Dr. Roger Cohen, APS member, sends this via email commenting on this Dot Earth article.
Where do I start?
Well, maybe the most offensive part of this column is the use of psychobabble to distract and divert attention from the real issue, which is the science, and whether it has been corrupted. Of course Revkin will \”share Ropeik’s view.\” Would there be any doubt? This mumbo jumbo is a symptom of the burgeoning industry of treating global warming deniers as mentally ill, a stark reminder of how easy it was for the Soviet Union to throw dissenters into mental hospitals.
Am I exaggerating? Hardly. Take a look at this piece on a conference held in 2009 at the University of West England http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/6320/ . It was aimed at trying to understand just what affliction plagues those people who simply don’t see or can’t find the \”mountains of evidence\” for serious anthropogenic global warming. Evidently it has spawned a new field — \”ecopsychology.\” Lord help us.
As for the science, Lewis and many others who have bothered to actually look into it cannot find the purported strong case for serious anthropogenic global warming. Indeed the balance of evidence points to a small anthropogenic component, far smaller than IPCC summary conclusions. It will of course take time for this to be widely understood and broadly accepted, but it will. There will be a Kuhnian paradigm shift at some point. Meanwhile the tainted IPCC process and other shenanigans have caused public erosion in the trust it had invested in science and scientists. None of us know how this distrust, which is part of the larger decline of confidence in our key institutions, will resolve.
As for the APS and Dr. Lewis’s beef with it, readers may wish to review the information available at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/ It sheds a bit more light on what is really going on.
Gary Pearse;
Agreed!
Though had I proposed the boundary condition of alive or dead, I suppose someone would have pointed out that “being shot” doesn’t necessarily correlate to “being dead”. In either case however, there would still be 5 birds left. All boundary conditions would merely result in the ability to enumerate a subset, but there would be precisely 5 birds both before and after the shot.
A farm boy by the way would have used a shot gun and potentially have bagged them all. A really smart farm boy would have tarred the branch and so easily bagged them without the need of a gun at all.
davidhoffer: “They were conclusions drawn from his criticisms which were well laid out and easily verified.”
I’ve read the letter, It begins with a trip down memory lane, decides that money has corrupted modern science, pronounces “scam” and “pseudoscientific fraud”, then complains about the society’s procedures.
Not much laying out and verifying there. The letter is just a disconnected ramble of complaint, with very little substance, which is another reason it has failed to catch on.
“Sad that even valid criticism is so ruthlessly attacked by immoral means in order to advance a political agenda.”
When you accuse people of criminal behaviour, expect some blowback. There’s no reason why Lewis should be treated with kid gloves when he has himself gone bare-knuckle.
“The horizon by the way, does not always recede…”
It does for the traveller. On the matter of Columbus and sailing “over the horizon”, this effect was noted long before Columbus, so the flat-earth notion is a bit of an urban myth. Back then, most people probably gave the subject little thought in their everyday lives, since it would not have been of much relevance.
Brendan H’
It does for the traveller. On the matter of Columbus and sailing “over the horizon”, this effect was noted long before Columbus, so the flat-earth notion is a bit of an urban myth.>>
The story was told in order to illustrate a point. That you choose instead to launch into a discussion of the historical timeline of the effect being noted with a side bar regarding the most likely beliefs of people at the time betrays your unwillingness to address the point made in any credible fashion. Instead you lauch into misdirection and meaningless rehetoric hoping that the average reader will get lost in the details and forget the original point altogether. I made the point however much you disagree with the manner in which I illustrate it, and you have failed to rebutt it. Your approach, to ignore the facts and scream about meaningless details as if they were some sort of proof is precisely the dishonesty and manipulation that Dr Lewis protests.
Once again, one need not have a theory about the shape of the earth to come to the realization that watching a ship sail over the horizon and disappear is not proof that the earth is flat. It doesn’t matter when it happened, or how many people believed it at the time, or how many people believe it now for that matter. What matters is that conclusions drawn from observations that are in disagreement require that they be reconciled in some manner that explains both. Dr Lewis is quite rightly outraged that some “scientists” propose that the earth is flat by disregarding the fact that they can get in a plane and fly all the way around it. How sad that your only way of attacking his point is to complain that he hasn’t produced any science of his own predicting what the shape of the planet is. He doesn’t need to. Choosing evidence selectively isn’t science, and good on Dr Lewis for saying so.
