Below are excerpts from a story by Paul Roderick Gregory, in Forbes, plus an examination of how desperate the website SkepticalScience seems to have become in the way they treat professionals.
Excerpts from Forbes:
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Three recent events have brought the controversy over climate science back into the news and onto my radar screen:
First, Ivar Giaever, the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, resigned from the American Physical Society over his disagreement with its statement that “the evidence (on warming alarmism) is incontrovertible.” Instead, he writes that the evidence suggests that “the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”
Second, the editor of Remote Sensing resigned and disassociated himself from a skeptical paper co-authored by University of Alabama Climate Scientist Roy Spencer after an avalanche of criticism by “warmists.” His resignation brings to mind Phil Jones’ threat to “get rid of troublesome editors” (cited above).
Third, the New York Times and other major media are ridiculing Texas Governor Rick Perry for saying that global warming is “not proven.” Their message: Anyone who does not sign on to global warming alarmism is an ignorant hayseed and clearly not presidential material.
What lessons do I, as an economist, draw from these three events?
First: The Giaever story starkly disputes warmist claims of “inconvertible evidence.” Despite the press’s notable silence on such matters, there are a large number of prominent scientists with solid scholarly credentials who disagree with the IPCC-Central Committee. Those who claim “proven science” and “consensus” conveniently ignore such scientists.
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Second: As someone with forty years experience with peer reviewed journals. I can testify that the Remote Sensing editor’s resignation and public discreditation of Spencer’s skeptical paper would be considered bizarre and unprofessional behavior in any other scholarly discipline.
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Third: The media is tarring and feathering Rick Perry, we now see, for agreeing with Nobel laureate Giaever and a host of other prominent scientists. I guess if Perry is a know-nothing Texas hick (or worse, a pawn of Big Oil) so is every other scientist who dares to disagree with the IPCC Central Committee. Such intimidation chillingly makes politicians, public figures, and scientists fearful of deviating one inch from orthodoxy. They want to avoid Orwell’s “watching their comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.” How many are willing to shoulder that burden?
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Read the entire piece here.
For a recent example of “watching their comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes” one needs to look no further than Dr. Roger Pielke’s attempt to have a dialog with the oxymoronically named website “SkepticalScience.com”. Bishop Hill described what happened there as self immolation, Shub Niggurath lists it as A dark day in the climate science debate.
Whatever is is, it’s the worst example of climate ugliness I’ve seen this month, though not the all time worst (see the “corrections” at the end). It is surprising though, that for a website that recently won the prestigious national Eureka award in Australia, that they’d have to stoop to this level of juvenile behavior reminiscent of Animal Farm, cited by Paul Roderick Gregory in his Forbes article.
Strikeout of opposing commentary, especially that of a professional scientist writing something that doesn’t even appear inflammatory or off topic (since he’s responding to another commenter), is so “grade school”.
Can you imagine the howling that would ensue if I did the same thing to NSIDC’s Walt Meier when he posts something here I might disagree with?
From my perspective, while I once said that John Cook was at least “civil in his discourse with me”, and for that reason I gave Skeptical Science a place on my blogroll. I’m rethinking that now after seeing this latest ugliness.
One thing Shub Niggurath said caught my eye:
More recently however, the tone at [SkepticalScience] has turned shrill. The main proprietor John Cook, who is a climate change communication award winner, apparently approves. These changes have especially been noticeable after a certain ‘dana1981′ – likely referring to the author being born in 1981, began his contributions to the website.
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And to top it all, in their narrow and monomaniacal attempts at interpreting Roger Pielke Sr’s blog posts, the readers/moderators and authors including ‘dana1981′ were completely blinded to the fact, that one of them – ‘dana1981′ – had in fact, carried out the very same thing they so vehemently denied.
That reminds me of something I once said about the Internet:
Anonymity breeds contempt
I wonder if Cook will rise to the level of respect that the Australian National Museum has granted him with their Eureka award and fix this mess “dana1981” has created, or will he turn a blind eye and take one for “The Team”? I’ve done my part to be reasonable and adopt suggestions, the ball is now in John Cook’s court. Ironically, in the attempt to muzzle Dr. Pielke and have him acquiesce to demands, they handily proved his original point.
The way defenders of climate science are acting these days, it does indeed beg the question Can We Really Call Climate Science A Science?
h/t to Kevin Hearle for the Forbes article
Climate ‘Science’ has been used by politicians to create an ‘external enemy’ that justifies more taxes and more power to the politicians.
However, importantly, it also follows a powerful theme found in the plots of successful dramas like ‘Jaws’ that fits with the psychological mores of many people. The plots have a scientist/expert finding evidence of an imminent disaster and being scorned and not believed by the majority until it is almost too late.
