Since I did not attend Lisbon even though invited and initially accepted, (other business and family obligations took precedence) the very least I can do is to help elevate the discussion. Here’s a report from Dr. Judith Curry, and I urge WUWT readers to read it in it’s entirety. Hopefully Mosh will weigh in here with his report once he’s recovered from the trip. I’m sure Steve McIntyre will be posting on the conference also. Since this is a new topic, and one bound to be widely discussed, I’ve added a “climate reconciliation” category to WUWT. I’ll have some thoughts later. – Anthony
Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part II
by Judith Curry (excerpts from her blog)
Here are some reactions from the Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Debate. These are my personal reflections, and include some of the perspectives and statements made by others (without any attribution of names).
The first issue is what exactly is meant by reconciliation, and who actually wants it? Reconciliation is defined (wikipedia) as re-establishing normal relations between belligerents: re-establish dialogue, reinstate balance, restore civility. It is not clear that there has ever been normal relations between, say, the mainstream IPCC researchers and the skeptical climate blogosphere. Consensus building was not seen as having any part in a reconciliation. Rather there was a desire to conduct impassioned debates nonviolently, and to create an arena where we can fight a more honest fight over the science and the policy options.
So who actually wants some sort of reconciliation or an increase in civility? One perspective was that the alarmists shooting at the deniers, and deniers shooting at the alarmists, with a big group in the middle, with both the deniers and the alarmists ruining the situation for reasoned debate about the science and the policy options. Another perspective described the fight as entertaining theater. One perspective was that there is no incentive for conciliation by either side; both sides like the “war.” In the context of the “war,” the hope was expressed that more moderate voices would emerge in the public debate.
The issue of civility and nonviolence in communication was regarded as an important topic by the Workshop organizers. They brought in an expert to facilitate nonviolent communication. This frankly didn’t go over very well with the Workshop participants, for a variety of reasons. This particular group of participants wasn’t very volatile in terms of emotions running high, use of offensive language, or heated arguments. The main format of the Workshop was for groups of 7-8 to discuss various controversial topics. Each group had a different dynamic; the group I was in had some colorful personalities but not terribly impassioned positions on the alarmist-denier spectrum. One table did encompass the entire spectrum, but the dynamic of that group seemed collegial. So the issue of getting skeptics to sit down with alarmists (these were the two words that were generally used to describe the two poles of the debate) and talk politely and constructively didn’t turn out to be a problem. This is partly a function of the individuals invited, who for the most part weren’t too far out there on either extreme and expressed their willingness to communicate by actually agreeing to attend the Workshop.
…
Towards reconciliation
Some principles/strategies that were discussed to improving the scientific debate:
- Acknowledge that there are real issues and we don’t agree on how to resolve them
- Disagreement with mutual respect
- Find better ways to communicate criticism
- Find better ways to admit mistakes without damage to reputation
- Find some common ground, something to work on together
- Find where interests intersect
- Importance of transparency
- Communication engenders trust
- Search for win-win solutions (i.e. both sides work to increase the funding base to collect more paleoproxies).
==================================================================
I urge readers to read the rest in entirety here: Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part II
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Steven Mosher says:
January 31, 2011 at 11:03 am
Theo Goodwin says:
January 31, 2011 at 4:29 am (Edit)
“So even if you control the purse strings thats a blunt instrument. You have to control the line items. Which means you have to legislate science. See any problems with that?”
You are the one who brought up budgets, not me. My proposals are along the lines of abolish NASA.
Brian H says January 31, 2011 at 1:20 am: Mike D, Further to your quote and thought, does Dr. Curry thus identify herself with those who support the policies associated with climate change? You can’t really fence-sit on this one.
Dear Brian, Dr. Curry attended the event and reported on it. She did not organize it. If you read her report, she is very careful not to reveal her “position”. It would be fair to infer that she supports reconciliation of two polarized groups. She is also a climate scientist at a public institution (Georgia Tech).
