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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I agree with everything that Alan says, BUT:
No UK scientist, unless retired, will dare to go against the orthodoxy, which is cleverly set by the funding model. See: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/money-talking.html
We don’t have private universities with oodles of money nor (many) tenured positions (any more). We used to have employment protection, but it’s a bit of a joke now.
It would be a very brave scientist who spoke up in the UK. Would you risk your career and family because you discover too late that the subject that you chose to specialise in is only funded to find the right answer? Some of these people with have young families. The honest ones will be scared but keeping their fingers crossed that the auditors win the day.
Look what happens to people who challenge Darwin (I don’t). But what would happen to an honest scientist who unearthed something that challenged Darwinism? It would instantly be assumed to be fraud, I’m guessing.
The politicians see AGW as a money train and a way to global socialism. They have tried as hard as they can to elevate it to the status of Darwinism. They have invested billions if not trillions in this grand project, and will not treat honest scientists kindly.
I don’t expect to hear from them until the house of cards finally tumbles.
Roger Harrabin of the BBC probably knows this, which would explain why he is searching for sceptical climate scientists. They keep their heads down and he can honestly report that most of the scepticism comes from non-scientists.
With respect to the issue of trust, it is important that climate scientists trust policymakers to make sensible decisions given the bare-bones scientific results (including uncertainties and flat-out knowledge gaps). This trust does not exist today, leading to calls for improved ‘communication’ by scientists. That’s a slippery slope, as one can tell from Scheider’s ‘double ethical bind’ comment.
For big science with big policy implications, it seems clear that there should be more well-defined boundaries between the scientific and policymaking communities. The addition of a scientifically-savvy cross-domain advisory/review board layer between scientists and high-level policymakers (senate/congress-level) would insulate scientists from having to mince and dumb-down their words, and the policymakers would hopefully receive advice that incorporates a broader view than any one narrow scientific community would provide.
Such a framework should include rules, along the lines of conflict of interest rules in other disciplines, that explicitly disallow policy-focused advocacy statements by government funded scientists. That is not what they are being paid to do.
Dave Williams,
“Name-calling, insults, pottymouth and everything that I’m NOT looking for in a site that I thought was about science is missing here… at least on this particular topic.”
Name-calling? I thought the whole thread has been passionate but polite. The only name calling so far has come from an alarmist troll who referred to Willis as “an autistic lunatic.”
You also miss the point about Willis article. The article is a passionate plea for the restoration of the scientific method. Willis is a traditionalist and insists that science should be based on the solid foundation handed down to us from our illustrious forefathers. That is, falsifiability, empiricism, transparency and measurement of uncertainty.
Willis is not the only one who has shown that climate science has abandoned this framework. You should read the previous article of Professor Ravetz, who explains the failings very well. He writes without much passion and in a very academic way as befits a professor of philosophy of science, so you should feel right at home.
“Seriously, couldn’t it be that there is some credibility to the AGW theory as well as the “it is all natural” camp? Humans are modifying the face of the earth, pumping enormous amounts of various chemicals (some more harmful than others) and many seem not willing to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the impact that humans are probably having on the earth.”
Nobody here does not feel a responsibility towards the earth. I used to be a Greenpeace member in the eighties when it was about saving the rainforests. Now I won’t go near them. Why? Because they have conflated the CO2 scare to the point that it has eclipsed every important environmental issue.
What are the environmental issues? IMO these are rainforest destruction, environmental degradation by over foraging among the worlds poorest, overfishing, poaching, eutrophication due to fertilizer runoff as well as sulphurous emissions. These used to be headline issues. Not anymore. We are seeing an acceleration of rainforest destruction due to planting palm oil crops to feed the biofuel industry. Madness.
“I can only say how unimpressed I am by the closemindedness exhibited thus far. It’s like listening to Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory… geez.”
