Reply from Jerome Ravetz
As usual I am nearly overwhelmed by these replies, and I only wish that I could respond to each of them.
Let me try to handle some issues that came up repeatedly.
First, we can find it very useful to look at the correspondence in today’s London Independent newspaper between Steve Connor and the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson (here described as an ‘heretic’), on http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/letters-to-a-heretic-an-email-conversation-with-climate-change-sceptic-professor-freeman-dyson-2224912.html?action=Gallery.
Dyson makes a very basic point, that the uncertainties are just too great for any firm policy decision to be made. Connor, by contrast, presents a number of scientific claims, all of which he believes to be solid and factual. Then the argument shifts to more general issues, and Dyson eventually pulls out.
Now some people on this blog may believe that Connor is some paid hack or prostitute who is peddling alarmists’ lies; but it is also possible that he really believes what he is saying. For Dyson, it could be (and here I am mind-reading, on the basis of what I would do in similar circumstances) that he saw that short of taking a couple of crucial issues and digging ever deeper into the debates about them, he was on a path of rapidly diminishing returns. That left him looking like someone who didn’t want to argue, and so leaving the field to the expert.
For me, that is a reminder that before one engages in a debate one needs to be sure of one’s ground. And that requires an investment of personal resources, taking them from other commitments. That is one reason why I do not engage in detailed discussions of scientific issues, but try to do my best with the issues of procedure. Of course, that can seem cowardice to some, but so be it.
Now there is the fundamental point of the sort of science that ‘climate change’ is. The big policy question is whether there is enough strength of evidence for AGW to justify the huge investments that would be required to do something about it. That is not a simple hypothesis to be decided by an experimental test. There are the ‘error-costs’ to be considered, where those of erroneous action or inaction would be very large. The decision is made even more complex by the fact that the remedies for CO2 that have been implemented so far are themselves highly controversial. Therefore, although the issues of: the policies to adopt; the strength of the scientific evidence for AGW; the behaviour of the AGW scientists – are all connected, they are distinct. People can hold a variety of positions on each of these issues, and they may have been changing their views on each of them. This is why I tried to argue that the situation is best not seen as one of goodies and baddies.
As to Post-Normal Science, I was recently reminded of an example that was very important in setting me on the path. Suppose we have an ‘environmental toxicant’, on which there is anecdotal evidence of harm, leading to a political campaign for its banning. Such evidence is not sufficient, and so scientific studies were undertaken. But these used test animals, over short timespans with high doses. On the basis of those results a dose-response curve was obtained, which in principle should lead regulators to define a ‘safe limit’. But those results were from a temporary acute dose, while the policy problem related to a chronic low dose. And then (and here’s the kicker) it was realised that in extrapolating from the lab situation to the field situation, the method of extrapolation was more important in defining the dose-response relations in the field than was the lab data itself.
So Science was producing, not a Fact but an artefact. That for me became a good example for the PNS mantram. For that sort of problem, there was a classic paper about policy for environmental toxicants’, by A.S. Whittemore, published in Risk Analysis in 1983. In any real situation of that sort, there will be plenty of experts on both sides of the value-conflicted policy process, who really believe that their data is conclusive (children with unusual symptoms on the one side, lab rats with LD50 doses on the other). In practice, there is a negotiation, where scientific evidence is introduced and contested as one element of the situation.
Reflecting on that sort of problem in relation to PNS, I came up with point about science now needing to relate to Quality rather than to Truth. That was rather neat, but also a cause of much trouble, for which I issue another apology. My critics on this issue (notably Willis) have provided me with much food for thought. I don’t resolve these things in a hurry, and there are still others in the pipeline, but here’s how I see it now. In a recent post, Willis gave his definition of truth, which is a very good one relating to scientific practice. But for him (and I agree) it means that a scientific truth is a statement that might actually be false. From a scientific point of view, that’s good common sense; to imagine that any particular scientific statement ranks with 2 + 2 = 4 is the most arrant dogmatism. However, that means that our idea of scientific truth is quite different from the ordinary one, where there is an absolute distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’.
One way out of that problem is to believe that scientific truth is indeed absolute. On that there is the classic pronouncement by Galileo: “The conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgement of man has nothing to do with them.” This is echoed in practice by generations of teachers, who present the facts dogmatically and discourage any questioning. I was one of those who reacted against that authoritarian style of scientific indoctrination. Now, if one is doing routine puzzle-solving research, the issue of truth is not too pressing; one can know that somehow, somewhere, one’s results will be superceded in one way or another; but that’s all over the horizon. But in cases of urgent policy-related research like the toxicant example I mentioned above, to believe that one’s anecdotes or one’s lab-rats give the truth about the danger of the toxicant, is mistaken and inappropriate. For when such conflicting results are negotiated, what comes into play is their quality.
