Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Here on WUWT, Ron Cram has provided an interesting overview of a number of people’s ideas about desirable changes to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC). He proposes that the IPCC provide us with a majority and a minority view of climate science, rather than just a single Assessment Report.
I’m here to propose something very different. Some people think the IPCC should be disbanded. I’m not one of them.
Figure 1. The old time methods are still the best.
I think disbanding the IPCC is a bad idea. Instead, I think that we should take the IPCC to the crossroads at midnight and pound an aspen stake through its heart, stuff its head with garlic, and scatter the remains to be disinfected by sunlight so it can never, ever rise again.
Let me give you a list of my reasons why this is the preferable outcome, in no particular order:
• The IPCC has provided very little of value in the way of deliverables. The reports have been clearly political, heavily slanted, and shot through with third-rate science and worse, NGO puff pieces disguised as science.
• No other branch of science wants, needs, or has anything like the IPCC … which argues against it being a useful construct. Nor would most branches of science tolerate that kind of nonsense, a bunch of government bureaucrats summarizing the science.
• Instead of providing us with any kind of certainty or agreement, the IPCC has been the source of endless disagreements, arguments, and food fights. It is a force for dissension and division, not for scientific advancement and harmony. It has made the split worse, not better.
• Dr. Pachauri has shown repeatedly that he views his tenure as an Imperial Presidency, immune to comment or dissent. Indeed, his view permeates the entire organization.
• The “Summary for Policymakers” is done with lots of input from politicians. Letting politicians assist in the writing of the scientific summary for themselves and other politicians … bad idea.
• A number of underhanded, unethical, and generally dirty things have been done under the IPCC umbrella. As a result, there is a huge segment of the population who will automatically adopt the opposite position to any IPCC recommendations … and often with good reason.
• People don’t trust the IPCC. We have little confidence in the players, the science, the system, or the so-called safeguards. We’ve been lied to, systematically lied to, by the IPCC. How anyone can think the IPCC is still relevant to public policy after that is beyond me. Abraham Lincoln knew better. In a speech in 1854, he said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
And regarding the confidence of the public, nothing has changed in the last century and a half since Lincoln spoke … which is another reason why it is useless to try to keep the IPCC alive. Confidence in the IPCC is dead and it will not come back, it’s not pining for the fjords, it’s terminal, put it out of its misery.
• Previous dirty fighting has soured a number of excellent scientists on participating in the IPCC process.
• The participants are chosen by politicians of the various countries … hardly a scientific method for doing anything.
• The great Ravetzian experiment has been a failure. Jerome Ravetz is one of the founders of and hucksters for “Post-Normal Science”. He recommends including all stakeholders like politicians and planners and social scientists into the scientific process, just like the IPCC did. And he thinks that in times like the present, we need “Post-Normal Science”. (In the best Orwellian doublespeak fashion, this is not a science at all, despite the name.) Post-Normal Science holds that we need to substitute “quality” for truth. The IPCC fits right into Ravetz’s vision of “quality” and participation, and this is exactly what the IPCC claims to do — assess the quality, from the viewpoint of all the stakeholders, of the various parts of climate science.
I’m not saying Jerome Ravetz planned this in any way, he didn’t as far as I can tell. But quite unintentionally, for whatever reasons and circumstances, the IPCC has been a grand experiment in Post-Normal Science.
That experiment has failed. And not just failed, it has crashed and burned with spectacular pyrotechnics and outrageous sound effects. In addition to unending disputes, it has brought us the amusingly meretricious self-aggrandizement of third-rate scientists like Michael Mann.
The attempt to introduce some kind of “quality” assessment into climate science has not led to a greater agreement on where we stand and what to do. Instead, the IPCC and its post-normal science process has led to infighting, and to chapter authors promoting and hyping the “quality” and the “robustness” of their own work, and to questions and protests from reviewers being routinely ignored or run over, and to people gaming the system, and to everything but what the IPCC was supposed to lead to – some kind of agreement on the main points.
