by Judith Curry
. . . as scientists are increasingly viewed not as honest brokers, but as advocates aligned with the goals of the Democratic party, scientists and their organizations risk losing public trust and only likely contribute to polarization on hot button issues like climate change.
Matthew Nisbet has a very good post entitled Applying Science Communication Research to Policy Debates: What Role for Scientists and their Organizations? The entire article is well worth reading, below are some excerpts:
For all the attention that science communication research has deservedly received, what is still missing from this discussion is careful analysis, understanding and application of normative and ethical principles to how scientists and their organizations can both effectively and ethically apply this research to their engagement of the public and policy makers.
Four guiding principles
Audience-based research can and should inform communication planning and strategy, leading to a range of potential outcomes. Yet in applying framing research to public engagement efforts, there are four key ethical imperatives to keep in mind. These include:
* Emphasizing dialogue and the exchange of perspectives, rather than traditional top-down approaches to communication. This imperative can be promoted either through face-to-face deliberative forums, new models of digital participatory media, and/or as in the case of the National Academies, using research to identify frames that emphasize common ground and promote dialogue.
* Effectively and transparently communicating the values—or the second premise—that guides a policy decision rather than simplistically defining a policy debate as a matter of “sound science” or “driven by science.” In a policy debate, when scientists or journalists focus exclusively on these types of first premise claims, they create the incentives for interest groups to turn science into just another political resource, leading to distortion and exaggerations over scientific evidence and uncertainty.
* No matter their role as issue advocate or honest broker, accuracy in communication needs to be maintained. Both scientists and journalists must respect the uncertainty that is inherent to any technical question, resisting the tendency to engage in either false balance or exaggeration. As in the case of climate change, each time a scientific claim is proven false or inaccurate; it risks further alienating publics already distrustful of the science and scientists.
* Finally, scientists and journalists should avoid using framing to denigrate or attack religion or to define political parties and leaders as either “anti-science” or “pro-science.” Framing will always be an effective and legitimate part of social criticism and electoral politics, but for scientists and journalists to simplistically define critiques of religion or opposition to a political candidate as a “matter of science and reason” is not only inaccurate, but also alienates key publics, impairing efforts at dialogue and consensus-building.
A typology of frames applied to the climate debate
| Frame | Defines Science-Related Issue As… |
| Social progress | …improving quality of life, or solution to problems. Alternative interpretation as harmony with nature instead of mastery, “sustainability.” |
| Economic development/competitiveness | …economic investment, market benefits or risks; local, national, or global competitiveness. |
| Morality/ethics | …in terms of right or wrong; respecting or crossing limits, thresholds, or boundaries. |
| Scientific/technical uncertainty | …a matter of expert understanding; what is known versus unknown; either invokes or undermines expert consensus, calls on the authority of “sound science,” falsifiability, or peer-review. |
| Pandora’s box / Frankenstein’s monster / runaway science | …call for precaution in face of possible impacts or catastrophe. Out-of-control, a Frankenstein’s monster, or as fatalism, i.e. action is futile, path is chosen, no turning back. |
| Public accountability/governance | …research in the public good or serving private interests; a matter of ownership, control, and/or patenting of research, or responsible use or abuse of science in decision-making, “politicization,” |
| Middle way/alternative path | …around finding a possible compromise position, or a third way between conflicting/polarized views or options. |
| Conflict/strategy | …as a game among elites; who’s ahead or behind in winning debate; battle of personalities; or groups; (usually journalist-driven interpretation.) |
Partisan Soldiers with Science on their Side
[A]dvocates accused the George W. Bush administration of putting politics ahead of science and expertise on a number of issues, including climate change. For example, in the 2004 election, Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) made strategic use of the public accountability frame, comparing distortions on climate change to the administration’s use of intelligence to invade Iraq: ““What I worry about with the president is that he’s not acknowledging what’s on the ground, he’s not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he’s not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues.”
In 2005, journalist Chris Mooney’s best-selling The Republican War on Science helped crystallize the public accountability train of thought, turning the “war on science” into a partisan rallying cry. In 2007, Hillary Clinton, in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, promised to end the “war on science” in American politics, highlighting the emergent prominence of this frame device.
