth is. Because of the inverse square law, that makes a big difference. I’d explain why CO2 is not the primary determining factor, but first you need to get up to speed on the basics.
I’m no mathematician but I recall somewhere that you can’t have more than ONE hundred percent of ANYTHING in a lot of SOMETHING. Or please tell me what I’ve missed here?
You are conflating a separate definition with the example I gave. Think about it like this: $2.00 is 200% of $1.00.
Finally: How?
The CO2=CAGW hypothesis states that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming. But it is an established fact that the planet has descended into Ice Ages when CO2 levels were much higher than they are today.
If CO2 is the primary controlling factor of the planet’s temperature, as claimed by climate alarmists, then Ice Ages could not have occurred with CO2 several times higher than current levels. QED.
Paul (21:52:15) :
“I wish to thank Willis and everyone else here for all that has been said. I can certainly understand, appreciate and respect the manner in which he is carrying on his dialogue with Dr. Curry….
…She gets no pass on trying to distance herself from it here, as far as I am concerned. In fact this is all the ’scientific’ proof on offer as the remainder of the presentation is nothing but advocacy based on the famines, droughts, etc., all the alarmist worst case scenarios….”
I certainly agree that Ms Judith Curry should be approached with due caution.
3.2 is where Ms Judith Curry lost me.
“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.”
Ms Curry from the evidence presented has not stuck to just science but has branched out to ” advocacy based on the famines, droughts, etc” That means she could have bothered to look behind the curtain to follow the money funding CAGW. It does not take a scientist to figure out Maurice Strong, a big name in the Canadian oil industry, has advocated AGW since the first UN Earth Summit in 1972. Or that the Rockefellers of Standard Oil fame have funded AGW through Greenpeace and WWF and the IPCC “peer reviewed papers” by those organizations. Yet Ms Curry has the gall to point fingers at skeptics and blame them for the sins committed by CAGW advocates, that is taking oil tainted money. I have found through bitter experience that this type of finger pointing is the hallmark of a con artist in action. It is certainly not the hall mark of a careful scientist who checks her facts before descending to Ad Hom attacks.
[snip]
No religion, no posting under multiple names. ~dbs, mod.
Alex Heyworth (19:56:37) :
“Those interested in an expansion of Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen’s analysis above, of how politics has driven the science, could do a lot worse than purchase a copy of Garth Paltridge’s The Climate Caper. He is also of the opinion that the problem is far more widespread than climate science, and goes to the funding of science generally.”
I agree the problem is very widespread. “science” is not understood by most lay people and has in modern times taken the place of religion. Science and its “high priests” are now used to manipulate public opinion worldwide. Science has a major advantage over religion since it is pretty much culture neutral and therefore ideal for manipulation. By controlling education, grant funding and peer review science can be warped in the direction needed.
In the 2002 Rockefeller autobiography “Memoirs” on page 405, Mr. Rockefeller writes: “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents… to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world … If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
I do not think it can be put anymore bluntly than that.
Job one: identify and purge the junk science from climate science. Only then can we build any confidence in the science. Confidence in the scientists, however, has gone bye-bye until they are replaced, no, until the organization is replaced by a new set of professional scientists with attendant scientific oversight.
There is a large percentage of junk science out there in climate science and it is difficult to put a percentage on it. But, since we have been not warming or actively cooling for 15 years, it is a fair bet that just about 100% of the “science” used to support the claims of the IPCC AR4 are junk.
god… you are on the wrong side of history… just words, and already debunked words at that… sorry, very few believe that CO2=CAGW, or even CACC… and gods do require belief… the climate godhead is dead… time to peddle your garbage on venus or some other planet.
[snip]
No religion, no posting under multiple names. ~dbs, mod.
There are significant parts of of your lengthy writings on the certainty/uncertainty of climate science that I can’t follow (clearly, you’ve delved deeper than I into these matters), but I think I get the gist of your thought. But the more extensively I read your material, the more I’m reminded of the Steinberg cartoon of two rabbits dueling on the mouth of an crocodile (yes, it might be a alligator).