And that is why we need to drive a stake through its heart. It was based on false premises. One was the premise that we need something like the IPCC at all. No other arena of scientific endeavor has such a thing … oh, except for the UN bureaucrats latest power grab, a new “IPCC for the biosphere”. (OK, for those who don’t know how that will turn out, spoiler alert! The outcome will be another train wreck … I can see that many of you are surprised.)
Another very important false premise was the charmingly naive idea that Lead Authors would treat their own work the same as they treated the work of other scientists … BWAHAHAHA. Only a lapsed Marxist like Ravetz or one of his kin would be foolish enough to think that would end well. I strongly suspect that Ravetz must actually believe in the goodness of man.
Look, folks, the US Constitution works because none of the founding fathers trusted each other one inch. They didn’t believe in the goodness of man, they’d seen too many kings and tyrants for that nonsense to fly. That’s why the US has three equal branches of Government, so no one branch and no one man would get too powerful. They didn’t trust people a bit.
Why didn’t they trust anyone? Because they were realists who knew that given a chance, someone would grab the power and use it for their own interests and against the interests of the people.
Like, for example, what Michael Mann did when he was appointed Lead Author for an IPCC Chapter. Because the people who set up the IPCC believed in things like fairies, AGW, unicorns, and the basic goodness of humanity, Mann had no constraints on his scientific malfeasance. He was free to promote his Hockeystick garbage as though it were real science.
So that’s why I say kill the IPCC, deader than dead, and scatter the remains. It is built from the bottom up on false ideas, fantasies of human goodness and of the benefits of political involvement that will ensure failure even if the motives are good.
But if for our sins we have to have something like the IPCC, it needs to be set up so that no one faction can take control of the outcome. We need an IPCC Charter that is specifically designed, like the US Constitution, to prevent people from doing those things that we know they will otherwise gladly do. So if we have to have an IPCC, we need a new Charter for a new organization, a charter that starts from the premise that humans will definitely lie, cheat, and corrupt the science if given the slightest chance.
As a result, if we don’t kill the IPCC, the Fifth Assessment Report will be guaranteed to bring us at least three things among its cornucopian lack of benefits:
Liars, cheats, and corrupters of science.
My conclusion? Considering the widespread damage done by the first four attacks, I’m not sure that climate science is strong enough to endure the impending attack from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Kill the unclean beast now, while we still have a chance of saving the science.
w.
Ron Cram says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:57 am
Thanks for the comments, Ron. I think that your proposal (a “minority report” as well as the usual majority report) is certainly a second-best outcome … and one which has much more chance of actually coming to pass than my more Gordian solution.
I just thought that before we started discussing what the second-best outcome might be, I would make a strong case for what I see as the best outcome, so that’s why I wrote the post …
Keep up the good fight, thanks for your contributions here on WUWT,
w.
Dave Springer says:
February 14, 2011 at 10:57 am
Oh, very good indeed, the “Climategate Players” give the historical phrase “the Globe Theatre” new meaning. Those suckers want to play with the real globe …
w.
I understand that there is a new emerging technology for dealing with Imperial Presidencies called “Twitter” and “Facebook”. There was something in the news lately involving Egypt or Tunisia or both… and a new story about the same technology having promise for application in Algeria, Yemen, Syria, and a half dozen other places.
I don’t know exactly how it works, but it looks like you do a process called a “tweet” that says something like “Aspen at Midnight NYC sched on Facebook” and it catches a virus? or becomes a virus or something “viral” happens and then 100,000 people show up with Aspen stakes …
Someone under 30 ought to look into this approach.
😉
Oh, and once Puchari is esconsed in a villa on the coast of India we can have the Swiss Banks freeze his accounts pending a ‘review’… that seems to be what they do next.
(If this catches on, I may need to get one of those eye-pod things and join the pod people…)
The UNIPCC is the spawn of the UNFCCC. The following is from the UNFCCC web site,
at unfccc.int/2860.php:
“Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable.”