The public accountability frame has outraged and intensified the commitment of many Democrats, environmental advocates, and scientists, motivating them to label Republican and conservative political figures as “deniers” on climate change and to engage in sharp rhetorical attacks on political opponents in other policy disputes. Yet for many members of the public, “war on science” claims are likely ignored as just more elite rancor or only further alienate Republicans on the issue.
[I]f scientists speak from their authority and institutional position as trusted experts, using framing to claim that a specific political party or a candidate is either “pro-science” or “anti-science,” the result is likely to be both normatively and strategically undesirable.
First, claims of a “war on science” or a “rising anti-science culture” are inaccurate and reinforce deficit model assumptions. In Congress, for example, on the great majority of issues there is widespread bi-partisan support for science, a reality reflected in Federal spending on basic research and bi-partisan boosterism in areas such as food biotechnology.
The unintended consequence of “war on science” claims is that given the miserly nature of the public, the framing strategy easily reinforces the partisan divide on issues such as stem cell research and climate change while promoting a false narrative that science is for Democrats and not for Republicans. [P]olls show that the differences between Democrats and Republicans in views of embryonic stem cell research and climate change have widened to more than thirty percentage points respectively.
In fact, this persistent and widening gap in perceptions over the past decade suggests that climate change and stem cell research have joined a short list of issues such as gun control or taxes that define what it means to be a partisan in the United States. [W]hile “war on science” claimants believe they are defending the integrity of science, they are more likely to be part of the communication problem, reinforcing partisan divisions across key issues.
JC comments: Matt Nisbet’s analysis provides some important insights. I found the frame typology for the climate change debate to be particularly illuminating. I can think of numerous examples of each of these framings. I continue to be disgusted by certain members of the ‘elite’ community that focus on conflict/strategy. The only example I can think of for middle way/alternative path was Drew Shindell’s proposal for a climate fast attack plan, which was demonized by ‘elite’ advocates. My own efforts in highlighting scientific/technical uncertainty have resulted in attempts by the ‘elites’ to denigrate and ostracize me, as a ‘serial climate disinformer.’
The only frames that have any chance of succeeding for some climate change policy, IMO, are economic development/competitiveness and middle way/alternative path. And any way forward needs a realistic accounting of scientific and technical uncertainty.
Dishonest broker Michael Piltdown Mann calls Rob Wilson a denier.
=============
Schoolteachers teach terror when all they have left is the power of fear.
Rob Wilson criticizes Michael Mann’s work, and in reaction Mann goes ballistic, as discussed in this thread:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/10/21/wilson-on-millennial-temperature-reconstructions.html
Judith; science aside; the elites treatment of you is enough evidence that they are very afraid of something. Thank you for all you do.
It seems that this blog is about political persuasion. I would point out that PEW Foundation asked the National Science Foundation for a list of scientists whom the would poll. At the end of the poll, they asked which political party the respondent aligned with? Would you believe 55% indicated Democrat, while a whopping 6% indicated Republican. I think that it shows that more intelligent people favor Democrat ideas and ideals.
It might show that those predisposed to join either party, took different paths. Some to Science to some to other fields.
Sorry Walter, I need a lot more details. There have been a lot of dodgy polls lately.
Of course the first fallacy Walter is that many people who are largely in government employment and education (highly unionized and left-wing cultures in themselves) become members of NSF. Many for sociological reasons (status) list themselves a “in the science community” or often more preposterously as “scientists”.
Government provides whopping funding and culture and is essential to the critical mass of political fringe science such as AGW.
Consider Joshua on this forum or Gavin Schmidt running a propaganda site while being paid from the government. The idea that “shows that more intelligent people favor democrat ideas” is laughable on the face of it. Do you really think vast populations of GOP voters or DNC voters would show such evidence? Be sure to poll prison populations, methadone and welfare clinics aside from government funded academics in the interest of fairness on political perspectives. You would find all of these cultures gravitating to democratic politics and culture.
Of course the statement is an off-shoot of the ancient urban democratic meme “we’re smarter so shut-up and sit down” repeated by the NYTimes daily. It’s both insulting as it is false.
