In one of the comments to Daniel’s post on the stolen climate emails, techskeptic points to a wonderful chart at Information is Beautiful. The author did a great deal of gruntwork to lay out the various arguments of “The Global Warming Skeptics” vs. “The Scientific Consensus.” As far as I can tell, it’s a legitimately balanced view of both sides, complete with citations. If you’re confused about the various issues and accusations being bandied back and forth, there are worse places to start. This is a small piece of the full chart.
Of course, there is no such thing as a purely objective and judgment-free presentation of data, no matter how scrupulously the data itself may be collected; if nothing else, we make choices about what data to present. And a side-by-side comparison chart like this can’t help but give a slightly misleading impression of the relative merits of the arguments, by putting the conclusions of an overwhelming majority of honest scientists up against the arguments of a fringe collection of politically-motivated activists. But it’s certainly good to see the actual issues arrayed in point-counterpoint format.
Still, there remains a somewhat intractable problem: when people are arguing about issues that necessarily require expert knowledge that not everyone can possibly take the time to acquire for themselves, how do we make judgments about who to believe?
This problem has been brought home by the incredibly depressing news that James Randi has come out in favor of global-warming denialism (via PZ Myers). Randi is generally a hero among fans of reason and skepticism, so it’s especially embarrassing to see how incredibly weak his reasoning is here. It basically amounts to: “The climate is complicated. And scientists don’t know everything. And I admit I don’t know much about the field. Therefore … we have good reason to distrust the overwhelming majority of experts!” Why Randi chose not to apply his vaunted powers of skepticism to the motivations behind the denialists remains a mystery.
This gets to the heart of why I’ve always been skeptical of the valorization of “skepticism.” I don’t want to be skeptical for the sake of being skeptical — I want to be right. To maximize my chances of being right, I will try to collect what information I can and evaluate it rationally. But part of that information has to include the nature of the people making arguments on either side of a debate. If one side consists of scientists who have spent years trying to understand a complicated system, and the other is a ragtag collection of individuals with perfectly obvious vested interests in the outcome, it makes sense to evaluate their claims accordingly.
By all means, we should apply our own powers of reason to every interesting problem. But when our reasoning leads to some conclusion at odds with the apparent consensus of a lot of smart people who seem to know what they’re talking about — whether it’s on the nature of dark energy, the best way to quantize gravity, the most effective route to health care reform, or the state of the environment — the burden is on us to understand the nature of that difference and try to reconcile it, not to take refuge in “experts don’t know everything” and related anti-intellectual piffle.
DaveH @ 20: What is it about tree ring data that makes it unreliable after 1960 but reliable before then? This is a mostly non-rhetorical question–there are lots of people assuming what you said is correct, but I don’t understand why. What makes post-1960 conditions different from all other conditions in the history covered by tree rings?
@ PresqueVu #23,
What you said is of course untrue. That is not to say you were deliberately lying. You may simply be mistaken.
Would you care to tell me which paragraph?
Here’s an actual sentence from p97 of the IPCC 2001a report:
Thus, humankind has dramatically altered the
chemical composition of the global atmosphere with substantial
implications for climate.
What makes post-1960 conditions different from all other conditions in the history covered by tree rings?
Well, firstly, let’s be clear that reconstructions of past temperatures are not reliant on tree ring data.
What is certain is that temperature extrapolated from tree ring data before 1960 closely matched the temperature as worked out from using all the other methods.
Since 1960, other factors such as acid rain and air pollution have been significant to tree ring growth. Climatologists go into it further here (1998) : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/full/391678a0.html . Incidentally, note that they were not “hiding the decline” but writing about it in Nature!
Posts #23 and #27 highlight the dilemma of what and whom to rely upon. I have never read the page in question, and I do not intend to. PresqueVu, in post #23, presents what I presume is intended as a paraphrase telling me that “…the science is only 10-50% probable.” I am not sure what that statement means. DaveH, in post #27, claims that Presque is either lying or mistaken, and I cannot figure out what Presque even meant, although I believe I catch his drift.
Vita brevis, tempus fugit. I lack both the time and inclination to check most of this stuff, yet I do form opinions that, of necessity, rely on some of what I hear. Perhaps I protest too much. I have enjoyed both the OP and the comments on this thread.
Brian,
Even if you don’t read the page, quick searches would show you that neither “unlikely” nor “10%” nor “50%” can be found on it.
