Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
David Victor, in a presentation in January at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as part of a seminar series titled “Global Warming Denialism: What science has to say”, fairly recently highlighted here at Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog in the online International New York Times, made several very important points that I think that maybe we can, and should, all agree on, as a starting point to all of our subsequent discussions on “global warming/climate change”.
First, let it be said that David Victor, in his speech, self-describes himself as follows: ”I consider myself part of the mainstream scientific community on climate change, and I do all the things that the mainstream does. I teach about climate science and policy; I participate actively in the IPCC; I publish in all the normal journals.” He is a dyed-in-the-wool, self-proclaimed, practicing, Global Warming believer. He uses the term “believer” in his speech to describe adherents to the IPCC consensus. In any case, he cannot be mistaken for any kind of a climate change skeptic.
Each of the five following points of agreement is quoted directly from his speech, though not in sequential order, with some with emphasis added, each quote is followed by some comments by myself, in italics like this, to clearly differentiate them from Victor’s quoted words:
1. “First, I’d like to suggest that calling people who disagree “denialists” is clouding our judgment. If you really want to understand what motivates these people and what motivates the captains of industry and voters who listen to them, stop calling them denialists.”
The word “denialists” is offensive in its connotation, intended or not, of Holocaust denialism, and is, in any case, incorrect, no one (“nutters” excepted), denies “climate” or that climate changes. Later in his speech, he uses a better word which I will suggest here for all of us, if we must separate people with a binary system denoting disagreement with IPCC climate change science consensus: climate change consensus DISSENT and DISSENTERS.
I will add that though Victor seems comfortable referring to climate change consensus supporters as “Believers”, if I were a professional scientist, I would find this very distasteful. It sounds way to much like something skeptics often accuse them of. I would propose they settle for consensus SUPPORTERS, which doesn’t imply slavish following of every line of a doctrine-like set of beliefs.
2. “We in the scientific community need to acknowledge that the science is softer than we like to portray. The science is not “in” on climate change because we are dealing with a complex system whose full properties are, with current methods, unknowable.”
Dr. Judith Curry , who hosts the Climate Etc. blog, is the goto expert on the issue of climate change uncertainty, and has written extensively on the subject; and its known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
3. “The science is “in” on the first steps in the analysis—historical emissions, concentrations, and brute force radiative balance—but not for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty.” … “We all agree, you say, on some basic facts—that CO2 concentrations are approaching a mean of 400ppm, a value far above the 280 or 290ppm of the pre-industrial value. We agree that the climate will warm in equilibrium when net radiative forcing is added to the atmosphere, that humans are all but certainly responsible for at least half of the observed warming since the preindustrial era, etc. etc. That zone of agreement is impressive, but we must face the reality that those aren’t the questions that really matter for policy.”
Nearly all believers and skeptics alike agree on these basic points of the science (I place emphasis on the percentage of human contribution, many serious scientists still hold this bit in question, but in the end most agree that the exact percentage probably doesn’t really matter that much for policy). Before quibbling about radiative balance, note he says brute force radiative balance – not the nitty gritty picky details…we agree that this is not yet settled and is still a moving target for many.
4. “but [the science is] not [“in”] for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty. I can understand why a politician says the science is settled—as Barack Obama did last night in the State of the Union Address, where he said the “debate is over”—because if your mission is to create a political momentum then it helps to brand the other side as a “Flat Earth Society” (as he did last June). But in the scientific community we can’t pretend that things are more certain than they are.“
This simply has to be acknowledged on both sides of the climate divide – and not over-emphasized by skeptics. Some things are fairly well understood and some are still basically mysteries – surrounded by error and uncertainty — and some are in-between and require more study – clouds, ocean currents and overturn, effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation – there is quite a known list – and then there are the as-yet unknowns.
5. “…in the scientific world, there are no bright lines and the whole idea of “consensus” is deeply troubling. There is a consensus that 2+2=4. After that, we are in shades of grey. “ …“The instinctual unease with consensus helps to explain why some of the world’s greatest scientists have been climate skeptics and why the public has such a hard time understanding why these people are so disagreeable. They are disagreeable because the selection mechanisms in science demand it. If you want to find people who agree then hire an accountant. Nobody has caused bigger trouble than Freeman Dyson whose skeptical views on climate first came into focus through a 2009 New York Times Magazine profile. How do you dismiss perhaps the most accomplished physicist of his generation as an uninformed imposter? You can’t.”
