Guest post by Bernie Lewin
As it is the time of year for reflection, let us consider for a moment the Climate Change scare in the bigger picture.
One thing that became more evident as the year progressed was that Copenhagen 2009 might have been the peak of this scare. It is difficult now to see how we could have a resurgence of the campaign that would push beyond the hype of 2009. This is not to say it is all over just yet. And even because it is not over, and because of its resilience even in retreat, it is useful to gain an understanding of what is still happening in this scare before we consider the questions of whether it will happen again, and how much it has damaged the cause of environmentalism and the reputation of science.
Social panic and millenarian movements are well known, not only from medieval times, but also as continuing in different forms during modern times — as panics and as bubbles, the madness of crowds and so forth. What surprised many of us at the first realisation of the phoney nature of the science was that this could happen so comprehensively and convincingly within modern science. Where such panics are usually associated with ignorance and irrationality, this one has the authority of modern science at its very core. Yet we can find precedents to this science-base scare in many health scares of recent decades, and also in environmental scares since the DDT cancer scare triggered by Silent Spring, politicised by the EDF and legalized by the newly formed EPA. (See Scared to Death which finds a repeating pattern to these science-based scares.)
The AGW scare is similar to these in that it was instigated by scientists, but with one undoubted difference being its monumental scale. What is new in AGW is how it became so much more powerful and pervasive across so many disciplines and domains of science. While some previous scares were moderated and dampened by state-instituted scientific organisations, AGW was almost universal promoted. The involvement of state-sanctioned scientific institutions is of special historically interest when we consider the history of the Royal Society, the first successful state-sanctioned scientific institution upon which so many others were cloned. The Royal Society first promoted itself 350 years ago as a sober and reasonable remedy for such apocalyptic enthusiasm rife in the English Restoration. It is only in very recent times, and mostly with AGW, that the Royal Society and its clones have taken on apocalyptic scenarios as a principle tool of science promotion, and as a way to asserting their power, i.e., by drumming up panic, and so directing public policy (more here).
Apocalyptic public policy to appease social panic is not at all new. Sometimes (and often with the help of scientific reasoning) it was to quieten the panic. But often, and powerfully, it was to inflame it. Fear campaigns have long been used to drum up support for war. That the AGW campaign did often reach the pitch of war propaganda is evident in much of the political rhetoric of 2008-9, not the least example of which was the newly elected Australian prime minister’s declaration that AGW is the greatest moral issue of our time. And the public policy push was not just about windmills and carbon taxes. Nor was policy success always driven by an unconscious coalition of Baptists and Bootleggers. In my state (Victoria, Australia), during the 2008-10 peak, we were throwing public funding at a water pipeline and a desalination plant while introducing planning rules against new constructions on formerly expensive low-lying coastal properties.
These two major projects, the desal plant and the pipeline, were instigated upon scientific advice eschewing the historical evidence of climate cycles and promoting the idea of a climate shift to a warmer-dryer future for South-Eastern Australia. Beyond the construction contractors it is hard to find the ‘bootleggers’ here. The new planning rule was instituted upon the advice of state-funded science of an imminent 0.8 metre sea level rise. It does indeed seem that to some extent the decision makers really believed this advice and acted upon it to their perceived benefit in the face of embarrassing and widespread public protest. That they were victims of the bad advice of AGW proponents seemed to became evident when the government was defeated on a stormy weekend following the wettest spring in this corner of the continent since the drought began — during which the press was depicting farmers standing on their flood farms shouting ‘climate cycles’ and ‘told you so.’
While the political extremes of AGW are astounding, what is for me most interesting about the AGW scare is not so much the public panic – we have seen that all before – but the pervasive infiltration of this scare into the scientific establishment, into its associations, its journals and its funding bodies. Why so successful, so rapid, so pervasive this corruption?
When we turn for answers to academic historians of climate science, we find them mostly on-side and on message, and seemingly unaware of the profound significance of this turn in the history of science. (While Fleming is better than Weart, Oreskes & Conway mainline the propaganda and spits it out, whereas Kellow is the notable exception among the academics – see below). Looking elsewhere, we do find others starting to develop useful ways of presenting an historical understand of what is going on here. Some of these that I find the most interesting, I present briefly below for WUWT readers’ consideration and comment:
1. Now that modern science has usurped religion as the new principle validation of public knowledge, such corruptions should be expected.
