After I published this story:
NCDC’s Dr. Thomas Peterson: “It’s a knife fight”
I wrote to Dr. Peterson to advise him that he had WUWT available to him for rebuttal should he wish. Here is his response verbatim. – Anthony
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In response to your kind offer, I have typed up the three relevant pages
of the notes I spoke from at that meeting, which I would appreciate you
adding to your forum. I had three lessons that I personally took from
Climategate. Here are my notes verbatim for lessons 2 and 3, which are
the relevant ones to this discussion. You can agree or disagree with the
points I made, but let’s at least start with exactly what I said.
Regards,
Tom Peterson
Lesson 2: If the fight isn’t fair, then don’t fight – and maybe don’t
fight even if it is fair
Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random
–So it didn’t give a fair representation
-Releasing additional selected emails would make the fight fairer
–But not civil
There is a lot of incivility and ad hominem attacks out there
-We can’t control that
But we can control how we respond . . . or not respond
-Perhaps don’t even fight if the fight is fair
-Fights are never fun
–Even if you win them
The unfortunate downside is that some pseudoscientific nonsense can go
unchallenged.
Lesson 3: Collaborate with communicators
An aside from a Congressman after a hearing:
-You’re in a knife fight and need to fight back.
A science communicator:
-All scientists need to have their own blogs.
A good summary of similar issue though on a different topic by Michael
D. Gershon, M.D. (1999)
-“The experiments I conducted to this point gave me a feeling of
confidence that my work could withstand anyone’s scrutiny, which I
assumed (foolishly, it turned out) would be both logical and reasonable.”
Collaborate with communicators, 2
A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science
-What we do best
-And in the end it will win the day
–Just ask Galileo
But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science
So partnering with communicators can help bridge the gap
-From nerdy scientists like myself to regular people.
“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Oh, the benefit of hindsight! The point made is that “climate science” is advanced and correct and “views on climate change” have to “catch up”. Well, what if climate science is wrong on attribution, or models, or understanding, or physics? Do we really want to advance “views” and policies towards what is wrong, then? This example of Galileo is disingenuous – we happen to know now that heliocentrism is right so we can say “Galileo was right”. We absolutely cannot say that “climate science” is right in many of its assertions and assumptions. But, sure, in a hundred years we will know one way or the other. Anyway, Galileo was wrong on many, many things. He didn’t accept Kepler’s laws, nor that planets move in ellipses, he was wrong on the cause of the tides, and lots more besides. Moreover, he was mostly the cause of his own troubles – not because he believed in heliocentrism, but because of the foolish way he behaved. He was a self-serving egotist and made a lot of enemies. Heliocentrism would have caught on a lot quicker if he hadn’t tried to paint those who were sceptical of his views – including the Pope, who was originally his friend – as ignorant fools.
Dr T G Watkins says:
Just present the unambiguous evidence that rising CO2 is linked to rising temps. without mentioning computer modelling and maybe you will win the argument.
Better still, just present unambiguous evidence and leave the political arguments to politicians and better than “win the argument”, we’ll all respect you as scientists!
Tom Peterson
Archive of data and code. Who, What, Why, When, and Where.
Original data and if changed by who and how much and Why. Where was it done. When was it done. This is simple. Working in the age of computers version control is a must. To not have a public standard for an archive is incompetence. To not make these public archives public is criminal! Talking about Emails etc. is just a distraction. Why has the NCDC under your direction been so negligent!
Jeremy says:
January 17, 2011 at 9:21 am
But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science
‘This is a big fail, Mr Peterson. You are justifying brainwashing for a cause. you are saying, “We all may die, so lets all of us assume to be true what we cannot conclusively prove (otherwise known as a flight of fancy) so that we might save ourselves.”’
Very well said. Long ago, Bertolt Brecht wrote a play titled “The Measures Taken.” It is about a communist cell that travels from Russia to China shortly after the end of WWI. The last act of that play shows the survivors explaining their actions to their local party back in Russia. Brecht was openly communist. He fled the US because of the McCarthy hearings. His play contains the best explication and condemnation of the dogma that all else must be subjugated to the goals set by the Communist Party.
Unfortunately for Dr Petersons side they have no understanding of the tactics required to win fights.
Let the enemy have the least defensible ground.
The alternative is to take enormous casualties losing something you were going to lose anyway.
Trying to make the Middle Ages Warm Period go away was a foolish move.
Claiming 20 foot sea level rises was a foolish move.
Claiming more hurricanes was a foolish move.
Constantly changing the temperature of 1934 is a foolish move.