Having said all that, I now see clearly that Truth cannot be jettisoned so casually. I have two paths to a rescue. One is to make the issue personal; to say ‘this is the truth as I see it’, or ‘to the best of my knowledge it is true’, or ‘I am being truthful’. This allows one to acknowledge a possible error; what counts here is one’s competence and integrity. And of course this has been at the core of the Climategate dispute, arising out of the CRU emails, the question of the correctness of their results is tangled with the morality of their behaviour.
The other path brings in broader considerations. Our inherited cultural teaching mentions a number of absolutes, including The Good, The True, The Just, The Holy and The Beautiful. These provide the moral compass for our behaviour. Now we know that these are goals and not states of being. Those who believe that they have achieved them are actually in a perilous state, for they are subject to delusion and hypocrisy. Perhaps someone reading this will take offense, for they might be sure that they have achieved perfection in one of these, and (for example) be perfectly good or just. If so I apologise, on a personal basis, for giving offense.
For the rest of us, life is a struggle, always imperfect, to achieve those of the goals that define who we want to be. Now, if we say that science is mainly devoted to achieving the goal of truth, and that every real scientist realises that as much as possible in his or her imperfect practice, then we have something that works. All this may be obvious or banal to those who never had this problem; I am inflicting it on you all because I have been exposed to so many scientists who sincerely believed that Galileo’s words settled the issue forever.
As usual, this is going on and on. Let me deal with my Quaker friend. I never said that I am a Quaker, only that I attended Swarthmore. I have looked up the site for Quaker Business Practice, and find it very inspiring. Although I do not express my beliefs in the same way, I find there an approach that expresses my own commitments. In particular, there are some recommendations about practice, which I shall quote (for brevity, out of context).
*A Sense of the Meeting is only achieved when those participating respect and care for one another. It requires a humble and loving spirit, imputing purity of motive to all participants and offering our highest selves in return. We seek to create a safe space for sharing.
*We value process over product, action or outcome. We respect each other’s thoughts, feelings and insights more than expedient action.
And, just as a reminder of the issues I discussed above,
*Friends would not claim to have perfected this process, or that we always practice it with complete faithfulness.
It might seem all too idealistic, to expect such attitudes to survive outside a rather special (and small) group of dedicated people. But I recall that some have seen the life of science as an approximation to just that. In the interwar period there were two distinguished scientists who involved themselves in public affairs, one on the far Left and the other on the Right; they were J.D. Bernal and Michael Polanyi respectively. Their disagreements were urgent and profound. But they both loved science, and saw in it an example, imperfect but still real, of the ideal community of selfless sharing in which they believed. I should say that the motivation for my first book was to see whether, and in what ways, that essential idealism of science could be preserved under the ‘industrialised’ conditions of the postwar period. What happened in that quest, and after, is quite another question; but the commitment is still there.
And finally. What I said about Sarah Palin was not about her but about me. It is one of the complexities of life that issues are there in a variety of dimensions, not all of our choosing. I have friends in the critical-environmental movement who are really grieved at my defection; and as I have seen all too clearly, there are those in the anti-AGW camp who think very ill of me. So be it.
Thanks for bearing with me through all this, and thanks for stimulating me to a better understanding.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Science is about objective reasoning. In the affairs of human beings there are huge areas where we use subjective reasoning, often driven by emotion and belief. Our brains evolved to do subjective reasoning with objective reasoning, seemingly, a recent adaptation.
Practicing science is hard for us, it relies on our limited ability to reason objectively and put aside our subjective prejudices.
Mixing subjective and objective reasoning as Post-Normal ‘Science’ and pretending it is a valid way of doing Science only serves to obfuscate and confuse our understanding of nature.
If subjective activities (e.g. policy making) are to benefit from objective assessments of nature (Science) we need to maintain a clear distinction in our definitions, practices and naming of these distinct areas of human endeavour. PNS is a retrograde step.
Dr. Ravetz, you have turned Galileo’s famous quote on it’s head. It’s actually anti-dogma and anti-judgemental, but you describe it as being completely the opposite.