Their avowed purpose is to prove that global war is the result of human activities. Either their mission in life, their raison d’etre, must be changed or their funding eliminated.
JamesS says:
February 14, 2011 at 11:35 am
Steven Mosher says:
‘When Facts are uncertain, when values are in conflict, when stakes are high and when some think decisions must be made, THEN stakeholders (like people whose taxes would go up) MUST be part of the decision process. That’s the whole point.”’
“The weakness in this statement is “How do we know the stakes are high?” We’re told the stakes are high by people who stand to gain by the Chicken Little behavior.”
Right on the money. And what evidence do they offer that the stakes are high, why Mann’s hockey stick and the rest of their “science,” not PNS but science. This is the most obvious truck sized hole in the entire PNS gambit. They always end up depending on the best science. Well, if they are using science to make their decisions when the stakes are high, then how is PNS different from science?
Willis,
i think you are blinded by Ravetz’ past political associations. FUNDAMENTALLY, Post normal science is a DESCRIPTION of what happens WHEN..
1. Facts are uncertain
2. Values are in conflict
3. Stakes are high
4. Decisons are SEEN AS urgent.
As Ravetz said when we talked, the first casualty when these 4 things happen is Normal science. that is, normal scientific practice is thrown aside. That is a description of what happens. Lets Press a little deeper. When values are not in conflict, when stakes are not high, when a decision is not being called for, then scientists behave in the “normal” fashion. They look at what they want to look at. Study what they want to study. Spend their time solving the riddle of nature. The accept theories as “proven” . As Kuhn and Ravetz explain, they engage in puzzle solving. So for example take Superconductivity. No great values are in conflict in society about various theories. The stakes might be high, but no one is claiming that we have to decide something now. So normal science continues. However, the minute values are in conflict, somebody will find a way to raise the stakes, and more often than not they will argue that a decision is necessary. For example: take materials science and nano technology. People who hold values about “interfering with nature” and playing god, raise the stakes with fears of “grey goo” and then they try to argue that we need to make some decision now. Not about the science, but about the regulations surrounding the science. And the behavior of normal scientists ( free inquiry and puzzle solving) comes under scrunity. In behavioral science or medical science, when values are in conflict ( what can you do to a test subject) stakes are raised and the behavior of scientists is controlled. Or consider something like Stem cell research. Again, values are in conflict, stakes are high and people call for decisions. Then what happens. We decide to change what scientists can normally do. We limit their inquiry. we force them to change their behavior as scientists. They no longer have the right of free inquiry. Knowledge takes a back seat because of conflicting values.
Lets consider something like star wars. There values were in conflict ( is building a defense shield a sign of agression) stakes got raised ( the russians are dangerous) and decisions were caste as urgent. The result? the PATH of science was changed. What science got funded changed. What also changed was the way we tested things. Basically, we accepted more uncertainty in the science AND in the enginering than would would have. the cultural forces ( conflicting values) drove the science. It was no longer free inquiry of any theory. It was no longer “take your time” the science will correct itself. It was “get a USEFUL SOLUTION as quickly as possible. People who believed in the threat of the russians were willing to live with more uncertainty in the science. people who did not believe in the threat deamnded MORE ceertainty in the science. More testing. basically, when values are in conflict, the issue of uncertainty gets RAISED by one group and HIDDEN by another. This is what happens. Some say, we known enough about AGW to make decisions, others say we want more proof. Now of course there is no proof in science. no proof. Not even normal science says its theories are Proved. But when values are not in conflict this epistemic point doesnt get much attention. Its a merely philosophical issue. It’s of no practical consequence. No one takes an interest because nothing is at stake. When values are in conflict, the issue of uncertainty and proof takes center stage. Which is Why climate science becomes intertwined with philosophy. people studying super conductivity dont have discussions about Kuhn and Popper and Quine. When values are not in conflict nobody has the motivation to go around raising epistemological issues around the science.