Agreed: the elites have lapped up the completely screwed predictions of Chairman Hansen to justify totalitarian control of the people.
The fact is, there is little if any CO2-AGW, as shown experimentally. The physics is very simple – ‘back radiation’ is a mistake from Meteorology, interpreting a Radiation Field as a real energy flux. No professional scientist or engineer from a hard physics’ background can accept this as valid. Furthermore, the ‘CO2 bite’ in OLR is easily bypassed by the control system that keeps OLR = SW in.
As for the modelling, the heat transfer is a sham so the models have no predictive ability. A piece of seaweed is better.
People might remember the warning by Will Happer, 20 years ago when he refused to lie for Gore, that the IPCC IR physics was and remains utterly wrong. This is because Tyndall’s experiment does not prove gas phase thermalisation of absorbed IR energy – it is thermalised at optical heterogeneities; clouds, Space etc, simple statistical thermodynamics.
Also pyrgeometers measure temperature and predict the Radiation Field, not an energy flux; the textbooks need rewriting as any physicist will confirm.
Are Physicists less likely to believe in AGW? Any studies?
No process engineer accepts ‘back radiation’ because we measure coupled convection and radiation. prove it yourself with a beach windbreak. As for the physicists, it depends on quality. Many journeymen imagine a body above absolute zero fires out photons and those that can’t find a home at the other body bounce off and return.
This is of course ludicrous because an IR photon does not exist until it is converted to or from heat. Better physicists who know Maxwell’s Equations will be aware that the fundamental conservation of energy equation for matter transferring energy to or from EM Space is:
qdot = – Div Fv where qdot is the monochromatic rate of heat transfer/unit volume to or from Fv, the monochromatic radiation flux density. Div is the divergence operator. This comes from good atmospheric physics texts like Goody and Yung.
Integrate it over all wavelengths at an optical discontinuity and you get the difference between two S-B equations.
In other words, you must look at the vector sum of the Radiation Fields. There is no separate ‘back radiation’. The two stream approximation works in an optically homogeneous medium because the errors cancel out. It fails at the optical heterogeneity.
Again, Judith, you deliberately avoid the REAL issue. How do we force the “elite” to do what you and I know to be the right thing? You write ” I continue to be disgusted by certain members of the ‘elite’ community that focus on conflict/strategy”, but you carefully avoid actually DOING something about it. Believe me, if I could do something I would. But I am too low down the pecking order to do anything effective. You are different.
Doubtful. Even Pres. Obama, with no one in the Chain of Command above him, is constrained. Pecking works well, from below.
The word for people who think they can do anything, is hubris.
Everyone who aims to be effective & consequential, acknowledges and works within their limits & liabilities.
OK Ted and Rob. Get down to the nitty gritty. Tell me in simple, straightforward terms .WHAT CAN I DO?
Firstly … “sorry”, Jim. By doubtful, I meant doubtful that “Judith is different”; that because she is Highter Than Us, she can therefore Vanquish At Will.
In terms of your own lament – that you feel powerless to act on or effect the situation – what could be is the common sense that we are unable to do what we prefer, or have the effect we want, directly.
Especially, we want victory in one step. We want to neutralize what we see as a threat, with a single conquering blow.
Often, we must retreat, reposition, punt … and come at the problem from other directions. That the problem still exists, doesn’t mean we have failed.
Some issues persist forever. We will always have to accept imperfection; that ultimately, we’re a ‘work in progress’. That doesn’t mean that you or I are ineffective, or that we’re falling down on the job.
Just being here on Judith Curry’s blog, participating, is a meaningful form of action.
Ted, you write “Just being here on Judith Curry’s blog, participating, is a meaningful form of action.”
The situation is this. The warmists have been lying through their teeth for years. Our hostess is just waking up to this fact. The scientific establishment, led by the Royal Society and American Physical Society have been encouraging the warmists to go on lying. The latest AR5 report shows this lying in vivid Technicolor. Yet nothing is happening to make the RS and APS change their attitude. Nor the rest of what our hostess calls the “elite”.
