Put the ‘consensus’ to a test, and improve public understanding, through an open, adversarial process.
By Steven Koonin (originally published in the Wall Street Journal, sent to WUWT by the author)
Tomorrow’s March for Science will draw many thousands in support of evidence-based policy making and against the politicization of science. A concrete step toward those worthy goals would be to convene a “Red Team/Blue Team” process for climate science, one of the most important and contentious issues of our age.
The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand— uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations. It is very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.
The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science. At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability. At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent—and unexpected—slowing of global sea level rise over the past two decades.
Summaries of scientific assessments meant to inform decision makers, such as the United Nations’ Summary for Policy Makers, largely fail to capture this vibrant and developing science. Consensus statements necessarily conceal judgment calls and debates and so feed the “settled,” “hoax” and “don’t know” memes that plague the political dialogue around climate change. We scientists must better portray not only our certainties but also our uncertainties, and even things we may never know. Not doing so is an advisory malpractice that usurps society’s right to make choices fully informed by
risk, economics and values.i Moving from oracular consensus statements to an open adversarial process would shine much-needed light on the scientific debates.
Given the importance of climate projections to policy, it is remarkable that they have not been subject to a Red Team exercise. Here’s how it might work: The focus would be a published scientific report meant to inform policy such as the U.N.’s Summary for Policymakers or the U.S. Government’s National Climate Assessment. A Red Team of scientists would write a critique of that document and a Blue Team would rebut that critique. Further exchanges of documents would ensue to the point of diminishing returns. A commission would coordinate and moderate the process and then hold hearings to highlight points of agreement and disagreement, as well as steps that might resolve the latter. The process would unfold in full public view: the initial report, the exchanged documents and the hearings.
A Red/Blue exercise would have many benefits. It would produce a traceable public record that would allow the public and decision makers a better understanding of certainties and uncertainties. It would more firmly establish points of agreement and identify urgent research needs. Most important, it would put science front and center in policy discussions, while publicly demonstrating scientific reasoning and argument.
The inherent tensionofaprofessional adversarial processwould enhance public interest, offering manyopportunitiesto show laymen how science actually works. (In 2014 Iconducted aworkshop along these lines for the American Physical Society.)
Congress or the executive branch should convene a climate science Red/Blue exercise as a step toward resolving, or at least illuminating, differing perceptions of climate science. While the Red and Blue Teams should be knowledgeable and avowedly opinionated scientists, the commission should have a balanced membership of prominent individuals with technical credentials, led by co-chairmen who are forceful, knowledgeable and independent of the climate-science community. The Rogers Commission for the Challenger disaster in 1986, the Energy Department’s Huizenga/Ramsey Review of Cold Fusion in 1989, and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission of the late 1990s are models for the kind of fact-based rigor and transparency needed.
The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable. It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively,the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively. But whatever the outcome, wescientistswould have better fulfilled our responsibilities to society, and climate policy discussions would be better informed. For those reasons, all who march to advocate policy making based upon transparent apolitical science should support a climate science Red Team exercise.
Mr. Koonin, a theoretical physicist, is director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He served as undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term.
As just one example, Key Message 8 on pg. 41 of the 2014 National Climate Assessment is
The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
The first ominous sentence is literally correct but misleads by not mentioning comparable decreases in the decades prior to 1980, as discussed in one of the NCA’s principal references (Knutson et al., 2010: Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nature Geoscience, 3, 157-163, doi:10.1038/ngeo779). Somehow this survived the NCA’s extensive pre- publication reviews, but would have been flagged by a red team. [Curiously, an online version of this Key Message omits the second sentence about uncertainties.]
The first summary point of the most recent NOAA review of hurricane changes provides reinforcement:
It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).
However, it seems inappropriately wistful for an objective scientific statement. Something like “There has been no detectable human influence on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity over the past 70 years” would have been more neutral.
Climate is a wicked problem. Probably with many overdetermined influences. Alarmists pretend that it’s all very simple – carbon dioxide is a ‘pollutant’, altering the climate disastrously.
The tragic thing is: this idea of overdetermination is found in Marxism, so you’d think a bunch of Marxists would understand it. Right? Wrong. Their arguments “the debate is over“, “the 97% consensus is with us“, “you are a denier / shill“: are designed to avoid a discussion of the wicked climate reality. They want a simple message to railroad politicians with. I don’t think we can have a red vs. blue team exercise when we can’t agree upon what the data is, nor what data is important. They think the debate is over. I think it never took place, or if it happened, the two sides must’ve been using different data sets and different methods. Having said that, I’d be thrilled to see a proper red/blue debate.