Claiming the ‘sun doesn’t matter’ without knowing whether a deep and extended solar minimum was right around the corner was a foolish move.
Dr. Peterson, thank you for coming to WUWT and allowing us to see your notes and an overview of how you see things. I must shamefully admit that I chuckled sometimes as I read some the comments down to this point. I could kick you in the shins as well but prefer to not do that.
I am an engineer who has a long and extremely varied work record in many technical fields, all around the globe. I have reviewed many technical investigation reports, geology reports, research and development status reports and technical papers. I have done many, many literature searches using many libraries and have applied my library knowledge to become an excellent searcher on the internet. On the subject of climate change, I am a Lukewarmer. With that preamble, let me simply state that in many years of searching, I have yet to find anything that even starts to prove that carbon dioxide is the root cause of the observed warming from the early 1980s to 1995. I think that we are primarily dealing with natural cycle variations, not carbon dioxide. There are indeed some impacts of human activities on climate change. For example, simple calculations show that produced groundwater from no or slow to recharge aquifers account for 2.6 mm per year of the observed rise in the oceans level.
I do not share your view that we cannot wait to do something about carbon dioxide. I have 15 grandchildren, so have not drawn my conclusion lightly.
“…we cannot afford to wait a century for views on climate change to catch up to climate science…”
OK, so if that’s the case why have they been stonewalling the release of the data and codes for so many years? That’s wasting precious time, is it not?
Dr. Peterson,
I wonder what unchallenged pseudoscientific nonsense it is to which you are referring?
Many of us have simply been asking for a full accounting of the methods by which you come to your conclusions. When you adjust data, we want to know how and why you adjusted the data, particularly when the unadjusted data leads one to the completely opposite conclusion you have reached.
Challenging you when you do not support that effort is a basic principle of science and engineering.
“we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Tom – everything I have read during the last 6 years about our climate convinces me that governments need to wait at least a century before making any fiscal decisions. Or do you have some as yet undisclosed hard evidence that suggests otherwise?
The vibe I get is that of someone who is not comfortable in his own skin but sees nowhere to turn to in order to free himself from a decayed paradise now rusting to bits all around him. Here come the worms.
“A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science”
You mean, like: “I’ll keep that paper out of publication if I have to redefine the peer review process”
Is that the type of rigor and soundness you’re speaking of?
That was sloppy, Anthony.
When you gonna start allowing posts on the widescale geoengineering that’s already going on? Many of your fellow weathermen have talked about it on the air.
Brad
I keep seeing the idea advanced (as here) by the MSM and even our venerable “scientific societies” that if a theory, program, new law, or other initiative is not being well-accepted by the public, then the problem just has to be that the logic/benefits/truth are not being EXPLAINED well enough and that the majority of the public is just too damn stupid to understand what great things have been done/are being done by the very knowledgeable elitists in the ivory towers and in the Government. It can’t possibly be that the initiative or theory might be WRONG or HARMFUL….Perish the thought!
It looks to me like The Public has spoken on this and many other issues in the 2010 eleections. Maybe most climate scientists are not listening? But of course our wonderful system allows them to keep trying. I’m an old guy, and it’s been my experience that marketing guys always think people are dumber than they are.
Cassandra King says:
January 17, 2011 at 9:20 am
“Communication is a two way street, if you are so sure of your findings then offer them up for all to see, if you wish us to understand then be honest and open and self critical and humble and ever ready to revise your position, that is the only way forward. In other words trust us. What climate science is doing now is morally wrong, you know it and we know it, you are attempting to persuade by domination and bullying and secrecy, you are attempting to push the political class into forcing us to acepting irreversible socio economic changes while freezing out, insulting and ignoring those who point out flaws and errors.”
Wow! I wish I had said that. We must at all times and all places emphasize that selling science, as described by Ms. King, is truly a major moral wrong. It is not like selling cars. It debases its own product.
“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
So essentially, instead of properly and rationally respecting the planet taking its natural merry time on its go around the sun, and instead of acting rational and properly adhering to democratic rules and regulations and people’s freedoms, climate hippie communist want to “geo-engineer” rocket propeller for the planet so it can fall into a nicer line, and bash the “regular” folks into line.
Or is it essentially just that you all go broke otherwise? :p
The irony is this though:
“The unfortunate downside is that some pseudoscientific nonsense can go
unchallenged.”
Because if the hippie pseudo-scientist actually made use of qualitative and real science and still ended up with the same results they wouldn’t have had the need to wait until “regular” folks fell in line.
You know you are losing the argument when you have to bring a knife to a science fight.
harrywr2 says: “Unfortunately for Dr Petersons side they have no understanding of the tactics required to win fights.”
