A failure of self-correction in science has compromised climate science’s ability to provide plausible views of our collective future.
From Issues in Science and Technology
This is an excellent article by Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie. Here are some excerpts.
The integrity of science depends on its capacity to provide an ever more reliable picture of how the world works. Over the past decade or so, serious threats to this integrity have come to light. The expectation that science is inherently self-correcting, and that it moves cumulatively and progressively away from false beliefs and toward truth, has been challenged in numerous fields—including cancer research, neuroscience, hydrology, cosmology, and economics—as observers discover that many published findings are of poor quality, subject to systemic biases, or irreproducible.
In a particularly troubling example from the biomedical sciences, a 2015 literature review found that almost 900 peer-reviewed publications reporting studies of a supposed breast cancer cell line were in fact based on a misidentified skin cancer line. Worse still, nearly 250 of these studies were published even after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified in 2007. Our cursory search of Google Scholar indicates that researchers are still using the skin cancer cell line in breast cancer studies published in 2021. All of these erroneous studies remain in the literature and will continue to be a source of misinformation for scientists working on breast cancer.
In 2021, climate research finds itself in a situation similar to breast cancer research in 2007. Our research (and that of several colleagues) indicates that the scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the end of the twenty-first century are grounded in outdated portrayals of the recent past. Because climate models depend on these scenarios to project the future behavior of the climate, the outdated scenarios provide a misleading basis both for developing a scientific evidence base and for informing climate policy discussions. The continuing misuse of scenarios in climate research has become pervasive and consequential—so much so that we view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first century thus far. We need a course correction.
In calling for this change, we emphasize explicitly and unequivocally that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses significant risks to society and the environment, and that various policy responses in the form of mitigation and adaptation are necessary and make good sense. However, the reality and importance of climate change does not provide a rationale or excuse for avoiding questions of research integrity any more than does the reality and importance of breast cancer. To the contrary, urgency makes attention to integrity that much more important.
Farther in.
The emissions scenarios the climate community is now using as baselines for climate models depend on portrayals of the present that are no longer true. And once the scenarios lost touch with reality, so did the climate, impact, and economic models that depend on them for their projections of the future. Yet these projections are a central part of the scientific basis upon which climate policymakers are now developing, debating, and adopting policies.
The article gives background and history as to how we got here.
Why, then, did the IPCC choose RCP8.5 as its only business-as-usual baseline? Not because it explicitly judged it the world’s most likely or even plausible future, although the designation implies both. Rather, it selected RCP8.5 in part to facilitate continuity with scenarios of past IPCC reports, both SRES and earlier baseline scenarios, so that results of climate modeling research across decades could be comparable. It also chose RCP8.5 to help climate modelers explore the differences between climate behavior under hypothesized extreme conditions of human-caused climate forcing and natural variability. The difference between the high (8.5 W/m2) and low (2.6 W/m2) RCP forcing pathways created, as scenario developers explained, “a good signal-to-noise ratio for evaluating the climate response in AOGCM [atmospheric-oceanic general circulation model] simulations.” The technical requirements of climate modeling, and not climate policy, drove the design of IPCC scenarios.
And.
In our research on the plausibility of IPCC scenarios, we have discovered it is not just RCP8.5 that is implausible, but the entire set of baseline scenarios used by the IPCC. In some ways this is unsurprising. As events unfold in a complex world, even the near-term futures anticipated by scenarios will drift away from reality. As a matter of scientific integrity, however, the reputation of science as a source of uniquely reliable knowledge depends on its internal capacity for self-correction. In the case of the RCPs (as with the example of breast cancer research after 2007), what we are seeing instead amounts to a stubborn commitment to error. This wouldn’t matter if climate scenarios had no implications for the world outside of science. But they lie at the heart of scientific efforts to understand the future of climate change and society’s decisions about how to respond.
The authors sum up the issues very well.
The consequences of pervasive, implausible climate scenarios extend far beyond the IPCC process and the academic literature these scenarios have enabled. A continued focus on implausible emissions scenarios in climate research is a failure of science’s supposed internal quality assurance mechanisms and thus a failure of scientific integrity. The persistent use of implausible scenarios introduces error and bias widely across climate research. They are now woven through the climate science literature in ways that will be very difficult to untangle.
