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.
REPLY: Please send it again, I did not see your previous comment, but I’ll look at it personally. Sound more like a glitch or accidental deletion. Sometimes it happens. I have on occasion accidentally deleted comments rather than approving them. The “delete permanently” button andf the approve both make the same thing happen in WordPress, the comment moves out of the moderation que and the rest of the comments scroll up. Sometimes you don’t even know you’ve done it.
With the hundreds of comments here daily, mistakes are bound to happen. – Anthony
It is I who must apologize. I found my comment in the other Ravetz thread here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/24/more-from-jerome-ravetz-response-to-willis/#comment-607083
Your quick response, and gracious approach made me rethink my credibility on the issue, and I thought “Hmm, maybe I posted it in a different thread.” I first tried searching your site on my username, but that search feature in top-right panel doesn’t find any matches on user names. So I scrolled down to the next-most-recent Ravetz article, and I found my comment with Firefox’s Find feature.
I’m very sorry, Anthony. Please accept my humble apologies. Isn’t it interesting that I was calling out Ravetz’s apology to Willis, and I’m asking you to accept mine? Karma is funny that way…
John Whitman (to Tallbloke);
With your editing help perhaps he would then come across as less of a pedantic academic with a condescending tone.>>
I too applaud Dr Ravetz to have the moxy to participate in this forum, and Anthony for making him welcome. It is intensely important that as many people as possible see what he has to say, and pay attention to how his PNS theories have shown up everywhere in the climate debate including business magazines as prestigious as the Economist advocating action without credible supporting evidence justified on the theory of PNS.
But do not edit a word. Without the condescension, the immaterial fables, the insults cleverly disguised as a retraction, the self proclaimed inability to understand science presented as a logical qualification for the authority to act on it, the disingenuous equating of a real scientist walking out of an unfair interview with his own refusal to discuss facts, the justification of his position via references that he himself has discredited, the pardoning of fraudulently conducted research that his PNS enables on the grounds that bigots and terrorists in Ireland made peace, while he subtly distances himself from the worst of those his PNS enabled with a flippant remark that they will discredit themselves as if he had nothing to do with enabling them in the first place….
Don’t edit a word. Let the world see him as he is.
davidmhoffer says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Devastating.
I betcha he resembles that! 😉
David, you don’t answer questions by saying they are child’s questions. You simply ‘grade’ them by doing that – in this case wrongly – because the question is quite clever.
Does the question contain assumptions? Yes – it does – but these should be addressed point by point. I see you still fail to explain where the ‘trapped’ heat has gone.
bubbagyro says there is no such thing as ‘trapped heat’. But this is playing with semantics. Of course, at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) the amount of heat escaping to space will always equal the amount coming in. This is the radiation balance. It applies on Earth as it applies on Venus. it doesn’t matter how much greenhouse gas you have, the radiation balance at TOA will always be in equilibrium. If this were not so, the planet’s temperature would simply adjust until this equilibrium was achieved.
However, we do not live at the top of the atmosphere, we live on the surface, and the temperature at the surface is affected by greenhouse gases.
When people refer to ‘trapped heat’ they mean the heat that is returned to the surface by the greenhouse gases, which would otherwise have escaped directly to space. This ‘returned’ heat, in the form of IR radiation, represents an additional heating flux at the surface and makes it warmer than it would otherwise be. No scientist disputes this, I hope – Freeman Dyson didn’t.
So where has all this ‘trapped’ heat gone? I can answer that, but it is disappointing to see that no other sceptic can, and Dyson decided a cowardly retreat was in order.
Are there no other physicists here?
Bomber-the-Cat
I think Professor Dyson was right to end the debate when he did because Connor’s final statement contained false claims: – “One of the problems I have with the climate “sceptics” is that they keep changing their arguments. First they say that there is no such thing as global warming, thereby dismissing all the many thousands of records of land and sea temperatures over the past century or so. Then they say that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing the Earth to warm up, thereby defying basic physics”.
Every single assertion in those three sentences is untrue. You cannot debate with someone whose method of argument is to accuse his opponent of something he is not guilty of.
Bomber_the_Cat,
I understand what you are saying regarding the question that Dyson declined to answer. I am however, disappointed that you call Dyson a coward for not wanting to get into a debate with someone who has such an agenda – namely to try and trap him with logical inconsistencies.
You ask ‘where has all this trapped heat gone?’ Or more specifically from Connor ‘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?’
Firstly, where does Dyson say that global average temperatues have not increased? It would appear to Dyson that Connor has disregarded everything he had previously said.
Secondly, there is indeed an issue with ‘missing heat.’ Roger Pielke senior has written about the fact that according to James Hansen, co2 increases should result in a radiative imbalance of about 0.85 watts per square metre. Hansen has said that this imbalance will raise average global temperatures, ocean temperatures and melt the ice. Argo data since 2004 has been tallying the earth’s energy balance in ocean heat. The outcome of all this is that there is an observed ocean heat shortfall of about 1 x 10^23 joules. Nobody has found this missing heat. Either it has escaped detection or it never existed in the first place. But Connor should have known that this is a refutation of the ghg hypothesis, not a confirmation of it.