I think that this allegory is the reason for many of the heated attacks on ‘the deniers’ – “Don’t you see there is a disaster about to happen/shark about to attack?! Get out of the water!!”
Unfortunately, they are totally convinced they are saving the world while ‘deniers’ are big-business trying to make money and lulling the population into ignoring the looming disaster.
Re the question of Skeptical Science: I think ‘tautology’ is the word you are seeking.
bhaskell says:
“Has anyone even tried to put a collar around the potential margin of error (particularly for measurements that predate modern equipment)? ”
I have also often marveled at the number of people in science who don’t seem to understand the difference between accuracy and precision. In addition to the actual margin of error on the thermometer, there are siting differences as where you measure should be relevant to the area of interest and not biased by location close to various influences, like asphalt and ac outlets. This has been amply demonstrated by our host’s Surface Stations project. When a large number of your temperature measuring stations have accuracies specified as + or – 2 to 5 deg C it’s hard to take them seriously when they claim to be able to discern temperature rise rates on the order of a tenth of a degree or two per decade, or a hundredth of a degree per year. No matter how much they claim this doesn’t matter or that they have “adjusted” for it, UHI and siting issues still do not allow much confidence in the determination of temperature trends IMO.
Sorry, I was taught that ‘data’ is the plural of ‘datum’. While it is true that in the sense of ‘a body of data’ is often carelessly treated as a singular noun, I don’t think if I wrote, “But the data supporting man induced climate change are overwhelming” would make me “sound like an idiot.” Though making that barely-grammatical Warmist claim would, of course.
/Mr Lynn (an admitted pedant)
Pedantic error: “While it is true that in the sense of ‘a body of data’ is often carelessly treated as a singular noun. . .” should be “While it is true that in the sense of ‘a body of data’ it is often carelessly treated as a singular noun. . .” /Mr L
Yes, it it the science of guessing. Guess again.
tom T says:
BTW the name Skeptical Science is not an oxymoron.
I think the correct word is “misnomer”.
Ken Harvey: When one speaks of a body of data such as is generally the case with climate matters, the the word ‘data’ takes the singular verb. This is not optional – it is obligatory.
I always cringe when I hear or read “data is”, but that’s because I am an old fogey, and usage has changed during my lifetime. When I hear or read a “correction” to “data is” I infer that the person doing the “correction” is another old fogey. “Data” as singular refers to what used to be called “data set” or “all of the data”, so the evolution abbreviates communication in a useful way.
The Soothsayers of Macroeconometrics
By Arnold Kling
Applying macroeconometric models to questions of fiscal policy is the equivalent of using pre-Copernican astronomy to launch a satellite.
http://american.com/archive/2011/september/the-soothsayers-of-macroeconometrics
What does this have to do with climate, you may ask. That is left to the student as an exercise.
Is climate “science” a science?
…. most real scientists would think that is a very worthwhile question to ask.
…. most climate “scientists” would tell their supporters it is a ridiculous question as they egg them of to a new pitch of alarmism at the next rally.
That striking out of entire comments – by a real scientist, FFS – by skepticalscience is simply breathtaking. The contumelious arrogance it reveals strips away any last doubt that the AGW project is politics, pure and simple – should there be any doubt left to strip. Who the hell do these people think they are? Let us be grateful that this sort of vileness is making more and more people aware that AGW was never about science.
Need a job? Political “science” is doing well.
Umm…
Not to be contrary, but the SkS moderators seemed to be requesting that he not discuss the science [i]in that particular thread[/i], not that he never discuss it, for organization purposes. I’m really confused how that amounts to a “dark day”, though using strikeout rather than simply telling him to discuss it elsewhere was bad form.
Of course these folks do MODELING and DEVELOPMENT and TESTING of everything they do. And all THREE of these elements match each other and support each other. Final result – Verified and reproduced. ,
Max,
So far in “climate science” testing does not match modeling, and therefore is not verified and reproduced.
Is Pielke Sr. under arrest? Is SkS some sort of special tribunal? It certainly reads like it.
If I may diverge a little, if you need a laugh after this (I certainly do) check out this website:
http://www.eurocoin-competition.eu/home
Looks like climatologists are not the only people resolutely impervious to reality – perhaps they are the same people – the ‘energy’ of Europe is represented by wind turbines! No sign of the people ‘celebrating’ ten years of the Euro by rioting though.
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If science is considered an integrated and consistent body of reality confirmed information, then no, climate science is not science. So far climate science is some kind of a fragmented and dis-integrated pre-science, something in gestation and not yet fully born as viably alive science.