And you tell me that participating on Climate Etc. is going to have an effect. Sorry, there is nothing concrete that you can suggest that I do, that I am not already doing, that is going to cause the RS and APS to change their minds.
Try rhyming, Jim.
Can’t hurt nin.
===========
Great illustration of my main point, Jim! If the RS and APS are awesomely fortified …. look for other approaches.
CAGW is vast, informal empire, with way too many moving parts, with vast borders & frontiers only roughly known or defined. The very nature of the problem, makes it too hard to defend. Any & all who care to, can find poorly guarded & porous places to attack – to be effective.
The key to winning is to attack the adversary’s weak points, not it’s strong points!
Jim, I write my Senator and Congressman frequently. That is about all I can do.
Ted,
Dr. Curry could speak the truth but chooses not to. Her meme is political not observable empirical science. She is “post normal”.
Choosing to publish some truth while avoiding the investment in it is her most consistent pattern. She will never acknowledge the AGW was a deep political meme from inception invested in by her fellow left-wing academics of which she is a member. All that is offered is hair splitting nuance of left-wing factions. Hardly the truth about AGW advocacy and the sham soft science reality of the climate cartel.
Uh? It seems to me that Judith is very active in combating the elite; witness this blog. But she doesn’t need me to defend here. And there is of course the fact that she has a job to perform…
http://judithcurry.com/about/
“Even the largest river starts with one drop of rain” – quote from the film “The power of one”
You can do something and the first thing to do is stop thinking of yourself as being unimportant. Because you are not unimportant.
“Again, Judith, you deliberately avoid the REAL issue. How do we force the “elite” to do what you and I know to be the right thing?”
If that could be done, Socialism could be a viable idea.
Why couldn’t anyone make Stalin do the right thing?
Even if these “elite” were decent people, it would be
difficult.
You get women marrying men, they think they can change,
so even if you have fabulous sex with them, they will still not do
the right thing.
gbaikie,
I was going to say I don’t think Scientists should have to do any of these things: they should simply report on the science. But reading this makes me realize the impetus. They ARE doing this. They should have been roundly denounced by other scientists, but apparently the post modernist destructionism has also hit the sciences. I have doubts about physics and String Theory, so who knows how deep this goes.
Ed, “They should have been roundly denounced by other scientists, but apparently the post modernist destructionism has also hit the sciences. I have doubts about physics and String Theory, so who knows how deep this goes.”
Pretty deep I reckon. It is all due to leaded gasoline and Barney.
Well, don’t care so much for the lead stuff, but I don’t see Barney doing anyone favors. I was first introduced to Barney on a late night commercial as follows: “What’s Big, Purple, and Your Best Friend?”
But, to each his own. Barney definitely made a capitalist win.
Jim Cripwell: How do we force the “elite” to do what you and I know to be the right thing?
It’s a prevalent human weakness to want to force everyone else to do “the right thing”, but you should postpone thinking about using force, because it always has a cost. There is no way you can force scientists to do what you want them to do. The closest to coercion is to fund research that Congress, through the science bureaucrats, deems to be in the public interest.
Jim Cripwell:
“How do we force the “elite” to do what you and I know to be the right thing?”
Hard approach: A Board of Science that protects among other things the reputation of the profession.
Softer approach: Voluntary organizations such as the AICPA, where the only enforcement mechanism is revoking membership in the organization.
Then you get to do this if you’re a member:
http://richardseltzercpa.com/wp-content/uploads/aicpa.jpg
CPAs have agreed to be subject to a hard approach. If I want to use the letters CPA after my name, my board has to have me as active and current, that is in good standing.
Right, because you are providing a rules based function, and so long as the rules are pure, it makes sense. What would happen if the CPA ruling body decided, perhaps by a government ruling, that for minority owned corporations, the final checks and balances needed to only be 10% accurate?
Ed Barbar:
It sounds like you’re saying that for minorities, we’d be hypothetically told to lower our standards. We’d probably insist that we work that into the opinions given. That we met a certain standard. Which would appear to be a lower one. Your hypothetical might look something more like a review opinion which is one step down from highest level opinion.
Your point might be, when you agree to let the government in, you strike a bargain. I’d agree with that.