Please speak for yourself, you cannot speak for me. I personally know goodness, truth and beauty as both goal and state of being, and perception of qualities, say in Willis’ posts. Note I use the natural form of these words, not the artificial philosopher’s form. I experience them at work better like this, but also only when applied to my efforts to do what really needs to be done, if necessary getting my hands dirty. In this case, this means IMHO starting to get a handle on the science. So that your essay and moral comments in it can be filled with examples that are taken out of the story of Climate Science, not superfluities from other areas of life.
Peter Taylor is right IMO, our abdication of scientific understanding and allowing petty usurpers to rule, has to do with the neglect of apprehending, with care, sensitivity, and the tools of Science, the inner realms of Reality.
Once again, please let me recomment my Primer. Click my name. I wrote it to re-empower people of reasonable intelligence, whether or not they have any prior professional understanding of Science. I wrote it as “my story” to make it accessible even though it is not perfect.
At David 3:43. Well said.
The decision making problems examined by post normal science is nothing new. In the context of the knowledge base of the day, man has to make big decisions to problems confronting his surivival even in primitive societies. For example, should he plant a crop to withstand a drought considering that the last four or five years there has been lots of rainfall or should he continue planting crops that could withstand floods. The tribal leader may consult his shaman. However, the reasonable man would “hedge” his decision making under high uncertainty, high cost and high potential damage. So to the example of a toxicants Prof. Ravetz has cited, the decision maker could apply a factor of safety several hundred times the results from animal testing that would be equivalent to banning the substance. Then the decision maker “hedges” his “bet” or decision made under uncertainty by channeling the research budget to the other side that his decision is wrong, that the factor of safety applied could be reduced which will be equivalent to allowing the substance to be used more liberally. Even for a common substance such as barium, the WHO gudielines for barium in drinking water has been continously reduced as more scientific evidence is available. The same thing could be said with global warming. The politicians could make a political decision that AGW is a critical problem under scientific undertainty. Having made this decision, the research should flow towards proving his decision is wrong– there is no AGW. If the politicians, like George Bush decided there is no such thing as AGW– then he hedges by devoting research grants to prove there is AGW and the risk involved. The biggest problem with the climate science is the pompous attitude of politicians to have their decisions made under uncertainty supported which resulted to corruption of the natural science. Just look at the issue that if politicians have made the decision that there is AGW and research funds flows to proving there is no AGW but the investigations showed there is AGW public could easily mobilized to support the cause. This would be the time to commit fully the resources of the country. If the research showed there is no AGW, the reasonable politician could then switched his track and much more easily as he supported the research activities by the other side. In other words, he avail of the results of his hedge. The problem with the climate warming debate is the pompous and arrogant attitude of politicans to finance the sicnetific research that will only support their decisions made under high uncertainty. Since he has no hedge, when things starts to unravel he is completely destroyed. He has not hedge his bet. On the other knowing that the global warming researches may go beyond ones life time, there are also a number of organizations and individuals who are willing to sacrifice the integrity of their profession for the fame, the financial rewards, etc that are best summed up by Pechaury’s novel.
Ravetz:
“The big policy question is whether there is enough strength of evidence for AGW to justify the huge investments that would be required to do something about it. That is not a simple hypothesis to be decided by an experimental test. There are the ‘error-costs’ to be considered, where those of erroneous action or inaction would be very large.”
The warmists and post-normalists of course make it sound as if the big costs mount up when there happens the catastrophic thermal runaway of the entire planet and we didn’t stop it when we still could. That is their tale.
But for me, the enormous costs that mount up on an erroneous decision are the millions of people in the developing world whose lifes are held back or completely destroyed by ill-fated warmist capital misallocation – for instance by the current food price spike, caused in part by the warmist biofuel craze.
So while post-normalist pope Ravetz sounds oh so post-rational, for me there is a much more real catastrophe unfolding *now* than some distant year-2100-post normal trauma fantasy. Maybe he should feed this possibility into his post-normal thinking (which is just a boring old application of probabilities anyway so it doesn’t deserve to be called anything else but simple risk management – something engineers have been doing for decades, see the history of aviation and railways for a start, and the development of dependable systems. The moniker post-normalism is nothing but a propaganda trick.) If you assess risks, start with the *real* and *immediate* risks. Make the distant imagined risks a *LOW* priority.
I see what you’re doing.
You’re doing it wrong.
Dyson:
Connor:
Dyson:
Well Jerry, there we have the essence of the conversation. Some two-bit eco-journalist Emails a world renowned physicist requesting his insight then proceeds to question the guy’s integrity, states he’s not interested in listening anyway and becomes insulting.