The lines between science and metaphor are not absolute and there is a rich transfer or interplay between the two. I’ll explain my thought. Human history is filled with public outrage (and the outrage of opposing professionals) over new scientific ideas. This seems to happen either when public sensibility is offended or when someone’s interests are threatened, or both. And the outrage seems the most intense during the period of transition of beliefs; that is, when there is still enough uncertainty in the accumulating ‘science’ and just before the evidence itself makes earlier assertions or cosmologies unsupportable.
Human ‘evidence’ made it clear to early cultures that the world was flat: you could look out to the sea and observe the drop-off point. Greek Classical astronomy commenced in the fourth century BC to supplant that view. You and I weren’t around then, but it’s not hard to imagine all the knowledgeable folks back then muttering about this ‘balderdash and unprovability of a spherical earth.’
Darwin’s unified theories about the origin of species–his Theory of Evolution–scandalized the religious establishment and much of the public. There was backlash not only from religious interests but also significant ‘scientific’ counter-punch. As you know, the subject of evolution is far from resolved in certain quarters even now–and I don’t mean just from the religious fundamentalists who are under a biblical injunction to believe that the world was made by God in six days and change, roughly seven thousand years ago.
In my own lifetime, I have listened to tobacco executives and tobacco scientists deny all of the claims by medical researchers about the addictive and carcinogenic properties of cigarettes. I’ve listened to fishers and hunters and their supporters challenge and attempt to repudiate the statistical findings of government researchers about depleted wildlife and ocean stocks. I’ve witnessed the science-based campaigns of denial by big water system polluters, and corporate interests involved in destructive and damaging land-based resource extraction. Now, I watch people make igloos after a snowstorm and invite Mr. Gore to move in.
My point is a simple one. Scientific claims about climate change/global warming indict all of us, but this doesn’t make them wrong. I am sure that the science is in some respects inconclusive and imperfect. I’m sure that in today’s world of message amplification climate scientists have, in some cases, found themselves cast (or have cast themselves) in the role of climate advocates and have been guilty of scientific hubris and personal ego. Alarmism is a dangerous game.
But the pushback is also suspect, and I sense that you are more aware of the mote in the eye of climate science than the mote in climate denial’s. I’m not going to go off on a tear here about the big, bad emitters, or the troglodytes who make Al Gore snowman effigies. I want, instead, to note that climate change and global warming are (funny to be reaching for Gore’s word here) an inconvenience to all of us–our entire civilization. Climate change prospects mess up everything–national economic intentions, corporate agendas, lifestyles, personal behavior. It is enormously in our collective interest to close our eyes to climate change, reject the idea of deleterious consequences, and carry on.
So, is there a case to be made for improving and ‘perfecting’ climate science? Of course. Greater certainty has value in all scientific enterprise. But if you take the wide view, it’s clear that the warnings and projections of current climate science are set against an enormous civilization-wide cultural incentive to find them wrong. The reasons and motivations vary (your own are a bit hard to decode but there’s a clue in your writing which, while coherent, is shockingly aggressive and adversarial).
Personally, I believe we’re at one of history’s corner points, and both the claims of climate science and the assertions of its deniers are metaphors for the unanswered question of our species ‘mission’ on earth. No doubt, the rabbits will still be dueling fifty years from now–unless the crocodile shuts his mouth in the meantime.
[snip]
No religion, no posting using multiple names. ~dbs, mod.
Someone needs to check out the deal that IKE made with his Russian General friend after WWII. Ike had a hugh eclectro magnet built in Chicago and shipped it to Russia to study how to change the earth’s magnetic field to control the Jet Stream, therefore control the weather and climate. THIS INFORMATION WAS PUBLISHED BY THE US PRINTING OFFICE BACK IN THE 1950’S OR BEFORE.
