Guest essay by Jim Steele
The political genius of Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to unify the country during America’s most divisive time has been attributed to assembling a “team of rivals”. Likewise, scientific research is published so rivals and supporters of a hypothesis can independently and critically examine it. The great benefits of a team of rivals is also the basis for convening red team/blue team debates.
In 2017, Dr Steve Koonin, a physicist who served as Obama’s Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy, urged convening red-team blue-team debates for climate science in his article A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science. “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”.
Unfortunately, the public climate science debate has been framed as “deniers” versus “alarmists”, or “honest saintly scientists” versus “corrupt perpetrators of a hoax”. The media pushes exaggerated claims of a crisis while some scientists misleadingly shield their hypotheses claiming the “science is settled”. But science is a process and never settled. However, all sides do agree carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and concentrations have increased. All sides agree the climate is changing. That science is indeed settled. But complex climate dynamics are not driven solely by CO2 and many unsettled questions remain. Scientists still debate whether climate has a higher or lower sensitivity to rising CO2. Answering that question depends on the unsettled science regards competing contributions from natural variability and landscape changes. And because rising CO2 and warmth benefits photosynthesizing plants, scientists debate the beneficial contributions of rising CO2.
Climate models could not replicate recent warming when only natural climate change was considered. But models could simulate recent warming since 1970s after adding CO2. That was the only evidence that supported the notion that increasing CO2 caused observed warming. However, there’s a flaw in such reasoning. Models limited to just natural climate dynamics failed to explain recent changes simply because our understanding is still incomplete. For example the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a major driver of natural climate change was only recently characterized in 1997, but has been shown to account for 100 years of changing climate along the coasts of the north eastern Pacific.
Abundant peer-reviewed research shows changes in landscapes dampen or amplify warming. Regional modeling studies determined landscape changes could generate extreme temperatures similar to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. Urban heat islands and deforestation undeniably amplify temperatures and alter regional climates. Such landscape effects best explain why 38% of US weather stations display cooling trends, and why the best tree ring science suggests natural habitat temperatures haven’t exceeded the warm spike of the 1930s and 40s. The misleading downplaying of such important landscape changes in climate models led to the resignation of climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Unable to model the 1940s warming spike, climate scientist Tom Wigley, emailed colleagues suggesting “It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip”. Subsequently the “40s warm blip” was removed from many data sets arousing widespread distrust. Public red team/blue team debates examining such data adjustments could clarify the reasons for those adjustments.
In 2016, climate scientist Michael Mann co-authored a paper titled Science and the Public: Debate, Denial, and Skepticism correctly arguing, “science is debate” and “public debate and skepticism are essential to a functioning democracy.” But schizophrenically, Mann opposed red team/blue team debates as a “disinformation campaign aimed at confusing the public and policymakers”.
Mistrust for Michael Mann and his colleagues in the “high CO2 sensitivity and catastrophic climate change” school of thought increased as they campaigned to denigrate skeptics as “deniers” or “contrarians” who can’t publish in peer-reviewed journals. Simultaneously however, Mann worked to suppress skeptical publications. Two Harvard astrophysicists, Dr Soon and Dr Baliunas, published a peer-reviewed paper synthesizing 240 scientific papers and suggested recent temperatures are similar to the Medieval Warm Period. With his hypotheses threatened by such research, Mann railed “the peer-review process at Climate Research [the journal] has been hijacked by a few skeptics.”
Trying to suppress skeptical science publications he emailed colleagues, “I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” They then discussed how to rid any editors tolerant of skeptical arguments to prevent further skeptical publications.
Undeniably, some climate scientists have been covertly marginalizing honest skeptical scientists. Trust the science, but only when it agrees with their hypotheses. They have argued don’t debate skeptics because “debate actually gives alternative views credibility”. But the scientific process demands thoroughly examining alternative explanations. It is the rigorous vetting by rivals that makes science trustworthy but such biased gatekeeping erodes public trust. Hopefully developing transparent public red team/blue team debates can restore our trust and more accurately guide public policies.
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
Published in the Pacifica Tribune September 30, 2020
My favorite is all the fainting hearts regarding water levels in the Great Lakes. Record lows due to global warming followed by record highs due to global warming.
