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Climate Change and the Integrity of Science
blau tips news of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, decrying the "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." The letter lays out the basics of the scientific method, and explains how certainly highly-regarded theories — such as the big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin — are commonly accepted due to the strength of the evidence supporting them, though "fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them." According to the Guardian, the letter "originated with a number of NAS members who were frustrated at the misinformation being spread by climate deniers and the assaults on scientists by some policy-makers who hope to delay or avoid making policy decisions and are hiding behind the recent controversy around emails and minor errors in the IPCC."
In science vs media,
As long as the average person thinks the relative likelihood of "science being right" and "nutball propaganda being right" is about the same or worse, nothing will change. It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.
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Too bad the denialosphere doesn't have to live up to the same standards of integrity that scientists have to.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against former UVA faculty Michael Mann. In criticising Cuccinelli's lawsuit, I'm not even saying he has to admit or agree with everything or anything that Mann wrote. But political persecution of scientists is bad... like 15th century Vatican bad.
And, of course, they say nothing about the subversion of the peer review process discussed in the emails.
We have essentially the same thing today. No matter how much evidence is shown for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and so on, the fundamentalist wackos will rail against it and find some rationale for continuing in their thoroughly disproved ideas. About 25% of the American public cannot in any way be convinced, no matter how much evidence is shown them. These are the same people who think Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and who still believe Obama is a Kenyan citizen and George W Bush actually cares about them and their Christian religion.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
TFA says:
Exactly.
The problem is political, not scientific. Exxon & Co. have managed to convince the tin-foil-hat gang that all scientists are united in a vast conspiracy against people who own SUVs.
Scientists are scientists, not marketeers, how can they convince people who believe the world is 6000 years old that CO2 does absorb infrared radiation?
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence
I agree with this quote. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: climate change promoters are doing the same thing. Here's one example, and it was against a guy (Lomborg) who actually accepted the climate change thesis: he was only disagreeing on what should be done about it.
Unfortunately asking a politicized field to not act political is like asking a river to run in reverse up the Himalayas. Nice try, but won't accomplish much: especially if you are demanding it from only one side.
Qxe4
We either accept the methods by which the big bang, evolution, and climate change (along with pretty much everything else we think we know about how the world works) are understood, or we don't. If we do, then the economics are irrelevant: the universe doesn't care about our economy. If we don't, then we should have a better reason for this decision than saying "the motivations are different," because the universe also doesn't care about motivation, at least as far as we can tell.
In other words, you're letting your politics interfere with your understanding of science. Thanks for providing such a useful demonstration of how this works.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
to be harvested amongst the people who don't understand Science, specifically Climate Changes. Its much easier to convince people its all conspiracy to waste their money and that they should oppose it, than it is to educate them in something extremely complex and involved - and which we are still figuring out. :P
The Climate Change deniers can muster a lot of political capital by marshalling all the ignorant masses against making changes that might cost them money but are intended to be for the good of us all.
Personally, I expect humanity will do precisely *nothing* that is effective to deal with climate change and that millions of people will have to die first before the rest of us accept the fact that our lifestyle and population growth has been writing checks we couldn't afford, and now the collection agency is here for their money. Lots of corporations owned by rich individuals have made trillions of dollars off of the world's resources without worrying about environmental impact - now we deal with it. Tons of damage has been done to the environment by those same companies and we are left to pay the bill. Our great grandchildren will *still* be paying that bill I expect, those that aren't dead that is.
Do I want to see responsible research, yes of course. Will it happen? I am sure its happening now. Will the media report on it and the average human learn to understand it? No way. The Media has no interest in dispensing the truth, the average person is too stupid to understand, and doesn't want to hear anything that implies *they* have to make sacrifices and can't get the latest shiney.
When enough humans have died that we no longer can cause global warming, thats when things will settle down again. Humanity is too stupid and shortsighted. Its much more important to figure out whats happening on America's Got Talent...
Yes, I am a bit cynical and bitter today, what clued you in?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If the catastrophic AGW hypothesis is correct, all of these must be true, in order (that is, falsifying any earlier point falsifies all later points from the point of view of the theory):
If the first is false, then there is no global warming. If the second is false, there is no way to prove the third, because we would have examples of the warming going past this point and then correcting. If the third is false, then we need take no action. If the fourth is false, then we need take no action. If the fifth is false, then any action we could take would likely be meaningless.
The scientific method being what it is, and with the hypothesis claimed to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, then there must be significant evidence and reasonable argument to draw each of these conclusions. I haven't seen it, and I've been looking for a while. Normally, the "argument" rapidly devolves into name calling. But I'm willing to try, and so I have some questions, starting with the first point:
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
How, specifically, do we know this?