This applies to many other world class Climate Scientists, Physicists, Meteorologists, and other professionals (and serious citizen scientists as well) who are regularly trashed, thrashed, dismissed as frauds, Big Oil shills, and uniformed imposters by those who should know better on the Support’s side of the Climate Divide and in a far too-cooperative mainstream media. Likewise, some skeptics label some serious climate scientists as crooks, criminals, and frauds because they produce mainstream climate science which they find disagreeable.
Let’s agree to agree with David Victor: How do you dismiss these people? “You can’t.”
(Has there been misbehavior and are there some bad apples? Yes, maybe so—but if so, then let’s honesty admit, in both apple barrels. )
If you go on to read David Victor’s full January speech, understand that he does not follow his own admonition not to call dissenters “denialists.” It gets grating very quickly. He uses other disagreeable words as well. There are interesting things in Victor’s speech about where climate fight money comes from and whom it goes, admissions you won’t see elsewhere. I’m sure you will find things to agree with and many other things that David Victor says to disagree with as strongly as I do. Truthfully, it doesn’t seem to me that he agrees with himself much of the time: he’d do better if he stuck to the basic points above and worked from these. But, as I have said so many times it annoys even me, “Opinions Vary.”
I do agree with David Victor on these five simple points. Maybe we can at least all try to agree on #1, and let’s refer, if and when we must, to those who don’t agree with the IPCC Consensus as “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” Consensus DISSENTERS and to the subject as Climate Change Consensus DISSENT, and encourage others to do so. I think it’s a pretty good alternative though I’d be glad to hear your suggestions. I’m sure none of us like being called deniers or denialists.
Thank you.
# # # #
Authors Replies Policy: I will be glad to discuss why I agree with these five points made by David Victor.
I cannot, of course, speak for David Victor as to why he made these statements in the first instance. If you wish to understand his position better, read his original speech and place it, and David Victor, in their original contexts (see the first few paragraph of this essay). I have not listened to his latest , May 15th, presentation.
This is not a technical thread and I am not prepared (or able) to discuss, defend, or even generally talk about technical points such as brute force radiative balance or percentage of human contribution to CO2 concentrations or observed warming.
The key questions for policy aren’t issues like who is responsible for what warming as a result of the 350 or so Gtons carbon we have burnt so far. It’s what happens when we burn the next 1000 Gtons. And the next.
And yes, there are uncertainties. That doesn’t mean it is safe to do it. Anything but.
This echoes a piece I had printed in the Scotsman newspaper: Mike Haseler: No place for name-calling in debate.
“The instinctual unease with consensus helps to explain why some of the world’s greatest scientists have been climate skeptics and why the public has such a hard time understanding why these people are so disagreeable.”
I think the unease comes from the fact that consensus is only opinion and most end up being wrong (e.g. Earth being the centre of the solar system). The reason that the “believers” use it is to publcally appeal to authority and avoid scientific debate.
Why are they trying to “explain” a scientists natural sceptical outlook?
We on the skeptic side are winning. David Victor is basically saying we should just be ignored, and we will all go away.
Eff him and his arrogance.
The link to Revkin’s site raises the question as to why you worked so hard to make Victor, a complete arrogant schill, look better?
Look at how the cliamte kooks like Nick Stokes respond as a go by. The only way to win is to continue to let the facts speak for themselves and to point out how the climate obsessed work so hard to hide the facts.
Kip,
this is a much appreciated ‘start’: civilised discourse is helpful to real debate leading to clarification, deeper research, and , we all hope, new usable knowledge.
Re your suggested label, “Climate Change Consensus DISSENT” . I would prefer “IPCC CCC Dissent” because the IPCC has an identifiable aggregation of ostensibly “agreed” documentation. I do not see why I should accept the definitive status of CC “Consensus” for any other group of documentation etc, [unless [until?] ‘someone’ assembles the necessary materials and obtains sufficient common agreement to ‘ratify’ the Supporter side].