But that is their whole problem. They think about this subject as “winning” and losing the argument, and not about presenting the scientific facts and their conclusions in an open and honest way.
Instead, they see being open and honest as weaknesses, clearly because they don’t have the scientific facts to fact up their conclusions. So, they dare not debate this in an open and honest way which would actually persuade someone like me, and instead they try to hide the data and force through the argument by PR.
And like someone in quicksand … they just can’t seem to realise that once they are in the mire, the harder they struggle (to force the public to accept their beliefs) the deeper they will be sucked down so that no one will ever trust them again.
Stop trying to run some PR circus, stop struggling in the quicksand, relax, get on with the science and sooner or later, you’ll float back to the surface and escape the mire!
Dr. Peterson’s “lesson 2” seems to be, in large part, taken verbatim from “Real Climate’s” response to the Climategate emails.
As others have pointed out they are quite illogical and no defense at all, but it is revealing that he is simply repeating what he has been told by others – it indicates not only a lack of mental independence but it is also a symptom of the cognitive dissonance that he is suffering from.
He rails against the illogical while using the very same to defend his worldview.
Very sad.
I love the “we’re right, we know it, this changes everything and WE CAN’T AFFORD TO WAIT” argument.
Stalin would definitely approve.
That’s it?
I’ve seen presentations like that — by corporate administrators trying to control rumours and reports that the organisation is facing bankruptcy or litigation. They address a couple of issues tangential to the problem and assure everyone that everything is fine. At the end of it, the employees attending the presentation immediately send out our resumes with the now-confirmed knowledge that the company is going under.
It’s actually this kind of thing that first really started me leaning towards the sceptic camp. I would read something that appeared to be damning evidence against AGW, find an article responding to such critiques, and watch in mounting disappointment as the writer sidestepped the significant points (only the e-mails showing guilt were release), made non-specific attacks (“a lot of pseudoscience”), and then claim that the issue was too important to wait for all the facts to be in (“unfortunately we can’t wait a century”)
Once or twice, or even a dozen times, I would have chalked this up to a few bad communicators. But it seemed to be relentless. Some were far more complex, showing lots of graphs and figures that, when closely examined bore more resemblance to “transparent incomprehensibility” than actual arguments. And the more the fight went on, the more aggressive and irrelevant the AGW crowd’s responses became, and the more outlandish and obviously false their warnings about imminent doom.
To be honest, the Climategate emails were little more than another blip on my bullshit radar. A big blip, to be sure, but hardly the most compelling.
In the end, the AGW proponents and their incessant claims of unfair opposition did more to sway me against them than anything else. It’s been like watching the worm Ouroboros complaining about being attacked from the rear.
Damn. That’s funny. And true.
Dr. Peterson, thank you for responding……what happened to lesson 1 Anthony?
But do you not see you are talking of how to oppose political enemy, not address valid criticisms of science.
“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
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Tom Peterson has got it bass-ackwards.
It is the climate science that needs to catch up, but it can’t. The AGW hypothesis can only be PROVEN by repeated observations over a long period of time. As long as the observed temperature changes remain in the range of natural variability, there will be genuine cause for doubt…
By over-hyping the possible future consequences of continuing CO2 emissions – with the co-operation of a main-stream media which just LOVES to sensationalise everything – they are attempting to short-cut the scientific process – pretending the science is “settled” when it most assuredly is not.
In doing so, they are morphing from climate scientists into political propagandists. What should be a scientific investigation has become a moral crusade to “save us from ourselves.”
Their biggest problem of course is that nature, so far, is refusing to co-operate. Temperature and sea-level rises are not accelerating the way they are supposed to, and people are starting to notice. If the disconnect between observations and AGW theory continues to grow, the problem can only become even more acute.
Politicians who have bought into AGW, largely on the advice of climate scientists, are not going to be happy if it turns out they have been “sold a pup”. Unlike snow, publicly-funded climate research may become a thing of the past. The stakes are that high….
Wow, it looks like Dr. Peterson bought his rubber knife and is getting cut to pieces by real scientific arguments.
“We cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
Neither can the world risk or wait 100 years to see if the current version of global warming science is even valid. There have to be short term realistic milestones for the near term and if these are not being observed or achieved then quite rightly other scientists must speak up and ask more questions. There is too much at stake to have unproven climate models as the under pinning for future energy and economic policy of the entire world .If climate science is unwilling to share its data and findings with other scientists , then it is not following its own cardinal rules about what constitutes the scientific process. The problem is that IPCC scientists have entered the political arena and allowed politics and science to mix and there are no fair rules in politics.