Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dr. Ravetz, welcome back to the fray with your new post. My congratulations on your courage and willingness to go “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …”
You are putting AGW supporting scientists to shame with your bravery, most of them (with some conspicuous exceptions like Dr. Meier and Dr. Curry) post on some site where people will agree with them and pat them on the back and tell them how right they are. Here, nobody is right, everyone gets attacked (including me), and that is the strength of the site.
Onwards to your issues:
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.
My thanks in turn to Dr. Ravetz for providing the example. I now see the difference between his view and mine. What he sees as an unusual situation (facts uncertain, values in dispute) I see as everyday life.
Facts are rarely certain. Life is like that. Science is like that. It is very, very uncommon that we have scientific certainty about any complex real-world question. Despite that, throughout its history science has been of inestimable value in exactly these situations. This is because, rather than being based on something vague like beliefs or myths or “quality”, it is based on hard evidence and falsifiability and replicability. When facts are uncertain, we need more science, not less.
Regarding values, as long as there is more than one person involved (that is to say all of the time) values will likely be in dispute. Again, so what?
Since science has dealt quite well with these problems for centuries, why do we need a new post-normal “science”? How is the example different from any of the other public issues where science plays a part? Yes, as Dr. Ravetz clearly articulates, science often gets lost in the play of power politics … but that is a political issue, not a scientific issue.
Dr. Ravetz continues:
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.
I would put all of this under the heading of “transparency”. Again, this suppression and hiding is nothing new, nor is it a problem with science itself. Throughout history the people in power have sought to make their decisions in a way that is shielded from the public eye. See my discussion of the CRU Freedom of Information Act (FOI) debacle for a modern example.
I do not, however, see this as requiring any kind of “post-normal” change. It simply requires transparency, transparency, and more transparency. That’s why we have “Sunshine Laws” in the US requiring public meetings of governmental bodies. Thats why we have FOI laws. Not because of any problem with science, but because of a problem with humans and their power games. Sunlight is the best disinfectant for that disease, not a new kind of “science”.
Dr. Ravetz then discusses a couple of issues that had been raised by commenters in his previous posts.
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.
Well, despite his warning of inevitability, “democracy” as a prophetic message seems to have done pretty well. “Liberty” hasn’t fared too badly either. “Marxism”, on the other hand, led to the death of millions of people. Post-normal “science”, like the Marxism that Dr. Ravetz followed for much of his life, is rife with possibilities for corruption. This is because it preaches that, rather than following a hard line of evidence and scientific replicability, we should follow a very soft mushy line of something called “quality”. Me, I agree with Robert Heinlein, who said:
“What are the facts? Again and again and again-what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history”–what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
Or as Homer Simpson said:
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!
It is only when people don’t like facts proving something that is remotely true that they start clamoring for a judgment based on something like “quality”. Dr. Ravetz goes on to discuss this problem of the vague nature of “quality”, saying:
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.
Although Dr. Ravetz claims that “we all know what Quality is”, count me among the ones who don’t have a clue what it is. Dr. Ravetz seems unable to define it, despite my repeated requests for clarification. I disagree entirely that “quality” is the “best we have” as a foundation for the sort of knowledge we need, as Dr. Ravetz categorically states. I don’t want something undefined (and perhaps undefinable) as the foundation for my knowledge. I prefer to build my edifices on data and evidence and mathematics and facts and replicability and falsifiability and the usual scientific foundations, rather than on “quality”, whatever that might be.
Dr. Ravetz then reveals his aversion to the concept of “truth”:
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.
I can see why, if that is his reaction to the word “truth”, he might be averse to science. For me, a scientific truth is merely something which we have not yet falsified. And until it is falsified (as most “truths” may be in time), it is our best guide. For me, scientific truth should be the “foundation for the sort of knowledge we need”, as Dr. Ravetz puts it.
Dr. Ravetz then defends himself against a straw man, viz:
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.
I neither think nor have I said that Dr. Ravetz intentionally laid the foundations for the corrupted science of the CRU. However, what he calls “Steve Schneider’s perversion of scientific integrity” fits perfectly into the framework of post-normal “science”. For those unaware of Schneider’s statement, it was:
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.
