By Steve Goddard and Anthony Watts
They are mad, maybe not the crazy kind of mad scientist, but mad nonetheless. When people are mad, sometimes good judgment goes out the window.
The Guardian published a fascinating “open letter” from AAAS, signed by 250 biologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, etc. in defence of climate science.
So far, it has not gone over too well. Even Andy Revkin at the NYT Dot Earth blog points out that:
“The letter has a defensive tone that hasn’t served scientists particularly well in the past…”
Revkin also notes the fact that even the AAAS deputy editor himself tried to tone it down in a companion editorial:
The scientific community must recognize that the recent attacks stem in part from its culture and scientists’ behavior.
Of course, we, the great unwashed public, can’t read either the original letter nor the editorial at AAAS, since both are hidden behind the great paywall of science. We have to rely on the Guardian and NYT to give us mere mortals snippets of wisdom issued from on high. What a great way to “get the word out” to people you are condemning. Yes, “we’ll make them pay”.
In addition to the condescending tone, the use of the d-word, and the lack of open access to an “open letter” and companion editorial, the letter was so poorly written, that we thought we would pitch in and lend them a hand. Italics are their writing. Plain text interspersed are our suggestions.
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts.
A better way to word this would be : “We apologize for the bad behaviour of our colleagues, and recognize that the public is well educated and aware.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modelling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them.
Should read : “We recognize that the process is broken, and we appreciate the help of the public in correcting our errors.”
And then there’s this howler.
When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.
Should read: “We recognize that a few treemometers in Yamal, and particularly tree YAD061, aren’t really representative of the global climate for the past millennium and therefore a solid basis to overturn whole economies. We’ll fix that right away.”
For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution).
That paragraph should be cut completely. Implying that anyone who criticizes you is a “flat earther creationist” is not going to win any converts. Insulting the customer is a really poor idea.
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.
Very bad idea to compare the customers, aka the referenced “all citizens”, to holocaust deniers. That is a total non-starter.
Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
Should read : “Few, if any, of us are climate scientists, but some of us did see Al Gore’s film. We talked about it over lunch.”
The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
Should read : “Wow, none of knew that it was the snowiest decade on record in the Northern Hemisphere, until we read it on WUWT.”
We also call for an end to McCarthy- like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.
Should read : “We promise to see the doctor about our paranoid delusions.”
All in all, this letter is a PR train wreck. Then there’s the signatories.
Since it is common to see the “but he/she is not a climate scientist” argument used against people that offer views differing to “the consensus”, here are the impeccable climate science credentials of the first 20 signatories :
Robert McC. Adams – Division of Social Sciences, UCSD
Richard M Amasino – Biochemist, UW Madison
Edward Anders – Geologist, University of Chicago
David J. Anderson – Biologist, Cal Tech
Luc Anselin – Geographer, ASU
Mary Kalin Arroyo – Biologist, University of Chile
Dr. Berhane Asfaw – Palaeoanthropologist, Rift Valley Research Service
FRANCISCO J. AYALA – Professor of Biological Sciences, UC Irvine
Dr. Ad Bax – Physics, NIH
Anthony Bebbington – Professor of Nature, University of Manchester
Gordon Bell – Computer Pioneer
MICHAEL VANDER LAAN BENNETT – Neuroscientist, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Jeffrey Bennetzen – Geneticist, University of Washington
May R. Berenbaum – Entomologist, UIUC
Overton Brent Berlin – Anthropologist, University of Georgia
Pamela Bjorkman – Biologist, Cal tech
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn – Biologist, UCSF
Jacques Blamont – Astrophysicist
Michael Botchan – Biochemistry, Berkeley
John S. Boyer – Marine Biosciences, University of Delaware
After the first 20 names, they are batting 0.000. If anyone cares to go through the rest of the list and report, please pitch in.
I posted this on the above Guardian page yesterday but they deleted it, twice!
Dr Roy Spencer, former NASA scientist
“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”
Source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/the-great-global-warming-blunder-how-mother-nature-fooled-the-world%e2%80%99s-top-climate-scientists/
There is one virtue of a loyalty oath, disgusting as it may be –
you have a handy list of whom to line up against the wall when it finally hurts enough to stop nervously giggling over it.
Gail Combs says:
May 7, 2010 at 3:58 am &
ShrNfr says:
May 7, 2010 at 5:33 am
Indeed. As a scientist of 40+ years in BASIC science, I view Climate Change Science as a scientific derivative, similar to stock derivatives on Wall Street. CAGW works seem to be part science, part art, part computer science, part new age science. But it is very light on the basic sciences, like physics, math, chemistry, statistics. If hypotheses are not testable (no true controls can be conjured up for past conditions, and we haven’t found our parallel earth yet), then by definition, it is not science. Even if we had a parallel earth, the systems are multivariate and complex.