Gene, get a grip. First, mankind has dealt with climate change for hundreds of thousands/ millions of years (you decide when we became “human”) and thrived despite ice ages (the biggest threat to our existence as a species). Species extinction records make it clear that never has there been warming that has threatened living things; just the opposite. Second, even a cursory examination of how mankind survives and thrives today shows that dramatically reducing carbon output by the amounts and in the time-frames proposed by those who believe CO2 is a problem would cause incredible hardship and de-stablization of society. (“Green jobs,” give me a break — do some economic analysis).
We will need many more decades of research before we’ll have a decent handle on what drives climate and whether CO2 is a problem. Nothing “catastrophic” is going to happen in the meantime — or, at least, we have no substantial reason to believe that. Look at the science, not the wild speculations of alarmists (who, in some cases, sadly, are scientists).
Implicit or explicit evocation of the “precautionary principle” is based often on badly done analysis; at best, is based on highly speculative analysis; while, in the main, is just plain hand-waving/ wringing.
Skeptics are perfectly willing to come to the same conclusions you have arrived at — but only when the science and the engineering/ economics of action make those conclusions fully warranted.
There seems to be a general misunderstanding here that I picked up from people thinking that all exhaust fumes from cars and industries and energy generating by burning fossil fule must be bad, just like smoking is bad. I suppose it is because they live in cities where the fumes makes them feel bad.
We have to differentiate here between good and bad exhaust fumes.
Most of the gas released by burning fossil fumes is carbon dioxide (CO2) and this is good for life – it is one of life’s main building blocks. Everything you ate today depends on carbon dioxide – it is being consumed by plants during photosythesis – these plants are food for us and the animals). It acts sort of like a fertilizer.More Co2 menas better crops and more forests. To ask for a reduction in CO2 is just as non-sensical as to ask for a reduction in water vapor.
1) yes, just like too high sugar intake, if CO2 gets higher than 10% (in your direct surroundings) it does get bad for your health and you might die. But, in total, we are talking of 70 ppm’s being added to the atmosphere since 1960, that is only 0.007% of the total gas amount in the atmosphere.
Also, there have been times in the historical record of earth that CO2 has been much higher than the current 390 ppm (0.039%), causing tremendous growth and animal life. So an increase of 70 ppms in CO2 is not worrying (to me)- no one has yet proven to me in an experiment that it actually causes warming. (if I look at the chemical and radiative properties I think it is pretty much a tie between the warming and cooling)
2) the exhaust fumes that lets you feel bad are mainly CO (carbon monoxide) and SO2 (sulphur dioxide) and a number of other toxic gases. These are from the impurities and additives in the fuel. So obviously, if we can get cleaner technology that will get rid of these (bad) gases it will be much better for all of us. Nobody will argue about that point. One way to do that is to look critically at the fuel that we use, i.e. how pure is it?
god certainly is long-winded (no doubt due to AGW). Clearly it is necessary to counter, Smokey. He certainly appears to be omniscient, which is consistent with the attitude of the entire CS community. Interestingly, eloquence is not his strong suit, which I would think would be consistent with a god.
Fortunately, he is not a god, nor is he omnipotent or omnipresent. Fortunately too, the scientific community, as a whole, FAR outweighs the CS community both in number and quality, and clearly has done more research than the CS community on the latter’s own subject. I now agree with many of the posts above, there should be NO quarter in ripping these “scientists” to shreds and burying the whole CS corpse.
Willis, thank you for an excellent post and Dr. Curry for trying to carry on a meaningful discussion.
Willis you really hit the nail on the head. There can be no trust until the climate science community calls out the bad apples such as Mann and Jones from within, I don’t think see that happening.
Gavin Schmidt’s comment that scientists should be doing science, not pursuading the public is so diametrically opposite to his own actions that one cannot help but wonder if he is a pathological liar.
Tomazo (10:52:20),
Thank you for stating the obvious.
Regarding little g’s mendacious rants [compare his numerous misrepresentations of the sincere answers to his questions, along with supporting citations @06:32:18 above], continuing to debate an endlessly nit-picking prevaricator has no payoff, because he is not acting in good faith.
