April 12, 2013, by Warren Pearce
Families of climate scepticism I: faulty science?
At last week’s British Sociological Association conference, I presented some initial observations from my research on climate change scepticism. My starting point was that climate change scepticism – or as it is often inaccurately described, denial – is not monolithic. Those people typically labelled as sceptics vary in their arguments. Sometimes may employ many different arguments, some may focus on only one or two. Often these arguments overlap with each other. In my presentation I highlighted writers and commenters on two prominent UK sites: Bishop Hill and Climate Resistance (there are many other examples)
With these points in mind, I identify two broad families of climate sceptic argument. First, that it is ‘faulty science’ from which policy flows: this could be in terms of the methods being used, the practices of scientists ‘beyond the lab’ or the ways in which scientific knowledge is publicised. Second a questioning of the very idea that policy should flow from the science, instead arguing that scientific advice enjoys too privileged a position in policy makers’ thoughts. I will address this issue of the science/politics relationship in my next post. Below, I outline three related arguments which form part of the ‘faulty science’ family of arguments.
Modelling and observations
Computer models are critical to climate science and the projected effects of carbon dioxide emissions on global temperatures. Criticisms are levelled at these models sometimes focus on the assumptions upon which they are based. More broadly, there are worries about the weight afforded to these models over empirical observation. In other words, can we not learn more from existing temperature data than projections? As an aside, worries over modelling are not restricted to future projections, but also research done to calculate historic temperatures over the last few thousand years, for example this discussion of potential weaknesses in dendroclimatology (estimating past temperature from measuring tree rings)
Science by press release
Here is a concern that by the time research results make their way into the public domain, they have been in some way exaggerated, often giving undue weight to the worst case scenario (WCS) within a range of uncertainty. This may come from media reporting. For example a journal article about the effects of climate change on coffee clearly reported the significant range of uncertainty about effects in the abstract. Compare this to the funder’s press release, which repeated this clear reporting, but highlighted the WCS in a ‘box quote’ high up the page. Finally, a Telegraph report of the research made the WCS the story ‘lede’ in the very first sentence of the text, only reporting the full range of uncertainty in the eighth paragraph. Academic uncertainty and caveats give way to journalistic concerns for the ‘story’.
Press releases are sometimes seen as more directly responsible for miscommunication, a high profile case being the recent paper by Marcott et al which generated significant press coverage around its apparent replication of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph showing a steep climb in global temperatures during the twentieth centruy. This undoubtedly newsworthy aspect was emphasised in the accompanying press release but came under sustained online scrutiny by climate sceptics, notably Steve McIntyre. A subsequent FAQ issued by the paper’s authors downplayed the importance of the recent temperature rises described in their paper, describing that aspect as ‘not statistically robust’, instead emphasising the importance of their temperature reconstructions over the last 10,000 years. While this was certainly of scientific interest, it did not have the political salience of findings which could be linked to increased carbon dioxide emissions.
It is noteworthy that while journal articles can be scrutinised using this kind of ‘extended peer review’, there is a worry that once headlines hit the media the damage has already been done, and that prominent corrections need to be made in order to uphold scientific integrity.
Scientific practices
Climategate continues to cast a shadow over the climate debate. The short version of this lengthy saga is that sceptics feel the email leak/hack demonstrated how a prominent group of scientists sought to distort the peer review process, shut out dissenting voices from IPCC reports and go to great lengths to resist Freedom of Information requests to publish datasets. At the launch event of our Making Science Public programme, Mike Hulme argued that practices of climate scientists may not have been particularly unusual within scientific communities, and that perhaps it was these scientific ethics which needed opening up to scrutiny. Physicist Phil Moriarty disagreed, citing his ‘shock’ that such practices had taken place. Commenters on sceptic blog Bishop Hill supported Moriarty’s stance, hailing him as a ‘real scientist’.
So, faulty science?
As stated at the start, this was a presentation only of my initial impressions, so is by no means intended to be exhaustive. I invite those of you familiar with the arguments from the climate sceptic (critic?) community to correct me where I might have been mistaken, or highlight other aspects of the ‘faulty science’ family of arguments (or come up with a better name).
In part 2, I focus on the critique of the politicisation of climate science, post the audio from the BSA presentation, and explore the idea of climate sceptics being an ‘uninvited public‘…
I agree that this is close to how ‘sceptics’ see themselves, but examination of the arguments shows they are made of straw.
First, all good scientists are sceptics – otherwise they wouldn’t make a career for themselves at all. The co-option of the term for this particular little grouping, with it’s implication that no-one but them is sceptical, is rhetorically valuable but empty of content.
A second point worth making is that the a priori demonisation of ‘models’ as a tool for making forecasts makes no logical sense – since of course we don’t have ’empirical data’ from the future. Instead, results from coherent and physics-based models are dismissed in favor of untested and unevaluated heuristics – ‘no change!’, ‘new ice age!’, etc. By the way, you fall into a common confusion that associates the ‘evil models’ with reconstructions of past climate – they are completely different approaches and have no scientific similarities. Nonetheless they are often lumped together purely in order to be dismissed.
Similarly, I doubt that there is any climate scientist that thinks that the press does a good job (or even an adequate job in toto) in reporting climate science, and criticisms of press releases are a commonplace. However, there is a difference in how ambiguities in press releases are used by ‘sceptics’ – as ammunition to insinuate malfeasance and delegitimize the scientists themselves – versus constructive criticism aimed at improving communication of science results. The criticism of the press coverage thus serves as a ‘proxy’ argument aimed at dismissing the underlying results. Most of the mis-statements related to Climategate are similarly aimed.
Finally, it shouldn’t need saying but the idea that specific policy does not immediately follow from science is hardly a radical one, and the implication that mainstream scientists are uniquely naive about this has no empirical support.
I wish you luck in your overall aim, but I think you will end up finding that standard ‘sceptic arguments’ mostly serve as props for pre-determined policy preferences rather than as logically coherent critiques.
Thanks Gavin, exactly the sort of input I need. Yes, a more detailed analysis of methods would draw out the differences between the types of reconstructions and forecasts. (My background is all in policy, so getting myself up to speed re science).
Re co-option of term ‘sceptics’, I guess like many terms (‘sustainable development’ in the past, maybe ‘responsible innovation’ in the future) it’s meaning has changed to a point where the people it used to ‘belong’ to no longer recognise it as they used to. Paul Matthews had a nice idea on this – just describe people ‘concerned’ or ‘unconcerned’ about climate change, sounds rather less gladiatorial than deniers/alarmists etc.
Of course, I am sure in many cases you may be right re your last point – motivated reasoning etc in many policy areas. I think the way for me to deal with this is to treat arguments on their merits. If you’re right that they are mostly not ‘logically coherent critiques’ then I guess that dialogue of the kind favoured by some would be futile…?
Actually his comments were a bit off base since they presume that just because climate researchers use the term “scientist” that means they are “good scientists” as he describes them. That is questionable when many react to skeptics as if they were “heretics” who should be shouted down for daring to critique them. The theory of “paradigm shifts” in science acknowledges it is a human process which can become dysfunctional and ideas become entrenched despite counter-evidence that aren’t overturned until the old guard die off. Science is normally a self correcting process, mistake are made but eventually overturned. If that process isn’t healthy , there is reason to be skeptical that the results are trustworthy Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman described what he called “cargo cult science” which referred to fields which superficially mimics the process of hard science but lacked certain crucial elements such as a willingness to not only seek out critique, but to express areas of potential doubt in your own work in order to truly seek the truth.
Unfortunately many climate researchers engage in “motivated reasoning” to use the claimed importance of their conclusions to rationalize not expressing or pursuing potential doubts. Studies show there are many areas where climate researchers admit they have a poor understanding of certain processes or poor quality data.. yet they then leap to inappropriately certain conclusions. Computer scientists are familiar with the concept of “garbage in, garbage out”, they don’t appropriately carry through with the concept. They have models with different or incomplete physics for some subprocesses which then magically wind up with similar results since they tweak them to match the data. It is essentially glorified curve fitting with the pretense it is more than that since they may have sophisticated models for certain aspects, but the weakest link in the chains should undermine the level of confidence they have in the results,yet it doesn’t.