Nick,
You seem to miss the fact that if about half of the warming over the last 150 years (coming to about 0.4C contribution) is due to human activity, this small increase is not an indicator of a problem (keep in mind the increase followed a particularly cold period, which was much more a problem). Also the positive effects of increased CO2 (greening of the Earth and increased crop production) has been a major boon. The key questions for policy should not how to prevent the next 1000 Gtons from being used (they will be unless nuclear comes on line faster), but how to get past the eventual using up of cheap fossil fuel energy without hurting everyone, especially the poor.
“We in the scientific community need to acknowledge that the science is softer than we like to portray.”
There wouldn’t be dissenters if they had been honest about the uncertainty and not engaged in Zohnerism from day 1.
Cracker from Nick Stokes there. A tacit admission that the entire climate alarm campaign of the past twenty years is entirely without foundation. I’m getting a lot of that from Warmists now, they’re stepping back from their ‘certainty’ and taking a ‘precautionary’ stance.
Too little too late I’m afraid. The damage to the credibility of ‘science’ has been done and when the backlash against Warmism gets into full swing i.e. post Obama, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth…and for those who have no teeth?….Teeth will be provided!
Even when the olive branch is proferred for consideration and conscious thought, we have that same attitude from the same people making the exact claims that have yet to be proven beyond doubt. We know that CO2 exudes from the planet after the heat has been applied, but the first word is that nothing will be gained actually stating or believing just that. Great start Mr Stokes.
I agree with Anthony’s agreement with David Victor’s 5 points. These are wise words, to disspiate unneeded vitriol from the climate debate.
While respecting Anthony’s comment that this is not a technical thread, I came across an article describing a Nature Communication on ice age short term warming spikes that shows that grounds for robust skepticism of the CO2 driven theory/paradigm of climate can be found in the mainstream literature, not only in a skeptic wilderness. Here is the study in question:
Paleoclimate
“Too Short to Show”
H. Jesse Smith
During the last ice age, the climate of Greenland (and much of the Northern Hemisphere) jumped between cold intervals (called stadials) and warm ones. Records from ice cores show that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose during the longer stadials, but how it may have changed during the shorter ones was unclear due to a lack of highly time-resolved CO2 measurements. Ahn and Brooks constructed a detailed time series of atmospheric CO2 from an ice core in Antarctica, which shows that CO2 concentrations changed during the longer stadials but not during the shorter ones. The authors therefore suggest that during short Greenlandic stadials, changes in ocean circulation large enough to cause the transfer of large amounts of CO2 from the deep ocean to the atmosphere did not occur, unlike during longer stadials when the effect is clearly apparent. This, in turn, may imply that the climate links between the Antarctic and the high-latitude Northern Hemisphere could have been controlled by shallow oceanic or atmospheric processes, whereas CO2 changes were controlled by deep oceanic and Southern Ocean ones.
Nat. Commun. 10.1038/ncomms4723 (2014).
This is quite significant. Here it is clearly shown that CO2 cannot always be the driver of warming – instead CO2 increases from oceanic sources as a response to warming. This is not what some of the more shrill proponents of CAGW would accept but is here given solid experimental grounding.
A path out of the erroneous CO2-centric climate paradigm is to be found in the best quality climate literature.
The theory sounds good on paper.
But is it accurate?
Climate science won’t even let the question be asked, let alone try to answer it.
To a non “climate scientist” like me the whole discussion boils down to ATTRIBUTION. Here we have David Victor echoing others saying that we (mankind) are responsible for at least 50% of a temperature rise of around .8C since the pre industrialised area or say 0.4C. This is a judgement as no scientific proof has been delivered that this is a fact. But assuming this is in the “ballpark”, then with CO2 effect being logarithmic then the max effect of a doubling is probably no more than 0.8% and way below the latest climate sensitivity estimates of between 1.3 and 2%. To reach Nick Stokes’ 1000ppm some people say we will run out of fossil fuels well before then, so this is a non starter. So whichever way you look at it, from this basic premise of 50% attribution of .8C so far, we will never be able to increase temperatures by more than 1 to 1.5C. In the meantime nobody has a clue as to what natural variability will do our Mother Earth. Where is the problem that we need do do anything about?
If David Victor wants to be taken seriously in his statements about what those who challenge mainstream climate science actually think or might actually agree to, then the first thing that he should do is to contact some such people and work with them on the topic. Instead of doing that, he has delved into his own biased mind, and invented stuff. I can assure him that there are plenty of suitable and willing people for him to work with. Until he does that, he has nothing.