Call me crazy, but I prefer scientists who are scrupulously honest, regardless of whether or not they are effective. I don’t want “scary scenarios”. But post-normal AGW scientists seem to have no problem with Schneider or his claim. For them, “scary scenarios” are their bread and butter.
Next, as ScientistForTruth pointed out in his comment on Dr. Ravetz’s earlier essay, the influence of post-normal “science” on climate science does not trace to “a single footnote by Steven Schneider”, nor did it come into the discussion “long after the worst excesses at CRU had been committed.” To the contrary, Dr. Ravetz himself linked the two back in 1990, and the link was cited by Bray and Von Storch in their 1999 paper, “Climate Science: An Empirical Example of Postnormal Science”. So the idea that it all came to pass after the CRU excesses is nonsense, it was in play a decade before that. ScientistForTruth provides further examples as well, his comment is worth reading.
As to whether post-normal “science” is totally in tune with and accepted by the AGW proponents, consider the list of recommended blogs in the blogroll at Post-Normal Times. Post-Normal Times is the main website espousing post-normal “science”, and Dr. Ravetz is listed as one of the Editors. Here are the blogs that they think represent good, honest science:
Science & Policy Blogs
A few things ill considered
Al’s Journal [Al Gore]
CEJournal
Climate Progress
ClimatePolicy
ClimateScienceWatch
Deltoid
deSmogBlog
Dot Earth
EcoEquity
Effect Measure
Environmental Economics
Hybrid Vigor
James’ Empty Blog
jfleck at inkstain
maribo
Neverending Audit
Only in it for the gold
Rabett Run
RealClimate
Resilience Science
Skeptical Science
Stoat
The Intersection
Other Science & Policy Links
Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (NESH)
NUSAP Net
Real World Economics Review
SciDev Net
Stephen H. Schneider, Climatologist
Union of Concerned Scietists [sic]
We have Steven Scheider’s link, and links to RealClimate, Rabett Run, Skeptical Science, Stoat, deSmogBlog, Deltoid, and the rest of the un-indicted co-conspirators. Many of these blogs ruthlessly censor opposing scientific views, in what I suppose is the best post-normal fashion. We have the blog of the noted climate scientist, Al Gore.
But not one blog which opposes the AGW “consensus” is listed. No Watts Up With That, which was voted the Best Science Blog last year. No ClimateAudit, voted the Best Science Blog the year before that. Not one real science blog, just dissent-suppressing apologists for AGW pseudo-science. Color me unimpressed, that is as one-sided a list as I can imagine. How is that scientific in any sense?
So while Dr. Ravetz may disavow any responsibility for the AGW debacle or the CRU malfeasance, it is quite clear that the concepts of post-normal “science” are central to the anti-scientific philosophy espoused on those AGW blogs, and by the AGW movement in general. Coincidence? You be the judge …
Yes, I agree that Dr. Ravetz did not, as he says, “personally and intentionally [lay] the foundations” for the nonsense that passes for science in the AGW camp, from the CRU on down. But his philosophy has most certainly and quite consciously been used as a guiding star by those who would prefer that we do not look at the man behind the curtain … and that is no coincidence at all. Like Marxism, post-normal “science” is a perfect philosophy for those who would propound their own ideology while hiding behind a pseudo-scientific shield of “Quality”.
Finally, you may have noted that I have called it post-normal “science” throughout this essay. This is for a very good reason.
— It may be post-normal … but it is not science by even the most expansive definition of the word. —
Let me close by saying that despite my (obvious) distaste for Dr. Ravetz’s philosophy, he has my highest admiration for putting his ideas out on this forum. That, to me, is real science. Science progresses by people making claims in a public forum, whether in journals or blogs or other media, and other people trying to falsify the claims. At the end, what is left standing is “truth” … at least until it is falsified at some future date. In this manner (if in no other), Dr. Ravetz is following the scientific method, and has my respect for doing so.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Willis, perhaps a better illustration would be and old man with a lance, riding a mule, charging a line of windmills in the distance. Climate science sits, smug and self-satisfied, immune to the most devastating facts. It’s getting colder somewhere, I read in my paper today, because of global warming. Not a blink from the editor, not the least trace of shame from the reporter.
http://www.greatdreams.com/political/Don-Quixote-Windmill.gif
Keep breaking those lances. Eventually something will give.