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
So scientists who challenge the prevailing politically-correct liberal thesis are "climate deniers" - this is the basic problem. Even the term is ridiculous. Compare it to "holocaust denier". The holocaust was undeniably real - because there are still some living eye witnesses, photographs, original videos, documents etc. that clearly prove that it happened. What does it mean to be a "climate denier"? No one denies there is "climate". For too long people who challenged the "science" behind global warming were shouted down and ridiculed by their "peers". Now for a little bit, the shoe is on the other foot, and they don't like it a bit. BTW - CFL bulbs are a perfect example of why this type of "science" really has to be tried before accepted, and not pitch a fit if it is challenged - http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/lighting/cfls/downloads/CFL_Cleanup_and_Disposal.pdf Just think about that - what about places where there is no window, where the only ventilation is forced air. Give me an incandescent bulb anyday. If it breaks, worst you worry about is a cut. When it burns out, you can safely toss it w/out worry about what its components will do to the environment or your local groundwater. Not to mention that the CFLs do not last anywhere as long as promised if you don't follow their optimal usage pattern (leave on for at least 15 mins, etc.) Certainly there are places where they are appropriate, but "environmentalists" pushing them down everyone's throat, and corporate greed (Walmart) jumping on the green bandwagon and being dishonest with people - you wonder why people with a brain are skeptical? If they posted the cleanup instructions next to the bulbs on the shelf, would people still be buying these?
All science is about predicting the future?
Humm. So a paleontologist studying the Mosasaurs of the Western Interior Seaway is studying the future?
Or theories about the evolution of dinosaurs into birds is studying the future?
No one is proposing trillion dollar economic changes based on the big bang theory. They are proposing such changes based on AGW theories.
If the big bang is wrong, some physicists will be embarrassed, if AWG theory is wrong, trillions of dollars will have been wasted.
the sinners are not the politicians but the people who vote for them. Until we get people to think about the issues or just remove themselves from the process we will continue to get crap politicians. Blaming anyone else, at least here in the U.S., is taking the easy way out and will not fix anything. Although I would like to know what form of government you suggest.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
Whenever a religious figure speaks of fire and brimstone, I take it with a grain of salt. Whenever a politician makes the claim that anyone who speaks against them is racist/immoral/greedy/stupid, I tend to think they're frauds. Why would I let the scientists make claims without doubting them? I'm not calling climatologists liars; I'm saying that they're acting like liars.
Can anyone seriously say that evolution is as proven as Newton's Laws of Motion on the scale of billiard table? Or that our understanding of the Big Bang is as complete as our understanding of muscles contracting? So why choose evolution, the Big Bang and the age of the Earth? Don't get me wrong, I think that all three likely happened, but I wouldn't roll them out unless I had a political agenda. I've heard a variety of estimates for the age of the Universe, I haven't heard of anyone contesting the law of conservation of mass. Why not use photosynthesis and covalent bonds as established principles of science?
The central problem with the open letter is that they suggest that all scientists are apolitical and possess peerless moral character. That they can be trusted to police themselves and everyone else should just stay out of their business. Any organization or group that has been given the authority to police itself won't. Just because there's a witch hunt, doesn't mean there aren't witches. Given the trillions of dollars at stake, I'm perfectly happy to have a few annoyed PhDs to ensure public accountability. And government overreach is always a concern, remember that the Australian firewall was sold to the public by saying that it is protecting people from child porn. But somewhere there's a happy medium between anarchy and totalitarianism.
"If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part."
- Richard Feynman
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I'm a proud skeptic, that is, somebody who wants to see evidence of extraordinary claims.
George Monbiot has pointed out that "skeptic" is not an appropriate word for somebody who goes far out of their way to ignore evidence presented to them and seizes upon the thinnest contrary statements. That was his defense of the word "denier" and it started me using the word again. I remained skeptical until about five years ago, when the evidence started to look very convincing. Then the 2007 IPCC report won me over.
What we're seeing the last few months is, to me, a fascinating study of how resistant people are to news they don't want to believe. The climate science has been slowly building up for decades, one peer-reviewed article after another, one dataset after another, the same story emerging from multiple angles. The scientific disputes dwindled away until we now have 97% of climate scientists surveyed last year on board with the same basic conclusions. Some thousands of scientists represented by the IPCC summary.
Yes, Michael Crichton was correct that science isn't subject to voting and one guy can be right and a thousand wrong. But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?