In pre-modern times there were two prevailing validations of contentious public knowledge, one was the dogma of the state or religious authority and the other was direct communications from God. The authority of the prophet is upon such direct communication, while the religious dogma often defers to the authority of prophetic testimonials. But since the end of World War II, and especially through the compulsory secular education programs of affluent nations, the principle authority for public knowledge has been modern science. Except in the context of a Church, if you want to persuade folks to act according to the knowledge you profess, the best way is to make your claims upon the authority of science. Only recently has science commanded such enormous power. And power corrupts. And so when we look back on the corruption of the Church and the abuse of its dogmas to serve the interests of the unscrupulous, where we see scary scenarios causing panic in religious knowledge systems, now that modern science has usurped religion, should we be surprised that similar phenomena emerge within science also?
2. The public fear –> public funding cycle generated explosive growth of the pseudo-science of Climate Change.
In 1988 James Hansen won extraordinary attention from the press when he proclaimed his ‘99% certainty’ that the forecasted self-imposed global warming catastrophe was now in train. Schneider was not so certain, but he did recognise that scary scenarios were required in order to gain attention and to prompt folks to act (Haughton later admitted much the same). The IPCC was founded, and it reported twice without certainty and without alarm…and without much attention. At the end of 1995 it nearly did the same again…until late changes were made…and so headlines in the papers again…and the rest is history. Climate science, an under-paid stagehand was propelled into the glory of the footlights. (more here)
Scary scenarios generate public fear, public fear generates funding for more research, and if the new research generates more public fear then the science will continue to expand. The environmental sciences had hit upon a funding mechanism rarely exploited outside the arms industry (i.e., the fabled ‘military-industrial complex’), and this caused almost irresistible and explosive expansion.
3. The social and environmental sciences legitimated activist-science.
The Marxist social sciences of the post-war period (neo-Marxism) promoted activist science under the slogan ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world…the point is to change it’ and this legitimated the validation of academic research and teaching, not according to some ground in truth, but by the extent to which it promoted social change for the good. This politicised approach to scholarship pervaded left thinking to such an extent that old-fashion liberal scientists were vilified on campus as ‘bourgeois.’ Such an approach to research is evident in social science discourses with no apparent Marxism affinities, including Feminism and more recently Post-Normal Science. (more here)
Science-as-activism came into the natural sciences through geography and the other environmental sciences. At the time universities were using funding incentives to promote such things as ‘community partnering’, ‘knowledge transfer’ and science-for-policy – and all this against an idea of the old paradigm of the academy as an ivory tower full of irrelevant boffins wasting public money pursuing science for science’s sake. The distinction between science and policy, and between science and political interest became blurred. In this atmosphere, the involvement of advocacy groups (WWF, Greenpeace etc) in the scientific process was condoned and encouraged. The work of Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, exemplifies the corruption of conventional natural science practices by this new activist approach to science (more here).
4. Noble Cause or ‘Virtuous’ Corruption
The legitimation of activist-science helps to promote what is called ‘noble cause corruption’. This is the term used in the context of criminal investigations, where, for example, evidence might be planted in order to convict a criminal of a crime that the investigator has no doubt he committed. (Such corruption is portrayed famously by Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil.) As this sort of corruption manifests in the sciences, Aynsley Kellow has labelled it ‘virtuous corruption.’ This is where we would have scientists genuinely believing in the truth of AGW quite prepared to manipulate, distort and misrepresent their research in order to promote this truth in the face of formidable opposition from powerful vested interests (read: ‘Big Oil’ etc) attempting to obscure the truth with their own distortions, misrepresentations and lies.
-BL
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In my experience, the alternatives to incandescent light bulbs are:
1- Perhaps Energy Efficient, but not noticably so (unless you take too much notice of the numbers on the labels)
2- Have worse Luminosity and diminished quality of light
3- Last little longer than the old ones and Cost far more
So in time, people will reject them and demand that the old incandescent light bulbs be brought back.
Now to the main question of this post.
My informal opinion is that most members of the public lack a basic understanding of economics, statistics and climate science.
When told by a once loved former prime minister that climate change was the most important moral challange of our times – they believed him.
When told major changes were needed – they believed him.
When told that this could be accomplished without undue disruption to their lifestyles – they believed him.
