Climategate Is Still The Issue

[Chinahand]

You're comparing rigorous scientific process with religious dogma.

 

Only when people seem to fit the so called data around what they already believe and use it as evidence to support their beliefs.

Pongo - the point I've made repeatedly is that I do not think that this has happened in this case. The data hasn't been fitted to support beliefs - you seem to be saying it is.

 

But check after check has shown the CRU data is not significantly different from NOAH's, is not significantly different from the satellite data etc.

 

Link

[pongo]

Only when people seem to fit the so called data around what they already believe and use it as evidence to support their beliefs.

Pongo - the point I've made repeatedly is that I do not think that this has happened in this case. The data hasn't been fitted to support beliefs - you seem to be saying it is.

 

No. I seem to be saying that it seems to have been fitted. In the context of this thread which is about 'climategate' and the way in which these arguments have been presented.

[Chinahand]

VinnieK - I think we don't in actual fact have a large difference of opinion here but it is easy to make it seem like we do.

 

Peer review is a minimum requirement, but not sufficient to guarantee good science. Nearly all good science is peer reviewed, not everything that gets through peer review is good science. Its flawed, there are biases etc. I am not utopian about the way people create and puplish papers - heck a week ago you were challenging me when I cynically said 95% of experiements fail the other 5% get published in Science. I can't win!

 

But in the context of the CRU hack I do not think anything has shown their science is flawed - their communications etc maybe, but I am certain they'd share their data with say Lindzen, but not with Lord Mockton!

 

The CRU does respectable science - we can argue all night about whether this is an appropriate term or not - psychics do not - I think you do get my point about this!

 

We can nit-pick at the details all day, but overall I think there are people who are climate change deniers (Inhofe is one example, Mockton is another - they are deniers because they are doing politics and not science) and there are climate scientists (Yes Lindzen is one,Svensmark us another but when I read the criticisms of their work, and realize 95% of the field disagrees with them, I thus basically think that their work is simply 3 sigma in one direction and there are other scientists who are 3 signma the other way working on the risk of +7 degrees of warming, but even this analogy is too flawed as it isn't a single dimensional issue, but multifaceted).

 

The consensus is between 1.5 and 5 degrees and probably around 2. There are significant uncertainties, but quite simply humanity is running a huge experiment with the atmosphere and science is right to point out this is potentially dangerous for 100s of millions of people.

 

I really don't think I am such a controversialist with a romantized view of science for saying this. You seem to disagree.

[Slim]

 

Surely that's not the discussion being had in this instance. Rather it's how the debate surrounding Climate change has been framed and the nature of that debate, in which context 'Climategate' is an important event (regardless of the outcome of the inquiries and their outcome).

 

 

Pongo seems to be moving the goalposts as he goes, but a quick look back to his initial four points post shows them relating to the general science general climate change, not specifically the CRU hack.

 

 

[pongo]

Pongo seems to be moving the goalposts as he goes, but a quick look back to his initial four points post shows them relating to the general science general climate change, not specifically the CRU hack.

 

Look again. My original post relates to:

 

1. Accusations of denialism - very much an aspect of the 'climategate' emails.

 

2. Press / presentation of the issues post 'climategate'.

 

3. Political agenda.

 

4. Economic agenda.

 

Not the science. It's all about issues around the issues. None of my 4 original points question any aspect of the science.

[VinnieK]

Peer review is a minimum requirement, but not sufficient to guarantee good science. Nearly all good science is peer reviewed, not everything that gets through peer review is good science. Its flawed, there are biases etc.

 

The minimum requirement for publication is editorial screening, then it goes to peer review, and then publication. It's going to sound bitchy, but I have a feeling that this idea of 'good' science is something of your own invention because it seems to defy definition. Provided it isn't later shown to have catastrophic flaws or be fraudulent, publication in a scientific journal is to all extent and purposes the basic hallmark of something being science. Other than the obvious case where it later turns out to be flawed, whether it's 'good' or 'bad' is with few exceptions an entirely subjective matter. Really, to say "good science", is to say little and it's a bit like when people say "innovative science", which is pretty much a tautology. Such verdicts aren't so different to those pre-postmodernist arguments that afflicted the arts about what constitutes quality or value in a piece of art: Outside of the obvious contenders, whose status is typically determined only after decades of hindsight, and the vaguest of distinctions you just get this duubious and arbitrary judgement that achieves and means little.