Wasn’t the lows caused by global warming and the highs caused by climate change? Next it will be climate weirding, to explain anything that fits their narrative. But it is funny that just less than a decade ago, the Great Lakes would never refill again. And few mention that the levels are largely controlled with dams and weirs and controlled storage and releases. Future generations are going to have a riot looking back at our folly of the early 21st century.
Those of us who live in Michigan stopped listening to Great Lakes scaremongering in the Kate 1970s.
but “honest saintly scientists” versus “corrupt perpetrators of a hoax” is exactly waht we have …
From the article: “However, all sides do agree carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and concentrations have increased. All sides agree the climate is changing.”
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and concentrations have been increasing in the atmosphere, and the climate does change, within limits, but there is no evidence that CO2 is causing any changes to the climate.
Abbott
It is a reasonable assumption that more CO2 should cause some warming. But no one knows if that is 0.1% of the warming since 1975, or 100%, since natural causes of climate change could account for all the climate change in our lifetimes … since natural causes of climate change were in progress for the past 4.5 billion years, and did not suddenly end in the 20th century. We have assumptions about the CO2, based on closed system lab experiments, using artificially dried air. And those experiments justify a rollback of the industrial age??
Mr Abbott, it is a well known fact that Earth’s climate was PERFECT on June 6, 1750, at 3:05pm EST, and it is a well known fact that ANY change from that absolute perfection, in either direction, is an EXISTENTIAL CLIMATE CRISIS !
And don’t you forget it.
I appreciate that lesson, Richard. 🙂
There seems to evidence that increasing global CO2 levels is causing global greening.
Or I have heard an argument that global greening is not occurring and it seems increased levels of CO2 would cause global greening.
AND global greening is likely to effect the climate.
Or if made the Sahara desert become once again a giant grassland, it seems this have large effect upon global climate. And some greening of region around Sahara Desert would have small effect upon regional climate.
My vote is for Jim Steele columns reproduced here as often as possible. They are consistently good. His name in the byline means “must read” to me. There are only a few “must read” climate science writers for me, and another is Richard Lindzen.
From the article: “Trying to suppress skeptical science publications he emailed colleagues, “I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” They then discussed how to rid any editors tolerant of skeptical arguments to prevent further skeptical publications.”
In other words: Blackmail. Michael Mann prefers blackmail to scientific debate.
Michael Mann, along with the other Climategate Charlatans and their Spawn, should be sued for Trillions of dollars of damages over their lies about the Earth’s climate. They should also serve some jail time.
The Climategate Charlatans couldn’t prove CO2 is causing problems in the Earth’s atmosphere if their lives depended on doing so. All they can point to is a computer-generated global surface temperature Hockey Stick LIE as their proof. In other words, they have nothing substantive to back up their claims.
The bastardized surface temperature chart shown in this article above is evidence that it was just as warm in the 1930’s as it is today, and is also evidence of the fraud perpetrated on the world through the adjustments the Climategate Charlatans have made to the original temperature chart.
It is obvious the Climategate Charlatans are taking unmodified temperature charts (raw) and changing them into Hockey Sticks by cooling the past to make the present look warmer than anytime in human history. And it’s all a BIG LIE perpetrated by Michael Mann and his cronies on the alarmist side.
Look at the detrimental economic gyrations these lies have caused around the world. Foolish politicians bankrupting their economies in an effort to reduce their CO2 production because they believe these lies.
It’s Fraud on an international scale. Someone should pay. And we know the names of those someone’s, don’t we.
I think the answer to your question was provided by Tommy Wils in the climategate emails
Tom Abbott;
i have been commenting for years on WUWT, pointing out that it is SO2 aerosols, both volcanic and man-made (from the burning of fossil fuels), and not CO2, or changing solar irradiance, that is the control knob for our climate.
I guess the concept is too simple for the “brains” on this site to be able to comprehend, or too dangerous to their own theories or careers, for them to accept, even if they are CO2 deniers, and my posts are usually ignored.
I have searched for a way to provide a simple proof that even non-scientific policy makers can understand, and I believe that I have found the evidence that I need: I recently had a peer-reviewed article published that is titled “Experimental proof that Carbon Dioxide does NOT cause global warming”
http://www. scholink.org/ojs/index.php/se/
You should read it. For example, it explains why the 30’s were as warm as they are today On the other hand, perhaps you, or another, can point out a significant flaw that the reviewers missed.
