Jerome Ravetz, of Oxford University in the UK.
First I must apologise for the long delay in my making a contribution to WUWT. I confess that I was overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the comments on my first posting; and then I was discouraged by the hostile response to my second posting. By then I was in serious arrears with other work, and so I had to give WUWT a rest. A lot has happened since then, and I am very pleased and encouraged that a spirit of dialogue has taken hold.
Now, many thanks to Willis for reminding me of the challenge to give an example of uncertain facts and high stakes. Let me try. In early 2001 there was evidence of an incipient epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease in England. It was not at all certain, how infectious it would be, or what sorts of containment measures would suffice. There were conflicting values, although these were not made clear to the public at the time. These reflected the interests of the different stakeholders, including beef exporters, other farmers, non-farm users of the countryside, and politicians.
For each of them the stakes were high. The best-known stake at risk was the status of British beef exports, as certified FMD-free; this was worth some hundreds of millions of pounds in the increased price for such beef on the world market. But there were other stakes at risk, including the pedigree herds of cattle and sheep built up by farmers, and (largest of all, as it was later realised) the possible harm to all the non-farm activities in the countryside. And what was eventually realised to be the overriding stake was the political fortunes of Tony Blair, with an impending General Election which he didn’t want to have in the midst of an epidemic.
Coming back to ‘the facts’, these were to be determined by experts; but there were two opposed groups of experts. One was the government scientists, who generally had a conservative approach to the risks and to the science. The other was a group of academics, who had developed an expertise in epidemiological modelling. They made ‘pessimistic’ assumptions about the infectivity of the disease, and so their recommendations were on the side of a very aggressive approach. This suited Tony Blair’s political agenda, and so there was a severe quarantine and very extensive slaughtering. However one might criticise the government’s actions, the decision was indeed urgent, and there was a situation of high stakes, disputed values and uncertain facts.
I believe that epidemics of any sort provide examples of PNS. The uncertainty of the facts does not prevent the stakes from being high; there are always historical precedents to go on. Perhaps it would help if we distinguished between the ‘facts’ about causes, and the ‘stakes’ about effects. Only if both causes and effects are so poorly known as to be speculative, does an apparently PNS situation collapse. Even then it is not ‘normal’ science but something else.
There is another lesson for PNS in the ‘foot and mouth’ episode. It was presented to the public as ‘normal science’: “here’s an epidemic, let’s apply the science and stop it”. The uncertainties and value-conflicts were suppressed. More to the point, the ‘extended peer community’ was nonexistent. Divisions among the scientists were kept under wraps. Damage to the rural communities was revealed piecemeal, and then as incidental to the noble effort of quarantine. Only the investigative journal Private Eye published the gory details of the exterminations.
Again, after it was all over, Private Eye published an analysis. However rough and violent debates might be on the blogosphere (as we have seen!) still that is much better than the sort of blanket of silence that has been thrown over scientific scandals in the past.
Having cleared that point to my own satisfaction, let me now engage further with the debate. One reason for my long silence is that (amidst other obligations) I have been reflecting on what all this means for my doctrines of Post-Normal Science. I believe that I already said that this was developed rather in isolation, and did not enjoy the criticism that can come from students or colleagues. So inevitably, some issues were not raised and addressed. I am now grappling with them. Here they are.
Possible corruptions of PNS. These are inevitable. After all, what prophetic message ever escaped being converted into a battleground between priests and demagogues? But I should be more clear about which corruptions are most likely to emerge in PNS, and then to analyse and warn against them. It will painful, since I will be criticising colleagues who have been well-intentioned and loyal.
Quality. On this I find myself reduced to arm-waving, that ‘we all know what Quality is’. But I can say that I am well aware that Quality is not a simple attribute, but is complex, influenced by history and context, recursive (who guards the guardians?), fundamentally a matter of morality (if the people at the top are crooked, the whole edifice of quality-assurance collapses), and of course fallible. This may seem a very insecure foundation for the sort of knowledge that we need, but it’s the best we have. And if one looks for better guarantees of truth even in Pure Science, one will be disappointed.