So first and formost PNS is a description of what actually happens when values are in conflict, stakes are high and decisions are seen as uncertain. Its purely descriptive. When those things happen, normal science is the first thing that goes out the window.
Since you argue for a RETURN to normal science, you implicitly agree with the descriptive aspects of PNS. Let me put it another way. A scientific description of science, an empirical account of what science is, must take account of these observations. what happens to the behavior of scientists? what’s it like pre science, whats it like in “normal” science? whats it like in revolutionary science, and what’s it like when values are in conflict etc. Unless one wants to ignore the data in our theory of what science is, the one needs to account for these different forms of science.
Not all science is the same. Not all science uses the same method.
The part where you have difficulty is in the “prescriptive” views that you try to ascribe to PNS. What should science be. Your position is roughly this. When values are in conflict, when stakes are high, when somebody is clamoring for a decision, normal science should just carry on. Scientists should take no account that stakes are high, for example. If, for example, we have a correlation between smoking and cancer but we have no mechanism, then a scientist should not say “smoking causes cancer” Action should await proof ( although there is no proof in science).
The difference comes down to this. You want a return to normal science. The problem is you can’t simply return to that state of innocence. Climate scientists won’t go back to looking at the questions that interest them. They will continue to look at questions that have been FRAMED by policy makers. Peter webster will not get the resources he wants to study natural variability. Tallbloke will not get funding to look at his alternative theories. Nobody will pay to update the proxies. The frame of inquiry has been set. That’s the FIRST thing one does to get “normal” science off the rails. So there isnt any SIMPLE return to innocence without an entire dismanteling of that framework.
Finnally, lets get to the passage you quoted but misunderstood.
“PS: After coming up with the idea myself, upon further research I found that the idea that the IPCC is an example of PNS in practice is not new. It was discussed in the peer-reviewed literature a decade ago by Tuomo M. Saloranta in Post-Normal Science and the Global Climate Change Issue. His abstract says (emphasis mine):”
You bolded:
“It seems that climate science around IPPC can, to a relatively large extent, be characterized as `Post-Normal’. ”
Several points.
1. This is descriptively accurate. Climate science does find itself in a PNS situation.
2. This describes WG II.
3. The PNS folks have serious issues with WGII, so I’d say that the author of this study was wrong. Silvio and others were most critical of the over constraining of the dialog that the IPCC enforces. I don’t think I talked to a single PNS proponent who suggested that the IPCC came close to issuing quality decisions.
Anyway, before we even begin to discuss prescriptions for how one handles decision making in a PNS situation we first have to come to some agreement on the basic facts.
we are in a PNS situation. we are in it. like it or not. We are in it because values are in conflict, stakes have been raised, and decisions are being pushed upon us.
How we act, what we do, going forward is an open question.
Your suggestion of a return to “normal science” is one approach. it’s an attempt to control how scientists behave. Maybe we investigate them. maybe we cut their funding. That is, we use political and legal power to force scientists to behave the way you want them to. the way you believe they should. One the other side, they will use political power to allow scientists to continue to do their bidding.
PNS looks at that conflict and suggests a third way. “Truth” is already dead in this debate. So we are not suggesting that quality take the place of truth. We are saying, since people on either side will never agree on what the truth is can we find another concept to come to some kind of ‘reconciliation.’ That’s an open question. Not a logical necessity. not a moral necessity. not a fact to be discovered. It’s an invitation to finding a common ground.
But isn’t that like calling the over zealot socialist eurocrats single minded mentally disturbed cheats suffering from the bureaucratic dilemma of being over zealot in his/hers socialistic single mindedness that is the manifestation of someone mentally disturbed and will readily cheat to fuel his/her OCD?
It is said that running an organization is like running a business: Creative destruction. To otherwise survive you have to always add to it. In proper business economy you branch out if there’s no more to be had in your own branch (wether it is literally or by meagre economic fund is beside the point), but for organizations being run like proper business’, lacking tax income (nor can claim membership fees, especially growing if they had any to begin with?) What would such organization do, once they’re created, to keep what they have accomplished, to grow, and then to keep the growth and keep growing? (If for nothing else just to keep bestest of coworkers having a job to go to.)