Next, you turn up here with your pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo and attempt to throw fuel on the fire.
Who gives a damn what Connor believes? He’s not “the expert”. Does it not occur to you that Dyson has probably encountered many such hack traps before? If you’re really interested in reconciliation and so forth perhaps you ought to be having words with Connor.
But instead you come here, set up a straw man argument based on reading Freeman Dyson’s mind and attempt to use that to further your PNS nonsense (while subliminally reinforcing the arrogant purpose common to too many of the Oxbridge clique). Who exactly do you think you’re fooling with your naive interloper propaganda act, its classic submissive goading and rambling reinforcement? It’s becoming pitifully tedious.
Look, there’s no get out of jail free card even for utopian collectives. You’re a part of evolution too. History has chewed up and spat out superficially benign tyrannical belief systems like yours many times before. Where they’ve been allowed to fester and run amok, it always takes atrocity and immense suffering to finally bring that about. Which is as it should be; nature thrives on competition and will not tolerate the abhorrence of socialism beyond expediency for very long, however you dress it up.
Only just read the Connor Dyson email exchange.
Yes connor believes what he is told by the consensus is true.
This is where I keep accusing the believers of AGW of not being capable of independent thought. here is an example by Connor speaking about Wegener.
How does he suppose a person dying in 1930 would be buried in ice and slowly moving to the sea? Wasn’t Connor also told that the 2000s were the hottest decade for the last millenia? The 1990s were the hottest at that time, same with the 80s?
Wasn’t he also told Greenland was warming faster than most other places and was in danger of melting causing dangerous sea level rise?
How does he suppose Wegeners body got encased in ice?
Maybe it’s me who’s not thimking straight?
David,
Describing a question as a “Child’s question” (4.14AM) and then failing to answer it does not does not really constitute a sound scientific argument. If the question is easy (which it isn’t) then answer it.
You see, the proponents of global warming will pose questions such as this. If you are unable to answer or have a tantrum, then they win their case by default.
“The mainstream estimate suggests that doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels would increase global average temperatures by about 3C” is not false. This is what the IPCC claim. Now, they may be wrong – but it is not false to say that they claim that. You see the difference? So, Steve Connor is quite right to say that.
You got off to a good start in answering though, because the 3 Deg.C figure is the first thing to challenge. It assumes a feedback effect which has never been observed in this world throughout geological time. But Dyson didn’t do this. he ran for cover.
As for your figure of 1 deg.C, this is the no-feedback calculation. I tend to favour this too, but this is NOT what most so-called climate scientists would agree with. So the assertion that all moderately informed people know this is, I think, incorrect.
I notice that you didn’t try to answer the rest of the question, so it remains on the table. Notice that no other experts on this site wish to chance their arm at it.
I realise from succeeding comments that you are ‘tired’, so I will forgive your childish assumptions of what my position really is. But I think the scientific case must be MADE and questions like this have to be dealt with properly – not avoided!
I have just posted on another article here a link to Ross McKitrick’s
Questions for a Journalist
I recommend it. In fact, if Freedman Dyson had read these questions, maybe he could have held his own with Steve Connor.
On truth in science:
It occurs to me that truth is probably not a concept we can often achieve. We can certainly declare a theory “false”, usually by identifying a single counter-example.
We can declare a theory “plausible” or even “likely” but we must always expect that the damning counter-example may out there, waiting to be discovered.
Even e=mc² is only an approximation that is “close enough” at low speeds (v<<c).
vigilantfish —
Thanks for the excellent post. As one who *was* raised as a Quaker, and an environmentalist, and in the 1970’s even a follower of the Club of Rome, I appreciate your acute analysis of the historical and social context in which the latter two movements arose. It is a new day and I try to notice what the evidence suggests to be true, rather than remain mired in an honorable but mistaken past.
A number of friends and associates who are still drinking the kool-aid are disappointed that life is about learning new things as you go; when the signs of planetary cooling first became quite apparent several years ago I started to pay attention to what the environment was actually *doing* and moved on from there to notice the utterly indefensible methods of the AGW crowd, starting with Mr. Gore’s astounding inability to read cause and effect in his 200 foot long graphs correlating global C02 and temperature.
Sadly, many students slept through the preliminary lectures on cause and effect, cyclical patterns in nature, and theory of feedbacks (hint: they also didn’t do the assigned readings from Gregory Bateson). Consequently they still think Gore is credible because his graph was so big and it showed an obvious correlation.