Nick Stokes, it doesn’t mean it’s unsafe either. It’s most likely a positive as the current warming has been a major positive.
Nick Stokes,
Considering Kip made it clear he wished to discuss five specific points, your initial comment makes it look like you didn’t have the courtesy to read the thread before commenting. I’m afraid this defeats your purpose of high-jacking the thread into the very technical details Kip wanted to steer clear of.
You see, Kip was attempting to reintroduce civility into a debate which has grown heated. Through your boorish behavior, you become a parody of civility, if not a perfect example of incivility.
The sad fact is that the uncertainty is the problem.
Simply stating that something ‘might’ happen is an utterly worthless argument.
The precautionary principle requires analysis of the likelihood of an outcome, the costs of alternative actions, and the cost of doing nothing.
Thus far, the path chosen has been entirely unsuccessful because it is the most expensive as well as economically damaging and least successful in terms of overall policy compliance and acceptance.
Rather than brandish the stick of forced compliance, the right path is to create a better option. Lower or equal cost alternative energy.
Nick Stokes says:
“That doesn’t mean it is safe to do it.”
Is it safe to drive to work tomorrow? Of course (depending on how you define “safe”) it’s not yet we’ll do it anyway because the risk is tolerable. That’s what this debate is missing, any sort of reasonable risk analysis.
I believe that over the next few years the science will get settled and it will be proven that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is good for the planet, as it’s plant food, and the more the better.
Leonard Weinstein says: May 18, 2014 at 5:49 am
“Nick,
You seem to miss the fact that if about half of the warming over the last 150 years (coming to about 0.4C contribution) is due to human activity, this small increase is not an indicator of a problem (keep in mind the increase followed a particularly cold period, which was much more a problem).”
We’re not dependent on the “experiment” of burning 350 Gt C to know the effects of CO2. That comes back to radiative physics that has been known for over a century. We do know that we burnt 350 GT and it warmed. That is consistent with what the physics said. We need to work out what the next 1000 Gt will do, as best we can. And then some.
“believer”, believe it or not, is a rather neutral adjective. It’s not distasteful at all.
@phlogiston says:
May 18, 2014 at 5:57 am
– – –
Our blog host did not write this post.
I see the issue presented in this posting is the current “we-they” confrontational positioning in this issue. The posting pointed out that here are certain non-controversial results that both sides could agree upon. However, the adversarial name-calling ethos that prevails prevents even that and inhibits any real chance to come to a decision on how to act in response to the issue.
Today, we have a debate whose only completion is with the total loss of credibility and loss of power of one side or the other. Such a debate can never end. it is futile.
As soon as they realize they were losing the scientific debate, warmist changed the semantics. They stopped talking about global warming and they started talking about “climate change” as the two concepts were the same thing.
So, why don´t we all just agree that they pulled a straw man fallacy?
Because they do not want to admit that they lost the scientific debate. CO2 levels are rising, temperatures are not. Get over it and admit you have lost.
@Nick : Half the warming since pre-industrial occurred before humans could have had anything to do with it. You should know that. The other half could have, but we just don’t know, and it matches the nature amount of warming, so could very well have been natural also. Once again you should know that.
My default term is warmist, since it is non-pejorative and general, and it allows for the possibility that a warmist might also be a sceptic in the normal sense of the word. I prefer to reserve pejorative terms such as believer and alarmist for for those who belong to the appropriate subsets.
I think the term dissenter is inappropriate because its use would tend to legitimise, in the minds of the ignorant, not only the idea that science is conducted by consensus, but also (indirectly) the idea that the supposed 97% consensus among scientists on the subject is an established fact.
Insisting on more precise terms might seem politically correct, to some, but I think it gives alarmists less opportunity to misrepresent us sceptics if they cannot pretend that our lax terminology excuses their wilful misuse of language.
On a slightly different matter, I – and other left wingers – have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the use of the catch-all phrase “the left”, here and on other sites. Even “much of the left” would be a better label, in my opinion. There is nothing intrinsically left wing about scientific fraud, incompetence and ignorance. I remain puzzled that C-AGW seems, in much of the world, to have captured the imagination of a higher proportion of prominent non-totalitarian left wingers than right wingers. (My own country, the UK, seem to an exception to this pattern).