Mosher:
“i think you are blinded by Ravetz’ past political associations. FUNDAMENTALLY, Post normal science is a DESCRIPTION of what happens WHEN..
1. Facts are uncertain
2. Values are in conflict
3. Stakes are high
4. Decisons are SEEN AS urgent”
So, were Einstein and his friends engaged in PNS?
And the “Truth” is never DEAD! Elsewise there would never be any progress at all.
“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”
Source: Inscription on the southeast quadrant of the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.
I can’t think of any finer words as applied to CAGW and the IPCC….
steven mosher,
What exactly are you saying? That PNS deviates from the scientific method?
If that’s it, I agree. PNS isn’t any more science than Scientology.
Willis;
Steven is illustrating the true meaning of PNS:
“Political Newspeak Science”.
It’s an elaborate embodiment of Mencken’s observation:
Never, in all of recorded or unrecorded history, has warming caused a crisis for humanity or other species. Nor has high CO2. Both are universally associated with thriving and lush ecosystems, and major expansion of human civilization and populations.
The latter appears to be what the PNSers want to avoid.
Willis
Seems to me that Post Normal is closer to abnormal than normal. Or at least not as sound as normal.
steven mosher says:
February 14, 2011 at 4:18 pm
“However, the minute values are in conflict, somebody will find a way to raise the stakes, and more often than not they will argue that a decision is necessary. For example: take materials science and nano technology. People who hold values about “interfering with nature” and playing god, raise the stakes with fears of “grey goo” and then they try to argue that we need to make some decision now. Not about the science, but about the regulations surrounding the science. And the behavior of normal scientists ( free inquiry and puzzle solving) comes under scrunity. In behavioral science or medical science, when values are in conflict ( what can you do to a test subject) stakes are raised and the behavior of scientists is controlled. Or consider something like Stem cell research. Again, values are in conflict, stakes are high and people call for decisions. Then what happens. We decide to change what scientists can normally do. We limit their inquiry. we force them to change their behavior as scientists. They no longer have the right of free inquiry. Knowledge takes a back seat because of conflicting values.
Lets consider something like star wars. There values were in conflict ( is building a defense shield a sign of agression) stakes got raised ( the russians are dangerous) and decisions were caste as urgent. The result? the PATH of science was changed. What science got funded changed. What also changed was the way we tested things. Basically, we accepted more uncertainty in the science AND in the enginering than would would have. the cultural forces ( conflicting values) drove the science. It was no longer free inquiry of any theory.”
—————-
In each of the examples you cite, it is not the scientific understanding that was in question, but the moral understanding of the kinds of questions that were being addressed. To say the stakes were high in reference to stem cell research is like saying, for those who find research on human beings objectionable, that the stakes were high when Joseph Mengele did experiments on Jewish children. While what he accomplished did not count in general as real scientific research, the objection remains not to the kinds of question he was addressing, but to the fact that he had no regard for the human subjects he used.
There is no objection whatsoever to non-embryonic stem-cell research, which has proved very fruitful, and has generated many insights into the pluripotency of stem cells from non-embryonic sources and their potential therapeutic uses. The methods, the questions being asked, the intended or hoped for outcomes, are the same as for embryonic stem cell research. The stakes are only high for embryonic stem cell research because it transgresses long-held moral boundaries in western society. There has been no shortchanging of scientific methods, falsifiability and so on because of the restriction on the research material.
The arguments surrounding nano-technology entirely echo the controversies concerning biotechnology. In both of these areas, state-of-the-art scientific methodologies and technologies are being employed to further the development of new technologies. The issues again, have nothing to do with the kinds of scientific question being asked, but rather deal with the limits we should put on our apparently natural but unrelenting drive to alter nature to our own ends. While the moral and ethical arguments we build around these technologies may rely heavily on science to assess the relative risks, the understanding of the underlying phenomena, again, is not affected by these moral judgments.