Many of those from other areas of computer modelling basically consider efforts to validate climate models against reality using partial historical data sets to match against the rest of the data to just in the early stages, often they are effectively testing on data that has directly or indirectly been used to train them. The data is sparse, and incomplete (e.g. to truly measure energy they need temperature humidity and pressure data for each point.. often they don’t have that and gloss over the lack of it). A company wouldn’t be trusted to audit itself, yet they object to the notion of outsiders auditing their work and pretend their validation should be trusted just because they say so, as if a fox should be allowed to guard the chickens.
Other scientific fields require high levels of confidence in end results, 5 sigmas, that these folks try to claim as “absurd” since they wish to not be held to the same standards. The culture just appears dysfunctional compared to “hard sciences” where more evidence is required to justify the level of certainty implied in future projections. If someone made a projection for the stock market for 1 year from today, people would be right to be skeptical until a sufficient burden of proof were met to show there was reason to trust it. Some think that in the climate realm they too easily ignore the possibility of long term trends and factors they haven’t yet accounted for which may dwarf short term factors. For all we know perhaps they are right about human influence causing warming.. but it may be it prevented an ice age which might have been worse. Of course they will deny most of the comments I made.. as is to be expected for a dysfunctional field.
Am I a proper sceptic. Is paul matthews..is Don Keiller, Jonathan Jones, or Freeman Dyson or the many people in Desmogblogs Denisr disinformation dstabase?
Or do we have to put up with “sceptics” because indivuduals like John Cook or Adam Corner proclaim it.
Offensive and patronising
For nomenclature, I’m happy with the Leiserowitz descriptors as used in his ‘Six Americas’ project – so ‘dismissives’ would be the my preferred term.
I’m not quite sure what proposed dialogues you are referring to, but given limited time and resources, I mostly choose to spend my time in dialogue with people who minds are not made up and who have questions that I can help answer or know things I can learn. Life is too short for much else.
I expect the reference is to the Met Office/Tamsin Edwards outreach efforts.
Agree with all of Gavin’s points, but will add for now:
Note how denialists focus on recent paleo vs. deep time paleo. The latter (especially e.g. Pliocene/Miocene warm periods, PETM) have the direct implications of danger that they would rather not think about (e.g. Pliocene Arctic warming of ~18C at ~350 ppm CO2 that the models can’t replicate) .
Denialists select aspects of the science they think they can attack for maximum political effect. The breadth of the science gets little or no consideration. A serious non-denialist amateur (me e.g.) spends much time reading papers to understand the big picture even while expecting to never discuss many of those with anyone else.
We need to distinguish broad policy from detailed policy options. The science really does say that BAU is a very bad idea, but there are choices to be made in how to go about avoiding it. If those choices are more or less equal in mitigating BAU, science will have little to say beyond making that determination. In the end, whether to listen to scientists is a political choice, so what denialists are really complaining about is policymakers having said that’s what they would prefer to do. It’s intentionally missing the point to attack scientists for that.
You seem to have selected a fairly narrow slice of denialists. You need to broaden your net to include “world’s most popular science blog” WUWT, Delingpole, and Monckton among other dark corners (more importantly their sponsors/funders), plus the think tanks that provide ongoing fuel for the fire (GWPF in Britain) and their funders.
If you’re pretty new to all of this, it’s going to be a tough slog without spending some major time learning about the science yourself. Otherwise you’ll tend to find yourself falling into the trap of mistaking opinions about facts for facts.
You might want to look at a non-denialist “citizen scientist” blog for contrast. The Arctic Sea Ice Blog is a good one. In case you run across one, I would also point out that “lukewarmer” blogs are false flag operations.
BTW, I continue to use denier/denialist because some element of denial is always involved.
That’s much more than I was going to write just now, but if I have time over the weekend I’ll probably want to add a few more thoughts.
So you will continue to use climate denier / denialist even though you know it to be very offensive (used to closed down any civil debate) and people end up arguing about it. I have friends in Deniers – Halls of Shame. tagged as disinformer, denial industry,misinformers, etc.
this sort of rhetoric has no place in an adult grown up debate. By using it, you diminish yourself
and demonstrate an unwillingness to compromise that is required to allow a civil discussion.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for posting this, much appreciated – in particular, the Arctic Sea Ice Blog tip. Always interested in citizen science 🙂
Regards my focus on particular blogs – I am still working out exactly where I am going to cast my net. My initial impression is that the UK blogs have a somewhat different flavour to the US. However, I should say that I am not particularly interested in funders per se. Not to say that sources of money are not important, just that I feel there has been a lot of work already done on that and I am trying to do something different.
Finally, ‘denial’ was the subject of my last post https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/03/09/are-they-really-climate-deniers-closing-down-debate-in-science-and-politics/. If one is talking dictionary definitions, then there are >1. There’s quite a benign one ‘declaring something to be true’ or one from psychology ‘failure to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion or to admit it into consciousness, used as a defence mechanism’. I suggest that the latter has become the accepted meaning in climate debate, which is problematic for debate as it has an a priori assumption of what is true, leaving no room for debate. Obviously, not everyone in the climate debate is interested (or, crucially, has the time, as Gavin suggests above) in debating with critics. However, the point in my previous post (and this one) is that there are many strands of overlapping arguments, and that calling someone a ‘denier’ seems like a very blunt instrument for a complex debate.
It didn’t take long for Steve Bloom (who?) to start labelling us scientists who are sceptics as “denialists”. There’s a big surprise.
Science by press release hype and elements of the media that are environmentalists at heart are the biggest concern of mine..
ie like the 300,000 climate change deaths.. per year.. quoted everywhere, even at the Oxford Union Lindzen debate an audience member asked , that she had heard that 300,000 people die a year because of ‘climate change’ ..
yet this was purely based on a dodgy GHF report, that Betts / Mcneall (Met Office) have written is not based on rigorous science (code for c**p)
but, withoutthe hype, very hard to push for policies…
as for funders..
THERE are NOT ANY!!!
Gavin,
What do you make of Jim Bouldins severe analytical problems in dendroclimatology?
http://ecologicallyoriented.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/severe-analytical-problems-in-dendroclimatology-part-1/
I googled you and read your statement here, Phil. You’re a denialist, that’s for sure, noting in a number of statements in paragraphs 6 and 8. Your energy views don’t seem to be holding up all that well either.
Re denial, Barry, it’s a word with a definition that you can look up. In varying regards and to varying extents, it can be applied very neatly to you and many of your on-line friends. If the shoe fits…
Re funders, Barry, really? Just for starters, what about GWPF and Watts? Oh, and Willie Soon since he’s in the news just now. Surely you’re not in denial on this point?
Inflammatory and provocative, your use of the term denialist is nothing more than hate speech. A proper reading of your comment by any normal reader would be, “blah, blah, blah, denialist, blah, blah, blah.”
You insult the memory of all the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and others by trivializing their deaths. By associating those with whom you disagree with skinhead Nazis that deny the Holocaust occurred you indeed are able to inflame passions–and more pertinently, gloss over flaws in your logic and argumentation.
Your use of the term is Godwin squared and makes it totally unnecessary to read what you write.
There was a time when ‘denier’ had a meaning outside the context you have created. And some like you vainly try to refer to the meaning that you have in fact destroyed. Legitimate use of the term within the climate context is no longer possible–because you use it as hate speech.
Thomas, you’re seemingly in denial about the existence of denialism.
It’s unfortunate that denialism as a word has in many peoples minds connotations of holocaust denialism. But that does not in any way justify the way that rejection of the term on those grounds (whether explicitly or implicitly) is frequently – and your post is a perfect example – used to try to silence any criticism of …… errrrmmmmm …… denialism when it crops up elsewhere.