Ragnaar,
I don’t quite understand all the language, but essentially I’m saying that when the majority has lost its way, it’s too late. Even when the majority has not lost its way, and a vocal minority wants to change the rules, it’s also too late.
Jim Cripwell says;
” I am too low down the pecking order to do anything effective”.
To that I say b’s in the nicest way possible
Just by expressing your opinion of science and elites in science on such a prominent blog as Judith’s you are already influencing in a small way the thinking of the many and varied people who read this blog and similar blogs like it..
Some of whom no doubt are very influential in the world’s of science , politics and commerce.
Others like myself appear inconsequential but it is ultimately the quantity of similar opinion in the thinking of those so called inconsequential people which eventually carries just as as much weight or over the longer term considerable more weight in the public perceptions of the state of science [ and many other occupations ] than the the opinions of the quality [ ?? ] elites.
The quantity of similar opinions of those “inconsequential” people just takes longer to impress and express itself as an influential public meme that can no longer be discounted or dismissed compared to the opinions of the “quality” elites and insiders.
I guess I hammer this theme a bit hard here even though I have always supported science and been involved on the fringes of science for some 40 years or more
.Thats maybe why I now have the attitude towards science that i do or as one of my brothers who has a science degree put it; In science,you have to pay ninety nine f.w’s to get that hundredth guy / gal who can really make a difference.
So I keep on coming back to the basics in that scientists of whatever discipline, culture, background, training or otherwise are just ordinary human beings with all the faults and qualities, good ,bad, indifferent, skilled, incompetent, honest, dishonest , corrupt, you name it, that any other section of the population you might wish to choose from also has.
There is no getting away from that basic truth which has been long hidden behind the veils that science has managed to create around itself over the last century.
So in my book these days, scientists rate at about the same level of integrity and skill and honesty and deserving or otherwise the same levels of respect or contempt as is appropiate as do lawyers, merchant bankers, economists, financial advisers, entrepreneurs, brokers and etc and etc.
Draw what conclusions you like from that list but the plain truth is that the internet over the last decade in particular, has revealed and like the Salome of biblical fame, has publicly stripped the seven veils from the long hidden dance of science to reveal to an increasingly disappointed public a somewhat ugly old hag in need of a radical make over to bring back her attractiveness of old if that is now ever possible.
Alternatively, we, the inconsequential people just hold science and scientists and their pronouncements with the same degree of suspicion as to their motives along with a slightly curled lip as we do for all those other professions that are now deemed essential to our society’s functioning.
Thx fer this, ROM. Fits the theme of me forthcoming
7th Edishun of Serf Under_ground Journal. Would
yer mind if I post it there?
Beth the serf.
One guiding principle – to single out one party or one ideology as doing this would be simplistic and wrong. You are not doing that, correct? Further the inappropriate use of data to spin arguments seems to also be part of the problem here. Advocacy is on thing, but both sides do not get to create their own facts. Since Fox created the one sided news cycle, things have gotten worse and now the MSNBC has followed things could get worse. The fringe of both parties lack the facts to create a true picture of the world.
“Since Fox created the one sided news cycle”
This is remarkably dumb. “One sided” news has been going on for a long, long time. As soon as men realized they could lie, they were off to the races.
Andrew
“hacknied, hypocritical protestations of those editors, who at first, avow a rigid impartiality, and as soon as their papers have gained a circulation, prostitute themselves to the service of any party which will dispense the ‘lo(a)ves and fishes’ with the greatest liberality.”
H/t Alexander Martin via Jeffrey A. Smith.
==============
Oh come on. To act as if Fox News and Rupert Murdoch did not change the publishing and TV game in the US is to bury your head in the sand.
“Fox News and Rupert Murdoch did not change the publishing and TV game in the US”
How did they change it?
Andrew
The old joke is that they found a niche market, half of America.
=============
Quite so. The BBC, for example, admired the world over, it totally one sided with regard to climate change.
“To act as if Fox News and Rupert Murdoch did not change the publishing and TV game in the US is to bury your head in the sand.”