I should report on a problem that took some decades to solve, relating to quality-assurance. In my old book, I made the point that quality in science depends on the ethical commitments of its leaders, for there is no effective external system for assessing quality. (I spoke from my experience as a researcher in pure mathematics – perhaps a half-dozen people would be competent to assess my work). A student pointed out that this seems to contradict my calls for greater participation in science (I then called it ‘critical science’). I thought I had covered my tracks on that one, observing that in the antagonistic debating context of that sort of science, noone would be allowed to get away with shoddy work. I even gave the example of Dr. Stockman of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People (incidentally exposing how Political Correctness led Arthur Miller to make a crucial modification of the text). But the student observed that I had assumed that the antagonistic debate would itself be of high quality! Eventually I got to some sort of resolution of the problem, admitting that the quality in PNS might indeed be very low, but giving a principle for testing its procedures. This would be ‘negotiating in good faith’, which I remembered from New Deal labor legislation, and which is now a standard criterion for negotiation. This certainly doesn’t ensure quality in PNS, but it provides a criterion. And, incidentally, it could be used to characterise the sorts of discussions that are now emerging on WUWT.
There is another unsolved problem, Truth. I realise that I have a case of what I might call ‘Dawkins-itis’ in relation to Truth. Just as Prof. Dawkins, however learned and sophisticated on all other issues, comes out in spots at the mere mention of the word ‘God’, I have a similar reaction about ‘Truth’. I must work on this. It might relate to my revulsion at the dogmatic and anti-critical teaching of science that I experienced as a student, where anyone with original ideas or questions was scorned and humiliated. I happily use the terms for other Absolutes, like ‘beauty’, ‘justice’ and ‘holy’; so clearly there is something wrong in my head. Watch this space, if you are interested.
Finally, for this phase of the dialogue, I would like to defend myself against a charge that has been made by various critics. This is, that I personally and intentionally laid the foundations for the corrupted science of the CRU, by providing the justification for Steve Schneider’s perversion of scientific integrity. First, there is no record of the guilty scientists ever mentioning, or even being aware, of PNS during the crucial earlier years. Also, shoddy and corrupted science in other fields did not wait for me to come along to justify it. My influence is traced back to a single footnote by Steven Schneider, citing an essay by me in a large, expensive book, Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (ed. W.C. Clarke and R.E. Munn), (Cambridge, University Press, 1986). PNS first came into the climate picture with the quite recent essay by Mike Hulme in 2007. That was a stage in his own evolution from modeller to critic, and came long after the worst excesses at CRU had been committed. I should say that I do not dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand, since some of them are correct! But this one really does seem far-fetched.
Thanks for your patience and good will. I look forward to further exchanges.
First I must apologise for the long delay in my making a contribution to WUWT. I confess that I was overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the comments on my first posting; and then I was discouraged by the hostile response to my second posting. By then I was in serious arrears with other work, and so I had to give WUWT a rest. A lot has happened since then, and I am very pleased and encouraged that a spirit of dialogue has taken hold.
Now, many thanks to Willis for reminding me of the challenge to give an example of uncertain facts and high stakes. Let me try. In early 2001 there was evidence of an incipient epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease in England. It was not at all certain, how infectious it would be, or what sorts of containment measures would suffice. There were conflicting values, although these were not made clear to the public at the time. These reflected the interests of the different stakeholders, including beef exporters, other farmers, non-farm users of the countryside, and politicians. For each of them the stakes were high. The best-known stake at risk was the status of British beef exports, as certified FMD-free; this was worth some hundreds of millions of pounds in the increased price for such beef on the world market. But there were other stakes at risk, including the pedigree herds of cattle and sheep built up by farmers, and (largest of all, as it was later realised) the possible harm to all the non-farm activities in the countryside. And what was eventually realised to be the overriding stake was the political fortunes of Tony Blair, with an impending General Election which he didn’t want to have in the midst of an epidemic. Coming back to ‘the facts’, these were to be determined by experts; but there were two opposed groups of experts. One was the government scientists, who generally had a conservative approach to the risks and to the science. The other was a group of academics, who had developed an expertise in epidemiological modelling. They made ‘pessimistic’ assumptions about the infectivity of the disease, and so their recommendations were on the side of a very aggressive approach. This suited Tony Blair’s political agenda, and so there was a severe quarantine and very extensive slaughtering. However one might criticise the government’s actions, the decision was indeed urgent, and there was a situation of high stakes, disputed values and uncertain facts.
I believe that epidemics of any sort provide examples of PNS. The uncertainty of the facts does not prevent the stakes from being high; there are always historical precedents to go on. Perhaps it would help if we distinguished between the ‘facts’ about causes, and the ‘stakes’ about effects. Only if both causes and effects are so poorly known as to be speculative, does an apparently PNS situation collapse. Even then it is not ‘normal’ science but something else.