I think you came here with a closed mind looking only for a reason to attack this blog. You couldn’t find anything specific so you flail all around you hoping to hit a target. You’ve said nothing that’s of any relevance and your characterisation of everyone being somehow “against the planet,” is just way off the mark.
I suggest you stick around for a while with an open mind, and engage in polite discussion of a few ideas before making such sweeping generalizations. If you show an open mind then I promise people will warm to you, but if you come here to shout everyone down, then I’m afraid they won’t.
Thank you Willis, again
To date, this article is the very best criticism of climate science. Thank you so very much. The author and this website have done and are doing a most important service on the behalf of science and of everyone.
Count me with those who believe that Dr. Curry should be applauded and encouraged. Hers is a first step and the journey is long. I believe that most readers of this blog want her to take another step, and they want others to join her. I remember something about flies, honey and vinegar that I think is good advice in this instance.
Dave Williams (03:20:26
Make your case or ask your questions, some of the best minds in Climate science may indulge you.
But Princess smelly bums, will be attacked by the Lady Pamela Gray.
She dont take kindly to princesses with attitude.
She can and will teach you PDO . If we can awaken her from drunken stupor.
I read this splendid piece of spleen AFTER I had read Dr Curry’s piece, and sent her an extended comment, which I append below. She responded in terms which I will treat in confidence, save to say that they were warmly receptive.
“Dear Dr Curry,
I read your essay with interest. I am not a scientist, but one of the lay “public” whose trust you wish to regain, so my own Climategate story may be of some interest.
I believe I have a grasp of the Scientific Method which is both adequate for lay purposes and attainable by any reasonably well-educated person, whatever their actual state of scientific knowledge. Until Climategate my view of scientific controversy was coloured by the (naive) assumption that while scientists might succumb to the temptations of confirmatory bias, the peer-review system, which I understood entailed reproduction of results as an axiom, would take care of correcting their errors. If asked whether scientists should strive obsessively to dispel such bias, I would on reflection, reply no, we probably need scientists to have bees in their bonnets, get things wrong, learn from their errors, move on, etc – PROVIDED the peer-review system is healthy, it will sieve out the dross, and save the paydirt. I was aware that organisations like CERN post their work contemporaneously in reproducible form, and I casually assumed the climate alarmists were doing likewise, but didn’t bother to look. I am naturally given to scepticism, and have some understanding of the difficulties of modelling complex, nonlinear, chaotic systems (although not a clue as to go about attempting it myself), so I realised that any attempt to do so would involve a little bit of fairly well-established and uncontroversial physics (“settled” if you like), and a huge dose of statistics. Merely having a good grasp of the physics wouldn’t get you to first base, and the real ground would be broken in the statistical analysis of the observed data. Again, I assumed that “climate scientists” did not merely have a firm grasp of climatology, but in addition an especially good one of statistics, and that, again, the peer-review system was operating properly to ensure that this was the case. And when the talk was of “computer models” predicting catastrophe, once again I assumed (tell me why I should not have) that these models were routines that ran, unaided, on a computer. I rather vaguely followed the debunking of the hockey stick, but again I perversely took it to be evidence of the health of the peer-review system, and though I personally doubted AGW, I remained confident that good science would drive out bad in the long run, instead of the other way round. Again I assumed that the peer review process would stand in for my want of science – as I continue to believe it should have. And I assumed, based again on my misplaced faith in the peer review process, that the very first requirement of such a model as a driver of public policy – that it have skill in hindcasting – was being demonstrated in repeatable form, somewhere, to someone who could understand it.. As you can see, I was complacent, but so I ought to have been able to be! The increasing fervour of the climate change church began to pique my interest around Christmas 08, when I asked by brother-in-law, a medical scientist, if he could point me to the sites where the guys making these intuitively improbable claims posted their work. He couldn’t and from then on I started to look more closely at the whole AGW racket. For that is what I, a relative stranger to the blogosphere, found.