 

I know I'm ranting, for which I apologise, but not without reason: This notion of there being such a thing as 'good science' in the sense you use it, and the idea that one can identify and categorize scientific discovery according to whatever values it embodies, is very reminiscent of the fuzzy managerialist view of research which has steadily been choking the life out of modern science for the past three decades, so it irks me.

 

heck a week ago you were challenging me when I cynically said 95% of experiements fail the other 5% get published in Science. I can't win!

 

I'm not sure I understand; those aren't incompatible positions. Stating that peer review is flawed and acknowledging that the likes of Science, Nature et al aren't the be all and end all are only contradictory views if you believe that the latter have super awesome peer review and standards that ensure bad work doesn't get through or that they're the gold standard of 'worthy science', which is far from the case.

 

Besides which, I didn't so much take you personally to task as I did the phrase (which I was quite keen to emphasise). I'll try not to labour the point, but the whole 95% of experiments fail thing and the rest is in Science is toss, even when employed as a cynical commentary on the inefficiency of scientific research. It is simply nonsense and an example of the silly fetishization of Science and Nature that increasingly looks like a throwback to the 1930s before science and hence scientific publishing became so very specialized. Acta Mathematica, Journal fur die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik, the Annals, Physical Review (A/B/C/D/E), or European Physical Journal and hundreds of other similar journals are where the bulk of good science (to borrow a term ) resides, not in the spotlight of the garish 70's game show stage of Science and Nature.

 

But in the context of the CRU hack I do not think anything has shown their science is flawed.

 

Not really the point. Again, it's about the debate surrounding climate science, the views and roles of external bodies like the media, the government, or what have you, with a focus on how CRU falls into this.

 

The CRU does respectable science - we can argue all night about whether this is an appropriate term or not - psychics do not - I think you do get my point about this!

 

You know that's disingenuous. We're not comparing scientists at the CRU with psychics themselves, but with those scientists who research supposed psychic phenomena, or scientists who do criticise the current theories of climate change, or even just scientists who operate in a field to which you have no personal or emotional attachment.

 

I really don't think I am such a controversialist with a romantized view of science for saying this.

 

C'mon, are you really saying that you don't romanticize science even just a teeny weeny little bit?

[Slim]

 

Not the science. It's all about issues around the issues. None of my 4 original points question any aspect of the science.

 

I was responding to Vinnie who said we were specifically discussing Climategate. Your 4 points, to which I was responding, aren't specifically Climategate.

[Chinahand]

It's going to sound bitchy, but I have a feeling that this idea of 'good' science is something of your own invention because it seems to defy definition. ...

 

I know I'm ranting, for which I apologise, but not without reason: This notion of there being such a thing as 'good science' in the sense you use it, and the idea that one can identify and categorize scientific discovery according to whatever values it embodies, is very reminiscent of the fuzzy managerialist view of research which has steadily been choking the life out of modern science for the past three decades, so it irks me.

Vinnie, I'm not quite sure how to respond to this!

 

I think you are right that defining good science is almost impossible. An experienced professor working in a field will probably be able to identify it 90% of the time, when it concerns their subject area, but even then there are risks!

 

Thousands of papers are published every year and no doubt it is a huge challenge to understand which ones are genuinely influential and which not.

 

I'd be intrigued if you could create some market where professors could buy futures in prospective researchers - I guess that would be just as interesting as managerialist bean counting or citation plugging which exists at the moment. I fully agree that it is a very difficult task to integrate the biases, prejudices and eccentric brilliance of 1000 or so research sciencists in a particular field into a defensible list of what and who is good, medicore or bad.

 

But even so out of this fuzzy, evolving, intuitive mess a scientific consensus does emerge. And in my view that consensus is pretty clear when it comes to risks of doubling the CO2 in our environment.