There is another lesson for PNS in the ‘foot and mouth’ episode. It was presented to the public as ‘normal science’: “here’s an epidemic, let’s apply the science and stop it”. The uncertainties and value-conflicts were suppressed. More to the point, the ‘extended peer community’ was nonexistent. Divisions among the scientists were kept under wraps. Damage to the rural communities was revealed piecemeal, and then as incidental to the noble effort of quarantine. Only the investigative journal Private Eye published the gory details of the exterminations.
Again, after it was all over, Private Eye published an analysis. However rough and violent debates might be on the blogosphere (as we have seen!) still that is much better than the sort of blanket of silence that has been thrown over scientific scandals in the past.
Having cleared that point to my own satisfaction, let me now engage further with the debate. One reason for my long silence is that (amidst other obligations) I have been reflecting on what all this means for my doctrines of Post-Normal Science. I believe that I already said that this was developed rather in isolation, and did not enjoy the criticism that can come from students or colleagues. So inevitably, some issues were not raised and addressed. I am now grappling with them. Here they are.
Possible corruptions of PNS. These are inevitable. After all, what prophetic message ever escaped being converted into a battleground between priests and demagogues? But I should be more clear about which corruptions are most likely to emerge in PNS, and then to analyse and warn against them. It will painful, since I will be criticising colleagues who have been well-intentioned and loyal.
Quality. On this I find myself reduced to arm-waving, that ‘we all know what Quality is’. But I can say that I am well aware that Quality is not a simple attribute, but is complex, influenced by history and context, recursive (who guards the guardians?), fundamentally a matter of morality (if the people at the top are crooked, the whole edifice of quality-assurance collapses), and of course fallible. This may seem a very insecure foundation for the sort of knowledge that we need, but it’s the best we have. And if one looks for better guarantees of truth even in Pure Science, one will be disappointed.
I should report on a problem that took some decades to solve, relating to quality-assurance. In my old book, I made the point that quality in science depends on the ethical commitments of its leaders, for there is no effective external system for assessing quality. (I spoke from my experience as a researcher in pure mathematics – perhaps a half-dozen people would be competent to assess my work). A student pointed out that this seems to contradict my calls for greater participation in science (I then called it ‘critical science’). I thought I had covered my tracks on that one, observing that in the antagonistic debating context of that sort of science, noone would be allowed to get away with shoddy work. I even gave the example of Dr. Stockman of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People (incidentally exposing how Political Correctness led Arthur Miller to make a crucial modification of the text). But the student observed that I had assumed that the antagonistic debate would itself be of high quality! Eventually I got to some sort of resolution of the problem, admitting that the quality in PNS might indeed be very low, but giving a principle for testing its procedures. This would be ‘negotiating in good faith’, which I remembered from New Deal labor legislation, and which is now a standard criterion for negotiation. This certainly doesn’t ensure quality in PNS, but it provides a criterion. And, incidentally, it could be used to characterise the sorts of discussions that are now emerging on WUWT.
There is another unsolved problem, Truth. I realise that I have a case of what I might call ‘Dawkins-itis’ in relation to Truth. Just as Prof. Dawkins, however learned and sophisticated on all other issues, comes out in spots at the mere mention of the word ‘God’, I have a similar reaction about ‘Truth’. I must work on this. It might relate to my revulsion at the dogmatic and anti-critical teaching of science that I experienced as a student, where anyone with original ideas or questions was scorned and humiliated. I happily use the terms for other Absolutes, like ‘beauty’, ‘justice’ and ‘holy’; so clearly there is something wrong in my head. Watch this space, if you are interested.
Finally, for this phase of the dialogue, I would like to defend myself against a charge that has been made by various critics. This is, that I personally and intentionally laid the foundations for the corrupted science of the CRU, by providing the justification for Steve Schneider’s perversion of scientific integrity. First, there is no record of the guilty scientists ever mentioning, or even being aware, of PNS during the crucial earlier years. Also, shoddy and corrupted science in other fields did not wait for me to come along to justify it. My influence is traced back to a single footnote by Steven Schneider, citing an essay by me in a large, expensive book, Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (ed. W.C. Clarke and R.E. Munn), (Cambridge, University Press, 1986). PNS first came into the climate picture with the quite recent essay by Mike Hulme in 2007. That was a stage in his own evolution from modeller to critic, and came long after the worst excesses at CRU had been committed. I should say that I do not dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand, since some of them are correct! But this one really does seem far-fetched.