Dr. Ravetz —
My field of expertise is literary studies (I read here to broaden my horizons and study the dynamics of debate and science in public discourse at a level just enough above my comprehension to be educational without being incomprehensible).
The term “post-normal science” sounds too much like “post-modernism” to me to attract my sympathetic ear. I’ve seen what that particular doctrine has done to literary studies, and while some practitioners have produced some intriguing new perspectives operating within the paradigm (I always like to keep the baby even when the bathwater is rancid), the reigning ideology behind it is a train wreck.
It started, interestingly enough, on the barricades of Paris in 1968.
Roland Barthes, then a young student, proclaimed that the author had to be sacrificed, along with God and the State, in order to liberate the reader. An understandable hyperbole for a passionate young man in tumultuous times — yet Barthes has lived quietly in the French state and made his peace (apparently) with God for another 50+ years without recognizing how foolish such a proclamation looks in the 21st century.
One suspects the anti-author ideology endures because, in the absence of a common text serving not only as shared experience but also as *evidence* it concentrates all the authority of a classroom in the hands of a tyrannical professor. The author is dead — therefore the text means what the *professor* says it does. That Prof *was* an anti-authoritarian (it was popular to be so) in Grad school, but now he tolerates nothing that could undermine his authority — since, after all, order depends on authority, and he likes his pension plan.
Replace the word “author” with “fundamental physics and logic” and I think this parable identifies the historical origins of “The Team.” “Hiding the decline” is now more important than returning to first principles to discover the source of error. Is that what you mean by “post-normal?”
I sure hope not. If “post-normal” science can’t *recognize and name* the flaws in AGW “thinking” and the manner in which simple questions like cause and effect have been turned on their heads in the service of ideology, then it is, as some other respondents have noted, rooted in a past that no longer exists.
I’m a graying teacher myself, and the first rule of good teaching is: listen to your students. And in this case that means the ones talking back in the comments section. I believe you’re sincerely attempting to do that and I salute you for it. But honestly, Freeman Dyson needs a physics lesson from a bullying reporter?
-psi
Please speak for yourself, you cannot speak for me. I personally know goodness, truth and beauty as both goal and state of being, and perception of qualities, say in Willis’ posts. Note I use the natural form of these words, not the artificial philosopher’s form. I experience them at work better like this, but also only when applied to my efforts to do what really needs to be done, if necessary getting my hands dirty. In this case, this means IMHO starting to get a handle on the science. So that your essay and moral comments in it can be filled with examples that are taken out of the story of Climate Science, not superfluities from other areas of life.
Peter Taylor is right IMO, our abdication of scientific understanding and allowing petty usurpers to rule, has to do with the neglect of apprehending, with care, sensitivity, and the tools of Science, the inner realms of Reality.
Once again, please let me recomment my Primer. Click my name. I wrote it to re-empower people of reasonable intelligence, whether or not they have any prior professional understanding of Science. I wrote it as “my story” to make it accessible even though it is not perfect
Lucy, what we do without you to show us the way?
I loved the moment in your narrative on your site, when confronted by the argument “you’re not a scientist,” you realized that you were in fact *doing science* and you affirmed that principle in the face of the abandonment of personal authority by your interlocutors who had ceded all their own to “experts.”
In this case much of the science that matters is not, I believe, all that difficult (I can understand it, if not in detail at least in sufficient outline to know that something is rotten at NASA etc.). I have no doubt that Dr. Ravetz, should he care to apply himself by studying your site among others, and following your challenge to experience in the here and now, beauty and truth both as goal and (how very Quakerly) process, could grasp it pretty readily.
Steve Mosher goes on, “ Here’s the problem. Once science has been politicized you cannot “simply” return to normal science. It takes the use of power to do that. Are you going to force Hansen to think differently? defund him? defund all the scientists who believe action is required? Stop all science ( thats way abnormal). Sorry, the return to normal science is not a simple re virgination process. Its inherently political. post normal.”
———————————————–
David, thanks for reposting this comment of Steve Mosher’s, which deserves further attention (and your comments were spot on).
Just to establish my credentials as a grumpy feminist, could I say that ‘de-virginising’ is a ludicrous concept to apply to science. If Steve Mosher could explain what that means, he will be charting new horizons in the philosophy of science, not to mention anatomy. But, if he is saying that science is ‘ruined’, because she has had sex with a man, he is in deeper water still.