She does say, “Rather there was a desire [at the conference] … to create an arena where we can fight a more honest fight over the science and the policy options.
And prior to the conference she wrote, “What has impressed me about [the conference organizers’] writings is that they recognize that climate change is not only a scientific subject, but also a political, economical, and ethical subject.”
The conference description put out by the organizers states, “The international endeavour to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions has had severe setbacks. … We believe that the possibility of harmful climate change is real, and that the resolution of the science (even recognition of its inherent uncertainties) is urgent.”
It is clear that both Dr. Curry and the conference organizers acknowledge that the issues under discussion involve policies, not just science. It is clear that the organizers believe (their word) that policies such as CO2 emission reduction are urgently needed.
Whether Dr. Curry “identifies” herself with such policies is something you should ask her, but the indications seem to be that she supports such policies.
Personally, I don’t. Can we reconcile? Maybe, if those who support such policies abandon their position. I’m not going to abandon mine. CO2 is an essential nutrient of life. Warmer is Better. I see no reason to reduce CO2 emissions, whether it is a significant greenhouse gas or not. I perceive many hardships and suffering from the policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions. They are a part and parcel of a monstrous scam, and a profoundly hurtful one at that.
We don’t need more stinkin’ proxies reconciling the past with pre-ordained conjecture about the future obscured in pretend Bayesian confidence tricks and all the rest. Deliver actual science, full circle, or get off the teat. Who do you suppose is paying for all this pot smoking on the holodeck accompanied by soothing PNS background muzak?
As for communicating “to” the public, who the hell do you think you are? It is not for scientists to prescribe, justify, present or even allude to policy in public. That is the remit of politicians and ultimately the electorate, or at least that’s how democracy is supposed to work.
Unfortunately direction of science funding has been lost to bureaucracy, various sociopathic power brokers and base scam artists simultaneously gaming the system at every level, particularly in Europe. We’ve allowed our education system to be slowly but brazenly subverted, fostering the generation of sycophantic water melons we now see foaming at the mouth on Guardian blogs and at the BBC every day. Science is steadily being co-opted by extension.
All this is overtly political and fixing it subject to the passage of time. It has little to do with and is far wider in scope than mere science. You have been and continue to be played. Apart from the vegetables, you seem to have enjoyed this latest schmoozing but when are the scales going to fall from your provincial American eyes? Did you not detect that subtle whiff of carbolic masking the rotting garlic?
Sadly, the manic collective tendency (rampant in the EU for the past decade) must soon be put back in its straight jacket before its schizophrenia turns ugly, swinging from libertarian to authoritarian, for yet another round of barbarity. One can only hope that won’t eventually lead to another mega-war to overcome an outbreak of genocide somewhere; the signs of late are good (and old Sol seems to be lending a hand with a wake-up call a mite earlier this time). But as history tells us time and again, appeasement is never a solution to limiting the cyclic depravity of groupings of depressive utopian dreamers with inflated egos. Perhaps that’s how evolution works at the top of the food chain and why violence is such an ugly emotive word. Have a nice day!
Theo.
“You are the one who brought up budgets, not me. My proposals are along the lines of abolish NASA.”
unfortunately that will also not work to change climate science. You also have to change NOAA and university and research centers all around the world.
Effectively your solution for better science is to stop NASA. Good plan, too bad it does nothing to solve the problem. Looks like you have the sense to qualify for a run for congress
Theo Goodwin says:
January 31, 2011 at 4:29 am
Stephen Mosher is quoted as saying:
“You dont control the budgets. You argue that NASA should just return to doing normal science and they say ‘but we are doing normal science?’
and you say, no you aren’t. and they say, ‘yes we are’. And they just keep on doing what they are doing.”
Stephen Mosher says:
“So even if you control the purse strings thats a blunt instrument. You have to control the line items. Which means you have to legislate science. See any problems with that?”
Well, which is it? First you bring up control of budgets and then you deny that control of budgets matters. Which is it?