JF
Oh, yes, Dr Ravetz’s post-normal science. Tosh. Science exists to remove opinion, not valorise it. But my respect, Dr, for having the guts to defend it. Science, post-normal or not, needs people who are prepared to defend their corner in public.
I believe it is Charge of the Scottish Greys, rendered somewhat dubious because of a peculiar colour wash and its cropping.
PN”S” is the apologia of all manner of fiction foisted on the public in order to extract money and power from that selfsame ignorant public…
Buddenbrook (00:33:25) :
I agree with you. Scientists wanting to hold on to a theory don’t need PNS to rationalize their actions. If PNS had been used *in public* to defend AGW theory, that would have been another matter. It hasn’t. Instead, what’s being used to defend it is the claim that it’s just good science, that the scientific method has been correctly applied and that anyone who objects suffers from “anti-science syndrome” (Joe Romm’s favorite phrase) or is otherwise evil, stupid and/or funded by big oil.
Dr Ravetz : “we all know what Quality is”
I agree. We all know that quality is what comes from open and continued testing of hypotheses, doing everything possible to disprove them using real data and real observations.
OK I will try and post it again.
“Post Normal Science”?
How about post AGW Fraud?
How about CO2 debunked as a “greenhouse gas” backed up by easily reproducible experiments and verified by real data that has been established and excepted science for over half a century?
Click my name for more!
One important point Dr Ravetz did not mention, the UK had been through a serious Foot & Mouth before in the 1960s – wthin living memory – and there had followed a commission of enquiry which made recommendations and contingency plans were drawn up so that a future epidemic could be dealt with based on the experience previously gained.
The UK Government and scientific establishment entirely ignored the commissions report and recommendations and so re-set the learning curve. Those who called for the commission’s proposal to be implemented were shouted down.
Eventually the Government did resort to what had previously been proposed which did much to bring, what by then had become a very sorry and serious affair, to its grisly conclusion.
As with Foot & Mouth, we already have plenty of recorded experience of weather and climate, warming and cooling, freezing and thawing and the fortunes of Mankind in the face of changing climate and other natural events.
Of course there are no jobs or money in not setting out to rediscover what we already know – and talking up the dangers of imagined calamities that “science” can help us avoid, keeps the gravy train rolling and the gravy flowing for the politicos and “scientists” alike. It also fuels the eco-grief industry with hard cash and a reason to exist.
I would not call this Post-Normal science as it is the normal science of the Dark Ages: it must be Retro-science then.
We may therefore soon look forward to some good old fashioned witch burning.
Willis,
Why don’t you write a book. You are a great writer on this issue and I suspect your life story is fascinating too. If I recall you have been a Coral Island dweller, a fisherman, a logger and a scientist.
I’ll buy it.
40
Ummmm. I don’t want to sound like some sort of purist here. BUT
The quote about “Once more unto the breach, dear friends” is from King Henry V, who was King of England. The soldiers you show in the picture are from the famous cavalry regiment the Scots Greys who were Scottish. Sorry to be picky, but the two were from different countries (albeit that we and the Scots now share a common monarch)
;o)
Buddenbrook (00:33:25)
Perhaps so, perhaps no. But please don’t try to revise the past. I answered this in the previous thread. You just didn’t like my answer, but that’s no reason to try to make folks believe that I didn’t answer you. So I’ll go over it again.
We have had new technologies for centuries, each of which provided new and much more powerful ways to destroy each other. Each one was seen as a grave danger to the established order.
However, science has not been what controlled and blunted the impact of the new technologies. New technologies have been controlled by new laws, not by some new kind of science. When guns were introduced, there arose new laws about who could use them. When guns made it to Japan, they were banned entirely. When we came up with nuclear weapons, we came up with nuclear non-proliferation treaties. When poison gases started to be used in warfare, we came up with the Geneva Conventions.