Secondly, it is flying in the face of history to say that panics allegedly supported by science cannot be reversed. DDT is now being used (tentatively) to combat malarial mosquitoes in Africa. The MMR/autism scare, which affected immunisation rates, has been debunked. Nobody now believes, as we were told in the early days of television, that you have to be a certain distance away from the screen, with a particular kind of lighting, to avoid permanent damage to eyesight.
What is instructive about the examples mentioned above is that they were all carried on a wave of public sentiment. They pandered to the fears and prejudices of the day.
To suggest that scientists should just ‘go along to get along’, cloaking it under the name of PNS or anything else, is disgraceful. And, suggesting that because science and public policy have become mixed, science’s virginity has been irretrievably broken, misrepresents both science and virginity.
Dr Ravetz
Just a suggestion, but a more accurate description of your philosophy would be Pre-Enlightenment Science NOT Post-Normal Science. It adds no more value in today’s society than it did before the ‘Age of Reason’.
Jerome, You are a wonderful propagandist. Not just any ordinary propagandist but a wonderful one. You are right up there with Tokyo Rose. Let’s check out one of you complete thoughts, a whole paragraph, as follows:
“One way out of that problem is to believe that scientific truth is indeed absolute. On that there is the classic pronouncement by Galileo: “The conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgement of man has nothing to do with them.” This is echoed in practice by generations of teachers, who present the facts dogmatically and discourage any questioning. I was one of those who reacted against that authoritarian style of scientific indoctrination. Now, if one is doing routine puzzle-solving research, the issue of truth is not too pressing; one can know that somehow, somewhere, one’s results will be superceded in one way or another; but that’s all over the horizon. But in cases of urgent policy-related research like the toxicant example I mentioned above, to believe that one’s anecdotes or one’s lab-rats give the truth about the danger of the toxicant, is mistaken and inappropriate. For when such conflicting results are negotiated, what comes into play is their quality.”
Your reference is to Galileo is roughly equivalent to “There is a painting of Galileo wearing a t-shirt with the logo ‘Pope IS Truth’.” Sorry, but it was laundry day and the t-shirt was a gift. Galileo struggled, literally, against authoritarians, created the scientific method, applied it brilliantly, and explained it to the world. That one creation just might be the greatest gift of Western Civilization to humanity. As Galileo explained, scientific method is the creation of hypotheses which explain and predict observable phenomena. Notice that the purpose of scientific method is to keep the scientist focused on the phenomena, on the world, not on fantasies.
Scientific Method continues to rule real science. The people at CERN, real scientists all, have spent a gazillion dollars because they predicted the existence of phenomena whose discovery would permit them to make some genuine choices among conflicting physical theories. See, prediction and explanation of phenomena in the world still rules. They did not build the CERN project for the purpose of sitting around some table and discussing rules of civility. Among climate scientists, at least pro-AGW climate scientists, there is not one who is focused on observable phenomena and, in general, the world. In fact, “hide the decline” proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they are committed to preventing a focus on observable phenomena. When forty years of data that you collected conflict with your theory, heck, just erase the data. That is climate science and that is what you are defending. You are defending the most flagrant abuse of evidence and of empiricism in the history of science. Please focus and address the real questions.
If all climate scientists would simply agree that the thing to do now is to convene focused conferences, with full participation by sceptics, whose purpose it is to create a new measurement regime for climate science then everybody would jump on board. Bygones would be bygones. But the pro-AGW folks will never do that because then they could not control the data.
Interesting:
“‘facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent”
Applied to AGW by CO2, I’ll agree that the facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high, but I do not agree that decisions are urgent.
Well, other than to get decisions on how to remove the uncertainty from the facts.
“That is not a simple hypothesis to be decided by an experimental test.”
I can’t help thinking this is were you’re going wrong. Down the line the correct experiments will be performed to give us the level of certainty we require it’s just difficult to see when that will happen. There are at least in some areas the tools in place that are designed to give us the data we require.
I’m a little confused about your LD50 example. Nobody rejects this method. In fact the people ‘defending’ the toxicant don’t reject it as a sourse of truth, they are simply arguing special mitigating circumstances in this particular instance. When they go to a restaurant following the inquiry I’m sure they still assume (demand) that everything going into their mouth is at an appropriate level below it’s LD50. The general truth of the LD50 test as a measure of toxicants still stands in the minds of everybody involved in the case.
The only example I know of somebody bypassing the LD50 altogether is John Selwyn Gummer who at the height of the BSE scare choose to feed hamburgers to his daughter. I don’t think this alternative is going to catch on though.
What immediately undermines Ravetz’s position is the statement about Dyson “..That left him looking like someone who didn’t want to argue, and so leaving the field to the expert. ”
Conner is an “EXPERT”???