 

I have very deliberately qualified my statements about climate change - I'll say it again - between 1.5 to 5 degrees for a doubling of CO2, its unlikely to be much below 2, genuine risks of catastrophies above 5, but very hard to quantify, hence caution and mitigation is the best approach.

 

I am certain that this debate is being clouded by the deliberate creation of doubt for political ends. I have few problems with the word denier, they exist and they are hugely damaging to science: I have no doubt that Lord Mockton is a climate change denier, I've listened to what he says and looked at the rebuttals and he is deliberately distorting the issue.

 

The political debate is a dirty, distorting fight with environmentalists, scare mungers, big oil and zero-tax libertarians all having their go at muddying the waters.

 

The science, as far as my qualified statement goes, is basically settled, but there is a huge debate concerning where reality will lie between 1.5 and 5 degrees and between how droughts and hurricanes and mountain glaziers will alter as CO2 increases.

 

Pongo, Gazza etc are concentrating on the political debate. It is for me a terrible sympton of the age we live in that this is not an evidence based debate, but one full of sloganeering and distortions of the data to frame it to fit a particular agenda.

 

I try very hard to follow the science - and after doing that I am firmly in favour of efforts to reduce CO2 output and find alternatives.

 

VinnieK - do you agree, for all the political noise, and flaws within science that there is a scientific consensus on Anthropic Climate Change as defined in my simplified statement?

 

Mr Corbert whose video is at the top of this thread is deliberately trying to say there isn't.

 

I think that is wrong and very bad for politics and science.

 

I fully acknowledge there is no policy consensus, I'm not going to deny that, but that isn't what Climate change deniers are doing - they are denying the scientific consensus.

 

I have confidence that the messy flawed system that is science today has come to a general consensus on Climate Change and I will try to show that is the case when political attempts are made to say there isn't.

 

People can nit pick me all day, and no doubt I am no expert and simplify and get impatient etc. But I do find it ironic when I get so many complaints about my posts when I feel very much the mistakes I make are far more honest and minor than the deliberate distortions put out by the likes of Corbert, Mockton, Inhofe etc etc.

 

These people are paid to muddy the waters and undermine the scientific consensus - I genuinely think that is a societal wrong and feel those who understand science should spend more of their time showing how these people are wrong and defending the consensus than nit picking about the genuine, but basically irrelevent flaws in peer review.

 

The CRU does good science - yes that is undefinable, a simplification and not logically a 1 on a binary scale, but it is basically, fuzzilly true.

[Terse]

BBC NEWS

 

The message isn't getting home.

[pongo]

Pongo, Gazza etc are concentrating on the political debate. It is for me a terrible sympton of the age we live in that this is not an evidence based debate, but one full of sloganeering and distortions of the data to frame it to fit a particular agenda.

 

You cannot divorce the politics and economics from the science. Even assuming you identify a proven case for man made global warming, there will never be a consensus about the extent or certain impact of these potential changes. And there will never be a consensus about what, if anything, is to be done - since these are political and economic issues.

 

It may be a terrible sympton of the age we live in that this is not an evidence based debate (although I doubt this age is any more or less evidential than any previous ultimately) - but I don't see where that gets us. It seems to be tantamount to an unrealistic expectation that everyone might somehow draw similar conclusions. Though I may be misunderstanding you.

 

You can say that you believe that the debate is distorted to fit particular agendas - but nobody comes to this subject or any other subject without their agenda. We do not live in an age of agnostic gentlemen amateurs.

 

These are subjective and mediated issues. Even where there exist hard facts, the implications and meanings are utterly subjective. Some, for example, might think in terms of the threat from 'global warming'. Others might see only the eventuality or inevitability.

 

You cannot divorce the politics and the economics from the science. The way in which these issue are mediated are as important and very possibly reflect the quality and purpose of the science + its actual meaningfulness and the way in which any response might be coordinated. Although I doubt the eventual possibility of any coordinated democratic response.

[Chinahand]

Pongo - I agree that you should not divorce politics and economics from science - and that is what I am angry about with the likes of Mr Colbert, Lord Mockton, Mr Inhofe etc. because I feel that is they are doing, not me.