Denialism is widely recognised as a rhetorical tool used to reject evidence that cannot be reasonably rejected by other means, is definable (albeit a complex and sometimes slippery phenomenon), is known to be used by numerous interest groups to reject on false grounds evidence that they dislike, for whatever reason, and is the direct or indirect subject of numerous studies.
Climate change denial is just one manifestation of denialism. Denialist campaigns appear to be most abundant in various areas of human health: HIV-AIDS, MMR, and so on.
Although denialism, particularly in the climate change / sustainability arena, is often associated with right-wing political views denialism per se has no political affiliation. As with any set of tools, it’s there for use by anyone who wants to use it. On the political left it seems – to my eyes, anyway – to often be used in support of quackery of the right-on ‘holistic’, alternative, varieties. There also appears to be a strong correlation between deniaism and a world view that could be described as ‘conspiracist’.
I’ve been a scientist for 30 years, and I found it incredibly difficult to get my head around the idea of the very existence of anti-science denialism when I first came across it about eight or ten years ago. It took even longer to recognise how complex and varied a phenomenon it is, and that’s a learning curve I’m still climbing.
I believe that it has now reached the point where anyone who wants to be able to claim an understanding of how the public understands, or misunderstands, science, cannot reasonably do so without having an understanding of what denialism is and (absolutely crucially) how it is diametrically opposed to scepticism, how it works, and the range of motivations (conscious or unconscious) of its practitioners.
A useful but limited starting point for anyone who needs to understand the nature of anti-science denialism per se is Diethelm & McKee’s article in the Eur. J. Pub. Health (http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/1/2.full). An absolute must-read (IMO, of course) for anyone intersted in the public understanding of climate change is, funnily enough, a book about HIV-AIDS: Denying Aids, by Seth Kalichmann (available in had copy, or free in its entirety on Google books).
It is offensive, and shows what sort of personality you have, despite being asked not to use it.. it is used by activists to shut down debate.
I would like you, Steve personally to meet Dr Don Keiller, or Freeman Dyson, or many others in the Desmogblog Deniers Disinformation database, and call them that to their faces. and say that the tags of denial industry, denier, disinformer, misinformer, etc are justified
http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database
It is beneath you, this language has poisoned the debate for too long and should just stop. I’ve equally said the same about stupid rhetoric about ‘alarmists’, watermelons’ etc.. just try and be a civilized adult, who is interested in a discussion, please.
Mark Lynas put Soon and Lindzen in a climate deniers list a decade ago
http://www.newstatesman.com/node/146820
(making tenuous exxon links as well, all political rhetoric), and he and Marshall supported a Deniers – Hall of Shame (Campaign Against Climate Change – CaCC). (Marshall started the first one, at Rising Tide the organisation he founded, 2001) Mark has now since stepped down from that organisation, and said the Halls of Shame are shameful.. why can’t you see that.
– Just activist/political rhetoric, that prevents discussion, not facilitates it ——–
particularly Hari, Lynas and Monbiot eco journalists/activists that popularised it.
who would appear (note the dates) to started the whole ‘climate change denial’ as bad as ‘holocaust denial’ (or worse)
Hari 2005:
“The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers. Indeed, given that 25,000 people died in Europe in the 2003 heatwave caused by anthropogenic climate change, given that the genocide unfolding in Darfur has been exacerbated by the stresses of climate change, given that Bangladesh may disappear beneath the rising seas in the next century, they are nudging close to having the moral credibility of Holocaust deniers. They are denying the reality of a force that – unless we change the way we live pretty fast – will kill millions.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-shame-of-the-climatechange-deniers-6147534.html
2006: monbiot “Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/sep/21/comment.georgemonbiot
2006: Lynas “I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial – except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it”.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080512154243/http://www.marklynas.org/2006/5/19/climate-denial-ads-to-air-on-us-national-television
2007: fed Ellen Goodman : “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20070214041353/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/
then there are others saying ‘climate treason’, and others saying ‘Nuremburg trial’ for climate – and I’m sure very many other USA, examples could be found (in the main stream media (Hari, Independent, Monbiot – Guardian) very politicized and a huge deterrent to speak up at all.
2008 – Grist Climate Nuremburg (quoting monbiot)
http://grist.org/article/the-denial-industry/
2008: Hansen -Crime Against humanity:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange
2009: Krugman – Guilty of treason
http://www.alternet.org/story/141204/are_climate-change_deniers_guilty_of_treason
20011- Chris Huhne – UK Minsiter Enrrgy & Climate Change– “Defying climate deal like appeasing Hitler-
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/enivronment-britain-huhne-idAFL6E7IL0MF20110721?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
These are all influential people, especially Hari, Lynas, Monbiot in the media and amongst environmentalists.
Looking back at wayback machine Mark Lynas, for example was on the Realclimate (Mann’s baby) blog roll, right from the very start, where perhaps an unhealthy combination of activist rhetoric crossed over into the scientist vocabulary
@Barry & Steve – thanks for comments.I think that’s sufficient on etymology and effects of ‘denial’ on this post. Although any other thoughts would be welcome on https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/03/09/are-they-really-climate-deniers-closing-down-debate-in-science-and-politics/
I will not sit in a debate when one side continues to be offensive.
Gavin’s intervention is interesting. To the study from which it emerges ‘climate scepticism is not monolithic’ comes the claim merely that it is. Moreover, his conceit appears to be that the climate debate begins and ends with climate science. This is self-defeating, of course, because here is Gavin, pronouncing on more than simply climate science, venturing that sceptic arguments “mostly serve as props for pre-determined policy preferences rather than as logically coherent critiques”.
Scientific(?) claims that have interested me over the years have been those relating to the immanent demise of Himalayan glaciers leading to up to a billion people being without water; the attribution of 300,000 deaths on 2010, and 500,000 deaths in 2030 to climate change via malaria, malnutrition and diarrhoea; the demise of polar bear populations, the intensity and frequencies of storms and floods and its impact on human populations; the psychopathology of climate scepticism; and the endless claims that are made about the potential of renewable energy. Clearly ‘science’ plays a bigger role in the debate than merely weather forecasting.
My points here are that: i) climate science is the *least* interesting thing about the climate debate. ii) It is clear that climate scientists haven’t injected sobriety into the wider debate, contra Gavin’s claims that all scientists are sceptics. iii) The sensitivity of society to climate has been massively overestimated. iv) A broader, deeper tendency and preference for highly deterministic/reductive ways of seeing the human and natural worlds and interactions between them exists (e.g. malthusianism), to which even climate scientists are vulnerable. v) Even climate scientists are *woefully* ignorant of the political nature of such frameworks. vi) Evidently, a *great deal* of ‘science’ is intended to serve a *strategic* function in the debate, rather than advance scientific knowledge. vii) The reduction of criticism of the entire debate to a bogus, binary debate about one aspect of climate science is a grotesque and defensive action that does far more to harm science than think tanks and eccentric British aristocrats could ever hope their evil schemes to achieve. viii) Steve Bloom secretly quite likes there to be Moncktons, Delingpoles and GWPFs to serve as ‘Aunt Sallys’ – it would seem that global policy on climate change has been beset by the actions of just a half dozen men, such is their power. ix) But in fact, sceptics have very little power to influence the debate, and almost zero institutional muscle through which to assert the sceptical argument over policymaking, especially globally and in the UK, though less so in the USA. x) in fact most scepticism is a figment of the imaginations of people like Gavin Schmidt and Steve Bloom.
Aggressive reaction to climate scepticism has lowered the quality of climate science and in consequence, the value of related study, such as human geography. The likes of Schmidt should have been leery of the expectations that were being put on climate science to supply policymakers with the basis for extraordinarily far-reaching policies. It is not enough, in 2013, to say about a process that is now into its third decade that “specific policy does not immediately follow from science” and to claim that the idea that “mainstream scientists are uniquely naive about this has no empirical support”. There is very good evidence indeed that policymakers themselves think and say otherwise — a misapprehension which Schmidt et al have done very little to devote as much time addressing to as they have spent belittling the few sceptics in the world who do.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for this post. Some of this will feature in the next post, but here are a couple of responses.
