If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want. ~ charles the moderator
Scientists misread data on global warming controversy
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Well-publicized troubles have mounted for those forecasting global warming. First, there was last year’s release of hacked e-mails from the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, showing some climate scientists really dislike their critics (investigations are still ongoing). Then there was the recent discovery of a botched prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 in one of the Nobel-Prize-winning 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Instead, the glaciers are only shrinking about as much as glaciers everywhere, twice as fast as they did 40 years ago, suggest results from NASA‘s GRACE gravity-measuring orbiter.
The recent controversies “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science,” according to atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Cicerone was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month on a panel calling for more communication and release of data to rebuild lost trust for scientists. IPCC chiefs have made similar calls in the handling of their reports.
Scientists see reason for worry in polls like one released in December by Fox News that found 23% of respondents saw global warming as “not a problem,” up from 12% in 2005. Also at the AAAS meeting, Yale, American University and George Mason University released a survey of 978 people challenging the notion that people 18 to 35 were any more engaged than their elders on climate change. Statistically, 44% in that age range — matching the national average — found global warming as either “not too important” or “not at all important,” even though they grew up in an era when climate scientists had found it very likely that temperatures had increased over the last century due to fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases.
But what “if” (apologies to Kipling again) scientists are misreading those poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent public-relations black eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake? What’s really happening, suggests polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, is “scientists are over-reacting. It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.”
Krosnick and his colleagues argue that polling suggesting less interest in fixing climate change might indicate the public has its mind on more immediate problems in the midst of a global economic downturn, with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.7%. The AAAS-released survey of young people, for example, finds that 82% of them trust scientists for information on global warming and the national average is 74%.
“Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade,” he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
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Here’s an on-topic book, Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion, on the dark side of modern science, by Daniel Greenberg,
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Money-Politics-Political-Triumph/dp/0226306356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261504566&sr=1-1
Here are quotes from reviews on Amazon:
“Science, in the abstract, is supposed to be nonpolitical, even to transcend politics entirely. In truth, though, science is always conditioned by political reality—and by money.
So writes journalist Daniel Greenberg in this wide-ranging indictment of the way in which science is conducted in the United States. Although funding for scientific research has been readily available since the end of World War II, he maintains, research bureaucrats have transformed the enterprise into “a clever, well-financed claimant for money” and the successful quest for that funding into a condition of employment and advancement. Given that climate, Greenberg suggests, basic research has suffered, so that many diseases go unconquered, while more politically glamorous investigations are rewarded. Increasingly corporatized–industry, he writes, accounts for two-thirds of all research and development dollars spent, and its “profit-seeking values” are radiating throughout the culture–scientific research is insufficiently policed and criticized, watched over only by the inmates. In the rush for funding, Greenberg argues, science becomes increasingly subject to ethical lapses, with scientists too easily endorsing dubious causes such as the so-called Star Wars missile-defense system and too readily putting human subjects in danger.”
“Debunking science industry and policy myths left and right, Greenberg combines archival research and interviews with scientists and politicians in the know to explore why and how research has happened in the postwar U.S. “[B]ecause the politics of science is registered in money awarded or denied… [m]oney will serve as a diagnostic tool for our study,” says Greenberg. He goes on to describe the sycophancy, backbends and, sometimes, dishonesty practiced by researchers, and the willingness of some government scientists to keep their mouths shut when it behooves their bosses. A disturbing, compelling and well-researched conspiracy story of the ‘I knew it!’ variety.”
………..
“Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress by Daniel Sarewitz, is an excellent counterpart to Greenberg …. If science is corrupt on the one hand, it is also over-sold on the other, a point that Sarewitz addresses very methodically.”
…………..
“I’m one of those who believes that we have far more to gain from good science than we have to lose. Nonetheless, Greenberg’s book brought me up short. This is a dramatic, readable, well-documented, and shocking exposé of the dirty back-door means by which much support for science research is secured in this country. Greenberg cites example after example of how undeserving or questionable projects are funded while, presumably, more promising work goes begging because it lacks powerful patrons. Greenberg also argues that the whole system is corrupt because universities depend on grant overhead for operating budgets, while congressmen and -women want money for their districts, and various scientific disciplines want to increase their clout and standing. Greenberg clearly is very angry, and his anger stems from genuine outrage that an enterprise such as science, which is so important, and so powerful, has participated in making itself an often-sleazy political tool. I hope university administrators and all the federal officials responsible for science funding will read this book–the fault lies less with scientists individually than with the ways in which universities, the federal government, and scientific organizations see their self-interest.”
…………..