Robert E. Phelan says:
October 16, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Now imagine a mathematics that had both positive and negative numbers but no conception of zero. What would it look like? What would our conception of science look like? Our conception of reality?
You do not need to imagine. It existed, it was the Greek way of doing mathematics, with the alphabet representation, and then the roman one, with the lots of X and I etc.
They solved the same equations that our zero including system does, except they had to go to a lot of yogic mental gymnastics to get there.
The zero came through the Arabs and changed the understanding of mathematics.
You are wrong about mathematics. Mathematics are there, like mountains, and we discover it slowly through the geniuses that appear in each generation. The language we use is relevant to the complexity or simplicity we observe, but not the function.
Even within our known now mathematics we have frameworks where 1+1 is equal to 10, and it is the binary system all computers are based on.
anna v says:
October 16, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Mathematics are there, like mountains, and we discover it slowly through the geniuses that appear in each generation
That is very eloquently put, Anna, and is almost exactly the issue I am struggling with. Mathematics are ultimately based on certain fundamental assumptions. Retain the assumptions and certain discoveries are inevitable. Change the assumptions and they are not. David and Gary’s by-play on the number and conditions of the birds inadvertently illustrates my point: the number of birds remaining depends on the assumptions you make about reality and the importance you assign. What mathematics can calculate the country boy’s empirical observation that removal of one bird will result in no birds being left? My suggestion is that mathematics is a tool to answer certain kinds of questions; change the questions and you change the tool. Maybe if I better understood just why the ancients felt this over-powering urge to know the volume of a sphere things would be clearer.
In any case, I’ve got a lot of research to do and I thank you and David and Gary for your contributions. As Master Kung put it: Where three men are gathered together I can always find one to be my teacher.
Andrew P, Oct 18, 1:29pm:
Thankyou for your reply. The Wikipedia article you refer to is about a joint planning committee report about what should we do if the Soviets didn’t stop coming Westwards in May 1945. It was not a debate in Parliament and it did not concern atomic weapons – we didn’t have any at that point. Any government has to plan for all manner of contingencies and for you to interpret this as a threat to the Soviet Union is a gross exaggeration. It seems you get your information from the Communist Party’s Book of Made-up Facts.
davidhoffer: “Dr Lewis is quite rightly outraged that some “scientists” propose that the earth is flat by disregarding the fact that they can get in a plane and fly all the way around it.”
I’m not aware of any climate scientist who argues for a flat earth. And on re-reading Lewis’s resignation letter, he makes no mention of a flat earth, either for or against, so I’m not sure of the relevance of this subject. What’s more, he doesn’t have much to say about climate science either. Most of his beef is with the APS.
The fact remains that if you want to generate publicity for a cause, you need a credible spokesperson, ie one who has some expertise and experience in the subject, otherwise the appeal falls flat.
Robert E. Phelan says:
October 16, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Maybe it is semantics, what you mean by mathematics and what mathematicians and students of mathematics mean. You see mathematics as only a tool. We see it also as a field of exploration, also as an artist views a piece of art. Tools differ according to use, true, but a piece of art just exists to be appreciated.
anna v says: October 16, 2010 at 9:55 pm
…….it was the Greek way of doing mathematics…….
Indian mathematicians invented zero, it made life much easier. However number system is not yet perfect. There is problem of infinity ∞ to be solved.
Zero can be calculated as: a – b = 0 , only if a = b. This can be proved by reverse operation 0 + a = b, but only if a = b.
Infinity can be calculated only as: a / 0 = ∞. The reverse operation 0 * ∞ = x, where it may or may not be that x = a, is not satisfactory proof.
We are at same point with infinity , where Greeks and Romans were with zero, we cope with it, but have no precise definition.