In the basic sciences, we hold correlations as being significant when they are at least P<0.05, or r = 0.95 at least. Most of the climate change papers have poor correlation coefficients, like 0.6 or something similar, if they even bother to cite statistical methods at all.
Until late last year, I was a member of AAAS, ACS, NYAcadSci, and had subscriptions to Science and Nature. I canceled them all after several years of reading the science fiction within. I would rather read Iron Man and Silver Surfer comics. At least they don't pretend to be real.
I am very sad about the above, and how fast they went downhill. I relied on these journals for 40 years. Thanks to WUWT, Climate Depot, and many online sources, the gap has been filled, better than ever.
“Many recent assaults on climate science… are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.”
However, the standard of evidence does not apply to our accusation that sceptics are driven by special inerests and/or dogma.
Joe-
The change in outgoing longwave radiation due to radiatively-active greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a fairly straightforward radiative calculation, and leads to the basic conclusion, in an idealized radiative-convective equilibrium model (i.e. ignoring all the feedbacks), that doubling CO2 will warm the planet by about 2F–this conclusion is shared by Richard Lindzen as well. What if we include all the feedbacks? Our models suggest they will significantly amplify this effect. Could they be wrong? Absolutely. Could they be right, but then the warming due to increasing GHGs be offset by something else (e.g. clouds) in the system? Absolutely. And, believe it or not, those that I know from that list of names would be the first to tell you that.
When you say “no one is allowed to question or go over their science”, that is not at all true–Richard Lindzen just got an article published. The real issue is what component of the science is in question: challenging the giant climate models is quite acceptable within the scientific community–there are many who have no interest in touching them–but categorically claiming that “global warming is a myth” is to challenge the basic foundation of quantum mechanics and the thermodynamic and radiative properties of gases, upon which many fields of science and the functioning of many real-world applications and instruments are based. This, too, is certainly free to be challenged, but in this latter case, such a successful challenge would earn its place among the great revolutions in scientific history.
“For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category”
And the evidence for the age of the planet, for the age of the universe, and for the theory of evolution are all publicly available for review and well-documented. However, other than a graph of questionable parentage that claims to show a link between CO2 and temperature, I have yet to see any actual evidence for the assertions that CO2 is trapping heat and thus warming the planet, that this trapping will continue to increase, that this CO2 increase is all man-made, and that we’re all going to die unless something is done. I like to pretend I’m a smart person – show me some actual evidence and we’ll talk. But don’t refer to me as a flat-earth creationist again.
Harry Lu
A commonly used satirical technique in English is the pun.
The words “mad” and “angry” might be used interchangeably. That was a very “angry” letter targeting ignorant deniers.
I personally apologize for being so unenlightened about the imminent danger of global meltdown, drowning, monster hurricanes, drought, floods, and Man Bear Pig.
Pielke Jr and Ross McKitrick are both social scientists, yet are very informed about aspects of the issue, so I don’t see this as a disqualification per se. Also, Geography (which could well include climate scientists) is often in a Divison of Social Sciences.
Chuck says:
May 7, 2010 at 5:30 am
Great article, but I have one small criticism. You should remove the line about “flat earth creationists”. It is hard to take you seriously when you complain that you’ve been insulted by insulting someone else.
___________________________________________________________________________
Anthony is not insulting anyone. He is quoting what is said about skeptics. This goes back to Gordon Brown calling climate change deniers “flat-earthers” “..People who doubt that human activity contributes to global warming are “flat-earthers” and “anti-science”, Gordon Brown has said…” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6729833/Gordon-Brown-climate-change-sceptics-are-flat-earthers.html
Here is another one from 2007
“….We’ve all had a good laugh at the right-wing flat-earth creationists or climate-change deniers out there, but skepticism in the fact of new information is also a part of science. As one of those close-minded right-wingers once said, you can only open your mind so far before your brain falls out….” http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=56
It is the other side equating skeptics with right-wing flat-earth creationists.
It should be easy to see where this is coming from
Peter H Gleick, the first and corresponding author of this letter, is probably the sole drafter of this letter.
In 2007, he testified in Congress, where amongst other things, he provided Congressmen with a handy list of ‘wrong arguments’ against science for them to field climate questions in their constituencies. The main body of his testimony was very, very similar to the present letter. He does not seem to have developed any new ideas since then, completely ripping off the text of this testimony to draft this letter.