No, the models were not freely available. And no, it turns out that they weren’t “computer models” in the ordinary sense, but “computer-plus-man-with-keyboard-and-an-outcome-in-mind” models. Not only that, but those proclaiming their skill were actively obstructing their release. It still amazes me that comment about the FOI requests, your own included, does not begin with the obvious observation that people resorting to FOI to obtain data must have received an earlier rebuff to a simple request – the mere existence of a single FOI implies improper withholding of information. Had they gone so far as to post their work a la CERN, no requests of any kind (except those we may reasonably suppose they were trying to avoid, like “why doesn’t this work the way you said it did?”) would have interfered with their work, as they complain. Not only that, but the policy-makers and press influenced by their work seemed indifferent to this defect, whereas I saw it as a flouting of the scientific method so flagrant that it could not be innocent, and must invite the adverse inference that they were being secretive because they lacked faith in their own work.
Even so, when Climategate broke, I was shocked at what I learned. The emails, which I have read, reek of the correspondents’ clear understanding of their wrong-doing, of their doubts about their work. Reading the emails disabuses the layman of another cherished AGW shibboleth – that it is the shared conclusion of a variety of independent researchers – clearly the CRU “Tree Ring Circus” were orchestrating a “Bombers-over-Red –Square” parade of scientific opinion, safe in the knowledge that intruders who could see the bombers turning to make another pass could be excluded or bullied into silence. They reveal a collusive environment in which Phil Jones could tell his circle to delete sensitive emails and dodgy data without either expecting or getting a single cry of “foul” in response (whether or not the request was complied with is to some extent a red herring).
Climategate, and the comments it provoked from statisticians and FORTRAN wonks, revealed that for from being good at the physics but excellent at the statistics, as I had assumed, they were hopeless at computerised statistical analysis. And yes, although I know no statistics or FORTRAN, I give the critics credence, because they are alleging wrongdoing in people I already know to be wrong-doers. Logic, innit?
I cannot avoid the adverse inference, which a stream of subsequent revelations or “errors” (deceit, to the ordinary folk like me whose trust you want to recover), all of which lean towards, and none away, from catastrophe, merely reinforces – that AGW is probably a crock, and that we have nothing more to worry about from climate change or CO2’s part in it, than we do, say from the problem of hip dysplasia in overbred spaniels. Whether you agree with that view, I think that you must agree that for practical purposes it is the view with which climate science must henceforth expect to contend, and that the sooner it is reconciled to this unpalatable truth, the more likely it is to save the planet, if indeed it requires its assistance.
With all that in mind, I have the following comments on your essay:
You write:
“Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust.” Maybe, but a scientist must devote him/herself entirely to the former, trusting that the latter will follow. Cruel, I know, but giving priority to the cultivation of trust in “outsiders”, over cultivating expertise in their field, was in a very real sense what got these guys into trouble. It’s no good advocating a return to genuine peer review if the principle objective is the “restoration of trust” – you’ve got to do it for its own sake and for the benefit of the science, and hope that the trust will ensue, as it surely will. Much good science has survived temporary public disfavour.
“Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance.” With respect, that is precisely what the Hockey Team have done far too well, although the adaptations are not to your taste or their credit. If they had done less “adapting” and more sticking to time-honoured scientific method, they wouldn’t be in disgrace today. The first such adaptation was to call themselves “climate scientists”. When I was taught science in the 60’s there were meteorologists and there were climatologists. Now we have “climate scientists”. Isn’t “Climate Science” just a field invented by and for AGW believers who either choose not to call themselves meteor-/climatologists, because that’s not where the grant money is, or who in addition may not do so because they are in fact neither? If so it should neither have surprised nor greatly impressed us if they “overwhelmingly” endorse AGW. It’s just what “climate scientists” do. If it is to enjoy trust in future, it must convince us that it has shed its predisposition to alarm. If not, it will wither on the vine as scientists migrate back, if they may, to their fields of true expertise, and that still carry weight and trust.