Many of these thousands of published papers project future impacts of climate change on people, the economy, and the environment that are considerably more extreme than an actual understanding of emissions and forcing pathways would suggest is likely. As scientists’ understanding of climate change continues to improve, perhaps scientists will someday conclude that the most extreme impacts are also plausible under lower emissions trajectories. But that is not the consensus at present. And so, with any attempts at scientific nuance lost in technical language, these implausible projections of apocalyptic impacts decades hence are converted by press releases, media coverage, and advocates—as in an extended game of telephone—into assertions that climate change is now catalyzing dramatic increases in extreme events such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods, events that foreshadow imminent global catastrophe.
At the same time, and unsurprisingly, some opponents of climate policies are politically exploiting problems with the IPCC emissions scenarios. Groups such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London and the Competitiveness Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, are highlighting the misuse of RCP8.5 to call into question the quality and legitimacy of climate science and assessments as a whole. But unlike many attacks on climate science, in this case these organizations have a good point.
Implausible climate scenarios are also introducing error and bias into actual policy and business decisions today. For example, the US government derives its social cost of carbon estimates, which it uses for cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations, from the IPCC scenarios. The financial sector also customizes IPCC scenarios for its use. The emerging market for climate scenario products has led to a $40 billion “climate intelligence” industry, involving familiar companies such as Swiss Re and McKinsey, and start-ups such as Jupiter Intelligence and Cervest. These companies are using implausible RCP scenarios to develop various predictive products that they sell to governments and industry, who will depend on these products to help guide policy and business decisions in the future.
I strongly recommend reading the full article here.
The Hockey Team, the ClimateGate players, the IPCC “experts” described by Donna Laframboise, all of these characters from the past have provided the bedrock on which modern climate science is built.
Unfortunately, it is not exactly rock, but something else entirely. Those who think I am exaggerating should ponder on the fact that the first University department on the planet to be dedicated to climate studies was created at the University of East Anglia in 1972. When a new discipline is created, who teaches the students and where does the next generation of lecturers come from?
As generations of scientists pass on their knowledge the consequences grow and grow. The science of climate change surely is Frankenstein’s Monster.
Didn’t the Monster in that story end up in the frozen fields of the Arctic?
“In calling for this change, we emphasize explicitly and unequivocally that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses significant risks to society and the environment, and that various policy responses in the form of mitigation and adaptation are necessary and make good sense”.
Then…
“Many of these thousands of published papers project future impacts of climate change on people, the economy, and the environment that are considerably more extreme than an actual understanding of emissions and forcing pathways would suggest is likely…. Implausible climate scenarios are also introducing error and bias into actual policy and business decisions today.”
Huh??? “It poses significant risks… (but then) projected future impacts… are considerably more extreme than actual understanding (suggests)…” Again, ???
The comment software sometimes forces you into using the same font as the font used in the quote.
If you don’t want to use that font, do what I do, and paste the quote into a text program and then recopy it and that will change the font to the one in your text program.
“unsurprisingly, some opponents of climate policies are politically exploiting problems with the IPCC emissions scenarios. Groups such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London and the Competitiveness Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, are highlighting the misuse of RCP8.5 to call into question the quality and legitimacy of climate science and assessments as a whole.”
I’m disappointed that sceptics are so marginalized in this report. I realize if you are trying to communicate with the dark side you have to genuflect with GW is real and a risk, but it is a bridge too far to diminish sceptics role. It is no exaggeration to say that sceptics supplied all the scepticism to a science completley devoid of this self correcting essential. Indeed l the consensus agreed (conspired!) on output in the science, obviating the ‘need’ for critique.
It is also no exaggeration to say that for 2 decades climate consensus science did little other than react to the best criticisms of knowledgeable sceptics. Reactions tended toward preserving untenable positions, however. Nevertheless, sceptics constrained the free-for-all that a thoroughly corrupted science had enjoyed. They deserve recognition for this free service to all of humanity.
Let’s put this simply back in the very early 90’s when the specter of disastrous global warming and the “hovkey stick” raised their head I realized that if this was true then serious work may need to be done. Bac\k then the internet was very open and you coiuld go to university web sites and see complete information about what professors were doing. No paywalls or keywords needed. Even discussions with colleagues were all there.