If not, yes, the perpetrators should be held accountable.
Tom Abbott:
You pointed out that it was just as warm in the 1930’s as it is today.
There is a non-obvious reason for the temperature agreement:
http://www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/se/
What amazes me most is all our prestigious universities are absolutely married to this insanity. Will Yale or Harvard even give you a diploma unless you pledge eternal feilty to the eternal molecule?
Restoring discourse will be essential to return science to this issue and, eventually, to repeal the EPA’s preposterous Endangerment Finding (the only real endangerment). Historical events demonstrate that the pursuit of money has infected the scientific establishment, which, when its financial interests are at risk, does not pursue truth but rather suppresses it – by silencing discourse.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/08/27/agw-gatekeepers-censor-the-co2-climate-debate-by-refusing-to-publish-authors-response-to-criticism/
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-politics/example-of-how-professional-societies-block-scientific-discussion-of-climate-change-to-assist-their-political-party/
Restoring science to the issue should not be expected unless the financial incentive to obstruct science has been removed.
Lincoln’s election precipitated the 5 year bloody civil war, so that may not be a good place to start. On the other hand it strikes me that the ideological divisions today might be as great as they were in 1960, but without the geographical setting. Time will tell.
1860 of course. Mind you 1960 had its moments. I was there.
“Lincoln” is never a good place to start. Once “conservatives” or other folks who profess to believe in limited government, including those of us who have reason to believe CAGW is a crock, cede the high ground to Lincoln, they’ve effectively opened the door to whatever policies / means “climate change” activists seek to impose.
Two points: 1st, I think what’s needed in order to persuade people is much more explanation of why we need something like this. 2nd I think red and blue teams is just one potential option within what needs to be a much larger system of checks and providing structure and balance. I also wonder if the red/blue team approach is going to struggle to do a proper job because of the way the debate has been framed.
I think this needs to be a priority for us all; to understand and explain to others why this is so important so that it hopefully then opens the door to introducing systems that greatly improve the way science is done for high consequence situations. Unless the current system is fine, but my concern is the way science is generally done (including high emphasis on and trust in; experts, consensus, peer reviewed papers process, precautionary principle) is not suitable for high consequence situations like this; instead it needs a system more like engineering where I think the system is forced through many painful lessons to work very differently:
A system based on learning lessons from mistakes, implementing procedures, independent audit, certification and a system that causes customers (who will also have power) to be sceptics e.g. customers, particularly when they’re other large engineering companies or large businesses I suspect naturally become like a red team and their supplier, probably also a large engineering company, like a blue team. Sorry, I’m probably saying a similar thing in different ways with each comment here, and maybe I’m wrong about all this, but I haven’t seen much evidence many people are thinking along same lines and no one has told me I’m wrong.
I think one way to understand and explain the need is by looking back through history. I think aircrash investigations are one good source, e.g. the recent 737Max issue; I think the latest conclusion is the FAA failed to remain independent of Boeing and in doing so failed to correct Boeings lack of following suitable procedures. Which I think shows why procedures, independent audit, certification etc are so important, if that system is not present or fails it is likely to go disastrously wrong.
Or maybe another way is to get us all to think why we do or don’t trust certain goods or services, e.g. would we eat in a restaurant if it had no food hygiene certificate, would we fly if we knew the pilots were not trained in the use of the relevant procedures. To my mind it’s not so much about whether they’re the experts, and all convinced they are right, it’s more about the system.
I think I’ve asked in earlier comments if the same applies to climate science and as far as I’m aware no one has answered yes or no, I’m not seeing much evidence that it does and if there was e.g. no requirement to audit the global surface temperature network, that would seem to suggest to me there is not much of such a system. If there was no answer, if the answer was no, or showed failure then shouldn’t we treat it like we should in other similar situations like a restaurant that could not produce a suitable valid food hygiene certificate and not eat there until they did? It’s not so much that we know it means the product is wrong, but means we have no idea if it is wrong or not. But if there was no requirement for the restaurant to be checked then I think we can’t blame the restaurant; instead it is the system at fault and the first thing to do is change the system asap.
I like your systems approach but the very first thing that should have been chosen is a proper measurement for determining whether the globe is warming or not and where the effects are occurring.