Thanks for your patience and good will. I look forward to further exchanges.
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mods ~ first attempt went poof and disappeared, my apologies if this is a repeat
Sir,
After your first essay, I was a supporter. After your second, I was angry. After your third, I must advise that I consider PNS a serious threat to civilization. Over the top though that may sound, the evidence is clear.
During the recent flu crisis, Egypt slaughtered its swine population, though little if any credible evidence to suggest doing so would be beneficial existed. Out of “an abundance of caution” and because the matter was “urgent” the slaughter was carried out. In reality, swine in Egypt are owned almost exclusively by Christians. The slaughter was no more than an excuse to persecute them, and the justification stood on the shoulders of PNS.
Since being sensitized to your perspective on PNS, I have seen it repeated in one form or another from recent articles on climate in the prestigious magazine “the Economist” to the angry calls for violence published on the Greenpeace website, to the insanity of a United Nations resolution attempting to elevate even perceived harm to the environment to the same level as crimes against humanity. I could cite many more examples, the point being that threaded through them all is the perverse insistence that action be taken by those who claim the moral high ground and whose justification rests not upon facts or reason, but upon PNS. Your theory represents not a mechanism by which rational decisions may be made in the modern era, but one by which irrational decisions can be forced upon the populace when there is a lack of evidence to support them. It is not a mechanism to make good decisions when the science is uncertain, it is merely an excuse to make decisions despite the uncertainty. This confers great power upon those who seize it, and the opportunity that this represents for absolute corruption should be obvious.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis became concerned not that some Jews might escape, but some of their genes. Out of an abundance of caution that they be exterminated, birth records were examined in detail. Families that had been Christian for three generations were sent to the gas chambers to ensure that no Jewish genes survived. You may not see PNS in this, but I do. I see it in the persecution of Christians in Egypt, in the taxation plans that would cripple the first world for the sin of creating wealth while rewarding the third world for having failed to do so, in justifications for violence against AGW sceptics, and in UN resolutions that would equate the felling of trees with mass murder. Everywhere I see someone trying to take for themselves from others, or to do harm to others, without the evidence to justify it, I see the absolute corruption of PNS.
I would like to thank Anthony for giving you a platform, and for articulating so well what you believe PNS to be. I have never believed in the saying “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. I instead subscribe to the notion that “forewarned is forearmed”. Thank you for the warning.
Thank you, Dr. Ravetz. I’ll have to read this when I have time to study it and comment with at least a little knowledge of what you actually said.
R Craigen,
Well… yesssss. Except that post-modernism is a recent iteration of radical skepticism.
Mark (09:37:45) :
ScientistForTruth (08:58:36) :
“The von Storch article is not evidence of the presence of post-normal science. It is evidence of the manner in which the researchers characterised the behaviour of a group of scientists.”
Well, that’s a stretch! Don’t you know: Hans von Storch was editor of a climate journal and is one of the most prominent of all climate scientists? He’s not a researcher looking in from the outside – he’s not a social scientist. Get real! Oh, I see, he, as a climate scientist, might just have made a mistake…he characterized the behaviour of his colleagues as PNS (after Ravetz), but he might have been mistaken, might he?
Wren (10:45:00)
“There’s compelling evidence of CO2AGW. That’s why no scientific society of standing disputes it.”
The “compelling evidence” is as compelling as this compelling evidence: click
Post nornal science seems to say that the science may not be settled, but the consequences if we do nothing are so bad that we should so something even though we may be wrong. to avoid the consequences. However, it forgets that the consequences of doing something about AGW are even worse and much more certain, a huge governemtn takover of averything we do, with consequent huge expense ruining the worlds economy and resulting in poverty and death for millions, the vast burocracy needed to ‘save the world” from, well, us, behaving like all such all powerfull governments have in the past, power corrupts, then abolute power corrupts absolutly. In short, the “solution” to AGW is as bad or much worse that even AGW is. Therefore post normal science suggests that we actually have a choice between uncertain AGW bad things and certain bad things from a Solution” to AGW, I’ll pass on the “solution”, thank you.
In addition, more and more evidence has been seen that the “bad things” that AGW might bring are at the least aggagerations and at worse outright lies, and that the evidence for AGW is the same. The evidence from say the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods strongly suggests that we would not only survive AGW but actually thrive, and that global cooling or even a much more likely ice age (which is what we should REALLY be looking at) are much more dangerous, likely, and worthy of our study and action.