Kuhn applied his analysis of normal science and scientific crises to episodes in the history of science like the Copernican revolution, or the Chemical revolution of Lavoisier. IN the case of the Copernican and Galilean revolutions that gave us a heliocentric universe, the scientific methods were not altered to suit peoples’ agendas. Nor were the best scientific practices disregarded. The moral crisis revolved around the philosophical and religious implications of removing humanity from the centre of God’s universe. The solution Copernicus used to avoid religious condemnation was to discuss his ideas as a thinly disguised hypothesis (and have his book published after he died). Galileo developed telescopic observations of the solar system to support his theories, and again used the best practices of science then available, essentially ushering in modern science. He did not quibble about interpretations or understandings of the methods, and he was shut down not by science, but by the failure of the Catholic Church to move beyond its religious defensiveness arising from the Reformation. He was shut down not scientifically, but politically. Of course, with no concept of inertia and gravity nobody could understand why things would stick to a moving earth or other moving heavenly bodies, but the crisis in understanding did not undermine the development and use of Galileo’s scientific methods. Rather, this crisis challenged scientists to re-examine the world in a period of enormous scientific fruitfulness and change when very little that was done was ‘normal’ under the old understanding.
Normal science in Galileo’s era was Aristotelian (earth at the centre of the universe, the 4 earthly elements with their natural motions, the universe from the lunar sphere outward being composed of ether with its natural circular motion). He, through the use of his ‘post-normal’ science ushered in the developments that led to Newtonian science. And yes, the stakes were very high. But the methods employed were not justified by political arguments, not were Galileo’s conclusions ratified by all the involved stakeholders arriving at a consensus. No, one side lost, the other side won, because the evidence of the Galilean interpretation was far more powerful. So I guess Galilean science, while not normal cannot be called Post-Normal Science.
What new paradigms in science are the Ravetzian post-normalists ushering in? Kuhnian philosophy is associated with paradigm shifts and new understandings of how nature works. It seems to me that the current debate is not about scientists in competing camps holding incompatible or incommensurable understandings of climate, oceanography, and atmospheric science. There is simply a disagreement of the degree to which these systems are understood to the point of being predictable. The only new methodology is an over-dependence on computer models, which hardly constitutes a paradigm shift in understanding nature. The arguments, as has been stated at WUWT many times before, are political, not scientific in nature. While there were political dimensions in the Copernican revolution, the important thing really was the enormous shift in our understanding of how the universe works.
I, like Willis and others here, have a hard time seeing so-called Post-Normal Science as being anything other than a redefinition of science itself, so that the real standards of science no longer apply. How can it then be science? It becomes more like areas that are accorded the label ‘science’ which scarcely deserve it – psychology and sociology come to mind.
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
February 14, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Killing the IPCC would be a start, but the EPA needs its wings clipped, too. What needs to be done is de-fund this whole agw fraud from top to bottom. Most of the money comes from Uncle Sam. Hopefully, this Congress has the guts to pull the plug on all this agw crap and alternative energy nonsense.
AMEN, with the exception of changing the word “clipped” to “lopped off.” I’d enjoy reading a post of Willis’ opinion of the EPA.
Unfortunately the UN is a focal point for people like Ravetz, and by that I mean people who unfailingly belive in the goodness of man. We need to go for the nos feratu, the stake must be driven through the UN.
Someone once said: “By their fruits you shall know them.” The IPCC was vomited forth by the UN and reveals the underlying corruption thereof. The US should pull out of the UN as a first step towards sanity. Big government, whether it’s the UN or the EU or the US as envisioned by Obama, is always going to trend towards evil. All power corrupts…
The definition of “Post Normal Science” should be “political science.” It is a way to point out the excuse of the lack of science vigor and the making of decisions based on political needs and not real science. pg
David A. Evans says:
February 14, 2011 at 6:27 am
“The IPCC is working well within design specifications! In fact the design has worked so well that they’ve already started on the MkII, biodiversity version.