When told that they, as members of the great deserving poor, would be fully compensated with grants financed from taxes levied on the “polluters” – they believed him.
But when he told them that on due reflection, it was all rather too hard and that he had given up on the idea to pursue othere objectives, like saving the WHOLE world from the great financial crisis – they believed him and went on with their lives without worry about whatever that was (see I’ve even forgotten already) that was the greatest moral threat or whatever.
The only thing puzzling me is why the cost of electricity keeps going up and up when there are, at least as yet, no taxes levied on so called “polluters”, at least in Australia.
Oh and another thing.
I understand that it is very cold in North America and Europe at present, both because it’s approaching mid winter and because the very hot artic circular railay system is sucking all the heat up from the populated parts of the northern hemisphere, so the rail carriages running under the ice don’t get too cold for the polar bears to sit in them.
(There, I think I’ve got that straight at last).
But here in Australia, in the depths of the lower hemisphere, it’s almost mid summer when it’s always very hot and very dry, with bush fires raging and so fort, that neatly fills the TV news programs during the silly season holiday slots.
SO- (at last I come to my important question) – just why am sitting in front of my CO2 producing electric radiator because it’s so darn cold when it should be so very hot, hot, hot.
Is that but another result of global warming?
I can see now why it is so much to be feared
And why the uneducated masses cannot understand it too well.
The post title: : “Climate Change and the Corruption of Science: Where did it all go wrong?”
We need to fix this SOON! I’ve now seen “Scientific Integrity is an OxyMoron” on a few web sites. How long before we scientists lose all respect among the regular people?
John Whitman says:
December 27, 2010 at 10:41 am
tallbloke says:
December 27, 2010 at 10:10 am
vigilantfish says:
December 27, 2010 at 9:51 am
tallbloke/vigilantfish,
It saddens me that historians of science such as yourselves feel the need for anonymous commenting. I have enjoyed your frequent energetic activities on blogs for a long time.
It is hard to meet fellow commenters socially that way. : )
Happy Holidays.
John
—————
Come this summer, should you chance to meet a moderately attractive, somewhat plump middle-age woman with long blond hair wearing a Josh-inspired WUWT tee, that will probably be me. My husband assures me that it is indecipherable to the uninitiated – hence I will have no problem wearing it. My haunts are Toronto and Virginia Beach. I’d be really happy to meet other denizens of WUWT.
I just spent the last 45 minutes reading the post and going through all the comments, so I guess I’ve earned the right to comment.
I hate to the the one to toss cold water on what is to a large extent a celebration of the demise of CAGW theory, but I suspect that the situation with CAGW is a lot like what Mark Twain said of his death, rumors of it are greatly overstated. I believe that what we are experiencing is merely one phase of a battle in a war whose end is a long way off, and which in fact may never end, just morph into other forms.
I would caution all WUWT readers and posters to exercise caution. There are many battles yet to come, and with them will come inevitable advances and setbacks. There will be more times of desperation as well as more times of triumph, before we know how this this is going to come out.
Perhaps we should take advice from Clausewitz, who warned commanders sternly of the “fog of war.” By that, he meant that however sure we believe our knowledge and capacities to be, the rapid churning of events can turn things upside down in short order.
Another good analogy might be running a marathon. Very often marathoners (particularly first timers) experience a series of ups and downs during the event. At some points they feel they could sprint forever, and at others it seems that they can hardly put one foot in front of another.
I’m nearly fifty years old. I do expect that within my lifetime I will see a satisfactory shattering of the CAGW dogma. But I am not ready just now to place any bets on it.
Ken in North Dakota
Bernie,
Thanks for the post.
Let me clarify noble cause or virtuous corruption. As I describe it includes more than just the deliberate misbehaviour of scientists – though that might occur. (Not including in a a paper submitted for publication the fact that a result depends entirely upon the inclusion of bristlecone pine proxies is at least that). It also includes the ability to explain away contrary evidence because it might undermine the consensus or the political case for action, using various fallacies, such as the genetic fallacy (McKitrick is a Fellow at Fraser Institute, Exxon gave $10,000 to Fraser, therefore we can ignore his findings). But it also includes building in subjective assumptions (particularly in models) that are dubious or include value assumptions and affect results. This can be at least subconscious, and is the reason why in disciplines like psychology and drug testing, interpretations are routinely made by people NOT involved in the outcome – least they interpret results to suit the theory. In drug testing, doses and placebos are made up by one team, administration is undertaken by another independent group, diagnosis by a third and statistical analysis by another.