But in no case that I know of have new technologies had their impacts restrained by some new understanding or new kind of science … in every case, it has been laws that were used to control the new technologies, not science. Perhaps you have an example of a new kind of science being used to control some new technology. I don’t.
You say we need “new frameworks” to control the new technologies. I’m afraid I don’t understand what that means … what is a “new framework” when it is at home?
Ravitz said: “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”
No, quality is not a matter of morality, nor does morality imply quality. Quality is hard and solid and not ‘influenced by history’.
I would add that Jerry Ravetz was not only responsible for pushing PNS, but was also active in policy formation right up to the European Commission. For example, Sylvie Faucheux ran meetings in Brussels in January 1997: ‘Mobilising European Knowledge and Motivation for Action on Climate Change’, which produced the paper, with Ravetz as co-author, ‘Procedural leadership in climate policy: a European task’, published in ‘Global Environmental Change’, Vol.7, No. 3, 1997. This paper sets out the ways of pushing the eco-agenda, with prescriptions of what climate policy in Europe ‘should’ be.
Interestingly, in Ravetz’s essay ‘The Post-Normal Science of Precaution’ (2002) he states “global climate change does not have a simple ‘cause’ that can be identified and eliminated. Hence the old belief in scientific certainty is lost; in place of objective facts, we have an open clash of interests and world-views.”
Since natural changes to climate have been with us for millennia, and controlling those hasn’t been the interest of those espousing interventions, we arrive at the conclusion that anthropogenic causes cannot even be identified, never mind eliminated. So the AGW agenda really boils down to vested interests and worldview – politics and religion.
Mike Hulme in his paper ‘Does climate adaptation policy need probabilities?’ (2004) stated: “determining the probability of climate change cannot be resolved within what Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) call ‘normal’ science (i.e. routine puzzle-solving by experts, whose knowledge serves as a base for policy decisions)”.
So, Ravetz can give policy advice, possibly veering on advocacy, regarding anthropogenic climate change, but its probability of occurrence cannot be determined scientifically, nor can it be established as a cause and eliminated. We see how lumping climate change in with diseases among populations of discrete entities (as a classic case requiring PNS) is quite absurd.
There are some interesting observations in the paper by Risbey ‘Some dangers of ‘dangerous’ climate change’, Climate Policy 6 (2006). Risbey collaborated with Ravetz on this paper.
“Whether we choose to focus on CO2 concentration, temperature change, sea level rise, or species extinctions, we face the same problem. Where do we set the threshold…Any threshold that we might choose must be arbitrary…As noted by Jerry Ravetz (personal communication), the problem of thresholds is an old problem…The UNFCCC has set the objective of preventing ‘dangerous’ climate change. That is a chimera because it is a virtually meaningless concept…The task of setting this or that threshold to avoid danger is a part of that fiction. Policies based on fictions can succeed only if the major parties are willing to go along with the fiction – as for example in the case of acid rain negotiations for Europe, in which the parties were willing to employ a model that produced some patently non-physical results (Gough et al., 1998; Castells and Ravetz, 2001). At the present time, however, some key parties to the UNFCCC are not willing to maintain the fiction. In that event, the fictional nature of the ‘dangerous climate change’ premise can undermine attempts to forge effective policies…The belief in the existence of a solution to the problem of defining dangerous climate change follows a common pattern in assuming the existence of appropriate knowledge (somewhere) to solve any given problem (Ravetz, 2003). Ravetz calls this the ‘fallacy of the existence of a solution’. He notes that this fallacy serves to conceal our policy-critical ignorance….What are the alternatives to maintaining the fiction of averting danger?..the issues that need to be addressed…include many of those that early climate contrarians claimed lay behind calls for action on climate change. Contrarians claimed that climate change was a front for ‘green’ dreams of transforming the energy economy, production and consumption, modes of transport, work and leisure (Lindzen, 1990). The climate community has generally not been willing to engage the contrarians on these issues. By failing to engage these issues, climate change policy must then fall out of the science alone. This has led inexorably to the generation of a concept of ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ climate change, and to the attempt to define that concept in terms of the science and impacts. The contrarians were right to the extent that climate change is inextricably linked with the issues they identified.”