Dyson said why he was exiting the discussion. It was because Conner was not expressing the views of an expert, but a believer, two entirely different positions of authority.
Ravetz continually embeds subtle digs and insults into his epic tales, and even supposed apologies. Perhaps Willis was not so offended, but I was on his behalf. Ravetz wrote:
“The climate issue is not a simple normal-scientific one of verification or refutation of an hypothesis. It has become a ‘total’ issue, involving policy, politics, investments and lifestyle; and it has a history.”
Insulting because it isn’t the deniers that transformed the simple science into a “TOTAL” issue, it was his camp. Of violence, he should remember that it was Ben Santer who wanted to meet Pat Michaels in an alley.
This continued twisting of guilt is what makes me furious. Not violent, just furious.
Here are some queries for “common ground” I have for the CAGW faithful in the same vein as Conner had for Dyson (agree or disagree):
1) the earth is billions of years of old and during most of the past 500 million when life radiated from the oceans to the land the earth had no ice caps
2) for the past 3 million years the earth has been in an ice age
3) for the past 15,000 years ice age glaciers have been in retreat in what’s called an interglacial period which is a slight temporary warming in the midst of an ice age
4) the average length of the more recent interglacial periods is 15,000 years while the average length of the recent glacial periods is 100,000 years
5) in all the earth’s history there has never been a “runaway greenhouse”
6) during much of the past 500 million years atmospheric CO2 levels were anywhere from 2x to 10x what they are today
7) CO2 level and global temperature at this moment are quite low compared to most of the past 500 million years
8) plant growth ceases when atmospheric CO2 drops below 150ppm and increases up to as much as 2000ppm
9) plants requires less water per unit of growth as CO2 level increases
10) the periods of great biological fecundity in the past 500 million years happened when the earth was much warmer with much more atmospheric CO2 than today
11) the earth has experienced a small number of ice ages prior to the present ice age and some of those persisted for tens of millions of years
12) there is not enough economically recoverable fossil fuel to increase atmospheric CO2 to anywhere near the concentration during the warmest greenest episodes in the earth’s history
All of the above are as reliably true as can be according to the indisputable testimony of the geologic column.
Therefore, IF atmospheric CO2 is rising due to anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels and IF that amount of CO2 can cause a measurable amount of warming THEN burning of fossil fuels is a great boon for life on this planet as it will
1) help to delay the end of the Holocene interglacial and perhaps even end the 3 million years of ice age
2) extend growing seasons in high northern and southern latitudes
3) increase productivity of the primary producers in the food chain to the benefit of everything alive farther up the food chain
4) decrease the amount of fresh water that terrestrial plants require per unit of growth
So what I’m faced with is a decision between accepting what appears to be a bogus hypothesis about runaway warming due to anthropogenic CO2. Never before in the earth’s history when most of the time CO2 levels were vastly higher has there been a runaway greenhouse. To promote this as a credible hypothesis especially when the earth is in a 3 million year-old ice age during an interglacial period which is statistically overdue to end is contrary to all evidence we have of the earth’s history. If anything we should be TRYING to boost atmospheric CO2 for the benefit of the biosphere. On the flip side there is what appears to be a contingent of lunatics who want to hobble the economic growth of the world spreading misery and death to billions in the name of reducing atmospheric CO2 which just about everyone agrees can be practically accomplished to any degree which would make any significant difference in global temperature.
So I’m asked to back throwing money at a “problem” that is actually a blessing. The only “settled science” in all this as far as I’m concerned is the risk/reward equation. Trying to marginally curb anthropogenic CO2 production is just about all risk and just about no reward. Continuing on the present path appears to be just about all reward and just about no risk.
The only valid reason I can see for limiting fossil fuel consumption is conservation. I believe there is a limited amount of economically recoverable fossil fuel and at the current pace of consumption and growth in consumption it’s going to get nothing more than more expensive going forward. Less expensive means of supplying energy is always a good thing as it directly translates into higher living standards for everyone. Less expensive and renewable is even better. However, developing a less expensive alternative to fossil fuels won’t be accomplished by hobbling the extant economy. R&D is expensive and if supplying the needs of billions of people takes a larger bite out of global productivity there will be less to spend on developing a cheap renewable source of energy. In other words you DO NOT kill the goose that lays the golden eggs until you have secured another goose to replace it. Doing otherwise is insane.
johanna says:
February 26, 2011 at 7:21 am
‘Steve Mosher goes on, “ Here’s the problem. Once science has been politicized you cannot “simply” return to normal science. It takes the use of power to do that. Are you going to force Hansen to think differently? defund him? defund all the scientists who believe action is required? Stop all science ( thats way abnormal). Sorry, the return to normal science is not a simple re virgination process. Its inherently political. post normal.”