Brendan H
If you serisously had to reread Dr Lewis letter to determine if he mentioned a flat earth or not, then your failure to understand my point by way of analogy is so colossal that words to describe it fail me. If, on the other hand, this is simply another attempt to divert attention from the point itself, you have exposed yourself once more as a disingenuous manipulator of perception. Be you deliberately obtuse or merely suffering from the natural form of the condition, your assertion continues to be absurd. The laws of physics, chemistry, math and any other science are precisely the same be they applied to the building of a nuclear reactor or a climate model. Only the specific variables and measurements for the application in question vary. To prove that Dr Lewis opinion of the manner in which the variables, measurements and math have been used incorrectly is false, you would have to show that chemistry, physics and so on work differently in climate than they do in every other area of research where to date they are all identical.
Given your affliction, be it deliberate or natural, all I can say is, good luck with that.
Robert E. Phelan;
The discussion regarding birds was mostly tongue in cheek and says nothing about math. Your assumption that the vagueness of the example somehow shows that math is maleable is incorrect. All it shows is that the definitions to which the math is applied are maleable. Remove the variability of definition of the problem and reduce the discussion to pure math, and it is identical across the board.
The circumferance of a circle for example is 2*pi*r. It matters not in the least if you use roman numerals with no zero, a number system with a base of 8 instead of our base of 10, or a computer system which uses base 2. To bring it back to your bird example, the only variable is “r”. We can discuss at naseum how to choose which circle we’re calculating, and you might point at a row of them and say second from the end, but I think you mean from the left end while you mean the right, but that issue isn’t math. It is data selection. The equation applies precisely the same to both circles.
Theo Goodwin,
I’m going to have to call you on your account of Newton and the calculus. Newton’s invention was hardly sui generis. (Read Carl Boyer on the history of the calculus.) What Newton (and Leibniz) did was much more interesting:- the basic elements were already there (due to Fermat, Isaac Barrow [Newton’s teacher – who in fact proved a version of the Fundamental Theorem], etc.). In fact, just as with Special Relativity at the turn of the last century, the idea of the calculus was ‘in the air’. What Newton (and Liebniz) did was to generalize and systematize these ideas, which resulted in a new way of looking (yes, looking) at the whole problem of dynamics. They took the giant step and ushered in the new era.
duahong, your question has been answered repeatedly. Hal’s change of mind reflects both his own integrity and the changing knowledge base upon which honest climate researchers form their understanding. It is the very reason why his other statements about climate change are credible, for it shows that he does not approach questions with his mind made up as to the answers beforehand…in other words, he is a true scientist. All of this has been pointed out by commenters already.
I would like to add, however, that the whole episode also tells us something important about Andy Revkin, and I must say that I am disappointed. I had great faith a few months ago after Climategate alienated him from some fellow alarmists that he might be starting to shed the blinders. But the amount of space he devotes to this “point”, and the way he clucks with glee in his mistaken belief that by doing so he undermines the credibility of a major “climate skeptic” simply underscores how weak his own position is, and how poorly he understands what gives a scientist his authority. I shudder to think how many people rely on him to distinguish for them between genuine and fake science on this matter. But I suspect this episode will inject a little doubt into the minds of Revkinites who have the common sense to understand the value of the words of a scientist who is willing to change his mind when compelled to do so by the data.
David Ropeik, http://dropeik.com/ : “All of David’s work has been directed toward the same goal; to develop in-depth knowledge about an area of public interest, to synthesize that knowledge, and to provide that synthesis… so people can benefit from… applying a better understanding of the way people perceive risk to the challenge of risk communication and overall risk management”. It’s beyond parody.
Why are you-all discussing this moronic shite on this blog? Hal Lewis is a major scientist. Andrew Revkin is a f****g journalist for C***’s sakes. You can’t talk to him like he’s your equal. Ropeik too. Talking to people like this is degrading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis
Wikipedia has shafted Hal Lewis again. It briefly mentions his resignation, but the link it gives is to Melanie Philips’ defense of Lewis. She’s a British Sarah Palin – a skeptic who is a discredit to skepticism. Wikipedia is still in the hands of slimy green politicians.