In other words, the ‘climate community’ has sought to promote the impression to the public of doing ‘hard’ science to avoid having to address the objections that, for example, the aims of neo-Marxism were being served. But it has proved impossible to link climate change to anthropogenic causes, and so influence policy, without inventing convenient fictions including scary impacts and a new science for the 21st century: Post-Normal Science.
Ravetz has been responsible for the philosophical underpinnings to this, the development of PNS and, as I’ve shown, contributing to climate policy advice in the EU.
Buddenbrook (00:33:25)
Stephen Schneider, one of the most influential members of “the team”, was most certainly well read in PNS. His comment, which I quoted above, is definitely a PNS battle cry. The Post-Normal Times recommends only AGW sites. Bray and Von Storch talk at length about the involvement of PNS in the climate science field. Ravetz has written about climate and post-normal science. Saloranta discusses the influence of PNS on the IPCC, starting with the Second Assessment Report. Schneider’s “Instructions to Reviewers” for the Third Assessment Report specifically call for them to follow Ravetz’s lead in substituting “quality” for objectivity, viz:
“It is certainly true that “science” itself strives for objective empirical information to test theory and models. But at the same time “science for policy” must be recognized as a different enterprise than “science” itself, since science for policy (e.g., Ravetz, 1986) involves being responsive to policymakers’ needs for expert judgment at a particular time, given the information currently available, even if those judgments involve a considerable degree of subjectivity …”
So yes, they were instructed to use Ravetz as their “guiding star” … and they did.
Was everyone “well read in Ravetz’ philosophy”? No, of course not. Was what they were saying consonant with his philosophy? Yes.
For example, how many times have we been told that the stakes are incredibly high, and that the decision must be made right now? Does that sound like Ravetz’ mantra of “stakes high and decisions urgent”? You may find that coincidental. I don’t.
“recursive (who guards the guardians?), fundamentally a matter of morality”
Not the best choice of words -morality-.
Trade ‘testing cycle’ for recursive, and policy for morality, and we are back to “The quality goes in before the name goes on” – Zenith.
You could then look upon quality a measurement or a scale of effort.
At the top end, everyone involved has put forth the very best effort they can, and the product/theory shows it.
At the bottom end, the testing was weak to short-circuited (never happened).
Whether in the production world or the scientific world, pressure can ruin and corrupt the test-cycle/peer-review process.
The idea that a scientific truth is only something we haven’t falsified yet reminds me of what I was told early in my undergraduate years (can’t recall who said it first):
Progress in science consists not of replacing a theory that’s wrong with one that’s right, it consists of replacing a theory that’s wrong with one that’s more subtly wrong.
Willis,
Let’s go through this ground once more. I will attempt to picture a basic future scenario to show why an additional framework will eventually be needed, and what such a change in framework concretely means. Further I will try to define the link with climate change and to show why your criticism misses its target.
In year 2033 (2043, 2063… the speed of progress is uncertain but a number of these scenarios are pretty much an inevitability) a group of scientists and science advocates declare that further advancement in technological field Y could pose potentially grave risks to mankind some years down the line when possibilities, they argue, could open up for the development of weapons (or even the occurrance of research accidents) of unimagined terror and consequence. Nothing like we have seen so far, dwarfing the H-bomb. As a result they demand that research to be immediately halted until the risks can be better qualified and quantified. They further demand that all future research should be 100% supervised by governments 24/7 and access to the technology strictly restricted. Some politicians might jump the gun and threaten “rogue regimes” that they will have to open up their societies and scrap their research programs or… This is the type of future that Dr. Bostrom anticipates.
Now you do understand that on top of the other consequences, thousands of billions would have been invested in these fields, several interests would thus clash and the demanded bans and restrictions to commercial research would be very damaging to the national and global economies.