Because of water vapor’s latent heat, which is not sensible, temperature is not a good proxy for the total heat energy in the atmosphere. Temperature is also not a good proxy for humidity and cloudiness. The concentration on temperature, including adjustments to the past data, is solely for the adherents of CO2 being the one and only control knob.
Many thanks Jim.
I have to admit my thermodynamics is not nearly good enough, however I have also long felt that I do not understand how we can understand what is going on by apparently focusing primarily on temperature, and averages of temperature, etc. So I agree with the point about temperature as a proxy and my concern is we’re approaching it the wrong way and this should have been sorted out at the start; and that would probably be my second question to them after asking about the system they work in.
I think, first we need the system in place, then it should help and guide us through all the next steps after first defining the project, then e.g. how we approach the thermodynamics etc.
Camille Ferey: “Populism against science: a new political cleavage?, Part 1”
Posted on October 4, 2020 on the “Equality by Lot” site
“many commentators talk about the threat of “distrust” that undermines the authority of science, if not of the authority of Truth itself, in our democracies. Furthermore, this dominant narrative confounds this phenomenon of skepticism (which is very real) with a different phenomenon, a political one: populism. The political cleavage is then reduced to a binary opposition between reason and populism, and consequently all criticism of scientific and political institutions is ruled out.”
https://equalitybylot.com/2020/10/04/ferey-populism-against-science-a-new-political-cleavage-part-1/
Camille Ferey: “Populism against science: a new political cleavage?, Part 1”
Posted on October 4, 2020 on the “Equality by Lot” site
“many commentators talk about the threat of “distrust” that undermines the authority of science, if not of the authority of Truth itself, in our democracies. Furthermore, this dominant narrative confounds this phenomenon of skepticism (which is very real) with a different phenomenon, a political one: populism. The political cleavage is then reduced to a binary opposition between reason and populism, and consequently all criticism of scientific and political institutions is ruled out.”
https://equalitybylot.com/2020/10/04/ferey-populism-against-science-a-new-political-cleavage-part-1/
Here are two paragraphs on this topic that I made on June 10, followed by a link to the comment itself:
Christopher Monckton wrote here, early in June, in “Big Oil must fight on the science or die”:
“By the very nature of that disciplined and generally even-handed forum, both sides must be fully and fairly heard, and each can cross-examine the other. There is virtually no other forum where such a debate between the skeptics and the cultists can take place. For the latter, having lost just about every face-to-face debate that has been held on the climate question, go to elaborate lengths to avoid debate with the former. They know their shoddy case cannot withstand examination.”
This made me think of a suggestion for Big Oil [or a charitable WUWTer]. Fund debate-sponsoring institutions like the Oxford Union … [or Harvard] to hold a series of annual climate-change debates. For instance, to hold twelve debates over the course of a week, one-third on attribution, one-third on impacts, and one-third on responses, paralleling the structure of the IPCC reports.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/08/climate-litigation-big-oil-must-fight-on-the-science-or-die/#comment-3013114
Or a more modest one-day series of debates could befunded as a starter for the more ambitious plan above.
“But science is a process and never settled” followed by “That science is indeed settled”
Although I have great respect for Jim and his understanding of climate science, the second statement seems to be a genuine faux pas.
Jim, you were correct the first time. Science is never settled and it’s definitely not settled that all scientists agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (should such a thing really exist rather than simply being a misnomer) or that concentrations have increased (over what time period?).
A greenhouse works by preventing convection. To my knowledge, CO2 does not possess that ability, at least in any significant degree.
Measuring CO2 at the top of a volcano and claiming that to represent the amount in the earth’s atmosphere is also somewhat hokey at best. According to NASA in December 2016, CO2 is NOT at all evenly distributed in our atmosphere. Maybe they lie…
Granted, our ever-changing climate is changing, at least as far as we know. However, so is our science and that’s unlikely to change for a long, long time.
That being said, thanks Jim for your work.
Dale, My Whats Natural articles are aimed at a general audience reading the newspaper that usually have a very limited knowledge of the science. I think the biggest mistake skeptics make is going to deep in the weeds and using vocabulary that the general public is unclear on.
I used the word “anthropognenic” and people did not know what I was talking about. Your “Greenhouse argument” is technically correct. Greenhouse suppress convection. Nonetheless the term “greenhouse gases” has been used for decades and its common meaning and usage is understood to means gas that absorbs longwave radiation. For my article to go deep into the weeds on convectiion and radiation and real greenhouse would be counter productive.
