by Steven Mosher
In the last episode of “Craven Attention” I recounted some of the things Greg Craven said during a panel discussion after Oppenheimer’s lecture of the role of scientists. [GC33D The 2010 Stephen Schneider Global Environmental Change Lecture (Webcast)Moscone South, Gateway Ballroom, Room 103, 1345h–1440h Scientists, Expert Judgment, and Public Policy: What is Our Proper Role? Presented by M. Oppenheimer, Geosciences, Princeton University]
Greg seemed to take issue with my characterization of some of his comments.
I have no problem with analysis and criticism of my presentation, but I do feel strongly that the facts of it be correctly conveyed, as I have already been significantly misquoted. I expect that you do not appreciate having your statements mischaracterized or misquoted either…
But I believe some of your characterizations of what I said to be misrepresentative. You are of course free to give your assessment of my presentation, demeanor, or state of mental health. But everyone in the debate says “look at the facts and let them speak for themselves.” I ask that you do the same thing and limit yourself to quoting my actual words, criticizing them and myself as you will, without taking upon yourself to characterize what I said. I am painfully aware that I am a pathological overtalker and can’t be succinct to save my life.
I do not expect you to agree with my words or me. But I do expect you have the discipline and principle to convey the speech accurately, rather than settling for your interpretations and summaries of what I said (as you did in the “Basically it goes like this…” set-out). I’m sure that you’ll agree that characterizing your opponent’s words yourself does no service to forwarding the discussion.
And he seeks to vindicate himself by posting a transcript of the episodes.
And my remarks have already been mischaracterized and misquoted, to further malign the AGU. In the interests of accuracy and truthful reporting, I will post an audio file and transcription of my presentation as given at www.gregcraven.org as soon as I can.
He has now posted a transcript of a different presentation he gave earlier in the day. Huh? Strangely the audio that produced that transcript is still not available. The problem is my piece covered a different episode. He posted a transcript of the meeting at 1020 AM on the 15th and I covered the panel that followed Oppenheimer who spoke at 13:40-14:00. Still, we can note some things and see if it’s possible that I got the gist of what Craven was saying correct. That is, by looking at the first transcript we can see that my characterization of the second speech is not implausible. Let’s just say the second presentation was a good model for the first.
First lets note this. The Craven who cares about being misquoted had this to say; take special care to note his definition of the meaning of communication below:
my message to you now is that you must stop communicating as scientists. You must begin communicating as citizens, as a father, as a mother, with whatever feelings are in your heart, with your fears, speak to them of your hopes, let them know about your befuddlement at the divergence. And tell them frankly, forthrightly, sincerely, about any terror that you are ignoring…..
You say you want to have an effect on the public? If you trod a journey at all similar to mine, think, visualize, take five minutes to meditate on the impact it would have if you took off your goddamned scientist hat for just a moment, and put on your citizen hat. And said frankly to the public through the largest mouthpiece you can: “As a scientist, here’s my understanding. As a citizen, here’s my hope, my vision. And as a mother, here’s my contingency plan, here’s my lifeboat.”….
If you obliterated your comfort zone and the hard line of purity of your scientific sensibilities–that you do cling to, with the faith of a god–and you actually went forth as an actual advocate, a sentiment normally anathema to the constitution of a scientist, imagine if you went out into the fray bearing your heart, with your emotion and the authority of your understanding as your weapon. For what you’ve been giving them as a scientist up to now is information, and with that increasing divergence between public and scientific opinion…
You must stop selfishly pursuing your pleasure in finding things out. To be frank: f*** your research. We. Need. You. I know I am almost certain to outrage you with my impertinence and the audacity of my message. And my word choice, for substituting ‘f*** for ‘screw’. [Mild laughter.] And that’s the lesson you must absorb into the fiber of your being, for the meaning of communication is not what you intend, or the information. The meaning of communication is the response it elicits in the listener. And that’s where we have failed. So while you may be likely to forget the details of my rant, you will always feel the emotional aftertaste of it. And that is the purpose of communicating the science of climate change to the lay public. To give them an emotional aftertaste.