In climate science, one team can handle everything, which was less of a problems before billions were riding on it. Data is collected, manipulated, interpreted and modelled, and forecasts given, reports for the IPCC and governments – all by the same team. To make matters worse, their funding depends on certain results (leaving room for venal corruption), and they control the peer review process (as Climategate showed). Spencer Weart put it that climate science is a collective undertaken, and the assumptions that must be made are made collectively – by processes that we would see as political (in a small group sense). As a result, he said that climate science is inevitably socially constructed, though that does not mean it is only socially constructed.
It does mean that we need to be extra cautious about how climate scientists behave, subjecting them to rigourous peer review and insisting in on transparency, disclosure and replication. The absence of these factors in climate science means that the process is corrupted – in the same sense that a computer disc could be corrupted.
We must collectively insist that climate science lifts its game before we regard it as science.
The Gray Monk says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:57 am
In fact Huxley must be exonerated from any accusations of corrupting science for the purposes of social manipulation. He in fact warned that Darwinism would not make a good foundation for a new morality and cautioned against those who were tempted to use Darwinism as a basis for social experimentation or manipulation. The real culprits were the joint fathers of sociology: August Compte and Herbert Spencer. The latter was the f0under of conservative Social Darwinism, which taught that the poor were poor because they were not capable of being anything else, and hence educating the poor was a waste of resources. It is ironic that a discipline that has tended to be extremely left-wing originated with one who would today be labelled right-wing (although Spencer was a social progressive with respect to women and no moral conservative). Compte decided the science of human behaviour and society should trump the hard sciences, as human beings were the most complex phenomenon in the natural world – and ever since then sociologists have had a distorted understanding of their own importance.
The other distorter of Darwinism was the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel, who unlike Huxley was uncritical of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, deliberately generated propaganda (i.e. embryology recapitulates phylogeny -e.g. the developing fetus goes through all the evolutionary stages that human beings passed through before becoming human) to support Darwin’s theory. He founded the Monist philosophy, that taught the spirit and matter were one. This proved to be enormously influential in Germany, to the point of fostering the national socialist movement. Today Darwinian apologists point out that the inherent Aryan racism predated Darwinism, but overlook the fact that in modern times, science is the ultimate justification for any social program. EugenicS, seen then as a science, was used by Hitler to justify the eradication of the Jews during the holocaust, but he also called on the support of Darwinism and the Social Darwin ideal of the survival of the fittest, rather than Christianity – the religion of the weak. Science functions as the source of truth in modern society just as religion did in past ages. Distortions of science underlay Pol Pot and the Great Leap forward, as well as Lysenko’s science induced famines in the Soviet Union.
Jason Calley says:
December 27, 2010 at 12:52 pm
I agree with you, Jason – Lysenkoism is the closest analogy to the CAGW mania, not least because like Lysenko, those who dominate today’s climate science meme do not tolerate alternative opinions and actively persecute them, through shutting down routes to publication, ad hominem attacks, and shunning, not to mention making it impossible to get grants to undertake skeptical science.
———–
Lucy Skywalker says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:27 am
Lucy, I am a long-time admirer of your trenchant and perspicacious comments here. I wish as a historian that I could offer an answer to your question about Maggie Thatcher. I think a nice critique of a right-wing politician who unleashed part of this CAGW dragon will help to open the dialogue on this scientific fiasco in the future, but I think the Paul Ehrlich, Hensen etc. leadership, coupled with environmental activism, were actually more important: they saw an opportunity, especially after the Montreal Protocol to ban freon showed the way, and hijacked the science completely. The New Age-environmental religion was already well developed, and eager to replace the old Christian sins with new environmental ones, by the time Thatcher helped to create the Hadley Centre and CRU, and I think she had no idea what she was stepping into.
On the other hand, I am firmly of the opinion that the only way that most academics today will begin to acknowledge the distortion of science involved in the global warming scare is if it is presented as ultimately a right-wing, underhanded capitalist manoeuvre to manipulate markets and concentrate power in the hands of the energy and other industries. Those pure and self-righteous environmentalists, alack, were too innocent and politically naive to realize how they were being manipulated. I have not yet written my lectures on this, but they are coming this term (in an environmental history course I teach) and that is the tack I will employ in an attempt to open minds.