So I stand by the answers provided in my 06:32:18 post above [and also in my post @04:32:35]. They explain my position. I won’t continue arguing with someone who lacks sincerity – and unlike most commenters here, someone who lacks an adequate background in the hard sciences, compensating instead with faux religious overtones.
Although I never back down from a spirited <–[bad pun] argument, I draw the line at lunatics with delusions of understanding. The poster who presumes to call himself "god" [and also "dog"] falls into that particular class of trolls who endlessly nitpick arguments and citations that were provided in good faith to support a point of view. By misrepresenting and re-stating the points made, to mean something entirely different than what was clearly intended [eg: my Venus/CO2 response], g-man displays a startling lack of ethics. Fact checking a thread is easy, making his misrepresentations foolish gambits.
Little g is free to argue with himself now, along with his deliberate double-posting [little g wouldn't make a misteak like that, would he?]
If I responded to every lunatic who comes here from climateprogress, realclimate or pharyngula, it would drive me nearly as crazy as Joe Romm.
To the moderator, and to Tomazo, I apologize for the double posts. That happened because I mis-typed my “godly” email address the first time out, then noticed that, while I received a confirmation and request to complete the subscription on the valid version, THAT post seemed NOT to have shown up when I returned here to verify.
So I did double-post a couple of times. I should have added this note earlier on, as courtesy. Of course.
I would appreciate it if the moderator would restore the posts, using the email that begins “the_gods_will….”
And risk a “funny” by claiming a literary reference to “Winnie The Pooh” and the sign at Owl’s house: “Trespassers Will…”
I did not mean to trespass! I will stick with the correct email! Even if it does not look to me that it’s working right. Or at least not at first.
Thank you, especially to the moderator for the extra work.
Bob Tyson
To Tomazo and others,
I’ll have to check in with “god” and His pet to see if there’s anything more to your accusations above. And taunts!
In fact I am a scientist, by dint of education, a long first career in geology, and professional registration and publication. I used my real name in signing my previous post, so you may if you like double check me on this rather easily.
I note, and ignore, the tone of your posts, so far as you take so snide a voice towards the “Person” who spoke through my earlier posts. There was nothing religious at all in them, in those posts of mine, I mean. Or else everything: the motive to understand, and to share all understanding, with everyone.
Let me go back to Mr. Eschenbach’s article and a passage that for me sums up the trap into which we all fall too easily in this discussion.
. _ 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.
I, too, am astounded. Speaking as a scientist, but even more as a lay person and as a concerned citizen, I find that reply to be exceedingly blunt and, frankly, stupid.
BUT.
But I don’t know the context. I don’t know what was said back and forth between Jones and his interlocutor that might have pushed him off-balance enough to snap back with so emotional a retort. Scientists are human, and the emotional tone (as apart from the scientific content) of the GW discourse is very abrasive.
What I CAN imagine is that Jones was up to here with the relentlessness of such requests. That he also, as I too would have thought were I in his shoes, that the requestor was hell-bent on cherry-picking any bit of material that could, in any way, be conceivably found “out-of-order” in order to make a case in the media. There is a word for this, and I think we all know what it is.
I happen to agree that scientific activity needs to be open; that data be available freely to all; that the methods used to gather, to assess, to reduce, and to interpret that data be public.
And they are, by and large. That is what professional scientific journals do, for one thing. Yes, they hover behind pretty steep paywalls, but even now in the digital age, something called a “library” can come in handy. The reasons that this is so, and is as it is, are not hard to come by, and are not, in the main, sinister at all.
I am sure that Jones, having slept on things, wasn’t too happy with himself. He lost patience, and paid the price. We all can understand that much, and perhaps even have the grace to grant he was, in a certain important way, not treated fairly. But he did make his own bed.
And the data are available…
I like to take the name-calling (“troll”, “interlocutor” and so on) lightly. It’s predictable. I knew that. Or I should change that to “We knew that.”