Really useful to question how we define policy-relevant ‘science’ in the climate debate; the impacts of climate on specific phenomena and/or practices in society are clearly of as much (perhaps greater?) importance than work on climate modelling. This is summarised in your addition to the idea of ‘climate sensitivity’. So there are two levels of sensitivity to think about, the arrows in: carbon dioxide —> climate —> society.
Re strategic function of science, Hulme et al questioned the contribution of research attributing extreme weather events to climate change to decisions about adaptation funds (£), highlighting this as an effort to depoliticise decision making by putting scientific modelling at the centre of the process. How much responsibility do scientists bear for the reification of science within policy? Hard for me to say. As Pielke Jr. argues, expertise is a seductive notion for all concerned, particularly in ‘post-normal’ policy areas such as climate change.
Finally, I wasn’t sure about point vii) re the bogus reduction of debate to a binary. How does this fit with your argument that debate *should* be polarised? (I read something recently about how political debate is/should be more about rhetoric/values than reliance on evidence, but can’t remember source).
Hi Warren, on sensitivity, there has been a real problem with an implied assumption that society’s sensitivity to climate is equivalent to climate’s sensitivity to CO2. This has led to many claims being made that are simply absurd, for instance, the 2035 glacier claim, which was faulty in many respects. The claims made in consequence created the idea of as many as a billion people facing water shortages in just a decade or so. The idea that this cannot be understood — much less challenged — by those without sufficient knowledge of climate science demonstrates the problem of the binary debate. There are many ways to address the claim that need no climatology at all. One could determine that it is nonsense even while holding with the idea that there would indeed be no glaciers left by 2035.
So that’s the ‘binary’ debate. I argued for a more *polarised* debate, with more poles. That is to say, more perspectives, and for those perspectives not to be lumped into the bogus ‘science’ and ‘denier’ categories. It is common for criticism of climate-centric perspectives to be written off as ‘ideologically-motivated’. The main reason for this is, again, to create simple, opposing, binary categories — pragmatism versus ideology — but this presupposes the putative pragmatists’ virtue, their eschewing of politics, and their successfully having transcended the limitations of subjective experience, to form purely objective perspective on the world. I think environmentalists — including scientists who comment on the climate debate like Gavin — should be honest about their own ‘ideology’. A richer scientific debate would follow a richer debate about how society’s really depend on natural processes. For instance, human geographers should have pointed out that the claim that a billion people depend on water from Himalayan glaciers was bogus. Engineers could take issue with the claimed need for a global policy to limit emissions by demonstrating the plausibility of alternative water infrastructure. Social scientists and economists could have made better arguments about the need for industrialisation anyway, regardless of any climatic change. But the debate is denied the potential of all those perspectives, by the reduction of the climate debate into binary opposing categories.
Warren, I’d be very interested to hear more about the source of the comment about rhetoric / values vs evidence in debate.
If the subject of debate in such circumstances does not have relevance to the welfare of others then a preference for rhetoric over evidence is arguably OK. But in evidence-based fields such as public health or climate change a preference for rhetoric over evidence is irresponsible in the extreme.
A feature of denialism (and whatever any dictionary definitions may say about the word, denialism when applied to science is defined reasonably well by Diethelm & McKee: http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/1/2.full ) is it’s reliance on rhetoric to try to trump actual evidence.
Your rejection of the term denialism in the context of climate change fails to address a number of issues, IMO, including:
– Denialism is not only a term in increasingly wide use to identify spurious arguments, it’s defined very similarly in a number of places (cf D & M 2009, etc). Those definitions provide examples which clearly illustrate how scientific denialism is inimical to actual scepticism.
– There are innumerable examples of denialism, as defined by D & M, Kalichmann, the Hoofnagles, etc, in practice against a very broad swathe of scientific fields.
You may personally dislike the use of the term, but to be convincing in your rejection of it you will need to address those points in some detail.
It may be worth bearing in mind that when I say the term is used “to identify spurious arguments” it’s important to realise that the term denialist is – or at least should be in an ideal world – applied to arguments before it’s applied to individuals. It’s quite possible for a person to argue from a denialist perspective one minute, then from a (genuinely) sceptical one the next. And in fact that is a common occurrence in my experience, particularly from people (often but by no means always non-scientists) who fail to understand the difference. IMO a person can only be called ‘a denialist’ when they persist in the use of denialist arguments even after being repeatedly provided with the evidence that those arguments are unfounded or incorrect.
It’s quite possible that I’ve missed an important point in your writing, or even an entire post that will show that I’ve misunderstood your position and arguments (in which case please disabuse me) but, having now read a number of your posts here and elsewhere I’m starting to think that you might simply be failing to understand what people such as Diethelm & McKee, Kalichmann, etc, are saying; that there are well-founded concerns that scientific denialism is real; that it is in fact inimical to science and scepticism; and that it is frequently used to cast doubt upon genuine evidence that cannot be explained away by more reputable approaches.
Which is worrying if you’re researching and writing about the understanding of science.
Like Gavin, I consider myself to be sceptical about climate science in the proper way of the scientific process, which involves a sceptical approach.
The problem Gavin is that perhaps uniquely in the context of climate science, “normal” skepticism has been squashed by the rhetoric of “the science is settled” and “denialism”, as Barry points out. So in so far as those on the “consensus” side of the (non-) “debate” have rejected any kind of proper scientific skepticism, “this particular little grouping” whatever that means, are indeed the only ones properly sceptical.
Steve Bloom then gives a stunning example of how this works in practice: anyone who disagrees with him ON ANYTHING -not just atmospheric physics or climate science, but any aspect of policy including renewable energy- is dismissed as a “denialist”.
Gavin was on a US news show recently in which he bizarrely refused to debate Spencer face to face on the science, insisted that he was there just to discuss his field of science, but was quite happy to offer his opinion on policy. This is the kind of very public behaviour that leads to scepticism about scientists’ intentions. Tamsin Edwards tweeted recently that it is crucial to keep the science and the policy separate.
This paragraph seems to miss the point and be rather vague and confused. It really doesnt sound like a very scientific statement to me, but I am a non-scientist and no-doubt considered by Steve to be a “denialist” so what do I know? It is a bit like the hand-flappy statement by the AAAS that we should “do something” about climate change. What? There is no consensus on this, and much of the policies currently under consideration or already implemented are unlikely to reduce CO2 but are very costly. It can be argued that BAU is exactly the course we should pursue – BAU is actually not a static thing but involves continuous innovation; thus shale gas is a recent innovation that seems to be one of the few things that has really lead to a reduction in CO2.
This is what the debate has always been about: policy, with science being pressed into service- underpinned by constant messages of impending Doom (dont forget Al Gore shared the Nobel Prize with the IPCC) which are used to justify the label “denialist”.
Thanks Graham for this thoughtful response, particularly about how BAU is not a stable concept.
Keeping science and policy separate is a notion that comes up a lot in sceptic arguments (see my next post). However, this seems like something of a chimera. How exactly would one keep them separate? See the Sheila Jasanoff quote here in Pielke Jr’s STEPS talk.
Re ‘denial’, well I certainly consider it problematic, as I argued in my previous post. Where ‘genuine scepticism’ stops and what some might call ‘pseudo scepticism’ starts is hard to judge. In his recent book on Velikovsky, Gordin argued that there is no stable meaning of ‘pseudo science’ other than a theory which threatens existing scientists. This, of course, is a troublesome notion…
Warren
The climate meta-narrative, historically, follows a course with largely discernible contours. The basic template for this narrative was laid down in the late 70’s and early 80s, with the food shortages, the politics of acid rain involving Germany, Britain and others, and finally the ozone hole policy response.