While misguided are marching for ‘science’, the ‘power of citizen scientists’ discovers a new ‘sun – earth electromagnetic relationship’ that even our resident Stanford Solar Scientist may have not known about
Thanks to scientists, citizen scientists, ground-based imagers and ESA’s magnetic field Swarm mission, this purple streak of light in the night sky has been discovered. Originally thought to be a ‘proton arc’, this strange feature has been called Steve. While there is still a lot to learn about Steve, the electric field instrument carried on the Swarm mission has measured it. Flying through Steve, the temperature 300 km above Earth’s surface jumped by 3000°C and the data revealed a 25 km-wide ribbon of gas flowing westward at about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s either side of the ribbon. Credit: Dave Markel Photography
more here
p.s. there is currently a major geomagnetic storm in progress .
Awesome. And the spittle flecked defenders if the consensus dare continue screaming their “the science is settled” mantra.
Blue – Red will not work for climate matters as currently setup.
In an earlier career I was part of Blue – Red teams whilst working for a defence equipment company. Any sizable project has to go through the bidding process, then the Red team, people who did not have exposure to the bidding process would try and spot errors in the proposed bid. We all worked for the same company. It was in ours and the companies benefit if we found errors in our technical spec, costings, ideas etc etc.
It worked very well, but we were all on the same side and shared the same goal.
The people proposing climate related policies, using (in many cases creating) the science we read about day after day, have no shared interest in reaching the ‘truth’ or the ‘best outcome’.
In business all participants are on the same side and benefit from a correct outcome.
Perhaps there needs to be a thinning of the swamp of climate academia?
Perhaps University departments should be rated on the number of errors in papers (not due to updates in later knowledge, but Gergis type errors).
Perhaps the number of uncorrected errors could be a good metric?
I am sure that if sufficient thought was expended, that climate academia could be cleaned up with the ‘physics style’ of doing things could come to pass. Where experiments are repeatable, observations public, where levels of proof are very high prior to publication.
Can you imagine a climate team doing what the physicists did when going public with what they though was an increase in the speed of light? By asking for a 1000 set of eyes, the issue was resolved satisfactorily.
Climate teams have the opposite approach, publish any wide @ssed guess and be done with it.
The climate consensus is too corrupt to willingly tolerate an open and honest skeptical challenge. Under the status quo their idea of skeptical challenge would be to use Pascal wager type arguments, lie about the real questions and use blue smoke red herrings and straw men. Sort of like what is now done. And of course not permit skeptics to speak. Just like now.
The red team – blue team approach makes excellent sense, but the problem is that this project itself would inevitably become intensely politicized. Even if the pro-AGW people agreed to it, as soon as the project begins the roster of who is on which team would become heavily criticized for “lack of diversity” or “secret agendas” on one side or the other, the anti-AGW side would be accused of being a front for Big Oil, etc. The project would never get the support and respect it should.
As others have noted, this will not work. The alarmists would refuse to participate in any fair debate and use the MSM to claim it was one-sided.
Our only real path is to get the data back under control. NOAA needs to be audited and the data adjustments removed. Once you take away the fake data the alarmists have nothing. Oh they will scream, but this doesn’t need to be highly advertised. Just make sure the audit team has good credentials. I would suggest removing all adjustments to all climate data and replacing them with increases in the error bars.
NOBODY is out there trying to find out the truth, or even a better approximation.
Climate science is the basis for a trillion dollar global scam.
No one wants to know the truth.
Just what you can be induced to believe
I believe only a few commenters saw the real genius of this red:blue idea. Precisely because the AGW folks will NOT debate because they don’t have evidence of a crisis in the making, the red blue findings would be that so far we have only a theory with no results that can be teased out of empirical data. Their projections have been triple observations and natural variations still dwarf the forced warming. So what are the policy implications of this as perceived by neutral mods?
I like the idea of red team blue team, but it can only work with regards to subtopics. You cant have a debate on Climate Change, as such a debate can never seem to omit a proposed solution. Thus you could have red team blue team debates on…
What is the true change in temperature … thus addressing adjustments to surface based temp metrics and the differences in surface based and satellite records.
What is driving the change, contributions from highs and lows.
What significance is global vs regional temp changes (I personally think the term global warming is not relevant)
Etc. ………
In such an approach, the political aspect of “the solution” is omitted from all categories. Including the solution in the mix is what derails the process, as the solution is purely political, and the advocates skip the debate and fast forward to proclamation that we need to do X.
Dr. D, this would not be that kind of debate. One side would have to SHOW empirical evidence that something worrisome is happening. All they have is a theory, their efforts to try to tease an unequivocal signal out of noise in uncertain data and projections that are triple what observations turned to be. On top of that, they are faced with unexpected (to them) benefits of higher CO2in aggie it out, greening of arid areas and increased production of forests, improved habitat, etc.
Remember, the mods are neutral folks who will be presenting .
Presenting to policy makers.