The goal would be to replace Hansen and his crew at NASA with genuine scientists. Are you saying that that cannot be done by a new administration in Washington and control of both houses of Congress?
Steven Mosher says:
January 31, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Theo.
“Looks like you have the sense to qualify for a run for congress.”
Responding in kind, you seem to be a presumptuous gas bag all too eager to be fitted for a little Stalin uniform. The totalitarianism that climate science and environmentalism have become will not be tolerated in the USA.
Mosher writes:
“Mann has testified before. On some accounts he “lied” and well you can see that the field has turned about face since his testimony. Investigations won’t change what people look at, how they look at it, and what gets published.”
You have not responded to my criticism of Phil Jones. Would you please do so? You say that investigations won’t do anything? Seems to me that you are saying that so-called climate scientists cannot be refused grants and fired for failing to do what they contracted to do, namely, science. Is that right?
Please understand that it is beyond dispute that neither Hansen nor any among his followers has actually advanced science in any way whatsoever. Are you saying that we must live with that?
No need to abolish NASA. Just send a message in the form of firing Hansen. And keep sending messages until it is obvious that they have been received.
Steven Mosher,
You’re being very critical of suggestions without offering any solutions of your own.
What would you do to correct the ongoing AGW waste, fraud and abuse?
My suggestion would be for the House to pass a bill requiring that any scientist, organization or university that receives any government financial assistance [or a tax free ride in the case of NGOs] must post all of their data, methodologies and metadata on a publicly accessible site in real time.
If they don’t want to disclose trade secrets, the answer is simple: don’t accept taxpayer funds.
It would be an interesting Congressional debate, no?
I think Mosh is making the point that science IS a funded operation, whichever way you look at it – academics research relies on grants, government departments on tax handouts, and companies on inward investment for R&D – it’s all based on funding.
The days of solitary hermit type philanthropists/naturalist types sitting in their castles ‘inventing’ stuff and solving deep science questions are long gone.
But the flip side of the coin is that a large majority of funding is directly or indirectly from the public purse and this by its very nature may well be politicised. i.e. defence development or suchlike.
Personally, although I am not very happy with the Royal Society and others of a similar ilk – (let’s pretend they are not political for a minute) – they could feasibly be given a ‘budget’ to disperse into research into relevent science of the day. For example, the billions spent into climate science could, under the correct direction of an appropriate body (a bit like a Professor helping to direct his PhD students) into the pressing questions of the time, have produced far better results that the wildly disseminated efforts of the last 10 or 20 years!
In any event, any solution to budgetary control has to be apolitical – and as we have clearly seen in the AGW ‘science’ that is highly unlikely to be possible.
I’m not a scientist, but I’ve spent most of my life working with multiple sciences, from the “soft” sciences of anthropology, sociology, geography, and “political science” to the “hard” sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. I’ve had it drilled into my head since I was in high school (a long, long time ago) that for something to be scientifically viable, it must be reproducible by others. This lack of reproducibility was what killed the “cold fusion” fad a few years ago. So far as I’ve been able to determine, from reading this blog, that of Steve McIntire and a dozen others, and whatever scientific papers I’ve been able to read and understand, the one truly outstanding problem with “catastrophic anthropogenic global whatever” is that the results from Mann et al are not reproducible, either because they won’t release the basic data, they won’t release their methodologies, they aren’t “transparent” about what they’ve done to whatever data they have, and they’re not willing to release their code. If the results aren’t reproducible, it’s not science.
You heard it first here. The old meme:
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED.
The new meme:
THE FUNDING IS SETTLED.
Other forms of the new meme:
THE SHIP OF CLIMATE SCIENCE CANNOT BE TURNED.
(They won’t use this one because it has the word ‘science’ in it. They don’t compute that word.) Try the following:
THE GOOD SHIP LOLLYPNS CANNOT BE TURNED.
And so on.