Yet the existential risks would not be 100% certain, there would be scientists saying that the risks are being exaggerated, there would be NGO’s screaming that such scientists have been bought, that they are irresponsible etc. Global treaties would be demanded. Bans and surveillance. Scientific opinion would have to navigate in a new territory far away from the familiar popperian shores, under uncertainty, under huge political pressures and incomparable moral responsibilities pressing on the scientists. This new territory would be something akin to PNS, which of course should be further developed philosophically from the sketch that Ravetz has theorized. But he has got the right basic idea, and something like this will eventually be gravely needed.
If climate change genuinely and with a high probability posed a catastrophic risk of Al Gorean proportions then the framework would be needed in climate change too. So, if someone believes that the risk is genuine, to propose a PNS framework is understandable and not a marxist plot. It is a framework inside which scientists communicate risks and uncertainty, inside which scientists handle the mixing of science and politics that cannot be avoided. But it needs a basis in basic scientific (newtonian, popperian if you wish) research, that has firmly established the probability of the risks, and this is where climate science goes wrong. The risks have not been adequately, substantially established.
How I see it is that Ravetz also should take a step back here, and take another look at the pure scientific basis of the declared catastrophic nature of climate change. When that C is erased, PNS will cease applying to climate change. The risks won’t be high, and decisions won’t be urgent.
But what for “PNS”? For PNS other risks remain in the horizon, in which a framework of this type will absolutely be needed as argued above. It is thus a valuable philosophical concept, and Dr. Ravetz deserves praise for it, not derision.
So, bottom line: Directing your criticism at “PNS” misses the target. The criticism should be directed at the quality of the basic research in climate science.
The painting is a section from
Scotland Forever: the charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo by Lady Butler.
http://www.military-prints.com/gallery_1.htm
The first picture in this article is more appropriate:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/26/article-1080764-02419940000005DC-221_468x380.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080764/War-crime-Battle-Agincourt-finest-hour-says-author-Bernard-Cornwell.html&usg=__S9yLhr0QIusKmY6RcEHOd8NYqWo=&h=380&w=468&sz=82&hl=en&start=56&sig2=iWyavw76XYv1gQrs3t1RUw&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=rzzIWG_SOCYxkM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkeneth%2Bbranagh%2Bhenry%2Bv%26start%3D54%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=C1PES4-8BImi-AbixMC1Dg
Willis, in Dr Revetz previous post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/12/dr-jerry-ravetz-on-willis-epidemics-rough-tumble-debate-and-post-normal-science/ Steve Mosher had this to say. I know the posts get long and you may have missed this. I wanted to share this with you as your response to his critique of your comments is of certainity more cogent then mine.
steven mosher (13:10:11) :
Steve, thank you for putting a summary of what you feel is the view of Willis…”His call to action is really a call on scientists to just do normal science. It’s a fine sermon, but the calls to “just do the science” brought us Climategate. When we call on Mann to do science right, for example, everyone should note his response “do your own science.” So, while I agree that one should encourage scientists to just do normal science, I think its a poor strategy if your interests are at stake”
This was my response at 3:44
“Normal science” includes openess in methods and medadata. I have never seen anything Willis advocate that would not enforce this as “necessary”, so I do not see how what Willis advocated “brought us climategate”. Corruption is an inherent part of all human nature to various degrees, and can and does manifest in every “group”.
Please remember the the good Dr’s lammenting of climate science, was that political decisions made by groups which came together at Copenhagen were a travesty because they failed. I really suggest a re-reading of his first WATTSUP post.
Secondly the very name “Post Normal Science” is a horrible name, insulting to a true practice of science, which has brought vast benefits to billions. Science as applied to society has a long history. As science advances in power, it effects impact more people. If AGW was truly catestrophic, then the vast majority of conflicts of intrest would be disolved, as who wants to destroy the world? However many have wanted to, like Blackbeard, “rule the world”. We need a resuurection of classic science, where full openess is “ENFORCED”, before it goes to policy makers.
Of course there should be international diplomacy in policy in regard to how scientific applications within society affect other nations. But by fusing the “science” into the political process, instead of isolating and protecting it from the political process, one runs a high risk, nay a certainty of corrupting it. This is just as true of the corrupting influence of Rome on Christianity, when the two were fused and it became the official religion.
