Steve Mosher reports that things got a bit bizarre at the 2010 American Geophysical Union convention in San Francisco
Guest post by Steven Mosher
At AGU today I was witness to a “new AGU.” In the very first Steven Schneider Memorial speech Michael Oppenheimer explained the variety of ways that climate scientists can engage the public and the press. There was much I can recommend in Oppenheimer’s advice. He advised scientists to understand that their expertise on particular scientific issues does not give them expertise on all issues, especially on issues that touch on policy. It is one thing to note a scientific finding that climate models predict a 3°C warming for the doubling of CO2; it is quite another thing to opine that controlling CO2 is the answer.
Oppenheimer also was clear that scientists should state their bias openly. He self identified as a “progressive” and was open about his time spent at the EDF. All in all a good presentation, especially for fans of C.P. Snow. Oppenheimer did, however, say one thing that was bizarre.
He seemed to offer the following advice:
You can’t sit on the sidelines and do nothing, because your name might show up in a climategate mail. He argued that some poor scientist had been vilified because his name was merely mentioned in a climategate mail.
I have no clue who he is talking about, but his argument came down to this. If you think you are safe as a scientist by merely staying in the lab and speaking only about science, you are wrong. Why? because some guy got vilified by just being mentioned in the mails. Let’s be clear about who was the center of the mails: Jones and Mann. As Oppenheimer stated a scientist should not think his expertise in science gives him expertise in other areas, areas like the climategate mails and areas like advising other scientists how to conduct themselves with the press and public. Personally, I’d just block mails from people who ask me to delete things.
After Oppenheimer’s speech the “new AGU” assembled a panel of authors to discuss how to communicate with the press and the public. It was a great panel. A sullen Heidi Cullen didn’t say a word. A late arriving Jim Hansen and Naomi Oreskes who suggested that scientists should study history. One member of the panel dominated the discussion, Greg Craven. If you don’t recognize the name, you might recognize the jester hat: Yes, Greg is the high school teacher who made that video about global warming. Basically Pascal’s wager.
Greg nearly always starts every long-winded rant with the phrase “I’m no expert.”
Today was no different, but it came with a twist. He did claim to be an expert in communicating to the public. He was not. I cannot begin to describe the delicious sense of irony I felt when I listened to a panel of people who have no demonstrated skill or expertise in selling messages to the public, trying to tell scientists how they should sell a message to the public. And the questioners were also entertaining. Only one, Steve Easterbrook, managed to ask a rational question. But let’s roll tape to the questions and Craven’s performance.
One of the first questions referenced Revkin’s column on the need for more Republican scientists. Oreskes, with boring predictability, said the Republican party has been anti-science since god was a kid. Epic fail, since the question was not a history question, nevertheless, she trotted out her usual gruel. Craven then launched into his act. He wasn’t an expert on psychology but he read that conservatives are irrational and prone to confirmation bias.
There are so few Republican scientists, he explained, because Republicans are irrational.
That is a quote. That is the “new AGU”.
I’ve explained before that this view of one’s opponents leads to only one end. If you believe your opponents are irrational, then at some point you contemplate using force to get them to agree. I’m not shocked to find this in a teacher. The urge to commit violence on those who refuse to learn is an occupational hazard. I taught, I know. And we should not forget who hit the red button first:
There is a lesson here. People who talk to a captive audience of students do not have expertise in talking to the public at large. You do not convince Republicans by calling them irrational. You do not assume that an audience at AGU is full of Liberals. Greg went on for some time, foaming at the mouth about getting passionate ( the first step to violent action) and I don’t think anyone on the panel thought that there might be a conservative ( much less a Libertarian who believes in global warming) in the audience . One panelist copped to being an independent. Finally, no one on the panel seemed to realize that you do not convince the unconvinced by calling them denialists.
They did seem to agree that Al Gore was not a good choice as a spokesperson and that the meme of “the science is settled” was a bad idea.
The next questioner, sensing that Craven had stolen the show, decided to ask a 10 minute “question,” This activist from Oakland spoke with fire and passion about scientists needing to speak out. Craven, interrupted her passion because she had gone on “long enough”, and tried to steal the show back. Then she complained about him cutting her off.
Thunderdome.
Cullen looked pained. The only professional was silent. At some point Craven made a promise to shut up and stop hogging the limelight. A promise he would break on nearly every subsequent question, even those questions directed specifically away from him. At one point he banged his head on the table. Rational thought at it’s best. And he scribbled furiously as other people spoke, like he was getting ready to pass a note in class.