Submemes implied by the main new meme:
NASA’s funding is in the pipeline. Hansen is in his heaven. Schmidt is in Real Climate. Their minions are funded and assigned.
In the universities, funding is in the pipeline. Mann is in his heaven. His minions are funded and assigned. Graduate students have been funded and assigned. Many of them are real cute. And so on.
In the National Science Foundation, there is a main pipeline. It is pumping hard. It cannot be turned off, at least not for climate studies (again, they cannot use the word ‘science’.) The graduate students are funded and assigned. And many are really cute.
And so on.
Yet the truth of the matter is that Hansen can be fired at NASA for the simple reason that he has contributed a lot to propaganda for AGW but maybe nothing to science since being hired there. In addition, he can be fired for misuse of his office in propaganda missions, failure to show up at the office, and many related matters. Schmidt is in a worse situation. His career has been Real Climate, not his actual job. The minions can go too. The ship that is NASA can be turned and real scientists hired to do real science. How about we give NASA a mission having to do with exploration of space? If not, why not close it? Those nice weather reports can be privatized (really privatized). And so on.
In summary, the old Bum’s Rush was Al Gore’s the science is settled. The new Bum’s Rush is that everything is a foregone conclusion, all is decided, nothing to be done, move along, pay your ridiculously increased taxes. The boys with the power (funding) will tell you what to do, if there is any need for you. There is no place for your here. There is no discussion of science. There is only discussion of funding and peer review. And so on./sarc off
Anthony, these people want to put you out of business. Or turn your site into the internet equivalent of an old fogies home for those who want to dream about science.
I recommend that everyone fire up your printer and print a banner about three inches high that says “I won’t pay!” Attach the banner to the rear bumper of your car.
AJB says:
WOW! A lot. Extremely well said, Sir, a tip of the hat to you. The most important line is:
“You have been and continue to be played.”
Right on the money. And PNS is nothing but a smoke screen for folks gaming the system.
Can anyone tell us whether officials of the USA (any capacity) attended this meeting? If so, who were they?
MU! (The question is ill formed…)
There can not be “reconciliation” between “belligerents” when one side is tossing insults and handgrenades at the other and claiming that the other side ought to shutup and ‘get it’. One can have “cessation of hostilities” instead.
Look, ALL I care about (and all I cared about going into this oh so many years ago) was “What is the truth?”. There is NO compromise on that. NO “middle ground”. NO “cessation of truth seeking”. NO “reconciliation” with non-truth.
I originally entered this no-mans-land as a mild little sheep just wondering “How does this global warming stuff work?”. I got vilified in short order (shortly after a rash of insults) on various (infamous?) “warmer” blogs. Why? Because I asked questions. I didn’t just shut up, open mouth, and swallow large buckets of nonsense.
There is NOTHING that I can do to change that. I must have “things that fit” and I must have “explanations that hang together”. And I expect a certain quantity of civility. What I got from “The Team and Them” was anything but. “More holes than bucket” and delivered with a load of insult and invective.
So no, sorry, no can do. There is nothing that a non-beligerent can do to stop the beligerence. And there is nothing that makes sense about wandering into no-mans-land when the other guy is still lobbing grenades.
Anybody wants to look at where the “warmers” science is just loaded with errors, I’m ready to discuss it, and politely. Folks want me to shut up so they can peddal errors and, frankly, a load of propaganda unopposed? That’s not “reconciliation”, that’s capitulation.
This, btw, is the classic trap of the bully. “I’ll stop beating you up if you don’t tell mom”. Haven’t been interested in that one for a bit over a half century…
“Reality just is. -E.M.Smith” and, I would add, it is non-negotiable and not subject to “reconciliation”.
So the folks who wanted to declare the science is settled and the rest of us can just shut up and take it; well, they can just decide that the science is not settled and come take a look at where they have a load of loose ends. It’s all up to them.
I suggest starting with:
1) Temperature is not heat flow. It isn’t even a good proxy for it.