To chck on the validity of the claims I started going to web sires for those pushing the idea. I found a simple statement (paraphrasing), “Some have questioned that I have ignored data which contradicts my conclusions. I have done that because the theory is so obviously true that contrary data must be discarded.”
As soon as I saw that I knew this was pseudo science and everything I have seen since them has confirmed rhat. There was no need to wait for any of the IPCC reports, let alone until the 21st century, to know the whole thing is a fraud.
Plus the ex-leadership of the UN IPCC admitted this is all about the redistribution of wealth from wealthy nations to poorer ones.
I choose to believe his admission and explanation, rather than the fear mongers who try and convince people to give up more of their hard earned money when no matter how much people allow those selling their agenda to us, no amount of money will change our climate.
griff response to comment ratio (prior to this comment): 37:1. Pretty good, pretty good…
Hey, I think I have just come up with another non-dimensional number! The Griff Number (Gn), the ratio of responses to or mentions of griff’s “name” to griff’s posted comments.
That doubles the repertoire of non-dimensional numbers original to me! [The first, the Kelly Number {Kn} is: “the right answer divided by the answer I got.” Ideally, its value is 1, but it can take on any real or complex alpha-numeric value. Hey, it got me through grad school… Not sure what use the Griff Number is, though.]
At this point I’m convinced his only purpose is to derail discussion as soon as possible.
They may have lost touch with science reality, but they certainly got in touch with funding reality.
I’m totally confused about CO2 warming above approximately 400 ppm. Going back at least 20 years when I first heard about “Global Warming” and I started reading about CO2 there was this attribute called “the logarithmic effect”. Is this not relevant? And if not why? I’ve been waiting for a while to ask this question and it appears we have a number of knowledgeable people here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Shorter response (not an explanation, just a confirmation) — yes the effect is logarithmic that’s why there’s so much reference to warming arising from a doubling of CO2
Yes. But even that is based upon the assumption all other things held equal – a set of conditions that has never, does not and will never exist. The short version being that the supposed and completely hypothetical “effect” of CO2 on temperature does not actually function as postulated here in the real world, since the “feedbacks” are negative, offsetting feedbacks and no such actual, as opposed to hypothetical, “effect” has been empirically shown.
Whatever it is that IPCC is doing exactly, it should NEVER be confused with actual Science.
That pretty-much applies to most “global warming” advocates.
I see it differently. The IPCC reports include a lot of decent science, and there’s a lot more if you read all the references. The problem is that scientists write scientific summaries, then politicians write the overall executive summary doesn’t necessarily follow from the science, and worse, the media reaches conclusions that aren’t even solidly based on the summaries. Then the media latch onto some study that isn’t good enough to get included in any IPCC report and leave the impression that all kinds of nonsensical conclusions are implied by climate science.
They also include a lot of crap that fits the “narrative,” just because it fits the narrative. There might be some “decent science” in the full report, but that’s the part that nobody reads, and the “Summary for Policymakers” is pure propaganda.
In the end the IPCC wasn’t set up to contribute to the advancement of science, it was set up to push human-induced climate change propaganda.
I find this article somewhat bland. To me In the Climate scene it is simple; as for some reason the IPCC omitted to include the basic science behind the behaviour of water in its assessments by rendering it into a feedback role to that of CO2 and positive at that.
This is a serious error which is now being brought to light with the Models running Hot against observations amongst other things.
I suspect there was an initial bias of motivation here as the IPCC needed to establish a high risk factor due to human emissions of CO2 in order to continue in business.
Homing down to the detail we have that the Planck coefficient of sensitivity in its equation is Zero at the point of evaporative phase change of water, which if not included, will result in an overvalue of the global sensitivity factor.
I suggest that what is prevailing today is a form of Global Cognitive Dissonance which will go a long way to prevent any change to the now erroneous Consensus view. The whole matter being political to the detriment of the scientific reputation.