“…blamed on difficulties of communicating such a complex topic…” – this is a recurring theme amongst CRU apologists – the suggestion being that had the Jones’ and others’ refusal to share their work been handled by a PR organisation trained to dissemble, rather than by scientists with no such training, and having to pick it up as they went along, all would have been well. I understand that is not your intent, but you risk association with a reprehensible argument. And there are several objections to your own:
1. Trying to communicate the complexity of climate science to lay-folk like me is futile and unnecessary. We laiety, and that includes most of the political establishment, will always have to rely on “proxy data” (if you will forgive the allusion) to assess competing hypotheses, and chief among these is our ability to see that the readily-grasped precepts of the scientific method, including its ineluctible extension, peer-review, are being adhered to.
2. The trouble seems to me that since I was taught science in the 60s, ordinary people no longer understand the Scientific Method in the way that used to be instinctive to anyone with a good high-school education. Worse still, many scientists, sometimes in the name of “post-normal” science, seem shockingly innocent of basic tenets of science. Everywhere in the climate debate (now that we are finally having one) the mistake is made by so many climate alarmists (and too many sceptics) that it is the job of sceptics to present counter-theories to their own. It is not. What matters is whether AGW theory survives proper scrutiny, not whether those scrutinising it can do any better. It is up to the proponents of AGW to present their theories in the form of falsifiable argument. The Climategate emails and code reveal the excruciating efforts of the high priesthood of AGW to do just that, their continuing failure, and the lengths to which they did or were prepared to go to conceal their work, with all its inadequacies, from proper peer review.
I hope this helps you appreciate the lay person’s view, and wish you well in your efforts to rehabilitate science. However I think you’re going to have to be willing to spill more blood than you imagine, or will find agreeable. The Emperor is naked, and the answer is not to try to reclothe him, but to banish him for the conceited ass he is now seen to be. Efforts such as your own, to resolve the issue through reform, with a token smattering of contrition, will undoubtedly earn the appearance of success – the MSM is consumed with a desire to stop the agonising process of retrospectively reporting its own recent gullibility. Politicians share that desire, mutatis mutandis. Their complaisance will be easy to get. But a public conspiracy of silence is not the same thing as a renewal of public trust in science, although they may seem very similar. And AGW will be allowed to die a quiet death, leaving billions misspent, and pointless, growth-inhibiting legislation on statute books the world over, where it will be obeyed in the Anglosphere and northern Europe, and elsewhere ignored.
But the conspiracy of silence won’t hold out here in the blogosphere, and you surely know it. If you really love science, and want to restore it’s dignity, I’m afraid you need to get a bit nastier*. And if you don’t, the job you find repugnant will be done by others who will relish it, which would be a shame, because I think you could do it infinitely better, if you could only grasp the sceptical nettle.
”
*I might have added “repentant”
“I think a few things. If you’re actually genuinely interested in furthering understanding of science, climate and it’s implications then working with science rather than against it is essential. To this end Dr Curry’s gesture would seem opportune. If you want to remain on the fringe and exist only to fog the debate and hinder science and understanding then carry on throwing stones from the sidelines.” – Jay
Quite frankly Jay, the opportune bit here is the public debate, not Judith herself. If she is gullible enough to think there is a ‘climate denial machine’ then she herself is a lost cause, and Willis is more than right to take the opportune moment not really to address her personally, but to publish a direct smack to the face of all the BS artists who have been doing business in this field for far too long. The scenario is that the world’s petroleum companies got together and pooled their trillions in profits and executed their master plan for world domination and eventual destruction by greenhouse gas emissions – putting aside for the moment that they are as likely to have kids and be as concerned about this planet as the next person – by funnelling those trillions to… a retired Canadian statistician, a few retired weathermen, and some random limey’s to run blogs and file FOI requests? This is The Master Plan, the Monolithic Climate Denial Machine? To be blunt, anyone stupid enough to believe such a ridiculous load of crap doesn’t deserve respect. Willis’ post is spot on. Perhaps it might be hard for a bunch of nits who have made careers sucking off the government teet and never having to actually do anything productive in their lives to understand this point, but when something’s screwed up in your life or career the rest of us know that more often than not the man in the mirror is to blame. A lesson maybe at least a few climate ‘scientists’ will take to heart instead of bitching and moaning about their screw ups as if they were someone else’s fault. Like Willis said, grow a pair. After decades of BS and marginalized skeptics it turns out the skeptics were right about a lot of things regarding The Science™ and The Consensus™. Credibility starts with the truth, not better packaging for the same old crap.