2) There IS NO Global Average Temperature. (Fractal surfaces and 4th power of radiation see to that as one makes gigantic ranges of temps in a few feet and the other causes the IR photon count to be dominated by just a few of those spots. The former confounds surface measurment and the later confounds sattelite measure – or, more simply: You can count the photons, but that’s not the temp, or you can measure the air, but that’s not the surface temp.)
3) 30 Years Average of Weather is not climate. It’s just a long average of weather.
4) Putting your comparision as being between a low point of a 60 year cycle and a high point is a lousy way to find a ‘trend’. You have not found one, you’ve found that cycles give any trends you want depending on start, end, and cycle duration.
5) IFF The Arctic ever froze over completely and stayed that way for a couple of decades, that’s the start of the next Ice Age Glacial. That’s a Very Bad Thing, not a goal state.
6) Constantly changing your thermometers in a calorimetery experiment is guaranteed to foul up the results. You’ve done nothing but change the termometers. You have no suitable data for your stated task.
That’s the first 1/2 dozen of about 100+ obvious things done very wrongly. As soon as “the other side” is prepared to face up to them, then they can make progress. Me? I don’t see any reason to take any of them off the list, nor are any of them “negotiable” as they are part of reality and reality is not of my choosing.
I am a peaceful man. I would never turn down a genuine attempt at reconciliation. However, nothing in Dr. Judith Curry’s account of the Lisbon conference strikes me as sincere.
She obfuscates the very clear situation, and pretends not to notice the forest behind the trees: that on one side there’s a very active, well-connected and lavishly financed social machine armed with laws, power, money, institutions, censorship (aka “peer review”), and all of the mainstream media; on the other side there is a small minority of honest and serious people, few and far between, whose only hope is what remains yet of the freedom of speech and press, mostly on the Web.
Moreover, Dr. Curry demonstrates an enthusiastic attitude toward the discussion of the totalitarian notion of “post-normal science” (translation: ideologically driven funding resulting in manipulation of data according to the current political situation).
There cannot be an equal, fair, polite discussion between the robber and the robbed, between the conman and the seeker of the truth, between an apparatchik of the corrupt Academia and an honest dissident scientist.
Everyone has to decide for himself or herself, on which side of this fence he or she is most comfortable to be — but one thing in certain: sitting on this electrified fence is not going to be comfortable, Dr. Curry.
P.S. Russian literary critic who lived in the first half of 19th century, Vissarion Belinsky, once famously formulated the following moral axiom:
A scoundrel always has an advantage over an honest man, for the simplest of reasons: a scoundrel always treats an honest man as if an honest man were a scoundrel, while an honest man is obliged to treat a scoundrel as if a scoundrel were an honest man.
GISS, CRU, etc… “scientists” keep adjusting the data, and crying about doom.
Reminds me of my fathers old axe he gave me. I was using it one day, and the handle broke. So I got a new handle. Then, about a month later when I was using it, the head broke, so I replaced that.
Now when I use it, I have to ask myself, is it still my fathers axe?
And the same can be said of data of the past. Is it still data of the past, or is it something new we created?
Warning. “Normal” doesn’t mean (in this context) usual, acceptable, standard.
You need to know sociological and post-modernist vocabulary to understand the phrase properly. In those contexts, “norm” and “normal” refer to the cultural standards and prejudices and shared illusions within closed groups. Only those enlightened by proper post-modernist, and thus “post-normal” viewpoints and eddycation, are qualified to assess theories and sciences and opinions freed from the shackles of mere normative thinking.
Now re-read the summary of Ravetz’ position above.
Picked up on Bishop Hill:
Climate War Continues Despite Reconciliation Meeting
Theo Goodwin says:
January 30, 2011 at 3:28 pm
And that political agenda will not only hurt the pocket books of all Americans, it will hurt America’s national interests.
Greetings on behalf of the remainder of the planet.
Many, many fine posts on this article. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but mine would be DN’s comment on January 30, 2011 at 2:03 pm.