I certainly endorse the Red Team approach. However, a monster Issue Tree diagram would be even better. The big shortcoming of the Red Team method is that each line of argument is scattered among numerous documents. The starter document makes a given claim or argument. Then the first Red Team document probably makes several responses to that argument. The next Blue Team document offers several responses to each of the Red Team responses, and so it goes, document after document.
Note that this is a tree structure (the issue tree) because often one response elicits multiple responses, level after level. (We see this issue tree structure in the comments here as well, because it is universal.) One can only see these response-response-response, etc. paths by going from document to document to document, etc., which is very difficult to track given the branching structure of the arguments. The Issue Tree diagram displays all of this in one easy to see place. One document. Mind you the diagram will be very large, because that is the nature of the climate debate.
See my crude little free textbook on this at http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
I have been trying to get someone to fund a climate debate issue tree project for many years. But it seems no one wants to show the other side’s arguments. Maybe now that will change.
Assume the red/blue debate is over. Assume the skeptic side has prevailed despite yuge disadvantages. Assume CAGW is exposed as an unscientific sham. We won as we knew we must. But wait, the very next day we read in the papers…
“Scientist Announce Global Crisis!” It has been discovered that human activity is slowing the rotation of the Earth. The building of ever more and ever taller buildings, plus the cutting down of forests and the planting of much lighter crops for human consumption, and ever more and larger ocean going vessels all contribute to this effect. Scientist estimate that by the end of this century the Earth will be a non-rotating body, with 95% certainty. All life on Earth will cease to exist. The debate is over. World leaders will meet this week in Paris to establish a governing counsel of experts with summary powers to guide the planet through this crisis. All national sovereignty will be suspended until further notice. May God help us.
This just in…
The Rotation Counsel has prohibited the use of all parking structures and sky scrapers above the first floor. All are advised to remain supine or prone as much as possible. If upright, walk, jog or run toward the east to help speed up the Earth’s rotation in this time of crisis. Some are comparing this to Climate Change Alarmism. They will be dealt with in due course. This is real: now 97% certainty. Further, the data cannot be released since deniers would only use it to confuse the issue.
Steven Koonin:
You suggest in your above article
Sorry, but that is not possible because the cited documents are not scientific documents: they are political documents that present selected scientific information intended to justify political policies.
In the case of the “U.N.’s Summary for Policymakers” there is specific and repeatedly UN approved definition of its political purpose and nature.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only exists to produce documents intended to provide information selected, adapted and presented to justify political actions. The facts are as follows.
It is the custom and practice of the IPCC for all of its Reports to be amended to agree with its political summaries. And this is proper because all IPCC Reports are political documents although some are presented as so-called ‘Scientific Reports’.
Each IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is agreed “line by line” by politicians and/or representatives of politicians, and it is then published. After that the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports are amended to agree with the SPM. This became IPCC custom and practice when prior to the IPCC‘s Second Report the then IPCC Chairman, John Houghton, decreed,
This was done and has been the normal IPCC procedure since then.
This custom and practice enabled the infamous ‘Chapter 8′ scandal so perhaps it should – at long last – be changed. However, it has been adopted as official IPCC procedure for all subsequent IPCC Reports.
Appendix A of the most recent IPCC Report (the AR5) states this where it says.
This is completely in accord with the official purpose of the IPCC.
The IPCC does NOT exist to summarise climate science and it does not.
The IPCC is only permitted to say AGW is a significant problem because they are tasked to accept that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” that can be selected as political polices and the IPCC is tasked to provide those “options”.
This is clearly stated in the “Principles” which govern the work of the IPCC.
These are stated at
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
Near its beginning that document says
This says the IPCC exists to provide
(a) “information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”
and
(b) “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”.
Hence, its “Role” demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”. Any ‘science’ which fails to support that political purpose is ‘amended’ in furtherance of the IPCC’s Role.
The UN IPCC achieves its “Role” by
1
amendment of its so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to fulfil the IPCC’s political purpose
2
by politicians approving the SPM
3
then the IPCC lead Authors amending the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to agree with the SPM.
All UN IPCC Reports are pure pseudoscience intended to provide information to justify political actions; i.e.Lysenkoism. The US National Climate Assessment is similar as is demonstrated by its failure to refute blatant errors in IPCC reports..
Richard
Richard: You should write that up in form and submit it to the Wall Street Journal as a response to Steven Koonin’s Saturday Essay titled ‘Climate Science is Not Settled’. Most people, including most scientists, assume that the IPCC reports are unbiased summaries of the current state of knowledge on the global warming portion of climate science. They have no idea of the restrictions imposed on it by the ‘Principles Governing IPCC Work’ document.
Joe Crawford:
You say to me
OK. Tell me how to submit it and I will. But I lack confidence that the WSJ will publish it.
Richard
Richard,
“Hence, its “Role” demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation””
It could find the risk was minimal. I assess risks all the time and find them insignificant. Often the option for mitigation to take no special action. There is nothing in the role of the IPCC that demands any particular conclusion.