Steve, I hope you can give concrete examples of how you think the good Doctor’s post normal science would have prevented AGW becoming the lighning rod to worldwide political change.
When I and others state we fail to understand PNS, it is really (in my case) a regret that he does not give clear concrete steps of how he thinks it should operate. Much philosophy, but little transition from the the general to the particular. So perhaps you could provide some clarity here. Thank you for all your work in this field.
How much concern would any of us have to correct global-warming science if it had no policy community riding on it? No global bureaucracy planning carbon taxes, no unelected UN-sponsored World Bank Account for dispensing all the JfBs (Jobs for the Boys) to build turbines, barrages and biofuel plantations, no ex-politicians founding carbon banks and brokerages and massaging the global media to create an army of zealous youngsters to berate governments to toe the new global party line (except you can’t vote for anything – and its scary they haven’t noticed)……
I for one, would not have bothered. Time would sort out the science. The theories predict warming – if the warming doesn’t happen, the theories will get revised. And even the need to save face would not for ever doctor the data and get away with it.
No – the real reason is that we are not dealing with science alone. We are dealing with a monolithic political structure – an ideology that uses science – and abuses science when it doesn’t provide the right answer (by using unrefereed sources (IPCC), by losing data and codes so they cannot be verified (CRU), by bending deadlines for helpful papers (IPCC), by presenting alternative theories as ‘controversial’ and not re-presenting them (IPCC), by favouring unrepresentative analyses (IPCC-Mann), by shutting out dissenting voices (Statement on Climate Change by the World’s Science Academies), by subversion of FOI and Peer Review (CRU) and be deliberately doctoring data (hide-the-decline, remove-the-blip, Mike’s Trick – CRU/NCAR/IPCC).
This is not new. I fought this kind of thing for over 25 years with regard to the science of nuclear risks, toxic waste disposal, chemical plant, acid rain…..and one thing the consortiums of government/industry had going for them was the obfuscation made possible by apparently sophisticated computer models. It took a huge amount of time and resources to penetrate those models and bring their shenanigans to light. And I published all of that work in the peer-reviewed literature – which at least says something for the commitment to truth on the part of many scientists – mostly, the academics in charge of the journals who could appreciate good analysis and that quest for truth.
That ‘truth’ is a delicate thing. It is not like it was in Newton’s realm, and also not Einstein. We are not dealing with such truths. We are faced with a very complex environment and the fact that we are taking huge risks with our own life support systems – all ecologists feel this to be true, even though they cannot ‘prove’ it. That will only come after the fact – and way too late.
There are myriads of facts – some more reliably established than others. There are some theories of what drives climate. The main issue is between natural ‘cycles’ whose mechanism we do not yet understand and human influences via greenhouse gases – and there is only one form of ‘evidence’ that the latter is stronger and that is the computer models that appear to show there would have been no warming between 1950-2000 if nature had been working alone.
I doubt that many, if any, specialists in past climate cycles would accept the verdict of those models – none of which can adequately incorporate cycles precisely because the mechanisms are not known and quantifiable. But these scientists are bypassed or bullied into silence because the model that ‘identifies the human footprint’ has been picked up by an ideology of concern.
That ideology has a dangerous almost militaristic element embedded within it – you can hear it in talk of the ‘carbon army’ and the ‘war on climate’. A global army has been mobilised to fight the terror of climate – and with it a global propaganda machine and a growing apparatus for the suppression of dissent. Dangerous as it looks, I think it will fall apart – is already falling apart.
