Tamsin Edwards has a new essay on uncertainty, here is an excerpt:
About a month ago I was invited to represent the Cabot Institute at the All Parliamentary Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) meeting on “Communicating Risk and Uncertainty around Climate Change”. All Party Groups are groups of MPs and Lords with a common interest they wish to discuss, who meet regularly but fairly informally. Here are the APPGCC APPCCG register, blog, Twitter and list of events.
The speakers were James Painter (University of Oxford), Chris Rapley (UCL) and Fiona Harvey (The Guardian), and the chair was (Lord) Julian Hunt (UCL). Rather than write up my meeting notes, I’ll focus on the key points.
1. People have a finite pool of worry
2. People interpret uncertainty as ignorance
3. People are uncomfortable with uncertainty
4. People do accept the existence of risk
5. Scientists have little training
6. Journalists have little (statistical) training
7. “Newspaper editors are extremely shallow, generally”
8. There are many types of climate sceptic
9. Trust is important
Read all of the details behind the list here: http://blogs.plos.org/models/nine-lessons-and-carols-in-communicating-climate-uncertainty/
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There’s also the problem of the blatant use of emotive language in supposedly scientific papers.
One idea for them if they want to regain trust , is to meet the academic standards that would expected of a undergraduate handing in an essay, although actual quite a low standard its one the well qualified professionals within climate ‘science’ seem totally unable to obtain.
Trust me I am scientists, may be the new motto some want for the RS , but the public ,through long and bitter experience, have learnt how often they turned out to be self serving liars out to push a personal ideology to often their own finical benefit.
John Barrett, beautifully put. You should post that over there.
Latimer
It’s the weekend.. Tamsin is probably Xmas shopping, having a life ,meeting friends, etc..
wait to Monday, before you through any accusations around.
I’ve commented there before, both my comments appeared instantly, which suggest automatic pre-moderation, previous commenters going straight on. (if you put any links on, 1 or more links (depending how set up, might be automatically flagged as potential spam.
Let’s get to the heart of the issue. Climate science is in its infancy. These folks are no more knowledgeable of the basic fundamentals than doctors were 100 years ago when they prescribed blood letting. They have engaged in groupthink and hubris to such a great extent they started to believe their own BS.
It’s not a communication problem, these so-called scientists are simply pretenders and lecturing others when they, themselves, are totally ignorant serves no purpose. They need to go back into their labs and stay there for a couple of decades while collecting enough data to start the real process of developing a science.
They can’t communicate that which they do not know.
I made the following comment there on 6th Dec. It also has not come out of moderation… and it looks like it won’t:
Tamsin says: “And in the discussion someone quoted a journalist as saying “The IPCC report says it has 95% confidence – what do the other 5% of the scientists think?” In other words, confusing the idea of a consensus and a confidence interval. There was a laugh at this in the room.”
Surely it is wrong to imply that the 95% confidence quoted in this particular case has anything to do with statistical analysis.
I’ve posted a comment on Tamsin’s blog (currently in moderation), and also on my own blog:
http://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/attribution-statements-in-ar5/
In short, my comment points out that I think that Tamsin’s article does not report the AR5 attribution statement correctly – AR5 makes no stronger statement on the role of greenhouse gases than AR4 did. It is not just journalists that should be careful in how they report the science!
My comment was posted immediately without going into moderation, but I have posted there before.
Tamsin reports on twitter that she has been away from moderation for a bit, so we might start seeing more comments appear soon.
I’m pleased to report that – despite earlier indications to the contrary by disappearing from the visible moderation queue – my comments at Tamsin Edwards’ blog have been now published as written.
I withdraw my curses. Perhaps it was just one of those occasional glitches that afflicts even the best ordered software. It is good to know that a normal service has been resumed.
Willis
“People disbelieve the climate scientists because we found out from the Climategate emails that for years, we were systematically lied to and deceived by the top scientists. ”
that’s probably not true.
1. as Steve McIntyre has argued we learned nothing NEW from the mails. We suspected
deception, some of us were more confident, others less so. But those of us who distrusted
CRU before didnt increase our distrust. In short, you disbelived them before, the mails
confirmed your belief ( an mine). We did not disbelieve them BECAUSE of the mails
we already disbelieved them.
2. Every polling number I’ve see shows little to no change in public trust since climategate
Most people dont even know what it was.
climategate changed the conversation. that’s about it
Quick note on moderation at my blog.
1. It’s all done by me.
2. I’m not always timely. This weekend I (a) had plans on Friday evening (b) unexpectedly had to go offline on Saturday.
3. Barry is correct, previous approved commenters go straight through.
4. There might also be a “Wait to approve” on comments with link(s), but I can’t find the WordPress setting to see right now.
Cheers,
Tamsin
Jim Clarke says:
December 6, 2013 at 9:39 pm
‘I strongly disagree with Ms. Edwards when she postulates…”In my experience, this [lack of training in dealing with the ‘street fight’ of climate debate’] is one of the two main reasons why most of my colleagues do not do public engagement.” ‘
Yeah, mugged by scientific method again. It really hurts when an ordinary “unwashed” brings up the scientific method and you become tongue-tied.
You know how you can regain my trust? Explain the relationship between a model and its data. Hopefully it is a logical relationship. We know the relationship between scientific theory and data. Theory implies data. Do models imply data? Then how do models substitute for theory?
Steven Mosher says:
December 8, 2013 at 10:33 am
I disagree completely We learned a lot of new things from the emails. Yes, we suspected some things before … but suspecting something and being able to prove it are very, very different. Inter alia, Climategate showed us the nasty infighting. It revealed “Mike’s Nature trick”. It gave us in their own words their attempts to pack the peer review panels and get rid of editors. It showed us Mann and the others hiding their guilt by deleting emails that were the subject of the FOIA requests, which is an actual crime.
Your claim that there was nothing new revealed by the emails strikes me as just another in the endless attempts to claim “nothing to see here, folks, move along”. I don’t mind it when Michael Mann and Phil Jones espouse the “Climategate showed nothing” line of BS, no surprise there … but it surprises me when you repeat that palpable nonsense.
Regarding the polls, the Gallup poll here shows significant erosion after 2009 on the question of whether people worry about climate change … and the Rasmussen poll, taken after Climategate, showed that 62% of the public believed that climate scientists sometimes faked their results.
I also find this from Gallup here:
Note that Gallup says Americans and Europeans felt “substantially less threatened” after Climategate than before ….
Finally, in 2010 Gallup commented directly on the question, saying (emphasis mine):
So I’d say the polls show that the public is not as out-of-touch as you claim, and that Climategate definitely had an effect.
w.
Tamsin Edwards says:
December 8, 2013 at 12:07 pm
I suspected as much, which is why I didn’t carp about the long wait for moderation.
Also, my thanks again for your willingness to respond to what people have written, to defend your work and your ideas, and to come here and explain the reality of moderating a blog. Would that more of your colleagues were as forthcoming.
All the best,
w.
I appreciate that, thank you. Haven’t managed to respond to everyone yet, but hopefully I can add more later today or this week.
I second Willis’s comment and appreciation!
I’ll also add a note that Dr. Tamsin Edwards is actually reading comments, thinking and replying with thought provoking questions, comments and notes. This thread at her blog is definitely interactive in format much like several of the most informative climate blogs; (e.g., WUWT, ClimateAudit, JoNova, BishopHill, for starters)
Heh.
I probably agree with your views, but I’d be hard pressed to print error-littered text like yours. Yor prufe-reedin stoinks.
For those keeping count, my comment above did eventually appear.