Yes
Thank you
As usual, Willis does an excellent job. Couldn’t agree more.
BTW, is Willis a scientist? If not, what is his profession?
>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.<
Isn't it remarkable that mankind often responds more vociferously to the issues with the least known factual content? Isn't the major issue between the two AGW camps one of BELIEFS …. and not facts? Anyone who does not see religious dogma in these arguments is naive. I think historians will look back at this period of time and refer to it as "The Climateblog Crusades".
Well done Willis. At the same time I do not think anything Willis has said should be taken "personally" by Dr. Curry. What Dr. Curry accomplished with her post was to provide an excellent summary of the general perspective of the AGW-science proponents in academia and related institutions. Willis responded with a rebuttal representing the opponents to AGW science. Can we anticipate a second round?
Willis,
Perhaps you were a little harsh to Judy.
Now, being a southerner, what you have to do is say “bless your heart”. Then, you can proceed to insult the other party as much as you want and it will be all right.
Now, for Judy’s part, “bless her heart” she must be a yankee. I don’t think any self respecting southerner would hold such views about global warming. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe that there is one southerner in the entire climate science community. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
Kindest Regards.
Wow!
I started reading , and a cringed after the first bit, because it was quite vitriolic in its attack. But then I realised that I fully agree with just about every single point.
Yes it is harsh, but very, very true. I fully admire and respect Judith for reaching out to the plebs with an invitation to start a frank discussion. This is exceedingly frank, but I do implore Judith not to be turned off by it. Let it harden your resolve, let’s come back to the table and figure out where to go from here.
We need to heal the rift. It has been oh-so-long in the making, and it is a deep one. Nonetheless, it can be healed, I believe.
Phew! Good rant. I enjoyed that.
Dr. Curry takes a good lick here but it’s mild in comparison to the bitter personal attacks her camp has doled out over the years. I imagine she knew she would get mauled when she entered this arena, but I wonder if she expected it from her own people, too? Romm et al have thrown her into a lifeboat and cast her adrift. But that’s not a bad thing. The ship they tossed her from is worm-eaten but it’s crew still believe it seaworthy. However, as W.E. succinctly points out, if her professional reputation is ever to make landfall, she must stop acting like a CRU member and start thinking like a captain… in a Shackelton-esque sort of way.
Just an observation about the performance enhancing substances scandal in baseball: It has parallels here. Those athletes who admitted their abuse of these drugs in public (Andy Pettit, for example) have fared much better than those who have continually denied or obfuscated (Roger Clemens and Mark Maguire). People are willing to forgive past sins if a realistic attempt is made to recognize and admit the offense and a promise made to do better in the future.
The case for action was pretty strained before the inaccuracies in the UN and temperature record were highlighted. Perhaps the AGW crowd could gain some credibility and trust by indicating what they believe are the current implications of their hypothesis. The implications of hurricanes and water shortages in particular are the main catalysts for giving governments cover for expensive action. Stating their position on ’50 days to save the world’ and the real implications could go a long way to removing heat out of this debate. There is an urgency to this while governments race ahead with action, and urgency spawns brutality.
Well put Mr. Eschenbach. The other problem are the political classes both elected and unelected. The elected we can ultimately deal with democratically, but the insidious bureaucrats and chairs of intergovernment organizations that infest our western democracies are far more difficult to deal with. They control the purse strings that feed the bad science. In the UK and in Canada we see government funded broadcasters spewing out AGW propaganda like candy on Halloween while suppressing the voice of we skeptics.