The Luther analogy is a bridge too far. Lewis is more like the little boy who shouted “butt nekid!” or Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower of the Pentagon Papers. They had a major impact, although their personal expertise was not outstanding.
Not really. All you need is a sympathetic “poster child” to rouse public indignation or sympathy, such as the food-lot farm family being evicted in Australia, or a spunky whistleblower like the Erin Brockovich, the gal in the movie about pollution in groundwater, etc. She wasn’t a subject expert, but she could see that hanky-panky was going on and document THAT. That’s all Lewis has to do wrt the APS’s violation of its rules. So he can serve as a “rallying point” and inspirational role model for others who are contemplating challenging the pro-AGW pronouncements of other scientific societies, for instance.
And his well-documented complaint can be employed by our side’s polemics as illustrating the manner in which the endorsement of CAWGism has likely been obtained from several other scientific societies: I.e., by highhanded steamrollering of dissent by full-of-themselves, science-has-the-answers insiders, and then maintained by slimy subterfuge on their part. I.e., we can tar the consensus with the brush of the APS’s behavior.
Make that Nov. 19 (or 20th?). It wasn’t public knowledge until then. The 17th was the date of the “A miracle has happened” posting on CA and the receipt by JeffID of the Climategate e-mails.
davidhoffer: “To prove that Dr Lewis opinion of the manner in which the variables, measurements and math have been used incorrectly is false…”
Well, that’s rather the point, isn’t it? We don’t know Lewis’s views about “variables, measurements and math”, beyound “scam” and “pseudoscientific fraud”, which don’t tell us very much.
As for your flat-earth analogy, I was merely highlighting its incoherence.
Roger Knights: “All you need is a sympathetic “poster child” to rouse public indignation or sympathy, such as the food-lot farm family being evicted in Australia, or a spunky whistleblower like the Erin Brockovich…”
I think you’ll find that both sets of people were very knowledgeable on the detail of their particular issues. The perils of seeming-ignorance are well illustrated by the early stages of Sarah Palin’s entry into national politics.
Whether Lewis can become a “poster child” for the climate sceptics’ cause remains to be seen, but his resignation letter comes across more as peevish and disgruntled than spirited and uplifting.
As I say, I think this will go the way of the “Hansen’s superior’s” story. Now what was that guy’s name? Something chemical-sounding. Ozone, freon, neon?
Skeptics do not need a poster child.
We need a number of harsh winters in a row to hammer in the fact that there is no warming. What thousands of calculations and rational expositions of the truth of the matter have not done, shoveling snow in places where it used not to snow, and breaking ice where it used not to ice is the surest propagandist, unfortunately :(.
Regarding the comments above that touch on my input to Andy’s blog about what science tells us about risk perception, call it psychobabble if you will, but if you are interested in the SCIENCES that help explain how the human animal (Dr. Law, myself, Andy, you…) interprets facts about risk and turns those assessments into our perceptions, as a journalist trying to learn more about this as I was researching “How Risky Is it, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts,” I relied on sources that include the following, which you might find interesting (these resources have nothing to do with climate change. They’re just scientific investigations that reveal important aspects of risk perception)
(The resources below are summarized in a single place, “How Risky Is it, Really” Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts” (Ropeik)
– Joseph LeDoux, pioneer in the neuroscience of fear. See “The Emotional Brain”
– Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist, on the inextricable tangle of affect and reason. See “Descartes Error”
– Daniel Kahneman, social psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel Gold Medal in Economics, pioneer of ‘behavioral economics’, the study of heuristics and biases we use to make judgements under conditions of uncertainty. See “Judgments under Uncertainty, Heuristics and Biases” (1982. There are updates but I like the original.)
– Paul Slovic, psychologist, pioneer of the study of the psychological factors that make some risks FEEL more or less scary, despite the facts. See either “The Perception of Risk” or an update “The Feeling of Risk”
– Dan Kahan, Yale law professor and, with Slovic and others, researcher into Cultural Cognition, the idea that we choose our positions on issues not so much based on the facts per se but to match the positions of those in the groups with which we most strongly identify. See http://www.culturalcognition.net
And I acknowledge again, as I did above, and as several commenters rightly point out, that of course these influences on how we perceive things affects me too, just as it does us all. You too. Which is why I state in my book that the examples of risk issues I use “…are only my view of things, meant not to illustrate how you should think about these specific issues, but merely to explain the hidden processes by which you and I think about risks in general.”