Lucy,
You are about right on Thatcher, but there is a wider context as well. Closing the uneconomic coal pits was one driving factor. Steaming coal in Europe as a whole was four times the cost of coal from Australia, the US, South Africa and Colombia in the early 1990s, and Thatcher saw in global warming a reason to finish what she had started in the mid-1960s with the miners.
Another factor was the disbandment of the CEGB and privatisation of electricity generation in 1990. This mean that investment decisions were made on the basis of commercial discount rates (8%) rather than public investments (4-5%), which favoured less capital-intensive generating plant (eg gas over coal).
Also in 1990, the EU relaxed a prohibition on the burning of gas for electricity generation.
Over then next 5 years, there followed the so-called ‘dash to gas’ with 20% of generation shifting to gas (mostly CCGT) from coal – reducing emissions by 12%. This is why the UK was very happy in 1997 to ask everyone to reduce emissions against a 1990 base year, because they’d already done so with no effort.
The other factor was Germany. Helmut Kohl used the climate change issue in the 1987 elections to wedge the SPD and Greens, both of which campaigned for a phase-out of nuclear power, to be replaced by coal-fired generation. Then in 1990, Germany was reunified in October, and the Eastern economy (and emissions – based on dirty brown coal) collapsed by 30% over the next year.
These windfall reductions were allowed to be shared with the rest of Europe under the Burden Sharing Agreement (or ‘European Bubble’), which allowed the PIGS and Sweden (also wishing to phase out nuclear) increases. The political alliance was the Third World (in G77) promised wealth transfers in the name of adaptation and exemption from targets, coupled with EU advantage relative to the US and others.
The other part of the equation was the model for a climate treaty, where Mustafa Tolba, UNEP Director, choosing to follow the model of the Montreal Protocol – well before the first IPCC report – by placing reliance on a ‘scientific consensus’. The IPCC was established to produce such a consensus – but also to forestall the actions of activist scientists in the (unofficial) Advisory Committee on Greenhouse Gases. The Montreal model was inappropriate: there was not committee to find a consensus; the science of climate change was inherently uncertain; the successful conclusion of Montreal depended on support form the US, whose chemical industry had strongly favourable interests because they had developed (and owned patents on) substitutes; the costs of action were not great for any country; the issue did not go to the very core of developed economies (energy).
Always look for multiple factors. Hansen, Gore et al were already talking up the problem of course, with Hansen’s infamous 1988 Congressional testimony – but that’s another story!
vigilantfish said:
” … The other distorter of Darwinism was the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel, who unlike Huxley was uncritical of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, deliberately generated propaganda (i.e. embryology recapitulates phylogeny -e.g. the developing fetus goes through all the evolutionary stages that human beings passed through before becoming human) to support Darwin’s theory. He founded the Monist philosophy, that taught the spirit and matter were one. This proved to be enormously influential in Germany, to the point of fostering the national socialist movement. Today Darwinian apologists point out that the inherent Aryan racism predated Darwinism, but overlook the fact that in modern times, science is the ultimate justification for any social program. EugenicS, seen then as a science, was used by Hitler to justify the eradication of the Jews during the holocaust, but he also called on the support of Darwinism and the Social Darwin ideal of the survival of the fittest, rather than Christianity – the religion of the weak …”
——————————————————————————
Social Darwinism and eugenics have a complex history, which is not quite as linear as your post implies (of course I acknowledge that we are limited in space to discuss these things here). Nor were (or are) their proponents clearly divided along ideological lines. During the late Victorian period and up to the end of WWII, many people who regarded themselves as good Christians, social reformers and those who cared about poverty followed these lines of ‘scientific’ enquiry. There were strains of Malthusianism in there, as well as a still strong tradition of people who bred animals for particular traits. And, you only have to read contemporary English writing of the time to know that the notion of a master race was not confined to the Germans. It was by no means out of the mainstream to talk about the superiority of the English race – sorry you Celts out there! 🙂
The lesson of all this is that science is in no way immune from broader social, political and economic currents. When these achieve a critical mass, all kinds of dodgy stuff, like eugenics and its sibling, social Darwinism, come about. The quality of the science is secondary and only exposed in hindsight.