Yeah sorry, but the very thing he’s discussing has yet to cause his own self-correction on this point. CO2 has never been empirically demonstrated to “drive” the Earth’s temperature, and there’s plenty of empirical observations that say it does no such thing, so this erroneous notion of “human-caused climate change” is nothing more than a quasi-religious “belief” at this point that he makes sure to parrot so as not to offend the “movement” too much. It certainly is NOT “science.” Observations trump theory.
The essential argument seems to be that somewhat less over-hyped climate nonsense would be more convincing than the more over-the-top climate nonsense is…not convincing either. Junk science with a bit less hype is still junk science. Since, as we’ve seen scientists indicate elsewhere, a 2% change in cloud cover can completely negate any effect of a doubling of atmospheric CO2, and even the Intergovernmental Propaganda on Climate Control admits (buried of course as deeply as possible in the fine print) that cloud behavior is “poorly understood” tells us there is nothing substantive about claims of human-induced climate change. Certainly they are not “scientific,” since what “science” is ignorant about in terms of the Earth’s climate is of far more significance than the things they THINK they “know.”
Here’s how it works. You notice interesting things impacting weather like Indian Ocean dipoles-
Here’s How the Negative Indian Ocean Dipole Is Impacting Australia’s Weather (msn.com)
“Why should we care?We probably have a wet few months ahead of us.
The negative IOD means the southern regions of Australia are likely to have a wet winter and spring. Indeed, the seasonal outlook indicates above average rainfall for much of the country in the next three months.
In southern Australia, a negative IOD also means we’re more likely to get cooler daytime temperatures and warmer nights. But just because we’re more likely to have a wetter few months doesn’t mean we necessarily will — every negative IOD event is different.”…….
while La Nina and El Nino get an honourable mention for thousands of years not that anyone around at the time noticed……
“But in any case, we do know one thing for sure: rising global temperatures from climate change will cause more frequent and severe extreme events, including the short-duration heavy rainfalls associated with flooding, and heatwaves.
To avoid worse disasters in our future, we need to cut emissions drastically and urgently.”
That’s doomster logic for you folks.
I don’t think the IOD gets nearly enough attention.
Pielke jr. bemoans the sorry state of medical and climate science, grudgingly credits GWPF and CEI with having a “good point”, yet still believes GWPF and CEI are bad guys supporting a bad cause.
Pielke jr. makes a good case for how bad climate science is, It’s a shame that Pielke jr. is unable to grow up enough to recognize how corrupt and politically bizarre is the side Pielke supports.
More of the same with doomster logic. We haven’t got a clue what’s going on with the AMOC and what it means-
New Signs Indicate a Major Ocean Current Is on The Edge of Collapse Right Now (msn.com)
“So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible,”…
“The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere.”
From the article: “In calling for this change, we emphasize explicitly and unequivocally that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses significant risks to society and the environment,”
An unsubstantiated assertion. I don’t care who makes the assertion, it is not substantiated.
There is no evidence that humans are causing the Earth’s climate to change to the point of being a real risk. No evidence whatsoever. The evidence all goes the other way: Fewer strong storm, fewer, less intense wildfires, fewer and less tornadoes, hurricanes are no stronger or more numerous, and on and on. Where’s the risk?
The author thinks he is helping the situation by making this unsubstantiated asserion. I don’t think so.
I totally agree. The statement in question is usually used a a throw-away line in various statements about the climate. A close inspection of the record of global temperature change since the 1880’s reveals a definite pattern of alternating periods of warming and pause in warming with the periods being about thirty years in duration. This feature has remained true right up to the present. A patterned temperature change like this would seem to indicate that the cause of the temperature change would occur in the same pattern. Neither the atmospheric levels of water vapor or carbon dioxide occur in such a pattern. I see little or no discussion of this issue but rather endless detailed discussion of unrelated or scarcely related topics. If the evident pattern of temperature change continues then there will be only forty years of warming in the current century which will probably mean a temperature increase of about one degree.
If you’re wondering why nothing changes , look at Peter Ridds case. He was fired not for his views on climate change and the barrier reef but for his criticism of the quality assurance issues and the corruption of the scientific process. The decision in his recently heard appeal will be important to see if the problem of quality assurance in science and academic freedom to point it out is protected or will the law continue to allow universities to protect the scientist who refuse to allow proper scrutiny of their theories and data.. let’s hope the good guys win.