The page (which #23 probably chose at random) is in fact unequivocal. Apart from the sentence I already quoted there is this:
“The reason the Earth’s surface is this warm is the presence of
greenhouse gases, which act as a partial blanket for the longwave
radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as
the natural greenhouse effect. The most important greenhouse
gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide. The two most abun-
dant constituents of the atmosphere – nitrogen and oxygen – have
no such effect. Clouds, on the other hand, do exert a blanketing
effect similar to that of the greenhouse gases; however, this effect
is offset by their reflectivity, such that on average, clouds tend to
have a cooling effect on climate (although locally one can feel the
warming effect: cloudy nights tend to remain warmer than clear
nights because the clouds radiate longwave energy back down
to the surface). Human activities intensify the blanketing effect
through the release of greenhouse gases.”
My bold.
DaveH,
I think you ran the table.
Re #25
Having read Randi’s actual statement, and assuming that he is genuinely skeptical, it appears that one of the main problems here is the ability (learned as part of one’s expertise) to know what information is useful data, and what is noise/background/cover/alteration.
In the natural sciences, the set of total available information is much larger than the set of useful data. Without knowing what to look for, it is easy to come to a “this is all too complex” conclusion.
Sean, how can you possibly make the statement “As far as I can tell, it’s a legitimately balanced view of both sides, …” when the source of your information uses the title ‘climate-change-deniers-vs-the-consensus’ in the link and then the author professes to state that “Realclimate” was the primary source of all the information? Those two things alone should make it obvious that the information has been produced from an AGW perspective and is not a balanced point of view. But I assume that because you also use the term “denialist” that you aren’t really interested in the validity of the skeptical viewpoint.
SC said:”whether it’s on the nature of dark energy, the best way to quantize gravity, the most effective route to health care reform,”
You know, one of the strongest reasons I have for being an atheist is that I find utterly incredible the religious idea that there is an objective “fact of the matter” about moral questions. Now SC tells us that there is a “fact of the matter” about health care reform, and that there exist apolitical “experts” who can tell us what to do about that little problem. Amazing. Sean is a Christer! Jeez. So to speak.
MichaelG:
Because climate change deniers exist and there is also a general consensus among climate scientists.
And Real Climate is run by climate scientists. Where else would you expect someone to go for information about climate science? To a medical doctor or computer scientist?
“Skeptics” have had nearly a decade to persuade the scientific community, and yet, the consensus has only grown stronger as the science has matured and become overwhelming.
I suppose that it would depend what someone is skeptical about. It is reasonable, at this point, to argue about potential solutions, and perhaps even the projected magnitude of the impact, but there is little room for maneuver regarding the general conclusions.
It’s really not that difficult to spot a denier, to be honest. If you don’t understand the science, and particularly if you haven’t even bothered to learn the basics, you really shouldn’t be making any proclamations about the science, at all, unless you are simply asking questions in good faith.
But even if we look at some of the more well known “skeptics”, who do at least understand some of the science, they regularly make inexcusable errors, and then when called on them, tend to ignore the corrections and repeat the same “mistakes” time and again. That is a sure sign of either an incompetent, or an intellectually dishonest charlatan.
Anyone who is genuinely interested in working toward an understanding of reality will be quite happy to be corrected, and will then endeavor to avoid making enormous whoppers in the future. And those kinds of people are generally honest with their readers, and avoid making ignorant statements, as they fear losing credibility. Those who aren’t interested in realty are generally none of the above, go to computer scientists and pretty much anyone but the real experts for their information, and also have a habit of implicating thousands of scientists in far fetched and deeply offensive conspiracy theories.
To all:
Only a subset of tree rings diverge from the other methods after 1960. All of the others continue to correlate with thermometer readings, as well as all other records. We don’t know exactly why this happens, although there have been several peer-reviewed papers that have attempted to explain it, so it has hardly been kept a secret, contrary to what the Glenn Becks (well known climate scientist, of course) of the world have been saying.
It’s all going to hell in a handcart. The russians have now joined the denying cause:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/
And all because the AGW proponents thought it would be a good idea to bias the data to support their arguments.
Damian, You have completely missed the point of my issue with Sean’s claim and I have purposely steered clear of the relative scientific merits of either side of the climate debate so as to not confuse the issue.
Sean stated that it was a balanced viewpoint of the various arguments between “The Global Warming Skeptics” and “The Scientific Consensus.” However this is not what the readers are presented. Instead we have a presentation of a pro AGW viewpoint that aims to debunk a representation of the skeptics viewpoint. Furthermore, the skeptics are labeled as deniers. I’m sorry, but that is not balanced.