Because “We” made the universe. You see, and We expected things would go wrong, as go right. It’s not up to Us, now, to take what We know and search for better ways to solve Our problems.
No. It is up to us, knowing what we know, AND what we are getting to know better and better every day, to take that and look for better ways of living lightly on this planet.
If you think that is mendacious, or argumentative, or just plain wrong, may I ask, as one simple human being to another, what you intend for yourself, let alone for me, and for OUR offspring?
Just one edit, or correction to the above:
That he also might have thought, as I too would have had I been in his shoes….
Taking another minute to look back on the recent discussion – I might have misread the moderator’s comment in removing my double posts. (Please see again my apology for that, with explanatory note, above.)
To the moderator, you have written, in place of the removed post, “No religion…”
What do you intend, by this? I don’t understand.
I take back my request to have removed posts restored. I had not noted, earlier, that you removed the duplicates, leaving one of each in place so far as I can tell. Thank you.
bob (aka god, dog, etc…) (23:10:38)
Oh, the humanity. The poor man, so beset with relentless requests that he snapped …
You say you “don’t know the context.” For most people, that would be enough to either push them to learn the context, or to shut up. You have done neither. Not a good sign. Email Warwick, he might give you the context if you lost the attitude.
If you would step back from your preconceptions for a moment and do some research, you would realize that Jones said that to Hughes back in 2004. This was two years before I made the first FOI request to CRU. Jones was not “up to here with the relentlessness of such requests”, Warwick’s was the only one I know of. Maybe there was another one, maybe not.
But your claim of relentless requests is pure fantasy. You should examine your belief system, to find out why it is so important to you to justify Jones’s behaviour.
Dude, you are not following the bouncing ball here. We are not talking about data behind paywalls. We’re talking about things like Thompson refusing to archive his ice core data. We’re talking about the scientific journals not following their own data archiving policies. We’re talking about Mann hiding the Hockeystick data. If you have a non-sinister reason for those, trot it out … and if not, please stop bothering us until you do understand what is the subject of the discussion.
Bovine ordure. If Jones had slept on things and woke up unhappy with having given a rash answer, if he had regretted his actions, he would have then given the data to Warwick. He didn’t do so. Please connect the dots here, and if you can’t, again, please don’t bother us with your inability to do so.
And in what “important way” was Jones treated unfairly? I hate these kind of vague pathetic attempts to justify scientific malfeasance, to cast Jones as the victim. He’s not the victim. I didn’t treat him unfairly. I filed an FOI request. The first one, so your claims of “relentless requests” in my case is once again hogwash. He blew off my request, and you want to paint him as the victim? Get real. I was the victim of his abuse of power, and you want to suck up to him???
Nope. Again you know not whereof you speak. They still haven’t made it all available. They are still claiming that some of it is covered by confidentiality agreements … but just like the data, they have not revealed the confidentiality agreements either.
And claiming “the data are available” as though that proves your point, after I and others have had to fight Phil Jones tooth and nail just to get part of it available, is a sick joke.
Please go somewhere else and discuss something you actually understand. The folks you are talking to here include those of us who were there on the ground. You can fool some of the people out there, but not here. I have the correspondence with CRU, I know what happened. I was called yesterday and spent half an hour talking with the Norfolk Constabulary who are investigating the case, to give them my testimony. Why didn’t they call you too?
Because I have first hand knowledge of what happened … and you have only your pathetic fantasies. Hang around if you want to learn, but give up on trying to convince us that you understand these issues. You don’t. Get used to it, the first step towards knowledge is to admit you don’t have any. Jones was not wronged. He was an egomaniacal power mad liar and cheat, he twisted the system for his own ends, and he got what he deserved. Heck, he didn’t even get that, he should have been hauled into court. He only evaded that because as the UK police said, he was able to conceal his crimes the statute of limitations had run out.
And you want me to feel sorry for him? Sorry, I’ll pass …