It is naive for anyone to believe that these mistakes of the past were mainly due to lack of the high tech or more evolved methods we use today. The same will be said of many of our firmly held views on various things in 100 years.
The climate ‘science’ apocalyptic view of the world that we now endure is just the latest of a long line of similar phenomena. I hope that people like Bernie and Tallbloke continue to track and analyse this latest version as it is happening. Like a car crash, it is awful, but you just can’t stop watching.
I think the clue is right there in the title “Global Warming”. Global problems call for global solutions and there is really only one global organization. The UN.
It has been the UN that has pushed this particular “problem” and their advocacy is designed to bring about a global response through the UN organization. Many of the climate scientists on the AGW side support this global approach for political and ideological reasons. The UN is way left of center and is driven by the ideology of redistribution from developed to developing countries so as to accumulate power in it’s own hands. A continuation of the old adage that if you promise to rob Peter to pay Paul you can rely on the support of Paul and there are many Pauls in the world.
The battle against the UN is like that against the multi headed Hydra. We may have chopped off this head but there are many more heads on the way.
There is a direct parallel to AGW and an earlier scandal among professional historians. Distortion, fraud, or incompetent research (depending on how you evaluate the evidence – I go with fraud since some of the data did not, could not, exist) was perpetuated by a historian named Michael Bellesiles.
The similarities are very strong. A concensus of historians (initially) back Bellesiles research and theories because it agreed with their biases; non-historians questioned the research and were subject to ad hominem attacks; requested data was ‘lost’; a failure of the peer review process; errors were admitted but “didn’t change the final results”; finally, open postings on the Internet to the “errors” forced historians to repudiate Bellesiles.
I don’t like wikipedia, but they seem to have treated this story fairly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America:_The_Origins_of_a_National_Gun_Culture
Please read it and you will understand how these things can happen – and how the combination of hard-working, fact-checking non-professionals and the Internet can make a difference.
vigilantfish says:
December 27, 2010 at 7:38 pm
“On the other hand, I am firmly of the opinion that the only way that most academics today will begin to acknowledge the distortion of science involved in the global warming scare is if it is presented as ultimately a right-wing, underhanded capitalist manoeuvre to manipulate markets and concentrate power in the hands of the energy and other industries. Those pure and self-righteous environmentalists, alack, were too innocent and politically naive to realize how they were being manipulated. I have not yet written my lectures on this, but they are coming this term (in an environmental history course I teach) and that is the tack I will employ in an attempt to open minds.”
Please take care that you are not creating greater demons then you are slaying. Those underhanded capitalists are just trying to survive the storm. There are others that want complete power over all. You should remember what Lenin said about students.
Teach them to be sceptics, to search out the truth for them selves. pg
P.F. says:
December 27, 2010 at 8:33 am
“A very good and enlightening essay, but will it make sense to the masses that have swallowed the AGW nonsense?
BTW: Does anyone here know if the Royal Society was involved in the “scientific research” over a hundred years ago in which the effort was made to prove women should not have the right to vote because their craniums (hence, brain size) were smaller on average than men’s? It was somewhat akin to eugenics.”
Yes, back in the 19th century you did have RS members walking around espousing ‘phrenology’ and even ‘miasma’. It is arguable that the RS are simply upholding a proud tradition, of believing the mainstream view — whether it is scientifically correct or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory_of_disease
Mods – think my latest post may be lost in the spam filter – tks – j
[I opened the can, found no spam. Hence, I plated the contents for public digestion. …. bl57~mod]
Darn, I love spam!
Seriously, there was a comment, and it was posted about 5 hours ago. Of course, it was a long one, with references. Where do they go? Is it near the place where odd socks end up?
This is a much more pressing question than the number of models that can dance on the head of a pin.
[Reply] WordPress occasionally loses things. If it was your comment, please resubmit. RT-mod
Interesting article, thanks. It would be great if the semi-resident history-of-science commenters (vigilantfish, tallbloke) could involve themselves by helping to expand this into a published article. They could author under pseudonyms (‘Student’, maybe?).