Say what ??
Somebody tell me that’s not a cover for selective extinction.
Mosh, thanks as always for your patience in explanations. You say:
steven mosher says:
February 14, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Well, hang on. Before running off to something else, let’s stop and take a look at your claim that PNS is a description and not a prescription.
If all PNS was doing was offering a description, as you claim, then it would have no prescriptions about what to do. But PNS is full of prescriptions, about how we need to change the players, and how we need to substitute quality for truth, and how we should adopt the NUSAP criteria (which has never been adopted by any serious organization I can find), and the like. Those are not de-scriptions, those are pre-scriptions. Here’s one:
Now, unless you have a different definition than I have, that is a pre-scription, not a de-scription. Not only that, it is an unacceptably vague and dangerous prescription, to throw out scientific truth and replace it with some undefined concept of “Quality”. Here’s another quote:
If PNS is just a description as you claim, how can it possibly “perform an essential regulatory function”? That’s one hell of a description you’ve got there, it’s the Swiss Army Knife of descriptions, it has a tool for everything …
So as long as you persist in believing that PNS is solely or even fundmentally descriptive, I fear we won’t meet in the middle. While it is descriptive in part, PNS has also been an active force pushing for the implementation of a particular set of responses to what they might call a “post-normal” situation. I oppose those responses, in particular the idea of substituting Quality for Truth (which is as far from a description as I can possibly imagine).
Next, you say:
While I am glad that you think you know what my position is, I am puzzled by the fact that it is so far from my actual position, and contains many things that have nothing to do with me. When did I ever say anything about a correlation between smoking and cancer depending on a mechanism? When did I say “action should await proof”? Those are both statements that I disagree with entirely, particularly the second one, since I have stated many times that there is no proof in science. Nor have I ever said that when stakes are high, scientists should just “carry on” and “take no account that stakes are high”. Those have nothing to do with my position.
My position is that when stakes are high, we need to be even more cautious about what scientists do and how they do it. We should be aware that there will be pressures on the scientists, and adjust our sights accordingly.
What we should not do at that point is replace scientific truth with “Quality” or with anything else. What we should not do is slacken scientific standards.
What we should do is encourage scientist to resist political pressures, and to give us the best answers that they know of in the time that they have, along with realistic uncertainty figures. That’s what scientists have to offer, and that’s all scientists have to offer – honest answers and realistic uncertainties. So at that point scientists shouldn’t just “carry on”, they should gird themselves as best they can to avoid getting caught up in the politics and compromising their science as a result.
Again I ask, if PNS is such a good system, how come Ravetz has to fight like crazy to get it adopted? People in general and businesses in particular have a huge problem with uncertainty. If the PNS tools for dealing with it are so you-beaut, then where are the success stories about PNS? Where are the evangelists that have taken it up and used it to great effect in their work?
And finally, Mosh, do you use PNS in your work? Do you follow Ravetz’s prescription to replace science with quality? After all, you’re working in the climate field, where stakes are high, decisions are urgent, Chicken Little is screaming something about the sky, values are in conflict, and idiots are in control … and if that ain’t PNS, what is?
So are you changing your own scientific habits to match the situation? And if not, why not, since it is a PNS situation, and you’re a PNS advocating scientist working in that situation?
w.
PS – in closing, here’s Ravetz again:
Yes, I can see, given his philosophy, how he could find that difficult to imagine … however, given the number of real world examples of the phenomenon that come up every week, I find it not unimaginable, but depressingly common headline fare. Green propaganda is used by the IPCC, and Jerry can’t imagine that damaging science …
He can’t imagine environmentalists wreaking damage on science??? Where has he been living for the past decades? The unholy alliance of AGW alarmists and the environmental movement has caused immense damage, both to science itself and to the environmental movement. Ravetz gives the phrase “living in an ivory tower” new meaning … along with the phrase “would you buy a used car from this man?” He definitely needs an imagination transplant, because his own organ seems to be failing him badly. (Of course, if he truly lacks the imagination to see how environmentalists are damaging science, he could just read the news, they’ve reported the problem in detail … but I digress.)