Investigating further, I discovered that the author of this work is David McCandless, who describes himself as a London-based writer, designer and author. Hardly an expert in the field of climate science and gives away his bias by starting his blog entry with “I’m fascinated by climate deniers. How could anyone deny the climate change is happening?” He then goes on to thank Gavin Schmidt for his assistance.
As to the rest of your unsubstantiated ramblings and accusations, I really have no idea what point you are trying to make, except to make it obvious on which side your opinions lie.
As far as I can tell, none of the writers on this blog, nor any of the commenters have been paid to read the papers, and to provide a determination on whether or not AGW is hype or not.
After I accepted the job of VP of Engineering at a company designing an ethanol plant a few years ago, along with a percentage ownership of the project, I had to look very carefully at AGW. This was necessary in order to make an analysis of how long government subsidies would exist for reduction of CO2. My conclusion was that the AGW was bad science, that world temperatures were steadily reducing, and that the political will behind CO2 reduction would fail by 2012, but that subsidies for oil import replacement would continue.
Now the situation is that 1/3 of the AGW world has been shown to be unethical and unscientific. The emails are not the most damaging part of the release. Their data has been released to the skeptic side which will be publishing papers based on it shortly. The other two climate centers will soon be forced to make their own FOI releases and will also fall into disrepute.
If you want to understand climate from the point of view of a particle physicist you have to read the CLOUD proposals at CERN, and only then make a judgement. Click the link or google “CERN-SPSC-2000-021”.
I’m reminded of the physicists I knew from the mid 1970s who were the last true believers in Communism. They were still arguing that the Soviet Union was a people’s paradise even after the Jews started getting out and telling the true story. Their claim was that “oh, those are just stories from people who were unhappy, that’s why they left.” The definition of human could be “the animal that believes its own BS”, and this applies to scientists just as much as to anyone else, especially when they are outside their area of specialty.
There is a strong “us vs. them” mentality developing in these discussions. I always thought skepticism was good for the science. Apparently not the case.
One of the points made by the skeptics is the lack of reproducibility of these graphs. Yes, I’ve been taught all along that this is a key point for credible scientific work. Another thing that goes against my formal education is that I’ve never seen confidence levels or error bars associated with these graphs that sell the idea to the public.
“Sean stated that it was a balanced viewpoint of the various arguments between “The Global Warming Skeptics” and “The Scientific Consensus.” However this is not what the readers are presented. Instead we have a presentation of a pro AGW viewpoint that aims to debunk a representation of the skeptics viewpoint. Furthermore, the skeptics are labeled as deniers. I’m sorry, but that is not balanced.”
Are you a journalist? I only ask, because most of them appear to believe that if a scientist claims that the earth is (very close to) an oblate spheroid, then “balance” somehow dictates that they ask for the opinion of a flat earther. This is palpable nonsense, of course, as is your claim that balance requires a fair look at both what the scientists say, as well as the pseudo-skeptics.
Balance actually requires that when looking at an issue you should take in to account the relative expertize of those involved, placing particular importance on a consensus of relevant scientists. It emphatically does not mean that you should present two ideas as if they have equal merit.
To “balance” an argument such as this, given the weight of evidence and expertize on the side of AGW, the “skeptics” would need an extraordinary amount of evidence and argument in their favor. In actual fact, they have very little.
“Investigating further, I discovered that the author of this work is David McCandless, who describes himself as a London-based writer, designer and author. Hardly an expert in the field of climate science”
But he is doing what is both ethical and rational, which is to place a far greater emphasis on the climate scientists than anyone else. What other alternative do non-experts have? To trust non-scientists and non-climatologists? If you have citations from the peer-reviewed literature that refute anything that he has said, please reveal them, and then let him know that he has made errors.
And this doesn’t work both ways, either. If you wish to argue against a consensus, you have very few options. They include doing the work that is necessary to fully understand the science, and then either taking part in the scientific process, or, at the very least, taking your doubts to the relevant scientists and discussing it with them.
Anything else is, in my opinion, unethical, particularly with a matter of such import. The scientific process dictates that you must spend however much time is necessary to have your ideas accepted by the other scientists in that field. And if they are not, that is just hard luck, I’m afraid. You won’t win anyone over by starting a blog as have many “skeptics” (and non-climate scientists), rather than fight the battle in the market place of scientific ideas (the literature).
Again, that is a sure sign of someone that you really should be skeptical about.