I think we should consider the role of ‘moral hazard’ in all of this. It’s pretty clear to me that none of the players – scientists, politicians, NGOs, etc. – believe that they will be answerable for the ill effects of unwarranted alarm about AGW. They’ll be retired, or out of power by the time the truth/falsity of the proposition is established, and enough time will have elapsed that they can rely on obfuscation to diminish their responsibility (c/f the global cooling ‘consensus’ – or was it? – of the 1970s). By promoting AGW you can expand your base of supporters (if you’re, say Greenpeace or WWF) or voters (mainstream politicians) or funding (scientists) without any risk or cost to yourself in the short or long term. What’s not to like?
There’s also a clear ‘Western’ bias in the way the argument is usually expounded: the precautionary principle says that we should do something rather than nothing, a stitch in time, etc. But clearly any effective action will delay or reduce development in the Third World (are we still allowed to call it that?). So the ‘better safe than sorry’ course has a deleterious effect on billions of people; but hey, they’re not here to make their case, so we don’t need to think about them, do we? Poverty is a much, much bigger and more pressing issue than AGW, and alleviation of it will be delayed by the policies we are being urged/forced to adopt to reduce AGW. But so long as it’s only invisible black/brown/yellow babies who are dying (of malaria or indoor smoke or just plain hunger) to make us feel better about the way we’re treating the planet, that’s OK.
I think it’s impossible for the average layperson (I include politicians and most of those running/working for NGOs in this) to understand the level of moral bankruptcy surrounding science funding. I’d like to be able to tone down that sentence, but I really can’t. I’ve spent over 11 years as post-grad and post-doc in Engineering and Marine Science faculties (UK and US), and my experience is that research proposals are exquisitely tuned to attract funding, pretty much regardless of the worth of the science. Research proposals are also more likely to be funded if the results are known before the research starts. (And if you think that makes no sense, you’re right). It is no surprise to me at all, that once the notion of the importance of AGW had become established, a bandwagon effect amplified it – that’s just the grim reality of how science funding works.
The only comfort is that science is ultimately self-correcting. Of course, that’s no help when current policies are made based on incompetent, biased and preliminary science. (Not just AGW – ‘heart healthy’ food would be another example, plus the ‘obesity epidemic’ and probably passive smoking and lead in petrol – worth reading the background of all of these). Unfortunately, although science itself is not arrogant and hubristic, individual scientists all too often are. This is not new and not surprising (Kelvin, Rutherford and Einstein all made some pretty dumb, arrogant and ultimately wrong statements); what is surprising is the extent to which the media is taken in by ‘authorities’ and allows them to shape the discourse. (OK, the media’s a pretty crapulous collection of arts graduates, so it’s not surprising at all, really, is it?).
Anyway… Hugh P, if you’re still monitoring the thread: I don’t know if you’re a ‘dial-a-troll’, or what. But the thing you don’t seem to understand is that 99.99% of the people writing and reading about AGW are not experts. You’re not, I’m not. Therefore we are required to base our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent on arguments from authority. Have you read even 1% of peer-reviewed literature in this area? Of course not. Neither have I. Hardly anyone, anywhere has. And fewer still have the skills to evaluate and criticize it. You have to realize that the vast majority of published science is, well, shit. (Yes, especially including my rather sparse publications). So citing that a lot of (recent) peer-reviewed science says ‘x’ doesn’t actually lend much weight to your argument, as far as I’m concerned. Tell me what the beliefs of climate scientists will be in 50 years and we can have a discussion … but of course, neither of us knows that.
So we’re left with arguments from authority, and skepticism. Now, you probably believe whatever Jim Hansen says, but I don’t. I believe that he would tell us that black was white if he felt it would further the adoption of AGW belief. For me, at the point where he became an advocate (1988) he surrendered all right to be taken as a scientific authority (and, incidentally, he should have been fired at roughly that time for abusing his publicly funded position to promote his personal agenda). The same goes for the vast majority of Western establishment scientists who comment in this area. Multiply my skepticism by a factor of – say – 100 for economists, NGOs, and politicians.
That leaves little meat on the AGW bone. I’ve read enough about Mann’s work and the huge effort that it took to get data out of him to smell a huge rat (and he’s clearly incompetent, at best, at PCA). Science is only science if you can show your working – just like at school. And the surface temperature records are archived and adjusted by people whose funding depends on there being a ‘problem’. [Upton Sinclair: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’]. And so on and so on. You can either conclude that the case looks shaky and feel that we should wait for some decent science to confirm the dire predictions of advocates, or you can accept it all uncritically and castigate those of us who are exercising our right (and obligation) to be skeptical of newly-emerging science.