The war of words thanks to the Blogosphere is alive and well. Thank goodness.
The February 19, 2010 Wall Street Journal printed an edited version of my letter-to-the-editor, in reference to Prof. S. Schneider and “post normal science.” The original is pasted here:
To the Editor:
The WSJ February 16, 2010 editorial “The Continuing Climate Meltdown” ends with “the lesson of climategate is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.” I suggest that years of such scrutiny have existed as evidenced by the many editorials and letters published on the pages of the WSJ and elsewhere. The several international climate conferences organized by the Heartland Institute; such publications as the “Climate Change Reconsidered-The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change”; independent scientific web sites such as those of ICECAP, Climate Depot, Anthony Watts, and Steve McIntyre have been tirelessly providing the scrutiny missing in the general media. There are many others.
There are several other lessons of climategate. Traditional, objective, evidence-based science has morphed into a new “post-normal science,” only too ready to allow malleable interpretations of inconclusive or incomplete scientific understanding… interpretations chosen to support an ideological agenda. We were warned of such philosophical mindsets in the widely quoted statement by climatologist Stephen Schneider (in part): “to capture the public’s imagination…to get loads of media coverage…to offer up scary scenarios…make little mention of the doubts we have…to decide what is the right balance between being effective and being honest.” The IPCC and climategate cabal seem to have made liberal use of such scientific flexibility in their “the-end-justifies-the-means” approach.
Another lesson would be that tens of billions of federal funding will likely get you the results you prefer. If the politically correct zeitgeist is accommodated, there seems to be no end of funding for research grants, favored corporate entities, and activist groups…it pays to be green.
One other lesson is that objective science cannot compete with dogma. Those who believe in climate change will likely never be won over by scientific argument. For them “the science is settled”, has been, and will remain so.
Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D
Charlottesville, VA 22906
It is an amazing thing to watch a renowned scientist say that they must restore trust. That sounds so…….fake. Restore trust? Now the Met Office is going to restore trust by going over data? What data? The Met will probably come up with #’s that are similar and gloss over any problems they had in the past…and say something like…” okay it’s what we thought it was so let’s just move on”. Willis is right…and very right for getting steamed. People do not trust a liar just because the liar admits he must restore your trust….but continues to do the same things.
It’s truly astonishing to see how Judith Curry can provoke such anger as this article displays (which I very largely agree with, BTW) and at the same time, provoke an almost completely opposite view from the hyper-warmist community.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/24/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/
It does make you wonder how Joe Public is to judge the issue without years of research.
Dave Williams (03:20:26) :
Having spent fruiltless hours being soundly abused on warmist blogs for expressing doubt, and being just plain deleted on MSM and CA comment threads (with absolutely no insults or ‘potty language’ from me, merely polite dissent), I can tell you that you are priveleged to be heard here.
Use that privilege and challenge the wrongs that you see need to be righted. Don’t run away just because people have strong opinions, and sometime use strong language.
Willis – brilliant!
“Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”.
Climate Science has gone too far – so far it has blurred the lines between science and fiction (and to quote Mark Twain – “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”). Perhaps ‘Climate Fiction’ is a better term.
Consider for a moment one of the final lines of the Hippocratic Oath (modern version): “May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling…”. Not that there’s a scientific equivalent. As a scientist I am angry that this field has been allowed to cloud the integrity of my profession.
In sport, there are consequences for “bringing the game into disrepute”. If climate scientists feel like victims, perhaps they should show some contrition for their behaviour in allowing the propaganda machine to develop.
My favorite line: “stop trying to pass off garbage as science.”
That, in a nutshell, is all we’re saying….
The major problem, in my opinion, is that climate scientists actually seem to believe that they have the ability to build machines that can predict the future.