Of course they did. For the first time conservatives had an outlet that allowed their views to be aired. Fox did for broadcast news what WUWT did for the blogosphere. Which is why they are so hated.
The hatred for Fox and blogs like WUWT (and Climate Etc, which is by no means a conservative blog but gives free reign to all opinions alike) is eclipsed only by that for Rush Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk radio. Millions of people who never listen to them have been taught to hate and ridicule them. Because they first broke the strangle hold the MSM (NBCCBSABCNYTimesWashPostTimeNewsweek) held on dissemination of news and opinion to the public.
Fox isn’t even very conservative. Most of their hosts are either progressive or “moderate” conservative (which is just progressive lite). Only Sean Hannity is actually conservative.
Fox’s blasphemy is to let conservatives have their say at all. And to at least treat them with respect.
“For the first time conservatives had an outlet that allowed their views to be aired.”
Conservatives have always had outlets, Gary M. They have always been exceptions to the rule, but they have been there.
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review reached hundreds of thousands. Talk Radio, the internet and Fox reach hundreds of millions.
What’s that breathing in the theatre?
========
“Talk Radio, the internet”
The original claim just said “Fox”. These aren’t necessarily “Fox.”
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
MY first comment on this thread included all three. You were responding to me, not the original comment. At least I assumed so, since you cut and pasted part of my comment, out of context, in your reply. I just reminded you of the context.
“For the first time conservatives had an outlet that allowed their views to be aired.”
Just sayin its not that cut and dry. ;)
Andrew
Fox news did not create the market they only tapped into it.
After two weeks of listening to CBS/NBC/NPR radio (I drive a lot for work) blame the entire shutdown on the Tea Party and never once point out the sequestration agreement (by both parties) nor Obama’s complete flip-flop on raising the debt ceiling (he condemned it in 2006), it’s obvious there is still a virtual progressive monopoly on radio news.
Bad Andy is just being obtuse because that is what a liberal faced with facts does.
“Bad Andy is just being obtuse”
I don’t think so. I’m a conservative who likes facts. The fact is that the are and have been conservative outlets besides Fox news. That’s my point. You are free to dispute my claim.
Andrew
Brad-
Unless you have witnessed the glacial evolution of the MSM over the last 60 years to the left, I dont know how you could judge anything that has been going on in the news. The MSM left the American public at the station in the L Train.
You may be conservative and view the old MSM as liberal, just as many liberals see it as conservative (go listen to left wing radio on TuneIn for a day).
Murdoch takes a clear view of what he wants and picks news and editorial content to fit that view. Prior to that most MSM took the view that they needed to play to the center, and they needed to never have their editorial positions affect their news. Murdoch very clearly ignored both, and was very succesful, good for him. LEts not act like that wasnt a change for a large mainstream news org. It clearly was.
dennis adams,
Glacial? Every talking head on network TV was a progressive from Walter Cronkite on. Cronkite only looked like a conservative because he did not let his personal views slant his reporting. He reported news from all angles. Which is the same reason Fox is seen as conservative today.
The NY Times and Washington Post et al., have been progressive since long before that. I mentioned on another thread the other day, that William Buckley wrote a book about the uniformity, and hostility, of progressivism in 1951 – God and Man at Yale.
The MSM has been political since the advent of television, and much of it before that.
Primarily via his Fireside chats, which dominated radio.
The MSM bias runs deeper & longer … than even it realizes
Brad, do you remember Dan Rather and his shenanigans, Brian Williams, Dianne Sawyer, all of MSNBC, in addition to 85% of all newsprint. At last count, 22 MSM types are now working for Obama. No rational person would consider the MSM centrist.
GaryM, you got thar right. Without Fox News all news would be the same, as it was in the past.
Walter Duranty was the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times, wrote laudatory stories on the Soviet Union and Stalin, including covering up the Ukrainian genocide by mass starvation.He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
Malcolm Muggeridge reported fromMoscow in 1932 for the Manchester Guardian. Muggeridge decided to investigate reports of the famine in Ukraine and traveled there without the permission, he sent backreports to the Manchester Guardian in the diplomatic bag, evading censorship. The Guardians editor spiked the stories as they were unsympathetic to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Muggeridge gave up his Socialism and was not rewarded for telling the truth.