IPCC’s gnomes are unlikely to find conclusions which cause the end of the sc@m from which they profit.
As Mencken said:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.”
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety by an endless series of hobgoblins.”
Chimp, whether or not you are right does not affect my argument. There is nothing in the defined role of the IPCC that requires it to conclude a significant risk nor any mitigation requiements.
Seaice,
The IPCC was set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific (supposedly) view of climate change and its political and economic impacts. Thus, it assumed what it should have been tasked with demonstrating, ie that humans have any affect whatsoever on global climate change. It can’t because we don’t.
seaice1:
You yet again demonstrate your inability to understand written words when you write
Bollocks!
Politicians don’t establish and task organisations to provide “scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies” unless they want “application of particular policies”.
Please, please, please do try to read words before pretending they don’t say what they do.
Richard
Richard “Politicians don’t establish and task organisations to provide “scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies” unless they want “application of particular policies”.
Whether or not that is true of the politicians, it does not mean that the organization’s role is to give it to them.
Chimp ” dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific (supposedly) view of climate change and its political and economic impacts.”
Chimp demonstrates thus admirably. The specific purpose is to provide and objectiveview of climate change.
You may think the IPCC is corrupt and not objective but that is different from saying that it is inherently set up to be that way.
“Whether or not that is true of the politicians, it does not mean that the organization’s role is to give it to them.”
Sure… Effectively they are saying in para. 2 of ‘ROLE’ that: “We’re yarding up a multi-year gravy train and looking for someone to help get it going down the track.” Now please tell me which academic, who’s job, similar to that of most politicians, depends on bring home the bacon, is going to tell them that man has no or negligible effect when they are obviously asking you to find one.
seaice1:
Laughably, you assert:
.It does when the politicians
established the organisation,
provided the remit of the organisation,
revue the organisation and its operation,
pay all the funds of the organisation, and
amend then approve every statement of the organisation
You are again being deliberately stupid. Stop it.
Richard
“A Red Team of scientists would write a critique of that document and a Blue Team would rebut that critique.” Compare that scenario with the one we have now: Where data is ‘adjusted’, peer-review is corrupted, sceptical scientists attacked in social media, their reputations trashed etc etc – where did Climate Science go so wrong?
Scott Adams (the Dilbert cartoonist) endorses the red team opinion ed and hopes that Trump will get behind it, at:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/159824817036/how-a-systems-thinking-president-can-settle-the
The underlying horror of this article is that it advocates for more back and forth committee decision government that runs up our debt while bringing everything to a inert standstill. A committee of judges that adjudicates the written/oral jousting matches between believers and skeptics? Really? I’ll give you 10.0 for that 8.5 performance and the Russian judge will file a protest.
Future generations won’t have to worry about Global Warming because they will choke to death on a 20 Trillion Dollar debt that grows, year to year, like the Alien plant in the “Little Shop of Horrors” story. “Feed me, FEED me, FEED ME!”
By all means, let’s not solve real problems, let’s make up hypothetical ones that we can pretend to solve by throwing money at debating ad nauseum. I am reminded of the old quote, largely attributed to Mark Twain, “God made an idiot for practice and then created the Committee.” Government has grown to large to control and it’s slowly crushing everything in it’s path most certainly truth, competence, efficiency and our children’s future.
There has been no “debating ad nauseum [sic]”–what a strawman. There has been hardly any formal debating at all–maybe a few hours per year in a small private venue.
There has been very little “back and forth” in government decision-making on this topic so far, and a one-year standstill is exactly what the runaway green bandwagon needs.
Any attempt to stop the green machine and stop “fighting climate change” will be very unpopular (75% of the public favors such fighting) unless it is preceded by a public airing of the issues. Otherwise it will look like an act of ignorance or self-interest.
If Roger Knight’s view is true, why do WUWT , Breitbart and their ilk confirm Dr. Kooning’s charge of widespread “advisory malpractice” by so odiously banning and censoring so many climate scientists?
A peacetime Red Team paid to stay home and recite press releases on behalf of one side of K- Street should not be confused with gentlemen who go abroad to provide a bodyguard of lies for incovenient truths in time of wa.
Neither side in this conflict can serve national policy well by eliding sciiece and advertising.
AFAIK, WUWT doesn’t ban many climate scientists. Not any notable ones, anyway. It generally bans (usually just suspends) only in cases of of strong provocation. A few warmist posters are suspected of deliberately being provocative so they could claim elsewhere that they had been banned just for arguing for warmism.
Eh?
Huh?
When I first ““Red Team/Blue Team”” I thought something along the lines that “there’s already to much politics in climate science”. (“Red states/Blue states” in US politics) Then I began to read the post and realized it is method to avoid “group think”. It’s just unfortunate that the method used colors that has political connotations in US politics.