Your role, your job–the one we have assigned you and gladly supported–has always been to stand on the hill overlooking the bloody battlefield and give reconnaissance and convey information about what’s ahead. But there comes a time in the last stand for every single support troop, no matter how far removed, to pick up a weapon, come down into the fray, and fight to the death for what they stand for. To charge into the face of annihilation itself and fight with their teeth, tearing out the jugular of their enemy with their bloody mouth if they have no weapons left. That time is now.
If you do not believe that, if you do not feel that, I challenge you to be intellectually honest–that part of you that you hold up as better than any other profession, and I support you in that opinion–you are the only rational thinkers on the planet. Beware, psychological research shows that people don’t generally make decisions rationally. If you don’t agree with this–that this is the time to radically challenge your comfort zone, and your traditional mores of never letting feelings or opinions on policy pass your lips–I’m not going say “If not now, then when?” I’m going to say: detail an operational definition of a test to test whether a situation would merit that extreme action or not. Come up with the characteristics. And then I defy you to compare them to the situation now. If you do that, forget everything I’ve said. I absolve you. That’s all I ask. But if your intellectually honest operational definition tells you that the time is now. . . .
These snippets are from his earlier speech. However, in the panel after Oppenheimer’s talk he gave a similar version of the “comfort zone” challenge. The “emotional aftertaste” I was left with after I forgot the details of his second rant was this:
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 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.
I apologize if I got it “wrong,” but on Greg’s view my emotional “aftertaste” IS the meaning of what he said. I guess those years of studying Stanley Fish and Roland Barthes came in handy. Personally, I want scientists to keep their science hat on at all times. Others can panic without any practice or education. To be fair to Greg and to present his argument a bit more precisely and rigorously he seems to want scientists to speak emotionally about policy while retaining their objectivity in science. Except, for the ” f*** your research part” which is a bit hard to square with things. Craven thinks scientists research because they take pleasure in it. Removing doubt and uncertainty is an equally likely motivation. So there he seems to be saying they should put their desire to remove doubt and uncertainty aside in favor of passion. Oppenheimer’s point, on the other hand, was this: as an expert you have a problem. People make take your positions on policy to be expert scientific opinions, when they are not. And my point would be this. The passion for policy is part and parcel of the problem of trust in climate science. For Craven, the “understanding” drives the passion. But for many of the people that need to be convinced the displays of passion undermine trust in the science. That’s their emotional aftertaste.
If Craven wishes to be taken seriously, he needs to stop talking. Every time he opens his mouth, all he achieves is changing whichever foot is in there.
There’s so much that’s so wrong, it’s hard to know where to start.
He’s willing to wade into battle and fight to the death for his conviction that every human on the planet, from the arctic circle to the Sahara desert, quite impossibly, is living in the most ideal climatic conditions their area could possibly achieve or has ever achieved, and that a change of a few degrees either way will spell the doom of everybody. That conceit alone borders on lunacy, and that’s assuming that the IPCC’s worst nightmares are true.
Then there is his bizarre conviction that people make the best decisions through fear, terror, and panic. If that were true, hospitals would hire gunmen to shoot at surgeons performing brain surgery and the FAA would post Al Qaeda members in the cockpit to help the pilots concentrate.
Finally, we get down to his idea that scientists should act as propagandists to fire the visceral emotions of their audience, instead of the intellect. I think the last time that was tried on a wide scale was the Nazi eugenics movement, or perhaps when Aztec priests convinced everybody that if they don’t carve out the beating hearts of thousands of captives every year, the sun would go out.
The global warming crowd already has Hollywood spokesmen lined up around the block. If they turn all the scientists into spokesmen and agitator/propagandists then who is left to trust? It’ll be a pyramid organization of salesmen from top to bottom, just as blindingly obedient to an unthinking orthodoxy any a crew of stone masons laboring for the Pharaohs.
If Mr. Craven is so inclined, he can go work his little heart out on that pyramid, but most of us don’t want to be enslaved in the crazy scheme and instead are going to sip some Margaritas, double check the numbers, and question the heck out of a giant pile of unfounded assumptions.
I thought the science was settled. Sorta like the snow in my backyard. So now we have a cheerleader entreating that august body for more schneiders, jones, manns to throw under the bus as it careens down the decline. More popcorn, please.