Mosher, if PNS contained some meaningful ideas, which it does not, then if climate science is now political according to the PNS “analysis” then exactly the solution that is demanded by PNS is political. Defund all the creeps. Indict them.
You make some great points, johanna. Feminists are totally welcome.
R2 says:
February 26, 2011 at 4:03 am
“It’s ironic that those subjects that follow the scientific method rarely have ‘science’ in their name (physics, chemistry etc)…
… and those that tack ‘science’ onto their name rarely follow the scientific method!”
It is called “Cargo Cult” Religion.
Bomber_the_Cat says:
February 26, 2011 at 2:49 am
“Dyson was wrong to cut and run when the questions became too difficult. Remember the derision that was heaped on James Cameron when he pulled out of that debate with Marc Marano? Well, now Dyson has done the same – but not a word of criticism on these pages. Instead Steve Connor is called a ‘hack’ for asking difficult questions.”
‘The question Dyson baulked at was this –
“The mainstream estimate suggests that doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels would increase global average temperatures by about 3C. If you accept that CO2 levels have never been higher, but not that global average temperatures have increased, where has the extra trapped heat gone to? Can we deal with this before we go on? ”’
OMG, can you not recognize a most egregious case of the classic case of Complex Question? Logically, the question has exactly the same form as “Have you stopped beating your wife?” The question PRESUMES that the Warmista account of manmade CO2, along with its effects on heat, is true. Dyson should have slapped the interviewer. The interviewer is just another MSM propagandist.
I think the most important contribution of Dr. Ravetz concerns the use of rhetoric. Scientists on all sides of the climate debate use non-scientific terms to score points. As an example, above someone described Steve Connor as a “pinhead.” Dr. Curry recently posted on her blog, linked on WUWT, that members of the AGW “team” were “dishonest.” Famously, “team” members refer to AGW “skeptics” as “deniers” or “denialists.” None of these are scientific terms, but emotionally-charged, value-laden labels. Thus when Curry labels Schmidt “dishonest,” this enables Schmidt to puff up his righteous indignation and defend himself from an attack upon his character, rather than defend his scientific reasoning. It’s perhaps not emotionally satisfying, but I think the non-scientific community will be better served by those scientists who stick with arguing about facts and avoid resorting to emotionally-charged character evaluations of their opponents. I’m aware that this is very difficult, both because all humans are subject to emotional responses, and because even the determination of what constitutes a “fact” is under dispute.
I am afraid that even well trained, intelligent scientists suffer the same human foibles that we all do, that is the tendency to turn away from the mirror when they don’t like what they see and then to rationalize. It is often difficult to look truth in the eye and accept it because of our investments and of course the reality that sometimes, the power to change is not within us. I think it is why as a non scientist sometimes I listen to a scientific position and think that that person has left their common since at the door.
I have in the past assumed that scientists were always thorough, objective, and honest. And then I read this blog.
Well, here’s my advice to AGWers if you seek to convince me.
First, Get the basics right because if the foundation is faulty then every built upon it is questionable.
Second, get out a little. I know that expensive computers are great fun but they do little to advance knowledge of The earth’s climate.
Third, when you make an embarrassing mistake, like kill off penguins with your equipment and then somehow, god knows how, blame it on global warming, take time to make that good long gaze in the mirror.
And last, when the data isn’t quite what you expected, don’t tourture, satistically manipulate, obfuscate, or falsify it.
Climate gate has required that I become increasingly skeptical so don’t blame it on the car I might drive.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Dr Ravetz,
I followed the many well written criticisms of your article in the previous thread, the responses in that thread to the article at the top of this one, and the responses here. And my first comment in the last thread I shall repeat again.
Of the valid criticisms of you, your last two responses address not one single issue other than your words regarding Sarah Palin. And that amounted to no more than an additional slight dressed up as a retraction.
I, davidmhoffer, have serious doubts about Sarah Palin. It makes me uncomfortable to know that I am on the same side as Jerome Ravitz on this. Of course I say this only to show the complexity of the issue, this says more about me than it does about Jerome Ravitz.
So….anyone read that and have any doubt as to whom I have a lower opinion of, Palin or Ravitz?