John Mashey asked a question as forgettable as his screed on Wegman. Craven took charge again and argued the “if not now, when” argument.
Basically, it goes like this. As a scientist you have to decide at some point that enough is enough. You have to put your scientific commitment to the discipline of doubt aside and “blow past” your boundaries. Say what you feel, not what you can prove.
[ Steve Mosher: Mr. Craven has complained that this is not a direct quote of what he said. It is not a direct quote, it is,as the text indicates, a synopsis of my interpretation of his argument. ]
Rational thought at its best.
Steve Easterbrook, thankfully, asked the only intelligent question. On one hand we have Oppenheimer telling us take care when going beyond our expertise. On the other hand we have Craven, saying “blow past” your boundaries. Oppenheimer tried to paper over the difference, and Oreskes, who seemed to be shooting me looks as I sat there laughing, agreed that there was a difference between these views. Craven, breaking his promise again, read what he had been scribbling. Some sort of challenge to climate scientists that he promises to post.
By this time Hansen had joined the dais and the next questioner wanted to know if the push for action against climate change should be like the civil rights movement. Again, the scribbling genius of public communication took the microphone. And explained that he was finally going to keep his promise about shutting up. So, he handed his statement to Hansen, who dutifully read Craven’s forgettable text. Ah the humility of that. Not content with dominating the dais for an hour our expert in communicating with the public hands a note to Hansen to have Hansen read it. “Here Jim, read this for me.”
After all the PR disasters of climategate they still don’t get it. You don’t convince people by calling them irrational or ignorant. You don’t win hearts and minds by calling them denialists. You can’t scare people of faith, whether they have faith in religion or faith in human ingenuity. And you don’t pass notes in class, Greg. Maybe a dunce hat is in order for that move.
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Related: Time to end your membership with the American Geophysical Union
Due to Mr. Mosher being pressed for time, this article was edited from raw form by Anthony Watts, correcting spelling, formatting, punctuation, and adding relevant links. No other changes were made.
Lovely. The CAGW clowns set their hair on fire in the public square. Thank you, Mr. Mosher, for the liner notes to the spectacle. I agree with Dr. McKitrick: you couldn’t script a better farce.
mpaul says:
December 16, 2010 at 10:21 am
“…then you do not understand the negative societal consequences of your false god.”
Exactly, and well-said.
Craven’s presence on this panel is celebrity science at its best. Does the AGU open its membership to people with degrees in science education (most HS science teachers have degrees in education not science)? Or, is he on the panel as a guest?
I too am a high school science teacher with a professional background in meteorology. If I make outrageous You Tube videos can I become an AGU member too?
‘Say what you feel, not what you can prove.’
That, to me is the very definition of irrational behavior.
They should do a urine test on some of these guys before allowing them to speak.
‘It is one thing to note a scientific finding that climate models predict a 3°C warming for the doubling of CO2’. This shows their lack of scientific discipline and /or their understanding of what science is – they call the output of a mathematical model a scientific finding. They still think this repesents evidence. Scientific findings are the things that prove or disprove the quality of the mathematical algorithm. Once the science proves the model then the model can be used, carefully, and not before.
1DandyTroll says: “What kind of ‘shrooms do they really serve at these conventions I wonder?”
Perhaps he’s “inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity.”
“You can’t scare people of faith, whether they have faith in religion or faith in human ingenuity.”
“…faith in human ingenuity.”
Well said Steve.
Thanks.
John F. Hultquist says: “…Keeping communication clear: A change in temperature should be stated as, say ‘three Celsius degrees’ or 3C° ; an actual temperature reading is stated as ‘three degrees Celsius’ or 3°C.”
Yes!! Good point, one which I was lamenting about yesterday. Dropping the degree symbol is a postmodern conceit. What does 2.0 K mean? In my book, it mean 2,000, since K is the symbol for kilo (thousands). The ° [done with alt num pad 248] removes any ambiguity. Ditto for the differentials.
“There are so few Republican scientists, he explained, because Republicans are irrational.”
The liberals want AGW science all for themselves? Rule of holes…
> Say what you feel, not what you can prove.
Life imitates art. Here’s a quote from Atlas Shrugged, just following the famous money speech by Francisco d’Anconia:
-“Senior d’Anconia, I don’t agree with you!”