The ‘logical inconsistency’ that Connor was trying to trap Dyson with was the contradiction in having an increase in co2 and downwelling LIR without increasing temperatures. Yet, the work of scientists like Lindzen have shown that there is not a precise relationship between co2 levels and temperatures. If negative feedbacks predominate, then the temperature sensitivity will be less than that due to no feedbacks, but if positive feedbacks predominate (as posited in computer models), the temperature sensitivity will be higher. Since we don’t know the feedbacks, how can belief in low temperature anomalies be in any way a logical inconsitency with the belief in the IR effects of co2?
However you try an cut it, Connor comes across as a puppet. The question is, who is pulling the strings? Why should Dyson carry on a debate with an anonymous puppet master by proxy?
A comprehensively brilliant, and brilliantly comprehensive, post.
In Other Words, I agree with you completely!
😉
Uh, no, that’s not the question at all. You’re mixing all sorts of issues together. Lagged heat, by a few milliseconds, or “missing heat” a la Trenberth, but there is no “trapped heat”.
Fake concept, distorted question, bogus conclusions. No wonder Dyson was nauseated.
Thankyou Mr Ravetz for your thoughtful post. I particularly find sympathy with the comment.
“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.”
For myself the strength of the evidence is weak not because of a single issue, but relies on a chain of poorly supported conjectures and assumptions. The weaknesses and uncertainties are compounded, so plausible arguments on their own become implausible when stacked together. To maintain the looming catastrophe requires a number of extreme positions.
However, the justification of a mitigation policy is not the end of the matter. The policies are about inflicting a high cost now to avoid a much greater cost in the future. Yet there is no evaluation as to how the theoretical policy instruments can be translated into successful, cost efficient, outcomes. Indeed, the current polarization of the debate means that exaggerated claims of looming disaster are listened to, but calmer voices are either ignored, or denounced as deniers of the truth. So even if the diagnosis were correct, we end up proscribing [prescribing? Robt] an untested medicine that is both ineffective as a treatment and potentially more harmful than the disease.
I attempt, fairly inadequately, to chart the policy problems at
http://manicbeancounter.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/climate-change-in-perspective-%e2%80%93-part-2-of-4-the-mitigation-curve/
There is much to be learned. That is why we devote our time and resources to science.
The argument for CO2 regulation is that the science is settled. When the details of “the science” are debated, the conclusion is always that “more study is needed….but we must act now”. The inference of “we must act now” is that the science is settled.
It is argued that psychotherapy is not a scientific practice, but it appears that for some among us it may be the only hope.
We must act now./sarc
This is almost as good as an Ayn Rand novel! PNS with it’s ineffable revelations. The establishment of a “State Science Institute” whose only practical invention is a device to control the population – “for it’s own good”. This is an object lesson. Learn from it.
Atlas is going to shrug. Defund ALL government “science”. You cannot fix what is a fundamental flaw.
PR
Is not truth simply a constant that exists outside the human ability to manipulate it. In other words 2 + 2 = 4 is an invariable constant. It may be discovered but not manipulated. Now it can be rephrased in any myriad of ways however in the end the ultimate result will be 4.
The reason I scoff at the idea of ‘consensus’ and the ‘science being settled’ as to CO2 and the current trend of warming is the facts do not simply add up to ‘4’. Everything that I have read and seen to date point in a direction that CO2 raises temperatures a small amount but no where near the catastrophic values bandied about.
But that is still with a great deal of incomplete data… Also if the people who have been advocating that CO2 was going to cause so much warming are still doing research why? Because people have not believed them yet? If the science is settled then there would be NO POINT to continue to study it.
I’m sorry Dr. Revitz, but I think you have completely misconstrued Dr. Dyson’s reason for cancelling the interview. Dyson told Conners he was tired of Conners’ refusal to think about Dyson’s answers. Dyson was being interviewed by an idiot and he as much said so in his own way.
I really don’t think there is any intellectual comparison of the two, and Dyson was not running out of arguments, but was tired of an inferior trying to get him to run in circles.
As I thought the Carbon Brief are just getting started: funded by the European Climate Foundation
The Carbon Brief’s ‘thought’s on the Freeman Dyson interview.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/02/freeman-dyson-interviewed-in-the-independent
Some background on The Carbon Brief
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/18/the-carbon-brief-the-european-rapid-response-team/
Dave Worley:
It is argued that psychotherapy is not a scientific practice, but it appears that for some among us it may be the only hope.
Yep, even unsarcastically, Ravetz’s PNS involving “facts uncertain, values in conflict, stakes high, urgent action required”, can easily be seen simply as a description of Ravetz’s own state of mind, a dysfunctional one having nothing to do with reality, but only to Ravetz’s personal reaction to reality and his failure to be able to rationally deal with it himself, alone in the same way everyone is.
Then his vaunted PNS simply acts to try to intentionally reify or bring about the same state of mind in others, also reinforcing his own, by the complete lack of virtue of its own methods which are the state of mind, therefore conveniently “proving” that a “Ravetz PNS” state of mind does reflect reality by some kind of “perception is reality” consensus or vote, and which also puts people like Ravetz in charge of what everyone else must do, including being able to force them to do it as in “might makes right”.
The parallel which makes or sees PNS as nothing more than an externalized obsessive-compulsive neurosis – such as incessant hand washing or anorexia nervosa, practiced in order for the person to obtain some control over something in regard to which the person thinks they have nothing else that “works”, or over something which they can’t even define – is really too great to ignore, and which we would do at our own peril.