 

I think there are large well funded movements, in the US especially, which actively sow doubt in science and attempt to reduce its influence in politics and economics - they sow it into evolutionary science, they sow it into the cancer risk of cigarettes (though thankfully the cigarette lobby over stepped itself and has been much reined in) and they sow it into climate science. And there is quite alot of evidence these groups support each other, with a cross fertilization of ideas and people.

 

Beyond the actual lobby groups there is then the Palinesque wing of the Republican party which very much supports and encourages this because of their attitude towards governments in general, the UN in particular, and a distrust of elites which they see as promoting a world view - materialistic, evolutionary etc - which is against their religious point of view.

 

These are powerful social forces in the US and they have just made their presence felt in the elections and I genuinely feel this is dangerous.

 

I basically agree with the rest of what you've said - it is unrealistic for everyone to draw similar conclusions from the same data - I just want lobbiests to stop distorting the data in the first place.

 

I feel the world should now be focusing on the policy debate with the science settled sufficiently to make policy makers act.

 

Pongo, you say you doubt the eventual possibility of an coordinated democratic response - I'm not sure, the world is trying various ways to solve it from the democratic to totalitarian to geopolitical real politique!

 

I realize that is flippant, but the trouble is we have only very poor mechanisms to solve these types of proplems and the IPCC is about our best shot at a multinational level and I think there will be a coordinated reponse eventually.

 

CFC's were dealt with. I admit today's problem is far larger, but CO2 does directly bolt onto energy policy and so there are strong reasons to seek renewable power. As I said earlier renewables are gaining ground because they have reality on their side, but it is a huge challenge with massive inertia slowing the change.

 

Society has come to defeat instututions which had massive social and economic influence - slavery for example. Please note I'm not saying the oil industry is equivilent to slavery, just that it has social influences in a similar way to the slave economies of early 19th America and Africa.

 

Basically I think the world will come around to using renewable energy - though it may be too late to stop some pretty drastic and irreversible changes to the earth's ecology.

 

I don't think that will be too world changing for me, or an average bod in the British Isles, we are rich. But I do think the bottom billion are going to have a tougher time because of delays caused by the distortions of science we see the likes of Lord Mockton using. I feel that is a real wrong.

 

I am perfectly happy to have a policy debate, that is what is needed - it is unlikely the world will see less than 2 degrees of warming in the next 70 years, that really is the scientific consensus, and it could be worse.

 

But at the moment we can't get to that debate because lobbies are successfully saying it isn't needed as this consensus doesn't exist and everything is fine. That is so far from the truth I'm reasonably happy to call it a lie and those who spread this lie deniers.

[VinnieK]

I think you are right that defining good science is almost impossible. An experienced professor working in a field will probably be able to identify it 90% of the time, when it concerns their subject area, but even then there are risks!

 

But again, it depends entirely on that professors notion of good, which might not even be shared by colleagues in the same discipline (never mind beyond it). You have to remember that academics generally work in incredibly narrow areas and many may not even have the experience to comment with full authority and expertise on papers whose subject matter is very close to their own area of expertise.

 

For an example, take theoretical physics. That contains quantum mechanics and gravity, which both contain as a subset the attempts to unify them, which (partially) contains as a topic that of alebraic objects caused Quantum Groups. This is already a narrow field, but typically researchers will specialise in studying just a few aspects of these things. Now a researcher studying a few such aspects might not have a great handle on the work of another studying a different set of properties or via different methods. Conversely, someone working on the subject of gravity or even the unification of it with QM might have little if any idea of what his or her colleagues are doing in Quantum Groups. Science is massive, and a single academic's specialism incredibly narrow, so much so that it's not that unusual for there to be only dozens to a hundred or so people worldwide working squarely within their specialist area

 

Secondly, I'm getting the impression that to some extent you equate influential with good to some degree, but this isn't a great way to look at things. 'Big' papers which are immediately influential typically come only as the culmination of years and the publication of many subsidiary results, and it can take years or decades (or even centuries) for the influence of a particular piece of work to fully manifest. Even then, influence depends largely on perspective: a professor's idea of 'influential' might be restricted solely to what interests them within their discipline, which need not always translate into wider influence.