-“If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully.”
-“Oh, I can’t answer you. I don’t have any answers, my mind doesn’t work that way, but I don’t feel that you’re right, so I know that you’re wrong.”
-“How do you know it?”
-“I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. “
To say any group of people are irrational is just plain ridiculous. I’ve met some really ignorant and irrationsl scientists in my day. To say they are all ignorant and irrational would be …..ignorant and irrational. I’m really getting tired of the ignorant and irrational members of the AGW crowd though. It seems they are the only ones from which you hear these days.
Ah yes, Greg Craven. Some time back I stumbled on his YouTube argument for taking drastic action against AGW using Pascals Wager. I wrote to him that using the same logic, you have to agree with going to war against Sadam Hussein because of the premise he had weapons of mass destruction. Surprisingly he didnt agree with going to war, even if supported by his own “logical” treatise on action against AGW. Go figure. I wonder if he believes in God?
Dacron Mather says:
December 16, 2010 at 12:45 pm
REPLY: … Am I correct in divining that you are the imaginary illegitimate great great x4 grandson of Cotton Mather?
Good shot, Anthony!
steveta_uk said: (December 16, 2010 at 3:10 am) This is exactly the attitude of every politician after a poor vote result – never ever ever has a politician said simply that the voters don’t want what the politician is offering, they always resort to the “we failed to get our message across” meme. … And almost without exception, they lost because they DID get the message across.
Very perceptive, Steve; and so clearly — even starkly — set down. Thanks!
“”” Sense Seeker says:
December 16, 2010 at 3:28 am
Long story on the benefits of CO2, William. But it’s a bit one-sided. While you give all the positives, you omitted the negatives.
Higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations are acidifying the oceans, which makes it harder for the creatures there to form shells and other structures. This will upset marine ecosystems and has consequences down the food chain – including us.
More CO2 leads to more warming, which will lead to (well, is already leading to) sea level rises . Not great if you live on the coast.
In other words, your story lacks balance.
PS: Informative story, Steven. “””””
Well the oceans are highly alkaline; and not at all likely to turn acidic any time of interest to us. Besides according to Dr Jane Lubchenko, corals and shellfish should simply thrive in ordinary tap water so long as you dye it blue with “an ordinary labortatory blue dye”. She did an experiment before a Congrssional committee (I believe) to demonstate that. But if you chill the water with lots of dry ice, then it won’t stay blue so maybe the shellfish don’t like that.
So more CO2 leads to mre warming; OF WHAT ??
I believe it can warm the atmosphere (not much; try a winter night out in the Mojave Desert, with no sleeping bag.) I’ve seen no evidence it can warm anything else.
And I thought it was land based ice melting that caused sea levels to rise; not CO2. When sea ice melts the oceans take up more CO2 and the atmospheric CO2 goes down; as much as 18 ppm in the high arctic; and that all happens in a short five months.
You need to do some reading; a whole lot of reading; and stop mouthing things you clearly don’t understand.
@ur momisugly
Dacron Mather says:
December 16, 2010 at 12:45 pm
=========================
How about a summation of your diatribe (in gibberish), cuz I know you had something to say, but the big words left me unmoved.
Craven’s little grid is a neat way of summarising how the issue is polarised. In terms of outcomes, he only sees two – either catastrophic warming, or none at all. The policy decision is similarly polarised. We either do something that will cure the problem (at considerable economic cost), or do nothing and possibly suffer the considerably worse consequences.
The big flaw that he recognises is that the likelihood of this catastrophe could be small. Rather than get messy with the science, he bolsters this with opinions of groups of respected groups. We can say that catastrophic warming is likely, because many groups of leading sciences have passed resolutions saying it is a problem.
The flaws that Greg Craven does not recognise are
1. We do not have a perfect policy solution in theory. Solutions are in terms of containment of the warming to a certain level.
2. In practice, policy-makers have not stuck to any boundaries on limiting economic costs. Here in Britain the legislated objective is to reduce CO2 emissions by 80%, regardless of the cost.
3. The IPCC points to a number of scenarios for warming. They also have a number of possible catastrophic consequences that may occur if temperatures increase by the large amounts the computer models postulate. So, for the IPCC, the worst case global catastrophe is probably as likely as no warming at all in the next century.
Greg Craven does not recognise two important possibilities
– That the entire costly exercise of averting catastrophic climate change may be a failure. So we get the climate catastrophe and the huge economic costs. If the policy cannot be controlled within the bounds laid by UNIPCC AR4 or the Stern Review, then, for the sake of humanity, it would be better to do nothing.