The structure of the narrative consists of the fabrication or emergence of broad seemingly science-based themes (you could call them climate memes) that serve to hold together several interests and advance them, at any given time. Examples would be: ‘overpopulation’ would cause catastrophe, “ozone hole would significantly destroy life on earth”, “the rate and magnitude of temperature rise is unprecedented”, “Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035”, “40% of Amazon would be destroyed”, “2C would be really bad”, “a 4C world would be hell” etc. These are needed because the organizations attempting to create policies are in a constantly changing yet enormously inertial landscape, where, in order to produce significant alignment of inertial entities and change in direction, large levers are needed.
‘Science-based policy-making’, in many respects, serves as a perfect vehicle for building such large levers. Because of its science-based nature, it excludes several players from participatory, democratic criticism. (You can see this all the time – people are generally used to holding opinions on everything, it comes to climate, and they are told to ‘f*** off’ because they don’t know climate science). Secondly, and this is key, science is unique in producing a constant stream of novel findings, published in peer-reviewed journals, and one of human disciplines where complete and abrupt overturning of pre-existing notions, and overthrowing of paradigms is possible. The latter property makes the scientific literature the best tool for producing large policy levers that serve to disorient congealed masses of resistance protecting the status-quo and break it down. Consequently, fresh findings and new papers are most useful in building levers, as they are the least scrutinized and cross-examined entities in the canon of scientific knowledge.
Owing to the above, science suddenly acquires a much more proximate, intimate connection to climate policy-making. If policy were based on the established, cross-verified scientific knowledge, it would be cause for little concern. But science functions in a dual role – it serves as broad justification for action undertaken, it is also used in overthrowing maneuvers and sudden coups.
With this, and contrary to what Ben Pile writes above, it is possible for a small mass of sceptics to suddenly acquire significant powers. These are none but owing to the same vicissitudes of science that makes fresh findings useful for activists – if they are inherently weak and flawed, they are easily overturned as well. And if the findings and claims are dramatic and extraordinary, the likelihood of their being wrong can almost be assured.
Thanks for these insights Shub, very interesting. My BSA talk was to STS scholars, who are very familiar with attempts to make democracy more participatory. This is where my proposition that sceptics are an ‘uninvited public’ comes from. Interesting that you think a small mass of sceptics can acquire significant powers. I will need to think whether there are similar cases in other science/policy areas. More on this in next post I hope…
acid rain thats another issue eating the paint off our vechicles lovely isn’t it? make your car stand out like a sore thumb what are we going to do about it? i know we will do w2hat the untied goverment does nothing just like those summit meeting there not summit meeting there beer meeting an high ball meeting everyone sits around to see who can get drunk fast they don’t make any headway they over look it they go for the booze party an girls what a fine time they have sitting around drinking the best champage an smoking stogies sound interesting ?????????????/
Ben, Shub and Graham. Thanks for these comments, heading off for rest of weekend now but these are really helpful, especially re the next post on politics & science.
Hi Warren,
Here is another sceptic theme that falls outside of your taxonomy. The idea that Climate Science is an immature field and is just not ready to be used as an input to policy or an input into anything else.
Some parts of science are more advanced than others. Astronomers can make correct predictions 100 years into the future. Chemists can make skilled guesses about a new material but they are still guesses. Botanists cannot make predictions at all and just describe what they find.
Climate Science is still on the start line- they just don’t know enough to make a correct prediction.
What is really sad is that they have no insight – they think they are up there with the big boys.
(Note: astronomers do not have “ensembles”. Neither do they get angry with people who have differing ideas. There is not a PR website called “Real Astronomy” )
I must second Jack Hughes’ view on the subject. As a graduate student I got a look under the hood of the GCMs of the era (admittedly a generation back) and it was clear that while the ideas were there the execution was not ready for prime time. Now that I work as a scientist in the private sector I have concerns that these immature models are serving as the basis for expensive, and possibly disastrous policy decisions. I have no doubt that climate change is underway but I have no faith whatsoever in the policies being suggested to alleviate the problems. What is of particular concern is that scientists with no real policy experience or understanding spend so much of their time advocating policies that have little or no chance of addressing the problems and instead pull necessary resources away from options that have a reasonable chance of making a difference.
Thanks for this Jack. Quite right that I missed this from my list, although I guess it is adjacent to the section on modelling. How does this fit with Jim Bouldin’s comment below about different branches of climate science? Are there particular branches which cause concern?
If Dr Schmidt’s marvelous models are so physics-based, why have they failed to predict the current & continuing stasis in global temperatures?
Why, when CO2 emissions are running between Dr Hansen’s scenarios B&A, are temperatures below those that scenario C predicted?
Why is it that when errors in “Professional Climatologists'” papers are highlighted by those outside of their inner circle, they are ignored, vilified or their findings are plagiarised by those in this inner circle and their names must not be mentioned?
The whole area of climate science has been corrupted as a political tool.
I agree with more than one of Gavin’s points, including in wishing you success in your efforts to characterize different types of climate science skepticism. However, this is not a simple or quick undertaking, and many/most of the science-specific discussions have already occurred, in the literature, in IPCC and national-level publications, and on various internet sites.
I completely agree with him that mixing up two entirely different types of science, so as to castigate the entire climate change science enterprise, is entirely misguided and a major mistake. No scientist I know would ever do that, and scientists as a whole are entirely unpersuaded by such “logic”. The fact that there are major inferential issues in extracting long term environmental trends from tree ring measurements has no bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of climate modeling, and indeed no bearing even on other branches of paleoclimatology, ones that use different proxies and different analytical methods. We take each issue one at a time–it’s the only logically justifiable way to proceed.
Similarly the argument that climate scientists are uniquely “corrupt” is not defensible, even if “Climategate” email messages have some bad stuff in them (and they do). I’m pretty much on the extreme end among scientists as far as I can tell, in my willingness to criticize scientific practices that I find to be a problem, and I have more familiarity with climate science than do most who are not specialists therein, and even I would not level such a charge. Am I willing to criticize bad science when I see it? Yep, more than willing; have already demonstrated that. Am I going to generalize such findings beyond what I have evidence for, so as to disparage an entire (and enormous) branch of science? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnope!
As for policy applications of the science, scientists have just as much right to make statements in that regard as anybody, in fact moreso, because they have a better understanding of the science issues involved. It’s essentially laughable when we have non-scientists telling us “don’t make policy statements” when they then turn right around and make policy statements based on their own *assertions* that stem straight from their political/economic world views. Frankly, they’re not very good about disguising that that’s what they’re doing, as we can see from a number of comments right in this thread. Moreover, for some of, the best way to insure that we *will* make some policy statements, is to have people like that telling us not to. Not going to fly.
Lastly, on Steve Bloom’s assertion that there is always an element of denial in skeptical arguments: no I completely disagree with that. Denial by definition involves a kind of willful ignorance or avoidance of something, and that is just not always the case.
Jim if you are referring to my note and my comment about policy, I would point out that I did not say that scientists shouldn’t address policy implications or advocate policy alternatives, I specifically made a point of criticizing scientists who spend “so much time” advocating policy.
There appears to be a cadre of climate scientists who are offended when taken to task on their research by outsiders and non-experts, but feel free to tell economists, sociologists and politicians how they should go about their business. Science is a primary input in good decision-making but it is not the ONLY input. Moreover, these researchers in an effort to drive the policy in their desired direction, can overstate the reliability of their results/predictions. Climate science is still in its infancy and GCMs are still relatively primitive in that major considerations (like clouds, secondary aerosols, feedback mechanisms and black carbon) are still not well handled (or handled at all). Overstating the reliability of forecasts is the surest way to lose credibility should those forecasts start to come up short.
As a former researcher who in my previous life worked on policy development/implementation, I can state that I am “skeptical” about the reliability of the forecasts and am concerned that the emphasis on decarbonizing our economy may not have the desired effect. If climate sensitivity is not as significant as suggested, then a large proportion of the monies spent decarbonizing may be poorly spent. If the recent research into black carbon is true then a greater emphasis should be placed on eliminating coal, in particular, as an energy source and monies should be dedicated to helping developing economies like China wean themselves off coal as an energy source. I could go on but the point is that a lot of the “skeptics” out there do not deny the reality of climate change but do not have faith in technical specialists who overstate the reliability of their research and are trying to drive policy based on their personal preferences.