“But there comes a time in the last stand for every single support troop, no matter how far removed, to pick up a weapon, come down into the fray, and fight to the death for what they stand for. To charge into the face of annihilation itself and fight with their teeth, tearing out the jugular of their enemy with their bloody mouth if they have no weapons left. That time is now.”
This is just the sort of speech probably given before the charge of the Light Brigade, heroic, and a complete disaster.
“The reputation of the British cavalry was significantly enhanced as a result of the charge, though the same cannot be said for their commanders.” Of course the enemy whose throats are about to be ripped out, are perfectly entitled to reciprocate and then some, so one should not complain when one’s nuts are served for dinner. I could also go on about whether the cause is 100% correct, that uncertainty just doesn’t exist, and that the “enemy” also has an opinion. But, unable to accommodate opposing arguments, we’ll just blow them up and rip out their throats. Just the sort of folk to send your kids to – to prepare them for life.
CAGW crowd is now somewhere between anger and bargaining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
You certainly seem to have upset those alarmist teenagers over at Global Warming Superheroes blog:
http://globalwarmingsuperheroes.com/bad-guy-of-the-week/bad-guy-of-the-week-anthony-watts/
It’ll be fun to watch people like this go mad when they realize the game’s over.
So there’s no place for “science” in science anymore? Only hopes, dreams, feelings, and emotions? What would Spock have to say? 😉
I am for a fairer world, people do die in their millions from grinding economic poverty, religious and cultural persecution, armed conflict, gansterism, I have seen it for myself, and on occasion openly wept, I have felt as desperate and angry as Mr Craven, and questioned the purpose of our pointless existence.
What I cannot figure out is what these people want us all to do! They espouse “Climate Fairness” but they have not thought this through.?
It might appear to be a good idea for a transfer of funds from “rich” countries to “poor” countries, I even naively have thought that way myself from time to time, but having lived and worked in Third world “poor” countries I know that these countries governments are nearly always Gangsters masquerading as politicians.
The UN and IPCC is full of such people, and if you give them “Climate Fairness” money they will steal it for themselves and consequently increase their power and further reduce the freedom of their population, so the “poor” will likely become poorer.
However I have never yet seen anyone die of climate change and I suspect I never will.
I thought Craven was retiring from the public life, and building an eco-Ark or something?
His retirements last less time than Brett Favre’s.
“The meaning of communication is the response it elicits in the listener
From Webster’s dictionary:
Pronunciation: \kə-ˌmyü-nə-ˈkā-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : an act or instance of transmitting
2 a : information communicated b : a verbal or written message
3 a : a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior ; also : exchange of information b : personal rapport
4 plural a : a system (as of telephones) for communicating b : a system of routes for moving troops, supplies, and vehicles c : personnel engaged in communicating
5 plural but sing or plural in constr a : a technique for expressing ideas effectively (as in speech) b : the technology of the transmission of information (as by print or telecommunication)
Craven has been seeking to brainwash our kids into believing that climate scientists hold both the diagnosis of a world wide calamity and the prescriptive cure for prevention of the same.
He has sought to profit from this by selling a book, as well as sought power in the public square to impose policies on all of us, and particularly against skeptics of his claims.
He is wrong on both counts, as well as a profiteer, and deserves any honest attack he receives.
That he is pathological is beside the point. He is seeking to harm us by turning his ideology into law. Stopping him by telling the truth about him is perfectly acceptable.
Steve Mosher is something who has demonstrated his commitment to truth. Craven, not so much.
Even Goebbels, a well known master of propaganda, knew that “Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
May I raise a subject which relates to the wider subject of science versus intuition?
The sunspot count would seem to be inflating, with tiny specks now contributing to the SIDC score. The data series stretching back some 4 centuries is a useful resource in any hypothesis linking solar activity and climate, but only if the scoring method is consistent. I have just discovered a site – http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50 – where the author has launched a competing “Layman’s Sunspot Count”, using the public’s intuition to recalibrate the last few years of the sunspot curve. (Compare the sun’s spectacularly pox-ravaged face of 2001 with today’s minor zits and you’ll get the point. Back then the score was c150; today c25. The mark-one-eyeball sees a decline much more than five sixths.)