 

Thousands of papers are published every year and no doubt it is a huge challenge to understand which ones are genuinely influential and which not.

 

There are many more papers than that to deal with! In areas related to medicine only it's said that the total number of papers published in the previous year was closer to 700,000.

 

But we're getting away from the point slightly. The stance I'm taking is that science is broadly neutral. The best that can be said with any certainty is that something fulfills the criteria of being science or it doesn't, and scientists in general must be held to the same ethical standards. The CRU affair was damaging, not to the science produced there, but to the public view of the institute, the university, and the broader debate on climate science. What's more, I would say that this is entirely understandable. It's reasonable when researchers talk the way those at the CRU did about putting pressure on certain journals and so on that people should think "hang on a mo', what else are they up to?".

 

Now, they might not be 'up to' anything, but that's neither here nor there: I am convinced that were we talking about any other discipline (say, string theory or experimental psychology), then any group of researchers who conducted themselves in a similar manner would be universally condemned. But because attitudes towards climate science have become so uselessly polarized and entrenched in their positions, and because the subject has become a cause celebre and the debate emotionally charged (and this is as much a fault of those who support the science as those who don't) any attempt to treat the subject seriously is lost in the football terrace chants of "Ther gon' t' take my car!" and "We're all going to die!"

 

I have few problems with the word denier, they exist and they are hugely damaging to science

 

That is a bit of hyperbole; they really aren't. The academy at large couldn't give a toss about 'deniers', who are at best an irritation to one small subset of the scientific community (which nevertheless remains comparitively well funded and capable of producing work). The biggest threats to science are the lack of funding, the ever greater concentration of that funding in a few small centres, and the increasing tendency to make securing funding dependent on ill thought out 'impact' criteria. On a local level, science is threatened by declining educational standards, both secondary and within higher education, and an employment structure that primarily rewards administrators over researchers and both hinders the career progression of young researchers and dissuades a great many qualified people from taking up a career in research.

 

Compared to that, the threat of deniers, although they may be vociferous and make a good bogeymen, is nothing.

[Chinahand]

I subscribe to the Economist and so have no idea if this Briefing Paper is available generally but its a really good piece -

 

 

Here are some edited highlight for educational purposes only!

 

Adapting to climate change

 

Facing the consequences

Global action is not going to stop climate change. The world needs to look harder at how to live with it

Nov 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

...

The world warmed by about 0.7°C in the 20th century. Every year in this century has been warmer than all but one in the last (1998, since you ask). If carbon-dioxide levels were magically to stabilise where they are now (almost 390 parts per million, 40% more than before the industrial revolution) the world would probably warm by a further half a degree or so as the ocean, which is slow to change its temperature, caught up. But CO2 levels continue to rise. Despite 20 years of climate negotiation, the world is still on an emissions trajectory that fits pretty easily into the “business as usual” scenarios drawn up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

...

According to the IEA, [even] the scenario [agreed at Copenhagen] puts the world on course to warm by 3.5°C by 2100. For comparison, the difference in global mean temperature between the pre-industrial age and the ice ages was about 6°C.

 

The IEA also looked at what it might take to hit a two-degree target [a level that is rather arbitrarily seen as the threshold for danger]; the answer, says the agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, is “too good to be believed”.

...

Though they are unwilling to say it in public, the sheer improbability of ... success has led many climate scientists, campaigners and policymakers to conclude that, in the words of Bob Watson, once the head of the IPCC and now the chief scientist at Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, “Two degrees is a wishful dream.”

...

In a late 21st-century world 3°C warmer than the pre-industrial norm, what changes are most marked? ... Arctic summer sea ice goes, allowing more shipping and mining, removing a landscape of which indigenous peoples were once an integral part. Permafrost warms up, and infrastructure built on it founders. Most mountain glaciers shrink; some disappear. Winter snows melt more quickly, and the risks of spring floods and summer water shortages on the rivers they feed increase.

 

Sea level rises, though by how much is hard to say. Some of the rise will be predictable, in that oceans expand as they get warmer. Some, though, will depend on the behaviour of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps, which cannot be predicted with any certainty. Less than half a metre by 2100 would be a lucky break; a metre-plus is possible; more than two is very unlikely, but possible later.