Unlike the seeming majority of my fellow critics (I don’t like the word ‘sceptic’ since it plays to the dominant ideology’s tactic of branding with quasi-religious overtones), I feel sad at what has happened to the ‘green’ movement. My former friends and allies in previous battles (such as banning the disposal of nuclear waste in the ocean or drenching Scandinavian forests in British acid), have bought the ‘scary climate story’ hook-line-and-sinker. My efforts to quietly warn them were spurned. There is now a danger that as the carbon ship begins to sink, it will drag the green movement down with it. Some on this blogsite will say ‘good riddance’. And I understand that. The behaviour of the greens – from WWF, Greenpeace, FOE and even the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been self-serving, incredibly naive and at times down-right scary in their leanings and methods. Something could be lost that I would argue most strongly, we need – the power of the campaigners, the investigators, the ability to raise public awareness, to challenge in the courts, to lobby and to take direct action. Yes, it has been horrible to see all of that power gone so badly astray – but if an anti-AGW, anti-Green, business-as-usual backlash eventually gains power, something important would be lost.
This is at the crux of the green-AGW ideology……….the real threats to our future are well enough known: out-of-control population growth in countries unable to feed themselves (sub-Saharan Africa); compromised water supplies; forest and biodiversity loss; over-fished seas; overcrowded insanitary cities; and 2 billion people in poverty and very vulnerable to climate change (natural cycles or otherwise). So – how to create action? That is the Schneider Attack – simplify the message and scare people. It is a mistake of course, but an understandable one.
I have to add to that things I do find hard to understand and cannto excuse- the arrogance, the ad-hominem attacks, the naive alliance with government and institutions that were historically always part of the problem – and the shades of the jack-boot in some of the younger zealots.
So – where is all this in a post-normal world? Like Willis – it looks all very normal to me – ‘same old’. Perhaps what is missing is a sociological analysis of the sociologists at Oxford. Where were they in all this? Belatedly, they now notice there is a social phenomenon going on. The edifice of UN science is crumbling under attack from semi-retired mining engineers, anonymous hackers and blogsite meteorologists who are upholding the very most basic tenets of the scientific method! Without the internet, it is doubtful they could prevail.
Another excellent post from Willis and so many interesting comments.
Don’t forget to send Anthony a contribution so that we can continue enjoying the best blog on the net.
I am waiting for the contributions from the well known climate scientists who will convince us all with their data and theories that they are indeed correct about AGW.
Reading Dr Ravetz and also witnessing the slow, inevitable fallout of PNS as it has been applied to climate science over the years, I can’t help but feel that an enormous amount of time and resources has been wasted on this whole enterprise- and if left to fester for too much longer will no doubt end up causing us all great damage.
This is history re-writing stuff. Don’t like what the ‘blip’ in the 1940’s tells you? Simple! Just sand it out. Now it’s perfect. It’s of the ‘times’. It’s high quality.
Ready for market.
Something tells me that this is not how an advanced society would go about steering itself. I have high hopes for the advancement of society. But this PSN stuff isn’t it.
Now I get it, the post-normal scientist couldn’t hack it in the normal world of science so they went postal on it.
Put another way. In their minds they’re ahead of the old pesky normal stuff, normal math, normal logic, normal statistics, normal methodologies, normal ethics, principles, and moral, they’re ahead of all that normal “crap” that doesn’t make any sense to ’em anyway. In their minds, they’re in front of the rest of the normal science, normal society, and normal people. In their minds, they’re beyond normal. They are Post-Normal!
Maybe it takes post-normal psychology to understand how that isn’t insane. :p
Willis Eschenbach (03:45:54) :
Thanks, you make your point well. It doesn’t say to pretend to be objective while being subjective, though it might be interpreted that way. I would tend to think of it more as a request for the opposite: being open about subjective judgements. Scientists had been pretending to be objective while being subjective long before this.
Censored again!
Fine have it your way.
I am not going to take this lightly. I presume you will claim that I’m off topic or some such nonsense.
For the record I am never off topic!
[Relax, ctm called it a night a couple of hours ago, and I took over at 0530. Your posts are approved along with everyone else’s waiting in the moderation queue. No one is censoring you. ~dbs]
Rupert Matthews (02:45:20) :
Ummmm. I don’t want to sound like some sort of purist here. BUT
The quote about “Once more unto the breach, dear friends” is from King Henry V, who was King of England. The soldiers you show in the picture are from the famous cavalry regiment the Scots Greys who were Scottish…
To be *really* picky, the Greys didn’t assault into a breach, they created one, at the cost of about 40% of the unit in casualties.