I do think that in the long term, the current mode of ‘big science’ funding will be broken (partly as a result of the AGW scare) and that citizen scientists (without the magic ‘PhD’) will be able to get more involved. That would be a return to the way science was conducted pre-WWII. I hope that’s the direction things go, anyway…
It’s really much to do about nothing
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/2010wheredoesitfitinwarmestyearlist.pdf
A physical geographer, I like your blog Bernie, and if I get around it, I’d like to research and contribute to the history of climatology a nuts-and-bolts organisational bit about whether Geography’s quantitative-revolution program at some stage could have been better invoked to impact events. It may not be too late by the way.
We were warned!
I agree. I remember reading recently that TV audiences plummet when the news reports on global warming. Public fear is just an illusion drummed up by the media. No doubt there are a few crazed activists who are scared.
Hugh Pepper says:
“Lucy Skywalker: Using the Lord Monckton as a guide to anything is a huge error. He is a propagandist who does not deserve a moment of reasonable attention. I will believe the Academies of Science, and the data supplied by the thousands of scientists who have contributed to the IPCC process and the many others who have been engaged in research all of which may be challenged in the acceptable peer review process. You need much more than rhetoric to challenge the mass of data which is already available to you and others. If you are predisposed to disbelieve anything which does not fit your preconceptions, however, this entire exercise will be futile.”
Mr. Pepper, Why do you believe that a ‘propogandist’ for the sceptic viewpoint is any less to be listened to than the whole of the worlds media and broadcasters who are propogandists for the warmists cause? And why do you feel that scientific papers can only be reviewed or criticised by the peers of the scientists who have produced them? Your assumption is that science should only be challenged by scientists, I can only say that without the views of so many non-scientists like Lord Monkton who. like many of us, can read a scientific paper and make a judgement on them and challenge the findings and forecasts we would all have been taken for a very expensive ride. Thank god for the non-scientists who have so far proved that polar bears are not dying out, that snow disappearing on mountains is not caused by warming, that seas are not rising, that record snow levels are not caused by AGW. that average temperatures are not rising each year, that animal species are not dying out through AGW, that snow would be a thing of the past in Europe and north America has proved laughable, that rain forests will be killed off or that mass starvation will not occur in Africa etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., False statements that in the main have come from peer reviewed scientific papers, some of which have sbsequently been proven to be based on falsified data and manipulation, and which you offer as the only authority on these matters, I know who I would prefer to listen to.
What Trembling Fools They Are
A silent spring, I’ve never heard,
it did not kill my favorite bird.
The population bomb’s a dud,
it’s just not so, my favorites bud.
Where’s that swarm of killer bees,
that forest with depleted trees,
That ice age that didn’t freeze,
the Ozone Hole or PCBs.
Skies were blue – they still are,
peak oil – I use it in my car.
Polar icecaps just won’t melt,
that’s a lie that Al Gore dealt.
Y2K was a fake,
COBOL pros got that take.
My skivvies in disarray,
I’ve been fingered by mo-TSA.
As a child beneath my desk,
escaping that Atomic death,
A white-hot flash that never came,
I’m pining for that cleansing flame,
for fear of something real,
not a panic-driven zeal.
Oh, what trembling fools they are,
they’ve sold my freedoms to the safety czar.
P.G. Sharrow says:
December 27, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Please take care that you are not creating greater demons then you are slaying. Those underhanded capitalists are just trying to survive the storm. There are others that want complete power over all. You should remember what Lenin said about students.
Teach them to be sceptics, to search out the truth for them selves. pg
—————
PG – point taken. My natural slant is right wing, which I do not hide, so I will try to be fairly even handed, but I am not going to whitewash the role of Shell or other oil companies … they discovered a way to increase profits with the sanction of the left, and were happy to do so. I am pro-capitalist, but within reason. The behaviour of fishing companies in pursuing dwindling stocks reveals that in capitalism, as in all things, there needs to be checks and balances. What destroys this system is if the corporations become too cosy with governments, rather than governments offering some conservative oversight – as happened with some of the main fisheries corporations; and there are numerous other examples.