But of course, you will never hear that AGW might be false, since in the ivory tower of acedemia, you are surrounded by people who stand to gain money, power, and great prestige if they “save the world” from AGW, and stand to lose money, power, and a LOT of prestige if it is proven false, so you will never hear that it might be false, or hear about any consequences of trying to stop it, since those consequences will only effect “the little people” outside the ivory towers. You need to get out and look around, find out what taking action against AGW will do to “the little people”, try talking to some of them instead of only hanging out with your ivory tower crowd all the time. How many of them have already lost their job because of governments increasing takover of all power and money, checked out the goverment of greece lately, what about those countries where governmet already controlls everything, is that what you want? Even if AGW is true, can we solve it if we are all broke, or under a dictatorship? Do dictatorships ever really solve anything? Suggestion, get the book “The Road To Serfdom”, and check it out and compare it to what you read in the paper, now, is bigger government a good idea?
And you might think that all those other aacedemics you work with are really sincere, and so you should believe them. But it is possible to be sincere and very wrong, and it is possible to so slowly slide into increasing lies (rienforced by telling the lies to each other over and over, I believe it’s known as “incestious amplification” and “groupthink”) that, like the drunkard, you sincerly believe that the next drink will do you no harm.
And ask youself, do I stand to gain or lose if AGW is true, do my friends, might that effect how I think about it?
J.Peden (10:46:13) :
Wren:
“Doing nothing” is based on what assumptions and forecasts?
Based upon what I just got through explaining and arguing – against the claim that GW/CO2AGW is itself a net disease entity with a known etiologic agent, and with an alleged cure that is not worse than the alleged disease.
The FDA does this kind of analysis all the time in evaluating drug treatments for proven diseases. Drug benefit must significantly outweigh its risk/side-effects in the treatment of a known disease, given its own risks.
======
So if you can’t do blinded null hypothesis testing on GW/CO2AGW like you do on promising drug treatments, you should do nothing? Nah !
Smokey (11:03:01) :
Wren (10:45:00)
“There’s compelling evidence of CO2AGW. That’s why no scientific society of standing disputes it.”
The “compelling evidence” is as compelling as this compelling evidence: click
——
That chart isn’t funny, just goofy.
Dr. Ravetz:
I understand why you chose the examples you did. QA itself can become political. I worked both as a Safety Rep. and as Hardware/Software tester.
There is pressure to move product/theory along.
When QA breaks down at a coal mine, people die. Inspectors get reluctant and familiar with mine owners. Complacency is the easy path, but it kills.
When QA breaks down in Hardware, devices fail more frequently and sooner. Toshiba got sued for 2.5Billion some years back for sweeping a known failure under the rug.
The QA of Science. Who does that? If peer review breaks down or is corrupted/constrained, there is no QA.
Politicians are neither Scientists nor QA people. They operate under political expediency and correctness.
Right now, if I were to present the AGW bug to Engineering, they would jump all over me for insufficient cause, and my boss would be glaring at me for filing a known issue. I could not prove Global Warming was caused by C02.
And if I presented the AGW Safety Issue to Management, I’d get scolded for trying to Grandma the Process. I could not prove AGW was a threat to the miners.
So, keep up the postings.
Welcome back, Dr. Ravetz. Perhaps you’d like to meet my friend Dr. Lysenko? I believe the two of you have a great deal in common.
C. the C.
R. Craigen (10:13:37) :
I have decided that the existence of objective truth is axiomatic to scientific endeavor, and prefer to spend my time improving our understanding of truth than trying to build without a foundation.
———————
Indeed, the beginnings of science lie with a Platonic justification for the search for truth concerning the physical world. The justification was theistic: because the world was designed by the Demiurge according to rational principles, and because the human mind is capable of rational thought the human mind to understand the world. The use of reasoning and logic reveal deeper truths than do mere physical encounters with matter. Thus, for example, while our bodies may tell us that the earth is flat, the study of ships sailing across the horizon and other evidence (the different lengths of shadows in Alexandria vs Athens at midday) tell us the earth is a sphere.