“As to the rest of your unsubstantiated ramblings and accusations, I really have no idea what point you are trying to make, except to make it obvious on which side your opinions lie.”
Well, to be fair, I’ve never hidden the fact that it somehow appeals to me to accept the overwhelming consensus among relevant scientists. It’s crazy talk, I know, because I usually ask the local plumber to cut my hair and an illiterate electrician looks after my accounting.
Delingpole fails at journalism. Again.
A solitary Russian newspaper (Kommersant – lit. “The Businessman”) reported claims by “the Institute of Economic Analysis”, based in Moscow, that the Hadley Center for Climate Change cherrypicked Russian meteorological data.
This story was gleefully swallowed by “a libertarian conservative who writes brilliant books and brilliant articles, and is really great on TV, radio and the internet too.”
Since Delingpole is, at best, too lazy to check his sources, others will have to do it for him.
So, who the hell are the Institute of Economic Analysis, and what would they know about climate science?
The IEA was created by Andrey Nikolayevich Illarionov , a Russian libertarian economist and former economic policy advisor to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. A well known global warming skeptic, Illarionov is currently employed by the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, a pro-free market, libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The IEA retains close links with the Cato Institute. The IEA website reports on a recent joint conference.
It seems that once again we have a smear story from the rumour mill that has absolutely nothing to do with climatology.
As a physics Phd, but now a working engineer specialising in open ended non-linear dynamics i am deeply shocked by the reliance on “climate models” being promoted by many posters of this blog. The fact is we can only create models which “mimick” the chaotic properties of the type of systems in question. Using the models as some sort of empirical device is going to lead us up the garden path. Having worked with similar models in an attempt to decribe far less complex systems than the climate I can guarantee all that current models are at best primitive descriptors of the probably infinite variables/initial conditions which will affect our climate.
That does not make me sceptic about anthro induced climate change, but my working experience makes me very suspicious of claims regarding GCM accuracy in simulating climate reality (not climate idealistion).
People appear to have forgotten important lessons learnt starting from Newton—>Poincare—->Lorenz etc…
The hubristic statements of certainty regaridng how our climate will change based on projections from GMCs is, frankly laughable.
MichaelG, you have completely missed Damian’s point, as you yourself admit:
“I really have no idea what point you are trying to make”
Seems to me, he quite clearly explained *why* the left side of the chart is labeled “Deniers”, by defining for you what constitutes a Denier. Here is my summation of his definition:
* [do not] understand the science [because they have] not bothered to learn the basics
* regularly make [factual] errors
* ignore the corrections [to those errors] and repeat the same “mistakes” time and again.
* have a habit of implicating thousands of scientists in […] conspiracy theories.
You say you “steered clear of the relative scientific merits of either side of the climate debate so as to not confuse the issue.” But this *is* the issue! Once you understand the merits of the science, you are left with no other option than to label a denier a denier – someone who denies the overwhelming data!
Let’s imagine the chart was about biblical creationism vs. evolutionary biology; would you want the left side to be labeled “Darwinism Skeptics”, to be fair and balanced to the debate? At which point do you declare the debate over? How much data is enough?
Sean in the OP and Brian137 raised interesting points on how we make decisions to determine who is telling the truth in a debate. Damian noted that for climate science:
” ‘Skeptics’ have had nearly a decade to persuade the scientific community, and yet, the consensus has only grown stronger as the science has matured and become overwhelming.”
This growing consensus can be tracked in the IPCC reports, or more informally:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/04/23/survey-tracks-scientists-growing-climate-concern.html
I first heard of AGW in the late 90s, from an apocalyptic Greenpeace hippie (his own label). It was one of many doomsday scenarios he would go on and on about, along with Y2K, peak oil, fascist takeover, water wars… you name it. So I can assure my very first reaction was STRONG skepticism. This carried over well into this decade; I never saw Al Gore’s movie because I *knew* it was chicken-little propaganda.
Then a year ago I decided to buy a beachfront condo in Florida. That’s when I dug into this whole “sea levels are gonna rise” talk. And it did not take much research to see WHO was saying the sea levels are going to rise, and WHY they were saying it. My skepticism towards the basic tenets of AGW are gone. Burning ginormous amounts of coal and petroleum have raised atmospheric CO2, no debate there. Via the Greenhouse effect, this has caused global atmospheric temperatures to rise. No debate there. Sea level rise to follow, as has been the case in earth history when the temperature goes up, because the polar ice melts. Again, no debate there.