...

On land, wet places, such as much of South-East Asia, are likely to get wetter, and dry places, such as much of southern Africa and the south-western United States, drier. In northern climes some land will become more suitable for farming as springs come sooner, whereas in the tropics and subtropics some marginal land will become barely inhabitable. These places may be large sources of migration.

 

... by 2050 the probability of a summer warmer than the warmest yet recorded will be between 10% and 50% in much of the world. By 2090 it will be 90% in many places. One estimate puts 8.7m more people at risk of flooding in deltas by 2050 if sea level follows current trends.

...

It is tempting to imagine that adaptation decisions might wait for models that can provide greater certainty about what might happen where. This is a forlorn hope. Faster computers and new modelling techniques might well provide more details and finer distinctions. But they will not necessarily be more accurate, or capable of being shown to be so: if different models become more precise and as a result their disagreements grow rather than shrink, which are you going to trust? Decisions about adaptation will be made in conditions of pervasive uncertainty. So the trick will be to find ways of adapting to many possible future climates, not to tailor expectations to one future in particular.

 

Even then, adaptation can help only up to a point. A 2009 review of the cost of warming to the global economy suggests that as much as two-thirds of the total cannot be offset through investment in adaptation, and will be felt through higher prices, lower growth and misery regardless.

...

Poor countries will often lack the financial means, technical expertise or political institutions necessary for such endeavours. Yet they are often at increased risk, principally because they are usually more dependent on farming than rich countries, and no other human activity is so intimately bound up with the weather. Crops are sensitive to changes in patterns of rainfall and peak temperature, as well as to average temperature and precipitation; so are the pests and diseases that attack them.

 

In its 2007 assessment, the IPCC’s picture of agriculture in a warmer world was one of two halves. In low latitudes higher temperatures are likely to shorten growing seasons and stress plants in other ways. In high latitudes, if warming is moderate, growing seasons are expected to lengthen and yields to rise, in part because raised CO2 levels aid photosynthesis.

...

Successful adaptation will require not just expanded research into improved crop yields and tolerance of temperature and water scarcity, but also research into new ways of managing pests, improving and conserving soil, cropping patterns and crop-management techniques that add resilience. Such research—and its application—will make it more likely that enough food for 9 billion people can be grown in a three-degrees-hotter world without much of the planet’s remaining uncultivated land or pastures coming under the plough.

 

If yields cannot be improved sufficiently, though, desperation may lead to more wilderness being uprooted or burned. A headlong rush for biofuels might have similar effects. This would be one of those adaptations to climate change that looked a lot like an adverse impact. Faster loss of species is highly likely in many ecosystems as a result of warming; greatly expanding farmlands will make this worse. It will also add to the fundamental problem, as clearing forests releases greenhouse gases.

 

Even if the world contrives to keep feeding itself without too much ecosystem damage, many of those dependent on agriculture or in poverty could still suffer a great deal.

...

Many of the millions of poor farming households in poor countries, who make up the bulk of the world’s agricultural labour force if not its agricultural output, already face more variable weather than farmers in temperate countries do. That and a lack of social safety-nets makes most of them highly risk-averse, which further limits their ability to undertake some adaptation strategies, such as changing crop varieties and planting patterns. They will often prefer surer chances but lower yields. Worse, in bad weather a whole region’s crops suffer together.

...

If climate change does slow poor countries’ growth rates, the onus on rich ones to help will be even larger. This was recognised to some extent in the Copenhagen accord, which proposed that $100 billion a year should flow from north to south by 2020, to be split between investments in mitigation and adaptation.

 

is also a pretty good speech which sums up alot of the issues:

 

[Chinahand]

If there is this global warming thing why is it so f-ing cold.

 

RealClimate highlights a scientific paper which tries to explain: short version as sea ice declines it affects artic weather systems.

[gazza]

what i disagree with is that they say its all man made, which while yes MAYBE some of it is, But the earth still has cold and warm sectors in its life.

 

whos to say this is no more than a normal cycle of the earth.

You can present date after date of how man have effected it,

But theres so much that does not add up,

 

So i stick on the side of its a earth cycle