Since Judaism and Christianity also had a high reverence for rational belief, and the search for the truth, the basic principles that underlie scientific investigation were nurtured, even if without much enthusiasm, through the Dark Ages and emerged with increasing vigour in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Science is not, contra the thinking of many today, an Enlightenment or post-Christian phenomenon. However, Post-Modernism is both post-Judeo-Christian (rejects any idea of truth) and Post-Enlightenment (rejects the primacy of logic and rationalism). Some critics think that science itself cannot survive in the post-Christian era, due to the rejection of absolutes such as truth, and have been predicting this for several decades.
Landry’s advertisement at Joe’s crab Shack
“Free All you can eat Crabs tomorrow”
If they throw in free Ice tea and free refills we have a deal.
We are going to burn up Tomorrow.
Para normal science at it’s best.
“There’s compelling evidence of CO2AGW. That’s why no scientific society of standing disputes it.”
Yet there are members of those societies who DO dispute it. Why? Simple, the leaders of that society stand to benefite in terms of money, power, and prestige, if they support AGW. They stand to lose all that if they do not, in fact, if they do not, they will likely be hounded out of office and then blackballed. So do they support AGW, heck yeah!
Also, there is a difference between the leaders of those societies and the rank and file, the leaders are bureaucrats, the rank and file are not, bureaucrats stand to gain great power over others if AGW is true, the rank and file do not, or do to a lesser degree. Hence the difference between what the leaders of those societies say and what the rank and file say. The leaders aren’t really scientists anymore, just more government types who, naturally, want government that is larger and more important. In additon, they, unlike the rank and file, have far more connection to those in government, who naturally like AGW since it’s being true benifits them. That connection puts pressure on them to, shall we say, realist that “one hand washes the other” and “we should all work together as a team”. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, kapish?
Plus we have seen here and elsewhere that not only is the evidence not compelling, but the evidence against it is more compelling, and the compelling evidence in many cases ranges from sloppy science to outright lies (which is where I would catagorize the “wind shear” method of measuring air temperature as compared to direct measurement).
Because of compelling evidence that climate is affected by man’s activities as well as know natural, no scientific society of standing disputes GW/CO2AGW. Average global temperatures have continued to rise even during periods that experienced the natural cooling influences of a down-cycle in sunspot activity and a La Nina.
Those skeptical of GW/CO2AGW not only do not have compelling counter evidence but have little evidence at all. Their argument seems to be they don’t know why know natural causes don’t explain the rise in global temperature but they know man’s activities had little or nothing to do with it because it was a result of natural causes that no one knows about yet.
Well, I’ve read what Dr Ravetz has written, but so far I’ve seen no science in it. In fact he has convinced me that PNS is not any kind of science, it masquerades as science, dresses itself up in scientific sounding language, may persuade the scientifically ignorant that it is science, but is just empty flim-flammery.
Perhaps PNS is amusing to certain academics as an intellectual word game, rather like Mornington Crescent.
Bushy’s comments are concise and spot on.
FMD is a poor example because it is obviously bad if a herd gets the virus, so Draconian measures, while disputable in their means, cannot be dismissed.
Working the AGW backwards, it is unclear that GW is bad. Indeed, in this humble scientist’s opinion (I am a commercial scientist, not an academic one with tenure), warming and increase in CO2 is a very good thing. So the three idols of the AGW faith, 1) warming is happening, 2) it is caused by man, and 3) it is bad if the earth warms and CO2 goes up, are all dogma under dispute and hypotheses unproven.
I know that these academics (conspirators some?) have to make a living. But not at my or my offspring’s expense.
Wren (10:45:00)
“There’s compelling evidence of CO2AGW. That’s why no scientific society of standing disputes it.”
Not that consensus means anything in the matter of real scientific validity or “proof”, Wren, but let me know anyway when the membership numbers of those societies exceeds ~2.4 billion people, the combined population numbers of India and China, countries whose Boards of Directors have found strongly against the Catastrophic element of CO2AGW, “where the rubber meets the road”, in comparison to their own need to develop by methods which massively increase World output of fossil fuel CO2 in order to substantially improve their own populations’ well being.
The analogy fails because the cause of the FMD is known.
I have a much better analogy:
Chronic heartburn, peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. Thousands of papers have been written, reviewed and published that linked modern lifestyle (spicy foods, stressed life, etc.) with chronic heartburn, which, was said, cause peptic ulcers and stomach cancers.
Since the alleged causes were linked to modern lifestyle, the remedies were a change in food and life habits, and antacids and acid production antagonists (antihistamines, proton pump antagonists…)
But, some studies were published where a bacteria, Helicobacter pylori was linked to these diseases (chronic heartburn, peptic ulcers, and stomach cancers) The real cause, a bacteria, was found.