“The chapter on the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its claim a few years ago that the country faced a shortage of tens of thousands of scientists is illustrative. Greenberg shows this lobbying effort for increased funds as a knowingly false issue pushed by a merger of institutional and academic interests. Greenberg quotes a US Office of Management & Budget Report which had this to say about scientists: ‘They are the quintessential special interest group…’ He has much to say on the inflated claims of many projects. Although he specifically mentions the aborted Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), it is clear he views more recent projects such as the Human Genome Project, and cloning, in the same light.”
So all this means is that any new real science is ignored as it does not fall into the proper peer review process.
Let garbage science rule!
R. Gates:
But I can say this about the AGW skeptics…either they will go down in history as the biggest heros to ever challenge the supposed dark cabal of the AGW “conspiracy”, or they will be known someday as a group of 21st century flat-earthers, who caused a great deal of confusion on the most important issue of our time.
Ok, Gates, I’ll bite: what do you know about the Scientific Method and how did you come by this info? What is your scientific background?
J. Peden,
My background is not important, as I am not putting forth any original research or adding to the sum total of AGW models already available. I am simply making educated extrapolations. I am not yet a True Believer in the AGW Hypothesis, though as admitted elswhere, and as is obvious from my posts, I tend to think there’s a better than even chance that it is correct. To become a full-fledged “true believer” or to pull back, and become a skeptic, I shall be watching the next few years with keen interest, specifically:
1) Will the long term negative anomaly and downward trend in year-to-year Arctic Sea ice continue, or will it reverse (over more than just a seaon)?
2) Will 2010 turn out to be the warmest on instrument record in the troposhere? Given that the current El Nino is not a strong as 1998, what other mechanism could explain this other than AGW?
3) I also am following Solar Cycle 24 very closely and generally quiet behavior of the sun over the past few years. Even though Cycle 24 is starting to ramp up, the Interplanetary A Index is still weak, though GCR’s have decreased from what they were. This has implications for cloud cover, as most of you know.
I have a great deal of respect for Anthony for managing this site so well, and allowing differing perspectives the opportunity for a forum. In general, the “true believers” on boths side of the AGW issue aren’t going to change their mind from this kind of discourse, but those such as me, who have associates and friends closely allied with climate research, find it most enlightening from several perspectives, for even though I listen to them, (and admittedly, they can be quite convincing) I prefer to do my own investigations as I remain far too curious about things to simply take anyone’s word as gospel.
Here’s one last thought, I believe by 2015 or so, the AGW debate will be over, and my previoius statement about AGW skeptics being heroes or flat-earthers will have come to pass…
R. Gates (11:59:22) :
J. Peden,
My background is not important, as I am not putting forth any original research or adding to the sum total of AGW models already available. I am simply making educated extrapolations.
Your background is in fact important, if indeed you were never exposed to the processes involved in the Scientific Method.
If you don’t know what the Scientific Method is and requires – and, as far as I’ve seen, you have so far refused to advocate its use in Climate Science – then you don’t know what the critical problem is with Climate Science. And you therefore can’t make any “educated guesses” about CAGW because you and Climate Science are not even in the ballpark, much less playing the game.
Until you face the fact that Climate Science is not based upon the Scientific method, all you will do is fool yourself – as your three decision points also indicate.
Do yourself a favor and find out that the Scientific Method requires open acesses to “materials, methods, including code” so that the “science” of any study or conclusion can be “replicated”, which is also perhaps the first rule of true scientific scepticsm and it’s built right into the Scientific Method. There is no true science without scepticism, Period. The Climate Scientists themselves appear to have not asked, “What’s wrong with my hypothesis”, which they should have done before even publishing.
Btw, Peer Review by a few select reviewers was never designed or warranted to insure the “given truth” of the studies reviewed. Never ever! The real Peer Review starts after a study’s publication, as Steve McIntyre, for example, has proven once again – with great difficulty.
Then ask your Climate Science buddies what they think about this crucial failure of Climate Science. They won’t like you, but that’s going to be a price of your “education”. You have to start at the beginning and that’s all there is to it.
Also, btw, I myself would have never thought that scientists operating at the level of the ipcc’s Climate Science simply would not be doing real Science. But I looked starting back in 2000 and saw it myself, much before I’d ever heard of Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts. I was surprised, but there it was.
R. Gates (11:59:22) :
…those such as me, who have associates and friends closely allied with climate research, find it most enlightening from several perspectives, for even though I listen to them, (and admittedly, they can be quite convincing) I prefer to do my own investigations as I remain far too curious about things to simply take anyone’s word as gospel.
Careful! It is curiosity that led many here to go from believing (though not necessarily advocating) CAGW to becoming skeptics, or climate realists. If you continue down that road, you may find yourself at odds with your buddies vis-a-vis the climate issue.
I suspect that may be one key thing keeping you from investigating more fully.