I remember when JFK was elected, even though I was in grade school I could sense a difference in the way he was talked about and how the media fawned all over him. It was hard for me to try and understand that we lived in a Republic but yet we had a King.
And lets not forget the ratings, Fox wins with the night hugely in Cable news rankings, but it aint half of America. See Oreilly Factor as last rated show last Thursday. MSNBC get less than that.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/10/18/thursday-cable-ratings-thursday-night-football-wins-night-pawn-stars-project-runway-white-collar-beyond-scared-straight-more/209894/
Look again. O’Reilly had the most viewers (2.8M) of any program in the 8:00 p.m. time slot & I believe 8th most viewers in the top 100.
Excluding viewers over age 49, then O’Reilly comes in “last”.
Fox created the other one-sided news cycle. The result is we now have choices and options for hearing both sides of the issues depending on which news channel we select. It is our job to look at both sides of the issues and now we can. It was a long time coming. Making liberal use of your channel changer will get you only a liberal view of the world.
Go for it Beth the serf.
Been a bloody farming serf all my life to the bankers and now at 75 years old, like all old men with little to show for a life of toil, [ except respect amongst my peers for which I am very grateful ] am wondering what the hell all my effort was actually for!
Sigh. Big sigh!
Thx Rom, respect amongst peers, that’s something!
Fellow serf,I’m awardin’ yer +100.
Bts.
ROM
Its nearly time to watch ‘Its a wonderful life’ and then just insert yourself into the place of George Bailey to see how much your life has enriched others.
tonyb
+1 to TonyB for his words of encouragement to ROM and +1 to ROM for a life well lived and respected by all who know him. Hard work is still there for me at 73 on a lifestyle block of 50 acres with gardens to be tended, animals to be raised, and a wife of 46 years, children and grandchildren to be loved and cared for.
Tonyb, Did you check out the forecasts by Dr. Spencer for your neck of the woods? Let us know if they pan out please.
Judith, I would prefer to see policy issues separated from the science altogether and for more resources provided for improvement of weather forecasts for regions currently under climate and other environmental stress.
Ideally the forecasts should be for periods in excess of 2 weeks so that mitigation and other precautionary measures might be put in place to protect the more vulnerable communities.
The framing that climate science should therefore be taking would be that of restoring meteorology to the forefront of climate change policy making and for the science to become more pertinent and relevant for regions and their communities.
Although the political left is more likely to support the concept of CAGW than the political right, that is not the real problem with climate science.
The problem is simply this: almost all climate research is conducted by government, or quasi government, bureaucracies. It is a comfortable area of research with almost unbelievable amounts of cash sloshing around the system. Those involved, not surprisingly, seek the perpetuation of the system and their comfortable lifestyles. This, of course requires the constant pleasing, or alarming, of one’s political masters, but facts and observations all too often refuse to play ball, and so must be ‘re-interpreted’.
Nevertheless, the key word with climate science is BUREAUCRACY and therefore the following applies:
The Seven Rules of Bureaucracy:
Rule #1: Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
Rule #2: Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control.
Rule #3: If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
Rule #4: Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness.
Rule #5: Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
Rule #6: Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
Rule #7: Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”
Peter Miller
+100 on your comment (especially the “seven rules of bureaucracy”)
Several years ago, C. Northcote Parkinson wrote something very similar.
Max
Dickens had it 160 years ago with the Circumlocution Office.
==========
Peter Miller, that’s a conspiracy theory you’ve got there. 1-7
Yes, it’s a “theory” in the same sense that the theory of evolution is a theory. As is, there are tons of facts and evidence to support it and none at all that contradict it.
Nice post….
In matters of energy/climate-related public policy, we have “biblical doctrines” being used by the wind lobby. It is getting very complicated…
http://www.masterresource.org/2013/10/red-state-wind-strategy/
For shame, preying on the opiated.
=======
I do not know whether it is because of my getting too old or living too far away from the States, but I find it difficult to accept that the climate debate has reached such an apparently irreversible state of irrationalism, hatred and crookedness.