The response of the (true) scientific community was impressive. The new findings were examined and embraced. The old papers were discarded and new remedies (antibiotics) were prescribed. No old guard tried to hide, dismiss or attack the new findings with ad hominem fallacies.
In light of the many facts against CAGW, (no temperature rise in the last 15 years, no Arctic/Antarctic shrinking, etc…) Why the Climate branch of the scientific community doesn’t reject the CAGW conjecture like the medicinal branch did with the old chronic heartburn hypothesis?
In the previous post, first sentence, make that ” as well as known natural causes”
Wren (11:08:12)
“Blinded [sic] null hypothesis testing”? Wren, you’re out of your depth. Blind testing refers to tests on human subjects, not on the planet’s natural climate fluctuations.
And regarding my chart link, you said: “That chart isn’t funny, just goofy.”
Well, it is funny, but thank you for making my point. My ‘goofy’ chart correlates with rising CO2 better than satellite temperature measurements correlate with rising CO2: click
Note the R^2 [non]correlation between MSU measurements and CO2. Rising temperatures as a result of the planet’s emergence from the LIA is being falsely attributed to rising CO2, without any empirical, falsifiable evidence supporting the CO2AGW hypothesis.
ScientistForTruth (11:01:56) :
I don’t think it is a stretch, I think it is rigorous. He is a climate scientist, as you say. It doesn’t follow from that that he has an appreciation of the vaguaries of doing social research. Social sciences like anthropology and sociology etc are not ‘sciences’ in the true sense because they cannot be. And they cannot be because, unlike hard sciences, the objects of study – namely humans and beliefs – possess their own subjectivity, which always get in the way, mess things up, and create an inevitable interpretive distance. This doesn’t mean you can’t do rigorous social science. But it does mean that you can’t write it, conduct it, or draw conclusions from it in the same manner as from the hard sciences.
Mark (11:01:11) :
R Craigen,
Well… yesssss. Except that post-modernism is a recent iteration of radical skepticism.
Mark, while postmodernists would present their worldview as skepticism on steroids, nothing could be further than the truth. Put more succinctly than in my bloated comment above, the skeptic does not doubt the existence of objective truth, only a version of it that is proffered to him. The postmodernist, faced with competing claims of truth, decides that it is not the claims, but truth itself, which should be doubted. A fundamental distinction.
The skeptic engages in a virtuous struggle to uncover truth; the postmodernist abdicates from the struggle and regards his non-engagement — even aggressive “deconstruction” of the struggle — as virtuous.
Postmodernism is epistemological “multiculturalism” (in the sense in which this word is abused in today’s world). Are you familiar with Mark Steyn’s take on multiculturalism?
Postmodernism, like “multiculturalism”, is abdication, not engagement. Both are malign western conceits.
Smokey (11:46:17) :
Wren (11:08:12)
“Blinded [sic] null hypothesis testing”? Wren, you’re out of your depth. Blind testing refers to tests on human subjects, not on the planet’s natural climate fluctuations.
And regarding my chart link, you said: “That chart isn’t funny, just goofy.”
Well, it is funny, but thank you for making my point. My ‘goofy’ chart correlates with rising CO2 better than satellite temperature measurements correlate with rising CO2: click
Note the R² [non]correlation between MSU measurements and CO2. Rising temperatures as a result of the planet’s emergence from the LIA is being falsely attributed to rising CO2, without any empirical, falsifiable evidence supporting the CO2AGW hypothesis.
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You can find lots of patently silly correlations. Just remember correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causality, and causality doesn’t necessarily mean correlation with one independent variable when several independent variables are involved.
What’s your theory on why average global temperatures have continued to rise even during periods that experienced the natural cooling influences of a down-cycle in sunspot activity and a La Nina?
I won’t accept the theory it was caused by magic.
Dr. Ravetz:
I apologize if you find this to be hostile, but post-normal science is a crock. Once we define facts as relative, PNS can be used to justify anything.
My assessment is PNS is best used when you already have your conclusions and you want to create facts to support them.
Dr. Ravetz,
We might be a little rough and tumble here but glad to see you back.
I guess where I am at with PNS is that I think it’s a fair description of a particular situation and associated issues. Where I think it went wrong is when people started looking at it as a game plan. I’m a little curious if that was intended or not.
Anyway, again, glad to see you back and joining the fray.
Cheers!