Then along comes "climategate" and everybody is actually told that they are being read a few sentences cherry-picked from thousands of E-mails, stripped of context. Hundreds of voices protest that the word "trick" is widely used for legitimate data manipulations.
Nonetheless, not only do the denier voices, many of them from organizations shown to be funded by Exxon, immediately proclaim this to outweigh decades of work by a couple of battalions of PhDs, the general public starts polling sharp drops in agreement with climate-change theory that had slowly won them over.
Conclusion: when people don't want to believe something because of its terrible costs, you have to convince them with a weight of evidence on the order of magnitude of 1000:1.
A thousand to one. Oh, man, we get all the hard jobs.
Close to 100%. There are "fringe" journals such as the notorious Energy and Environment that are extremely friendly to critics of global warming. While not highly regarded by serious scientists, there is little doubt that E&E would publish such a model. Besides, one can publish one's models on the internet these days. Many of the models used by climate scientists are available to the public so one could get a head start by modifying an existing model. And there is little doubt that many of the fossil fuel companies would be happy to fund the development of such a model. Heck, I imagine you could get enough money to fund such a study just by asking for donations on right-wing websites. Isn't it curious that nobody has managed to produce such a model to date. Of course, maybe it isn't actually all that easy to come up with a model that is reasonably consistent with known physics, with the historical climate data, and with the climatic effects of "natural experiments" like volcanic eruptions, and yet does not predict substantial warming in response to continued CO2 emissions...
The second link you posted there clearly refutes your claim (but you do have to actually read it to realize that). How you got modded to +5 is beyond me. You moderators need to actually click and read stuff before you endorse it like this.
Also, these graphs show what we (by that I mean people actually involved in computer modeling, since you obviously have no knowledge of it) call a calibration period. When you are constructing a model, you have a number of theoretically justified, but generally unmeasurable variables. So what you do is you take past data and you start with reasonable values and you adjust the variables until you you get a result that fits your data as closely as possible. Of course, the calibration should be a good fit, if it's not that means that either your model is totally wrong, or you've botched the calibration.
You can't claim that calibration confirms your model is correct, as a clever person can surely come up with an equation to fit any data by this method. Only time will tell how accurate these models are. Even if the model is correct, models like this are not rigorous, they tell you where the trends are headed, they do not predict the future. Think about it like this: if you read your speedometer and it says you are going 60mph that doesn't mean you will be 60 miles away in an hour, even though x = v*t is a perfectly valid model for your position over time.
Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.
While I agree overall and wish things were more open, it's very important to take that in context. FoIA requests are being used as weapons. Anyone working anywhere near climate science is on the defensive precisely because they have such powerful attacks come in from all directions. It's really no surprise that people are sick of answering the same questions, disproving the same lies, etc.
The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) most scientists aren't good programmers and 2) most scientists aren't good statisticians.
There. I said it. Sorry, but the guy who self-taught coding during grad school probably doesn't have the skills needed to consistently and reliably code some of this stuff. Ditto for scientists who don't have at least a BA/BS in math.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Look, let's stop bandying about "peer review" as if it represents some sort of SCOTUS of science. Peer reviewers don't have to look at the actual data (as Phil Jones so graciously offered, they never asked him for it), don't have to agree with the conclusions, and aren't judging whether or not a paper is TRUE or not, they're simply deciding if it's worth publishing.
Well, the screaming from the greenies is usually 2C over a century...so 1.4C/century is probably worth ignoring for all practical purposes...unless you believe that 1.4C/century will cause 10m sea level rises, more hurricanes, the loss of all glaciers, etc, etc.
What? How about something a little more directly related to AGW -> spectral analysis techniques don't mean that human created CO2 is causing catastrophic warming. Even though spectral analysis techniques may be necessary for AGW, they are not sufficient. Try a useful falsification.
Of course we don't -> we don't have a realistic model of forcing from CO2 that takes into account all of our known positive and negative feedbacks, but we can make a really naive model and calculate *something*. It just won't be true.
Only 255/2450 NAS members signed this statement.
(NAS has 2100+350 foreign affiliates)
What are the views of the rest - not just this minority?
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Where were you when the rest of us heard this news?
Falling back on "oh you guys weren't peer reviewed so your science is crap" means you didn't get the memo that the entire peer review process has been corrupted or you're the exact sort of propgandist that the GP is complaining about.
Argument from Authority is also in your post. Figured I'd shove that off the table while I was here since it is so easy to do. Scientific societies and professional bodies, indeed. Consenus is a political term, not a scientific one. The sooner you learn that the sooner you stand a chance of seeing the wool in front of your eyes.
Either way your point is heavily blunted by your ignorance and closed mindedness.