AGW is predictive and falsifiable, and those predictions are already coming to pass – the ice IS melting! Could it be something other than the human released CO2 raising temps? Of course! Have those other mechanisms been modeled, probed, investigated thoroughly by subject matter experts? You betcha! It’s not sun spots, it’s not Milankovitch cycles, it’s not the Greys pointing a space microwave at us. Take out the CO2 from the models, the warming dissapears. Put it back in, and the model temperatures match the multiple, independent, cross-corroborating methods we have for measuring real temperature. No one has been able to come up with an alternative to AGW to explain the warming. Pointing out small errors in a huge mountain of data doesn’t make that mountain crumble.
Now, what to do about it? There we surely have a robust debate. Me, I didn’t buy that condo; but I AM going to buy a car that can handle flood waters… I’m thinking a nice V8 Range Rover. 🙂
The problem here become not scientific but political/organizational. All climatology brunch of science is under suspicion. (And as we known there could be hole crooked branches of science – look at psychology) . Therefor climatologists couldn’t be impartial arbiters in public opinion. The problem could be resolved organizationally – make impartial jury out of prominent physicists and mathematicians, let them check all the data and make conclusion once and for all. That’s a pure utopia of cause.
@RadicalModerate you were looking for opinions on 4 points, including:
c) Our predictive models are so good that they unequivocally prescribe dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions or we’re all going to have a very hard time of it.
I don’t know about that one. We could very well take the same money it would cost to bring the CO2 back down to 1950 levels, and instead spend it on levies and flood walls where feasible and population relocation efforts where not. Deal with the change, not try to “set the world back to the perfect climate of the Holocene circa when we showed up”. Climate always changes, and will always change. We know biodiversity has been just fine in previous eras with way hotter climates. We’ll be able to feed everybody in a hotter world. In fact, it’s the glaciation events that are the real doomsday scenarios in my book. I’m not sure why everyone is panicking over our demonstrated ability to stymie the cooling that the Milankovitch cycle theory predicts should be currently happening.
Damian, you are still getting bogged down in the relative merits of the scientific debate. When I say the argument is not balanced, I am not saying that each side should be presented as having equal scientific basis. I am simply saying that each side should be articulated accurately, from their own viewpoint. It is then up to the reader to assess the evidence (including the source) and make up their own mind. So, I repeat my earlier assertion that Sean has not presented a balanced debate because both sides of the argument come from the one side. Now the end result of a rational person reviewing all the arguments may agree with the “consensus science” but this blog’s representation of that argument doesn’t allow a rational person to make an accurate determination.
And if you must know, no I am not a journalist. I studied mathematics and statistics before becoming a Navigator in the Air Force (so I know all about oblate spheroids). And good luck with your hair cuts and taxes.
“When I say the argument is not balanced, I am not saying that each side should be presented as having equal scientific basis. I am simply saying that each side should be articulated accurately, from their own viewpoint.”
You really don’t see what you’re doing here? How can both viewpoints be accurate, if they are of unequal scientific merit?
blueshifter, when I say accurate, I am talking in terms of how the viewpoints are portrayed, not whether those viewpoints are valid. For example, if the AGW argument is A, B & C and the skeptic argument is X, Y & Z, then I expect the arguments to be presented as such. They can then be argued on their scientific merit and one of the two will be proven correct. Now X, Y & Z may be total rubbish (as many people believe), but I believe that this blog has presented X, Y & Z as x, y & z. Hence my original point that a balanced argument has not been presented here.
Does my use of the word accurate and my desire to avoid getting bogged down in the validity of the scientific argument now make sense to you?
I did study environment in Germany during a year (what was rather a good time anyway) and I know that in order to make progress their science they are putting some motivations leading to excess, because of money for example (and industries are quite happy with it (taxes) because it helps them to go where workers are cheaper, because they have a good apology in order to leave). Otherwise it is strange that more we do worse is the situation and more is asked to us, more money and free contributions, I think it is going a bit too far currently. Finally human activity should have an impact, but the fact that some homosexuals are at the basis of the green movement will also have an impact on the future, which can be bad if they have too much power (see « The Spirit of Laws », by Montesquieu, book 15, chapter 19).
OXO:
Are the CRU data “suspect”? An objective assessment:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/are-the-cru-data-suspect-an-objective-assessment/
Try it out for yourself. It’s amazing how easy it is to avoid being made to look silly if you have the minimal amount of intellectual curiosity.