(I hope that doesn’t make me a Marxist or a Communist!)
David Ropeik,
I followed your link to your web site, which doesn’t make your babble any better but at least provides an explanation for why you said what you did. You are a consultant on Risk Perception, Risk Communication, and Risk Management. So any time, you get a question, you talk your own book and put the answer in the context of your pet field, no matter how tangential it is to the question on hand. You prove Maslow’s famous quote: “He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.”
I am hardly new to your topic – I studied under Dick Thaler years ago. I however understand where behavioral theories can be stretched well beyond where they should go. And it is true that your response is almost perfectly content free.
David Ropeik says:
October 18, 2010 at 8:41 am
Mr. Ropeik:
I trust that Andy Revkin was quoting you correctly in his column:
It seems Dr. Lewis is demonstrating the very phenomenon he laments, letting his affect and worldviews interfere with taking all the reliable evidence into account in order to make a truly informed and fair judgment.
It never seems to occur to people like yourself and Revkin that maybe the people on the skeptic side have taken a hard-eyed view at the evidence and found it severely wanting. As for Kahan and Slovick, their Cultural Cognition Project really is little more than a shoddy exercise in pathologizing dissent from progressive view points. Implicit in all their work is the attitude that “we are right and what is wrong with those people that they can’t see that?”
Ahhh… I have to go teach a class on socialization right now. People choose the oddest times to press my buttons.
——————–
David Ropeik,
I sincerely appreciate seeing you commenting here. Unfortunately, it is so late in this thread, so many may not see your presence here.
In psychology isn’t there somewhat of a fundamental split of views on the nature/source of human behavior?
I look forward to your response on this thread. I will monitor this thread, even though it is fading away . . . .
John
To Cope; Personal attacks seem to bolster the point that the “debate” about climate change really isn’t about those facts at all, but passions rooted somewhere deeper. (And if I was promoting my book, rather than it’s ideas, why cite the other four books, so you could consider them directly rather than my summary?) Further, please do have the courage to call the work of Kahneman, and LeDoux, and Damasio, and Slovic, and all their colleagues “babble”. I’m the summarizer/proselytizer, but the work you denigrate is theirs.
To Mr. Phelan; we selectively believe the things we selectively believe. Me too. You too. My 25 years as a journalist is part of why I am persuaded by the Cultural Cognition research. But that’s me. You have a different view, neither right nor wrong, just different. Which rather proves the point that the debate is not about the facts but how those facts feel, so it’s relevant to look to what science can tell us about where our feelings about risk come from. I do hope you are honest about this with your students.
To Mr. Whitman, thanks for the respectful tone of your reply. where does the rudeness of these things come from? Does the anonymity of conversations like this somehow justify rudeness and personal attacks on people with whom one disagrees? When the visceral nature, if not for the very psychology to which I refer.
To all. I am not arguing here for or against climate change (read my comments on Revkin’s blog), just commenting critically on what various scientific evidence has to say on what may have shaped Dr. Lewis’s thinking. I think these may be valuable additional scientific insights into the discussion.
David Ropeik says:
October 18, 2010 at 8:41 am
Regarding the comments above that touch on my input to Andy’s blog about what science tells us about risk perception,
To perceive something means one has an input and is analyzing it.
Did you get any input on prof Lewis?
For example, one right up your alley, in bold:
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
I think not, otherwise you would not be coming out with such a flippant statement:
letting his affect and worldviews interfere with taking all the reliable evidence into account
Let me tell you, even simple experimental physicists who deal with radioactivity and beam lines, like I used to, have to be quite good in controlling their affect and not letting it interfere with the work that has to be done. If they followed their affect instead of their intellect and mind, they would run away from the job.
It is really obnoxious of you to come out with such a statement for a senior scientist, a nuclear physicist who has spent so much of his mental efforts into guiding our society into safer practices with nuclear matters..