Thanks Blair. I wonder whether the source of some public scepticism about climate change is really just a sub-set of a general scepticism in forecasts, whether that be weather, economics etc? The policy implications of this are the kind of incremental ‘muddling through’ approach which Charles Lindblom proposed 50 years ago. Of course, this is rather different from the grand decarbonisation designs which play a significant role in the climate debate. On a more practical level, interesting question as to whether policy priority should be ‘get off coal’ or ‘get on to renewables’.
Warren, I would suggest that some of the scepticism on the forecasts is linked to a distrust of the messengers coupled with reasonable doubt fostered by the Climategate releases. The releases appeared to indicate that some of the scientists involved in the discussion may have acted in a manner that was less that representative of the ideals of big s Science. As for the policy alternatives suggested, they have a strong statist flavour that less progressive voters find unpalatable.
The problem with muddling through in this case is that the process suggested involves a complete upheaval of the capitalist system and a move towards a command society. In a former life I spent a good deal of time with deep ecologists (antihumanist primitivists, Arcadians) who idealized a world with about one tenth of the current population and everyone living off the land. The academics I listen to on this topic reflect a lot of these views.
As for next generating power, I foresee lower carbon hydrocarbon coupled with nuclear and a measure of renewables, but the renewables available right now are not ideal. Solar uses tremendous quantities of rare earths and other exotic materials, wind is tremendously destructive to wildlife and intermittent tidal is not ready for prime time. Hydro is great where available but is not available in a lot of places.
skeptical on weather take a look around an see what has happen how hurricane kathrina hurricane sandy how about the ice bergs they are melting at a alraminly rate water has to go somewhere would you like it in your backyard? maybe you will be able to take a bath in it or go skinny dipping in it late at night sound like fun? try it you might like it
Jim, Warren- I agree with Blair King in his response: I did not mean to imply that science and policy should or can be kept separate- but that we should be careful to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. The point is that the expertise of a climate modeller or atmospheric physicist in their field does not qualify them to speak as an expert on policy which is a different field and one that is surely more democratic and participatory than narrow areas of scientific specialization. In the climate debate I see the two being used interchangeably- one merging seemlessly into the other like a sleight of hand- “97% of climate scientists agree CO2 is warming the planet….therefore anyone who doesnt think Kyoto is the best way of tackling the issue is a denialist.”
I also do not think that climate science is uniquely corrupted- another example would be in medicine with the withholding of trial data, a cause being taken up prominently by Ben Goldacre. The issue with climate science is that the implications of policy decisions are more far-reaching in their effects since they effect the world’s use of energy, fundamental to everything else, and precisely because they demand global policies. So I would think it wiser for someone in Gavin’s position to just stick to his field of expertise, I feel he loses credibility when offering thoughts on policy without clarifying this. For many if not most skeptics it is after all the way the scientific evidence is being used that is the issue, not necessarily the actual science- but the way it is interpreted in terms of far-reaching action which necessarily involves over-arching views about the whole course of human society.
Climate change is framed as an existential threat- I dont think we can know that, not at least that AGW is unique in this. There are so many other existential threats that we seem to have overcome through our ingenuity and technology which we have had to face through thousands of years. The notion that as a globe, on a global level, that we can actually reduce significantly CO2 when a couple of billion people have not yet had the benefit of the fossil fuels that have allowed us to survive and prosper is implausible; this implausibility is multiplied by the uncertainty of what the effects of our actions may have on the climate anyway. We have always had to deal with climate threats, and we always will.
Lomborg presents the main alternative policy- R&D into cheaper forms of clean energy; in the meantime humans are on a long-term path to decarbonisation anyway from coal-oil-gas, eventually nuclear, perhaps ultimately hydrogen. When energy security and supply, and other more pressing concerns, are existential for hundreds of millions anyway, why should AGW have such a special status?
This brings some more clarity to the scientist/policy relationship thanks. As regards alternative policies, the Hartwell Paper is worth a read. Also, David Demeritt has written about how climate policy’s construction as a global policy followed the use of global circulation models. Anyway, more politics later…
I suspect our disagreement is largely terminological, Jim. Denial in my view involves bolstering a policy stance by either ignoring or discounting some aspect of the science for reasons not rooted in the science. (And we just saw plenty of examples of it in the responses to your comment, didn’t we?) I reserve use of “skepticism” for its original sense.
Just to add, that bolstering can be done either consciously or not. And yes, this does mean that there are plenty of denialists on our side of the fence.
only just saw this response- this is fascinating! What do you think they are denying if they are on “your side” of the fence? again, can you give an example?
could you elaborate on this please Steve? give an example of what this refers to?
Examples on “my side” are endless, although I suppose the worst of them are the very common unjustified claims of emissions policy efficacy, in particular the pretense that current plans to stay under 2C have any chance of accomplishing that. Such a view seemed reasonable ~20 years ago when the 2C idea was first broached, but the very limited action taken in the intervening time has made it cease to be so.
One could add the 2C goal itself (um, scientific basis for identifying it as a clear demarcation between dangerous and not?) and note that some scientists buy into it, indeed came up with it to begin with, but in their case the motivation wasn’t denial so much as a desire to get the policy apparatus moving in the right direction. Politicians do like their distant goals.
On a more individual level, one that struck me recently was the claim from someone on the Arctic Sea Ice blog a few weeks ago basically resurrecting the old Ewing and Donn ice age cycle idea. It’s not clear that he had been previously exposed to the refutation, but clearly wasn’t very accepting of the facts when he did get told. People attracted to a hypothesis because of it’s beauty (i.e. apparent symmetry) just aren’t going to like those ugly facts. AFAICT, the underlying non-scientific reason in this instance was the hope that some sort of countervailing mechanism might send the Arctic back into a cooling trend.
As for “your side,” your longer remark above serves as an excellent example, although there are plenty of others.
interesting, thanks, but your response seems contradictory-
-but your use of the definitive “denialist” suggests there are no choices, only hard science-based facts in what we do, which you are not really clear about; indeed a lot of those who you call “denialist” would probably agree with your views on “denialism” on “your side of the fence”- it is one of the reasons they are skeptical! Your use of the word still seems to have only one meaning, to shut dont the debate- there is no debate in your mind, only crystal clear unambiguous facts, both about the science and the policy response. “..a very bad idea..” is simply not a scientific statement, especially when you agree that a lot of the policy responses being proposed to deal with the issue are themselves questionable. Sounds to me you have a lot in common with those you call denialist!
Thanks Jim for your comment here and the kind words on your own blog. As mentioned above, any taxonomy of climate criticism has to take into account the different types of science involved. Similarly, I would be sceptical that climate scientists are uniquely ‘corrupt’, assuming that they are at all. However, perhaps that doesn’t matter as the focus of the arguments is on climate science, so the position in other disciplines isn’t seen as particularly relevant (and, of course, we’re unlikely to get access to a batch of hacked/leaked emails in order to check).
Re scientists having as much right as anyone else to make policy statements, of course they are members of society as well as professional scientists. I guess the question is whether it has any affect on their public credibility – this is different from their professional credibility, which may be less susceptible to policy comments. Is there something about making a policy statement which makes one appear more closed to debate than making a scientific statement? Perhaps that perception is there, if one thinks of politics as based on assertions and values, in contrast to science’s scepticism and curiosity.
Jim Bouldin,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I would like only to add a couple of points.