If science is considered to be the process for achieving such reality confirmed info (see above), then no, climate science is not science. Climate science is predominately a politicized funding process, supporting scientists with ideologies that ensure the production of conformed research products supporting the framework of IPCC bias toward CAGW. Climate science therefore can be defined as that which will produce an AR5 that is more alarming than AR4; it is not producing reality confirmed information.
John
Speaking of “data” …
My impression is that the word “data” may be undergoing transformation from a count noun (I think that’s the term) to a mass noun. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to use it as a singular rather than a plural term.
D. King says:
September 19, 2011 at 6:30 am
And those that use climate science for political gain can appropriately be called climaticians (rhymes with morticians.)
“Climate Science” is to Science what “Christian Science” is to Science.
I think the very fact that so many scientific organizations are taking a public stand on this issue is a warning signal of a possible pseudo-religious, politically-correct dogmatism. The less than one degree C change in global temperatures since 1850 (or 1910) does not seem to warrant the dire predictions being made for the near future or conclusively prove that modern industry is killing the planet.
Yes there is a greenhouse effect and that has been true ever since there was water vapor in the atmosphere. Perhaps we have been responsible for increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 39 percent. But the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is well known to be logarithmic and self-limiting.
If mankind and human industry are given the benefit of reasonable doubt, I do not think there is any proof but coincidence that modern industry and population growth have adversely affected the weather on a global scale. The one-degree overall average change being cited seems well within what should be the noise level range.
Anything that includes “science” as part of it’s name is highly unlikely to be actual science. You don’t need to say “physics science’, for instance.
“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably untrue. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
–H.L. Mencken
The prototype for this template was set by Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People, where the hero tries to warn the in-denial populace about a dangerous water well. The alarmists see themselves as his descendants.
Tim Spence says:
September 19, 2011 at 6:07 am
“Climate Science is a very broad academic entity, certainly it contains more fields than any one person can claim to be an expert in, therefore it is questionable if one person can justifiably claim to be a climate scientist.”
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Excellent point. Just as “biology” is a very broad general field, broken up into many specialties. So a person is a climate scientist who specializes in glaciology, or atmospheric chemistry, etc. These specialities are every bit as rigouras as any science, but are reliant on the use of models in some areas, as it is impossible to put a small Earth in a petrie dish as a biologist can with a bit of fungi…
I see the suggestion that climate science is not a science as yet more attempts of the same anti-science rhetoric that would discredit an entire discipline in the attempts to increase doubt about the credibility of the findings.
As far as I see it, climate science believes itself to be a science, but that is not the interesting question. What sort of science is it?
Climate Scientists appear to believe that they are following a ‘scientific method’. It is not a method which is based upon experimentation with laboratory controls and so it can hardly be put in the same category as chemistry or nuclear physics. Close to the natural sciences there are the ‘observational’ sciences of which astronomy is a clear example. Astronomy has developed as observational technology has developed and climate science does not approach the observational rigour that astronomers employ. At the other end of the spectrum it can hardly be described a ‘social science’ like social anthropology or sociology. With these sciences the role of the observer directly conditions what is being observed. It would appear to sit in a middle ground along with economics.
Economics (at least the classical variety) has within it certain core beliefs about human rationality and that aggregate human activity in the form of markets can be empirically studied and modelled. Climate Science takes as a given that certain thermo-kinetic properties of CO2 can result in aggregate effects upon the state of the climate. ‘Climate’ like ‘market’ are conceptual abstractions and most climate scientists, like most economists think they agree what these words mean.
Both Climate Science and Economics suffer from the lack of rigour that characterises the natural sciences and both suffer from imprecision in measurement which characterises the observational sciences. Indeed, because of problems of empirical attribution both sciences have to rely upon modelling in order to explain and predict the phenomena they are concerned with. Nearly all sciences do this to an extent but with these subjects models rather than observation are accepted as the principal route to knowledge. Indeed, both economists and climate scientists would argue that if model and observation conflict then it is probably the observation that is wrong.
Interestingly economics and climate science are characterised by similar dysfunctional behaviours: ostracism of opponents, data torturing, political posturing and so on. There have been disputes in all the sciences and from time to time they have all been subject to vested interests. But I do not believe there has been quite the ruthlessness with which any opposition is dealt with by those who claim the scientific high ground in these subjects. It was this that first led me to wonder if the claims of climate scientists were as well founded as they and their media and political outriders would have us believe.
I put the AGW hypothesis on about the same level as the rational expectations or efficient markets hypothesis. The large majority of economists engaged in published research would claim that there is a consensus supporting the validity of the EMH for example, whereas most who work in the real world and have never published (or indeed read) a peer reviewed article in their lives would dispute it. I do not doubt that climate science is a science of a sort but like economics its claims to the truth are flimsy to say the least and skepticism is the only rational response.