– That there is a huge middle ground between it all being a hoax and climate catastrophe occurring within a generation. Polarizing opinion stops critical and balanced analysis of the science.
I have tried (inadequately) to extend Craven’s grid to encompass this middle ground in a long blog posting.
http://manicbeancounter.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/greg-craven%e2%80%99s-grid-extended/
“”””” jorgekafkazar says:
December 16, 2010 at 2:01 pm
John F. Hultquist says: “…Keeping communication clear: A change in temperature should be stated as, say ‘three Celsius degrees’ or 3C° ; an actual temperature reading is stated as ‘three degrees Celsius’ or 3°C.”
Yes!! Good point, one which I was lamenting about yesterday. Dropping the degree symbol is a postmodern conceit. What does 2.0 K mean? In my book, it mean 2,000, since K is the symbol for kilo (thousands). The ° [done with alt num pad 248] removes any ambiguity. Ditto for the differentials. “””””
Well not so K is Kelvins; which are absolute Temperatures on the thermodynamic Temperature scale. It’s a man’t name like Ohm or Ampere etc; which is why it is traditionally capitallized.
Yes I know there’s a bunch of revisionism that wants to use lower cae so Kelvins would be k; which would be indistinguishable from both the symbol for kilo, and Boltzmann’s Constant (k).
So 2.0 K is two centigrade degrees above the absolute zero on the thermodynamic scale. I agree that degrees C as in say 3 deg C means three centigrade degrees above the freezing point of water which can be considered the same as Celsius Degrees, so long as 0 deg C means 273.15 K. The actual temperature difference represented by one Celsius degree is identical in size to a difference of one on the absolute Kelvin scale.
What was troubling Heidi Cullen?
“”””” Dacron Mather says:
December 16, 2010 at 12:45 pm
The AGU proceedings are so deeply shocking as to make conservative geophysicists insist this disclaimer should hereafter IMMEDIATELY follow WUWT’s every invocation of winter cold and cooling phenomena:
– However, skeptics warn that the panorama of sub-scientific provided here is worthy of a former TV weatherman, and that besides the gibberings of amateur statisticians and the grotesqueries of K-Steet shills, Mr. Watts hosts comments so daringly innumerate and sublimely counterfactual that it takes a petrified diaphragm not to laugh at the spectacle. Modulated with hypocrisy of an amperage Al Gore might envy, WUWT givesThe Onion a stiff run for its money. – “””””
So I know what an ampersand is (&) but what the hell is an amper age ?
Then there is that French Scientist Ampere after whom the standard unit of electric current is named ; colloquially referred to as “Amps” (A in algebra).
So a “petrified diaphragm”; I can barely bring myself to comment; sounds like an impending criminal assault. You should debate Lord Monckton; whose Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary will readily sink whatever your handy reference is.
Atomic Hairdryer says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:59 am
“Oppenheimer at least seems to recognise a change in the political climate.”
If true, that is a big deal. In the late Eighties and early Nineties was the major pitbull for global warming on national television. Or maybe he let the young ones take over the jester role.
Craven lunatic.
As my daughter once commented (she is married to a scientist), scientists sit around and think up things. I would add to that statement that engineers built things, usually useful things. I would wager that there are a lot of republican engineers!
It is possible they are not really concerned with convincing people who doubt climate-change. They seem more concerned with the threat that those who doubt it may convince some of their supporters to doubt it as well. To deal with that threat, if they cannot prove AGW in a way a layman will understand (or at all), those attempts to discredit doubters may be their best option. There were, demostrably, conservatives in the audience at the conference, but not in the audience for which Craven’s message was actually intended.
What about the skepticalscience approach? Their approach is to present the science as they see it in a (mostly) nonpolitical format. They mostly avoid the kinds of extreme statements that Mosher described above because of site policy. I have observed lots of links from other less technical sites and political sites that may have in the past linked to realclimate before realclimate was essentially equated with climategate.
My sense is that they can get pretty good inroads into the electorate with notions of precautionary principle and overall common sense solutions (although there are a few anti-nukes zealots there, they are in the minority). It is all well and good to take Ross McKitrick’s approach above and try to get the other side to immolate themselves on a bonfire of anti-civilization tripe. But there are those on the other side who are not so stupid to do that.