It is of course foolish to discount all of climate science as ‘uniquely corrupt’. However, it is also foolish to not carefully consider if there is evidence that climate scientists are more likely to share a specific set of philosophical/political values than most people, and whether or not those values might influence the practice of climate science, at least in how it is presented/communicated to elected officials and the non-scientist public, and perhaps in what research is done and what is published. Most climate scientists really do seem to care quite a lot about environmental issues and about the need to preserve Earth’s ‘natural state’. No problem with that. But it seems to me there is plenty of evidence (some of the shenanigans in the UEA emails being clear examples, along with hyped conclusions in papers, and associated hyped press releases) that some well known climate scientists do indeed allow their personal views/values to influence their actions as scientists.
I completely agree with you about the distinction between skepticism and denial. Based on all the evidence I have seen, I think the true climate sensitivity is uncertain, but it is more likely somewhere near 2C per doubling of CO2 at equilibrium than above 3C per doubling of CO2 (as the IPCC AR4 suggests). That makes me skeptical of the IPCC AR4 estimate. I think the data on sea level increase suggests continued, relatively modest increases (35-50 cm) through 2100, but that extreme increases (75 cm to 2 meters or more by 2100) are simply not credible. (There are lots of journal publications which seem to support my conclusions about sea level increases.) Yet there are those who will say that any deviation from conclusions of extreme and dire consequences automatically makes me a ‘denier’. I have practiced science for more than 35 years, and I think there is no clearer evidence of the politicization of climate science than the use of such labels by climate scientists.
Thanks Steve. I find the issue about the values of scientists really interesting. If I, as a scientist, made a discovery which I thought posed a great threat to society, how plausible is it that I might continue to act as a ‘pure scientist’, as some argue, and not comment publicly on my views? I take your point about how values might affect practices ‘in the lab’ rather than outside, I just wonder how that is managed in practice.
I too don’t really know how to ‘manage’ a situation where personal views may influence this publicly important science, save for those outside the process to be diligent in critically examining what is being done within it. There are instances where most people recognize a potential for bias (for example, in drug trials), and so set uniform quality standards for the conduct of research, standards we believe are in the public’s interest. The difference is that in areas like clinical trials, the potential problem of bias is widely recognized and understood, so instituting quality standards to guard against bias is broadly supported, while in climate science most of those involved appear reject even the possibility of bias, even if many from outside the field see signs of problems (once again, the UEA emails are a clear example). There are few fields where political views/values have much potential for introducing a field-wide bias… nobody worries about the political views of people doing protein folding calculations. But the apparent consensus of views/values among climate scientists is worrisome to many outside the field.
if your not part of the problem than you have to be part of the solution you can’t be a skeptic all the time fine facts an put them to go use
Jim makes a good point that “most of the science-specific discussions have already occurred”, and on his blog (I’m not sure if you noticed his blog post on this post there) he writes “many of the comments consist mostly of the same old opinionated assertions so typical of these discussions”.
So my question to you Warren is where are you going with this from the point of view of your social science research? Presumably you do not want to go into the same old arguments that have been discussed ad nauseam at various blogs for the last decade or so.
So far, you have provided a fair summary of what the sceptics say on the science aspects – a challenging task since there is such a wide range of views expressed. This has been welcomed by Bishop Hill, and it will be interesting to see part two on policy aspects. But while this is an important first step, I don’t think this in itself would constitute a publishable piece of social science research, would it? So what are you going to be able to add, from the social science perspective, that hasn’t been said already?
Paul, an excellent question. I certainly don’t wish to rerun old arguments (although the extent to which the climate debate consists of old and new arguments might be interesting in itself). Here are just three possibilities, always open to suggestions:
1) If ‘denial’ is a way of closing down debate, then getting past the term to more nuanced arguments implies an opening up of debate. So this could signal a move to more fruitful engagement between sceptics and scientists. This is a point I made at the end of the BSA presentation. The most notable, fruitful responses to sceptics have arguably come from scientists such as Richard Betts and Tamsin, rather than policy makers. This is interesting to me. Developing this theme would require a rather brutal question: “what’s the point (of engagement)?” As Gavin points out above, we all only have so many hours in the day; why should scientists devote their most precious resource – time – to discussions with individuals who they perceive to have a very different understanding of the world around them?
2) It may be that this taxonomy can form the basis of a paper. As has just been pointed out to me, it is based on *arguments* rather than individuals. Therefore it doesn’t seek to attach labels to people, merely review the argumentative landscape. A full paper would require more in-depth analysis of online discussions, but I think this is a potential point of difference from some previous analyses of scepticism.
3) Finally, I’m still open-minded about research direction. Hopefully I will get a few more comments on this and the next post, and that will provide some direction about which direction to move in. I try to maintain as much flexibility as possible regarding research plans, chiefly so I can remain responsive to what is happening ‘on the ground’ (perhaps, for online studies this should be renamed ‘in the cloud’)!
“The most notable, fruitful responses to sceptics have arguably come from scientists such as Richard Betts and Tamsin, rather than policy makers.”
Interesting that you would think so. Fruitful in what way?
there seems like alot of sceptics those are the kind that probably are that global warning isn’t real well stand out in a parking lot with your back to the sun than let me know how you feel make sure its over 100 degrees than tell me how you feel or i should say how does the sun feel on your is it hot or luke warm or even better burning your skin up let me know will you
denial is a cut up meaning they don’t want to face the problem at hand they sound like they want to overlooked it well if everyone is denial how would we solve problems an trouble what happen just specalation if a meteour was going to hit earth an kill an manime alot of people what would we do? deny it oh thats easy people take the easy way out everyday on problems an troubles hellva way to think untied we stand or untied we will fall like dominoes i rather be a volunteer than a denial victim would’nt you?
Warren, I admire your search for common ground and a way to move the climate ‘debate’ forward. But I have to say that I think you fail on a fundamental level to understand the nature of climate change ‘scepticism’. The bottom line is that the vast majority of ‘climate sceptic’ individuals, and in aggregate the whole of the ‘climate sceptic’ movement, are anti-sceptics.
Others here have addressed your apparent (and to me misguided) dislike of modelling as a research tool, so I’m not going to go into specifics at that level.
More broadly I genuinely believe that your rejection of the term ‘denier’ – presumably at least in part motivated by your desire not to alienate ‘sceptics’ – is misguided and, dare I say it, perhaps reveals a degree of naivety about the nature of ‘climate scepticism’ that I myself suffered (for want of a better term) from for many years. Denialism is, superficially, an endlessly complex and shifting phenomenon but is at bottom a set of largely rhetorical methods. As such it is comprehensible and definable.
It’s quite understandable to want to find a ‘middle ground’ or a ‘way forward’ or a way to ‘accommodate different views’. But two things, to my mind and in my experience, mitigate against this as a workable approach in the field of climate science and public policy / understanding of AGW:
1. Denialism (bearing in mind my comments above, and in my other post on this page) is encountered almost universally in discussions about AGW.
Denialism is not about finding where the balance of real probabilities lies or where the evidence really points (don’t just take my word for it: there’s plenty of discussion of and evidence for this out there in the literature). It’s about rejecting anything that contradicts ones existing point of view. An accidental by-product, if you like, is that it is in some cases about undermining the public understanding of science. Therefore ‘engaging’ with that majority of ‘climate sceptics’ who are in fact deniers is doomed to fail, if your objective is to find a way to a genuine understanding and agreement. This was the cause of much anxiety and angst for me, when I first started to try to ‘debate’ with ‘climate sceptics’, relying on the rational argument-to-evidence approach that I naively thought at the time was a universally accepted norm.
2. The fallacy of the middle ground.
Sometimes things are either yes or no, black or white, one thing or another. While there are shades of grey within the detail of climate science the balance of probabilities is, unless one misunderstands the nature of climate science in particular and science in general, that the world is headed towards some very unpleasant changes in climate, and that those changes are largely down to human activity. There is no ‘middle ground’ there, if one accepts science as an approach to understanding the physical world.
Warren-
Have you seen Tamsin Edward’s approach to a taxonomy of climate views?
http://allmodelsarewrong.com/the-sceptical-compass/
Tamsin’s taxonomy is a good general framework, against which your ‘families’ mostly seem to be descriptive depth of her ‘unconvinced’ and ‘lukewarmer’ groups. I think both her taxonomy and your ‘families’ are too general to cover all the nuances of individual opinion/knowledge/belief, but as long as they are used as a starting point and not a definition, both could be very useful in creating a basis for discussion.