Which is sadly enough, the main reason for WUWT readers – an informed bunch, to be left scratching their heads. This is all OLD stuff. Being reprinted.
His actions seem to be triggered by the ‘climate scientists under attack’. When that bulb glows, he rolls.
Mr Gleick has a tendency to use the names of Galileo, Einstein and other famous scientists to support the climate agenda. He drags plate tectonics into the question now – the newest addition. His climate communication strategy seems to be employ and thereby claim usage rights for climate science, many of the commonly-seen scientific and pre-scientific metaphors.
Gleick also got into a scrap with Pat Michaels at one point calling him a Flat Earther, which ended up with him coming under the threat of a lawsuit from Michaels.
Considering how this ill-worded intemperate hackjob of arrogance and condescension got published in Science, the only conclusion is that – they have lost their minds too. 🙂
I must mention this – Peter Gleick’s forte is research into drinking water – he is a big name in that. He is against bottled water and its sales. I totally, absolutely agree.
You can Google and verify easily, all of my claims on this post.
Will post more background on my blog.
Comments at the Telegraph site show, much as the letter does, an almost willful disregard for scientific method. As a long time teacher of scientific method and experimental design, I am embarassed for the authors, both of the letter and of many of the comments.
The Big Bang is no more real than is Anthropogenic Global Warming.
It was invented by Georges Lemaître, who later on became the head
of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences under Pius XII. Lemaître, a
Catholic priest who studied under Eddington, openly wanted to
reconcile science and his Augustinian vision of the Universe.
Gail Combs says:
May 7, 2010 at 7:58 am
So when the Western Economy crashes we can come back and pin the blame on you and the other 300 who state the IPCC report is correct.
There you go again with your Alarmist theories – those “economists” making dire predictions of future catastrophic “Western Economy crashes”.
We all know how reliable Economists are – all their “theories” are driven by money, just look at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. CWEC is just junk economics.
Economies are naturally variable – sometimes chaotic clouds affect them, such as during the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period, but it’s still just natural variability, between Depression and Overheated Bubbles.
The Null Hypothesis says the Western Economies are going to crash anyway.
That a minuscule fraction of climate professionals, comprising only one scientist out of every 2,600 in the biosphere, is the principal driver of Western economic policies is not only preposterous, but there is zero empirical evidence backing up that ridiculous conjecture. It is rank speculation, nothing more.
Why there are no penguins at the north pole:
Evil Penguins
“Dan says:
[…]
Our models suggest they will significantly amplify this effect. Could they be wrong? Absolutely. Could they be right, but then the warming due to increasing GHGs be offset by something else (e.g. clouds) in the system? Absolutely.”
Given the solution space the probability of the models being wrong tends to approximate 1 while the probability of the models being right tends to approximate 0.
A good indicator for “the models being wrong” is that they failed to predict, project or forecast (all of them) the flat temperatures of the last decade.
So, yes, absolutely, the models “could” not only be wrong, they ARE wrong.
I have scanned the signatory list for people who might be industrial scientists, but can’t be sure that any are amongst the signatories. Can someone else have a go? The reason for this approach is that industrial scientists have/got/ to get things right. If they don’t their jobs will vanish, and state funded grants are not available to try provide time to write another paper. To be sure that they are not promoting nonsense they must carry out “due diligence” to the utmost extent, their and their reporting must be factual and complete, and their conclusions must apposite, timely and beyond criticism.
Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial— scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. My bold.
Well, the signatories obviously don’t understand the Scientific Method. This must be why they’ve also missed the fact that Climate Science as expressed by its Models has an abysmal record concerning its predictions and thus its explanatory power. It’s beginning to look like now the CO2CAGW proponents have even managed to purge the term “Scientific Method” from their lexicon. Perhaps they know that even mentioning it might cause them some problems?
Janice:
A nasty penguin. There are pirate penguins, too.
Ric Werme says:
May 7, 2010 at 6:17 am
Gordon Bell – Computer Pioneer
Hey, someone I know! Gordon designed some DEC’s best computers, systems that made my early career in software engineering very pleasant, interesting, and valuable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10 Wonderful, wonderful system in ways that programmers who missed that era will never understand.
While I haven’t seen him in ages, I suspect I know at least as much about climate science as he does.