To state the science is settled regards rising CO2, that it is a greenhouse gas in common usage, and that climate is changing simply provides some common ground with the general public’s understanding. I have been amazed how many pHd colleagues think a climate skeptic believes the climate doesnt change. They dont understand there is natural climate change.
If I used your linguistic arguments, I would lose the general audience
Steele.
Your communication skills are excellent. There is no excuse for people with good knowledge of climate science to use big words that confuse most people.
Most people already start out confused about the climate and seem to need a government bureaucrat “scientist” to tell them how their local climate has changed over the decades. Not even realizing the bureaucats only talk about an “average climate” that not one person lives in.
Leftists here in Michigan often look shocked when we tell them their property was located under an ice glacier 20 000 years ago.
And then I ask how many decades of hearing about a coming climate crisis would be required, with no crisis, before they start wondering if the crisis prediction was right? The last person I asked said 50 years. I told him some U.S. scientists began predicting dangerous global warming in the late 1950s. … Suddenly the 97 percent of scientists hoax was declared to be “PROOF” OF THE COMING CLIMATE CRISIS !
A major characteristic of climate “science” is the high chance that a new paper has no proper analysis of its errors and uncertainties. If a proper uncertainty was expressed for each new propsed paper, most would never reach the final publication stage because the assertions and inferences could not be regarded as accurate or capable of replication.
To illustrate with a minor example, here in Australia summer approaches. A pattern of past summers has been claim after claim of new records being broken for highest ever temperatures. As we have seen, same happens in USA where a few years ago a NASA or NOAA claim of hottest year ever relied on a national average only 0.1 deg C hotter than any previous year. Some people rightly rejected this by saying the average could not be measured that accurately. Some even said it could not be measured to better than +/- 1 or even +/-2 deg C.
This lack of certainty applies to many core nmbers in climate research, such as the top of atmosphere energy balance, the amount sea level rises or falls for a 1 deg change in global temperature and most emhatically, the change in global CO2 in air per 1 deg change in global T, the climate sensitivity.
The main foundations of climate research are so uncertain that they have no adequate strength. Geoff S
Let me second your assertion. Too many people in science have been trained by Excel and other statistical software that the uncertainty of the mean is also the uncertainty in measurements. They think confidence levels tell you the accuracy of the means. These are statistical parameters based based upon the data points in a distribution. They don’t realize that measurement uncertainty also exists.
Too many scientists have no idea that measurements include uncertainty because they have never had to live or die by making something with their hands. Every engineer and scientist should be required to spend at least a semester in a machine shop making high precision products or in a laboratory making certified high precision/accurate measurements. That would teach them that EVERY measurement has uncertainty and that uncertainty adds as more and more operations, be they calculations or physical, are done with a measurement.
And where would that lead us? I believe the Red team and you believe in the Blue!
The argument I always hear is “NASA/NOAA (or some other government agency) say “…………” and then we hear an opinion from their website written by some James Hansen protégé who has selected some poorly peer reviewed study or internal assessment weasel worded to imply some expected future event may be happening now.
What we should campaign for is a clean up of our government agencies quality control processes.
As pointed out, the peer review process is full of corruption and allowing agencies to make recommendations or express opinions without a far more rigorous quality process will always undermine good climate science. Secret science, such as that supporting the “Hockey Stick”, should be excluded. The temperature record homogenizing process should be openly vetted. Statistical analysis standards established. Journals universities that abuse an open peer review process should be excluded.
Very well said!!
“What we should campaign for is a clean up of our government agencies quality control processes. ….. the peer review process is full of corruption and allowing agencies to make recommendations or express opinions without a far more rigorous quality process will always undermine good climate science. ”
The same is also true for most COVID related studies.
Tweeted, ’20 Oct 10:
——
Storms, fires, floods, quakes, temp.s, etc, all,
worse thru few doz. previous decades
— w/ CO2 much lower; yet,
the assumption, “All worst now”, was loaded into
Q.’s to Pence & Harris in ’20 VP Debate.
(Q’s c/o USA Today.)
Old data shown & explained:
https://youtu.be/6y3ObG5Xyys
——-
That explanatory video, kindly & clearly narrated by “Toto”, is courageously hosted by the YouTube channel, “Tony Heller”.