To expand a little, I’ll add that I believe that no complete taxonomy can ever be drawn of the varied camps relating to any human endeavour – we are far too complex for that. A taxonomy can be useful as a starting point, though, if treated as descriptive, not prescriptive. Kind of like models, I guess – “All models are wrong, but some are useful”.
Lots of good points in the comments here, too. The only note of caution I’d make is that there are far too many solidly entrenched positions in this debate, many of which are on display here. Take your time sorting it out, the debate’s not going away anytime soon…
Looking forward to part 2.
Hi kch – thanks for your comment. Totally agree with your general point about taxonomies and human complexity. However, what I’ve sought to do here is to introduce more complexity to a debate too often portrayed as ‘warmist vs denier’. We need ways of understanding an infinitely messy world – categories, labels, taxonomies and models are ways of doing this. The problem comes when our world view becomes too closely associated with a particular model, or ‘lens’ if you prefer. When that happens then the simplification that comes from categorisation becomes obfuscation.
Indeed, Tamsin’s sceptical compass was an influence which I will be referencing in the next post. There’s also the ‘denier. alarmist etc’ categories on the Yale Forum.
Thanks for the link – I’d missed that piece.
It’s certainly an interesting discussion of the terminology we use – both for self description and towards others – and our general inability to determine actual positions from those terms. As such, I think Wihbey’s piece is informative but not really useful (and possibly harmful) in and of itself – it requires extension into the type of taxonomy Tamsin Edwards and yourself are offering to be a good starting point for discussion and debate. At least Whibey gets that it is a complex problem (the Six Americas approach left me cold with it’s reliance on a single linear scale of belief/knowledge).
The comment thread is particularly interesting – lots of good dismissive labelling on display there, and very little attempt to actually discuss Wihbey’s piece.
“Take your time sorting it out, the debate’s not going away anytime soon…”
Nothing entrenched about that view!
Touche.
But would you disagree? If so, why?
The “debate” will go away when climate events make it impossible to carry on with it. Current trends do make me think that will be relatively soon, but that could mean five years or fifty years. At that point (and of course it won’t be a single point in time), I predict that the bulk of those who are now active denialists will become ardent advocates for geoengineering.
Ah. I see the problem. My ‘soon’ referenced the current blogospheric debate – which I would have thought reasonably clear from the context – not the overall problem. Of course, even by your time frame, a minimum of five years leaves Warren lots of time to think about his response…
My thanks to Blair, Graham, Steve F, Steve B, and Warren for their clarifying comments, which were all helpful.
It may be of interest to relate my experiences in this field, which I have been watching for a long time.
I first became interested in this topic in the late 1990s, reading a blog from the late John Daly in which he noted the difficulty he had discussing sea-level changes with the Australian Met Office. Rather than discussing his criticisms they elected to ignore and smear him – and yet his comments on the sea-level datum on the ‘Isle of the Dead’ seemed to me to be valid. The web is full of theories which look correct then turn out to be wild and mistaken – but it was unusual to find an official body so anxious to demean a run-of-the-mill ‘mad theorist’, and the language the Met Office used was not like the usual official denials – it read more like an activist smearing his opponent.
Then in the early 2000s, I found the Climate Audit site, and read Steve McIntyre’s story of the attempts to get data from Mann, and the refusal of Nature to publish his response paper to Mann et al 1998. Again, the thing that rang untrue was the activist nature of the interchange – these were not scientists replying to a comment – they were political activists trying to undermine an opponent.
If, in the early days, these scientists had engaged with their critics and responded politely, there would have been no story. Instead, they used a variety of underhand techniques to attack their critics as if they were personal enemies. Apparently valid points were not responded to – instead editors were lent upon to refuse publication, and in one case removed when they did not comply. The effect of this was to spotlight the criticisms rather than conceal them. Then criticisms started to be addressed by simply producing other papers repeating the error and claiming that these were new, independent confirmations. This was accompanied by a sustained attack on the few critics and their followers on the various blogs. Amazingly, it was claimed that these ‘deniers’ were part of a well-funded misinformation campaign and shouldn’t be listened to – anyone who followed Climate Audit, WUWT or Tallbloke’s Talkshop in the early days could see at a glance that these were shoe-string enterprises.
The effect of all this aggression on the part of the official scientific establishment was to build up and reinforce a groundswell of opinion which was hostile to them and critical of anything they said. And it soon became clear that the science was not as ‘settled’ as had been claimed – in fact, it became obvious that the major drivers behind it were activists taking advantage of an upswing in world temperatures to push a ‘green’ agenda of de-industrialisation.
This, of course, is where discussions on ‘policy’ come from. True scientists are quite divorced from ‘policy’. To take an example, meteorites and asteroids on a collision course with Earth pose an obvious threat of major loss of life – but astronomers are not combining to march on London or Washington demanding funds for a solution. They have identified the problem – it is up to society what it might want to do about it. If a ‘scientist’ gets involved in policy, their science should be viewed with much scepticism – the obvious pressures to come up with ‘the right answer’ are so huge. The Stern Report is just one example of poor technical work masquerading as an independent study, while in reality being a political manifesto.
I don’t know why the social scientists are getting involved in this topic at the moment. To my mind it is a fairly straightforward example of grass-roots groups working against a major established political movement which has claimed scientific justification where none exists. In the early days the only force driving those grass roots was a deep concern that scientific truth should not be prostituted. By now, of course, there are so many players in the game that almost any assertion that is made can find some fact to back it up – manufactured by Lewandowsky or otherwise…
i became aware of it have you ever stood in a parking lot with the sun beating down your back no trees around an it is a hot humid day over !00 degrees how does it feel? not good now does it maybe we should get our reprentatives to back up what is happening they seem to over looked global warming oh thats right they live in mansions an chaurffered limos with air conditioning well mr high mucky muck the next summit meeting you have lets not overlooked global warning shit or get off the pot for the rest of america get my drift mr high mucky muck
“Apparently valid points were not responded to – instead editors were lent upon to refuse publication, and in one case removed when they did not comply.”
Hmm, no wonder you call yourself dodgy!
Evidence, please.
Maybe you are not familiar with the CG emails
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !”
“I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review – Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
“Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work — must get rid of von Storch too”
” If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted ”
” It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically,”
Maybe I am, and maybe your reply was entirely unresponsive to the point I made. Crap papers that shouldn’t get published sometimes do get published, and that upsets people. That people complain among themselves re editorial decisions and editors is a given. That dodgy geezers with entirely unscientific motivations would whine about points they think valid not being addressed by the scientific community is also no surprise, there being no shortage of cranks. None of that is unique to climate science. But finally we get to the substance: Who got removed? I await your reply.
you know how hard it is to get the big wigs to leave everyone has a price tag on them ttry that money talks bull walks get my drift if they don’t stand with you than they will stand against you your decision have a bless day
valid points are not responded to because they are big wigs they think we are little people we don’t count in society so wonder the world has gone to a hand basket nobody helping anymore greed corporate greed no one cares or else they don’t believe what a hell of a world we live in
well did anybody see that movie day after tomorrow yeah sure it had special effects but not many it was base on fact i hope you know how to swim if you don’t you had better go the y m c a i hear they give out swimming lessons an teach you how to stay afloat you might need them one of these days they might come in handy you never know its either sink or swim take your best options i hope an pray you choose wisely it might save your life that is if you want to live for something everyone wants to live for some thing god country mom an dad children family etc
i would’nt do it either if you were not making strides to solve the problem at hand an that is what is happening to global warming they hardly making progress they make peenny ante srides like very tiny strides thats not much isn’t it? the goverment is offensive we must stand as one an make strides to global warming an such if we don’t than we will be in the movie day after tomorrow you want that? hope you can swim the butterfly stroke an make strides good luck
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