____________________________________________________________________
My husband knows him too. Gordon Bell is from the Boston area, “home of the foremost Marxist scholars in the world” as I was proudly told by a communist friend living in Cambridge. Another friend said she studied botany because it was the only field of study at the University of Mass Amherst that did not come without a healthy dose of Marxism.
My husband and I left the area because we just could not take the political environment any more.
I belong in the category of “pissed off” scientist. I mean, I could concoct all sorts of faulty, self-serving studies and data to panic the populace and further my career, and I see this all the time in the field of public health.
Use of fear is an old public health strategy:
—–
In 1910, ROSENAU, the father of preventive medicine in the United
States, wrote:
“Fear is lessening, but we would not want it to disappear entirely, for while it is a
miserable sensation, it has its uses in the same sense that pain may be a marked
benefit to the animal economy, and in the same sense that fever is a conservative
process. Reasonable fear saves many lives and prevents much sickness. It is one of
the greatest forces for good in preventive medicine, as we shall presently see, and
at times it is the most useful instrument in the hands of the sanitarian.4 ”
http://www.biotech.law.lsu.edu/cphl/articles/urbanlawyer.pdf
———
OK, go from cholera and yellow fever right on to AGW. Same/same.
“For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution).”
That reminds me of the Nicene Creed… amazing, it comes across as dogma, even though I generally agree with them on it. The supporting observations of evolution and cosmology are quite straightforward and sound, but CO2-based global warming, not so much.
“(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.”
-??? Parts of the planet have warmed slightly in an as-yet unexplained process, possibly related to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
“(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.”
-OK
“(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.”
-Nonsense. Overwhelmed??? What about the snowy winter in Washington?
“(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.”
-30 years, is that modern times?, or since the invention of the thermometer, is that modern times? But certainly not in geologic time, which they already know about from their earlier creed. This is more nonsense, if the planet warms, it will be no more rapid than some recorded climatic effects of large volcanic explosions for example (the rapid cooling resulting from these is much more damaging to humans and other animals and plants).
Even sea-level rise, which according to the IPCC will be about half a meter through the rest of the century, and possibly the most significant result of any warming, isn’t going to do more than make some people move and reduce some property values. Seriously.
Changes to the hydrologic cycle? It will still be the hydrologic cycle; evaporation, cloud formation, precipitation (even snow will still fall), it may well be that the hydrologic cycle will dampen (pun intended) the warming effects of increased CO2 by increasing cloud formation.
Ocean acidification – Ocean water is still basic, and have a long way to go to become acidic. The change so far is quite small, and most carbonate shell-producing organisms have robust processes for producing their shells. Warmer oceans tend to increase the range of reef-forming corals.
“(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.”
-Threatens, possibly, but remember the world is not static, it is dynamic, tectonic plates move, sometimes the magnetic poles switch, the weather changes, climate does change for sure. Human activity is NOT 100% responsible, no-one know to what degree, but probably not even 25% responsible for recent warming, and stifling our (currently fossil-fuel based) economy when so many people are hungry now is not the thing to do.
Scientific debate is a necessary part of progress in science, and a part of establishing new hypotheses, or discarding incorrect ones. The people who signed this open letter should be willing to debate, but I am guessing that by calling people climate change deniers who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, they are too dogmatic. Maybe they should have stopped the letter after “We are deeply disturbed…”
This is really funny: ACCUSED OF BULLYING! LOL!!!
Those ugly bad kids of WUWT and all those hateful blogs are bullying us! , Help me Mommy Gaia!!!
“Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling.”
1. The basic laws (I assume he talking about physics) do not allow gases that dissipate heat to then turn around and add heat on their own. CO2 dissipates heat it cannot and will not add heat to any system by itself.
2. There are no lab experiements under STP (0 C and 1 atm) or standard conditions (59 F and 1 atm) that demonstrate CO2 can increase the temperature of anything.
3.Observation of nature, via various proxies, since the end of the last ice age show that the temperature today is cooler than 8000 years ago. CO2 was lower then so it could not have caused that warmth. No temperature/CO2 correlation.
4. If models are not based on #1 above you can get anything you wish. I got a C in calc but modeling second order partial differential equations with 3 axis seems to me to be impossible.
So as far as I can tell the whole of their arguement rest on this sentence and it fails on all counts. The scientific conclusion for CO2 causing warming is false.
Part of the reason I’m a skeptic is my degree in anthropology. The attempts to minimize prior climate change has been laughable.
But seeing people calling themselves anthropologist trying to bully and minimize many good men of science who disagree with them; makes me ashamed of them.
The penguin from istockphoto is on the Skeptical Science website as its logo.