This is the problem with Ravetz’s idea of “Quality”, Mosh. One man’s “quality” is another man’s rubbish … whereas scientific truth doesn’t have that problem. So substituting quality for scientific truth as a “regulative principle” can only increase dissension, not decrease it.
Girma says:
February 14, 2011 at 6:03 pm
According to a web survey, 83.8% of reasonable people believe that web surveys are not worth the electrons they’re printed on …
Reed Coray says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Reed, it’s not a post, but here is my opinion of the EPA. Like many of the other players in the game, the folks at the EPA have been heavily afflicted by “noble cause corruption”. They believe in their noble cause so completely that they are willing to ignore the rules and facts and take action to prevent Unspeakable Horror.
While this is a tragedy, I view the EPA rather like I view democracy – it’s a terrible system, but it’s the best we have. I think that overall the EPA has been beneficial, although along the way it has made some very bad decisions … but then who among us can say different? And at present it is totally set on a false trail by the climate spinmeisters.
But the reality is that humans need regulations, or they do all kinds of Really Bad Stuff™. So I would never say get rid of the EPA. Because at some point the EPA will return to doing what it should do and was created to do (stop people from doing Really Bad Stuff™ like dumping poisons into the water and air) and recover from its infatuation with climate alarmism. Until then, I’d say lets just stop the EPA from doing stupid things like classifying CO2 as a pollutant, and wait for the worst effects of their climate-related illness to wear off … time wounds all heels, as they say.
w.
Jeremy says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Like my previous post, I don’t believe in killing the UN any more than I believe in killing the EPA. To start with, the UN provides a very necessary and critically important benefit as a forum for nations to talk to each other, even nations without diplomatic representation. As Winston Churchill commented on the importance of discussions between nations, “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war”.
Do I like the UN? Not at all. Is it a nest of pluted bloatocrats who are riding the gravy train for all it is worth? Of course. Does it provide legitimacy for tyrants and dictators? Sure ’nuff. Did UN Secretary General Kofi Annan steal from the UN “Oil for Food” program without any repercussions? Near as I can tell.
But we should FIX those problems, not kill the UN. It’s like climate science in that way. The solution is to FIX the problems in climate science, not throw it out the window. Yes, the UN has problems, huge ones. And no, the US should not pick up 45% of the tab or whatever it is we pay, this is 2011, some others should carry more of the weight. But that doesn’t mean that the UN does not provide some huge benefits to the planet. UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN work with refugees, there’s a host of things the UN does well, a few even very well, along with a host of things it does poorly, some very poorly.
Sound familiar? Sound like life? Yep. Nothing is an unalloyed benefit. But when I think of a world without the UN, as much as I dislike a lot of what the UN does, I don’t think that would be a net gain.
But of course … YMMV.
w.
Willis;
Fine detailed response to Mosher/Ravetz.
About the UN etc comment:
The jaw-jaw/war-war thing is WC, not LBJ.
And the fundamental irredeemable problem with the UN is the General Assembly structure, with every state having one vote. Sounds lovely and democratic, but there are a lot more mice and rats than elephants. I’d suggest a weighted vote proportional to the square root of population, or SLT.
Or just walk away and create a Council of Democracies; entry qualification is 2 successive peaceful electoral changes of party in power. And any reported election with a 75%+ majority is grounds for immediate expulsion.
Wouldn’t solve everything, but it would solve a lot.
Brian H says:
February 15, 2011 at 12:10 am
Thanks, fixed.
Definitely a problem, but like all problems, likely fixable in some way or another.
Another possible fix. I don’t care exactly how it is fixed, as long as each change makes it better, and we don’t lose the gains we’ve made. I’d start by cutting everyone’s salary by 20%, but hey, that’s just me.
w.