Intuitive feel – honest observation – is the first step in scientific method, leading potentially to a provable repeatable causal relationship. Our friend Craven has it back to front, calling for an end-product of ’emotional aftertaste’. Dodgy data at the start of the process is inimical to science. Of course, progress in astrophysics will not be seriously hamstrung by a skewed sunspot count which is, after all, merely a symptom of the underlying physics. But unpolluted facts are helpful in our quest to resolve this Great Global Warming Debate.
But for many of the people that need to be convinced the displays of passion undermine trust in the science.
Then I expect in your future, proferred diatribes attempting to validate GISTEMP against the onslaught of disagreement that you will be a little less emotional.
Always be careful arguing with an idiot, once the dust starts to fly, it is hard to tell who is who.
I missed the original post on Mr Craven’s speech but what is most interesting is that he felt comfortable emoting in this way all over what was presumably an audience of scientists.
I would have expected him to have been laughed to scorn by his audience but the fact that he wasn’t surely says much about how some scientists nowadays perceive themselves, their standing and their profession. (Which also ties in rather nicely with John A’s previous post on Climategate and what it reveals about science.)
Of course, eventually there will be a price to be paid for consenting to become the factotums and enablers of such emo-kids and their masters, and I would bet it’s one that scientists won’t like very much.
OK, we shouldn’t mock the afflicted. But I think he urgently needs to discuss all this stuff with his shrink.
The problem is that “scientists” like him are way more dangerous than a bit of extra CO2 or a fraction of a degree warming.
Let me make two quick points, points which may seem contradictory, but are not.
First, Craven really is suffering from a type of mental delusion. Most of us — perhaps all of us — do so to one amount or another, but Craven has a really strong case of it. I suspect that he is a nice guy, a good father and an excellent teacher. I have personal friends who are equally intelligent and nice but who suffer from the same CAGW meme. Given time, he will almost certainly have a spontaneous recovery and rejoin the ranks of the rational, perhaps even with his mind (like a broken and then healed bone) that much stronger at the point of fracture. I wish him the best.
Second, Craven, like the rest of those seeking to reorder and rebuild mankind in their image, is dangerous. He is a well meaning but crazy man. Think of a person convinced that “the children” have been replaced by alien pod people and is determined to burn out the local day care center with two gallons of gasoline and a flare gun. He has every right to any craziness he desires, but in this case he espouses a solution that will kill millions. I wish us all the best.
There have been scientists of this caliber before, scientists who devoted their lives to advancing infinite power for a chosen few and death for the rest of humanity.
Alfred Rosenberg and Josef Mengele come to mind.
It’s not clear that Craven really understands what he’s advocating. James Hansen does understand.
Wow, what a mixed up mind (not you, Steven, the other guy with the hat).
On one hand scientists are supposed to be guided by “As a scientist, here’s my understanding. As a citizen, here’s my hope, my vision. And as a mother, here’s my contingency plan, here’s my lifeboat.”….
The conduct of science has forever seemed to me more like a general commanding troops to peform exercises with surgical precision. The important part is to avoid the emotions of the mother and to be efficient, effective, driven by a clear objective and experienced enough to achieve it, with appropriate hardware and personnel support.
This guy seems the type to order tanks with one forward gear and 10 reverse gears in case of attack from behind. (The lifeboat?).
One of the most important tasks of the senior scientist is to choose capable colleagues and trainees; and to train them to ensure succession of the cherished ideals of the science and the method.
Much like Dr. Kealey, Craven and his ilk are basically asking scientists to drain their public “trust account”. Whether this — throw the kitchen sink — approach brings warmists success in their agenda; it surely will bankrupt the trust that the public has for scientists.
If scientists are as craven as Craven wants them to be, then scientists are like lawyers, which is only half a tep short of politicians.
David L @ur momisugly 3.49:am
Spock would raise his eyebrows slightly and say, (in that wonderfully bemused and withering tone reserved for human foibles) ‘Fascinating…………….’
I have found emulating him great fun on occasion.
I remember this guy now, saw one of his videos after Craven Attention (part 1) but I just skimmed that post so didn’t make the connection. He’s just another example of a warmist glossing over the weaknesses of the AGW science and resorting to philosophy and the Post-Normal Science/Precautionary Principle to try and talk people into accepting AGW. I think we can expect to see a few more people with this type of argument for AGW coming out of the woodwork.
Craven has a book to sell, you know.