I think that we are many to respect the hostess of this blog because she is the contrary of a disinformer, because she refuses framing, because she refuses segregation into factions.
“It is the privilege of error to give its name to a sect”
Voltaire (Preface to Newton’s Principia).
Many thanks to her to continue on this same path. Hopefully, at the end, it will pay; and if it does not, nothing else, I fear, may pay.
Pierre, you write “I do not know whether it is because of my getting too old or living too far away from the States, but I find it difficult to accept that the climate debate has reached such an apparently irreversible state of irrationalism, hatred and crookedness.”
I, too, find it difficult to accept this as you do, but I fear if is correct. I cannot see how we can get back to discussing basic physics when it comes to CAGW; the hatred and antipathy run too deep. I keep asking who can actually do something abut it. Where are the scientists who can somehow collectively get together and force the scientific establishment to start, once again, doing science instead of politics? I believe they simply do not exist.
The Supreme Court of Physics is the empirical data. In the end this body will make it’s ruling. But that may be too late before irreparable damage is done. I am afraid that a short term fix is impossible. There simply is no-one who can “bell the cat”.
Jim Cripwell
Like Pierre, I also live too far away from the USA to be able to judge the “irreversible state of irrationalism, hatred and crookedness” in the ongoing scientific and political debate on the CAGW premise there.
But I am optimistic enough to believe that “truth will prevail in the end”.
And this is largely because of key individuals, such as our hostess here, that do not mind taking some abuse from the “hateful crooks” in order to question their agenda-driven hypotheses and expose the truth.
Another contributor IMO is the NIPCC and the authors who have contributed to it.
And it appears that the strongest contributor at this time is Mother Nature herself, who refuses to show a warming trend despite unabated human GHG emissions (thus making a mockery of the whole CAGW premise).
Max
Mac, you write “But I am optimistic enough to believe that “truth will prevail in the end”.”
How do you guarantee that “in the end” is not too late before irreparable damage has been done?
Jim Cripwell
Nobody can “guarantee” anything.
There already has been “damage” (i.e. colossal tax-payer funded waste) related to the CAGW hysteria.
Mencken had it right several decades before this “imaginary hobgoblin” reared its ugly head.
It has become a multi-billion dollar big business along the way.
But, like all the others before it, this “imaginary hobgoblin” will eventually die.
How quickly this occurs depends a lot on Mother Nature IMO – but it will happen sooner or later anyway.
And the damage it has caused will not be directly reversible (wasted resources never are).
We do not live in a perfect world, Jim.
Max
I’ll tell ya’ something that is nearly perfectly hilarious and that’s Mencken’s report from the 1948 Progressive Party Convention.
====================
There is only one way out of this: Nature. If temperatures keep stalling, or even dropping in the next decade or two, the whole issue of CAGW will vanish in thin air.
“Jim Cripwell | October 21, 2013 at 11:41 am |
Mac, you write “But I am optimistic enough to believe that “truth will prevail in the end”.”
How do you guarantee that “in the end” is not too late before irreparable damage has been done?”
More people having gun and knowing how is works.
Obama has caused soaring gun sales.
““I’m not convinced it’s fully Obama,” said John Schulte, a Minneapolis resident who teaches people how to obtain gun-carry permits. “There are a couple other things like the end of the Mayan calendar, and the sun changing its 11-year cycle … which means more solar storms that could knock out our satellites, electrical grid, and more. I think you will find more people becoming ‘Preppers’ as well as gun owners.” ”
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/gun-sales-soaring-boosted-gun-laws-concerns-about-obama-532154
I often draw a parallel between the dismal science of economics and science, particularly the currently fashionable climate science discipline.
Economics has enormous amounts of data both historical and current to draw on, far more so than does most science, as a basis for analysis and prediction.
Economics has numerous theories, claims, predictions, schools, savage arguments and disagreements over economic fundamentals. Few of these numerous claims on the veracity of certain economic theories can stand up to close examination or can be knocked over by historical precedents and events, just like climate science.
There are about 20% more economic theories kicking around in economics than there are economists, just like science and scientists and climate science..
Economics has intruded into every aspect of our lives but unlike science. particularly climate science we, the public, the bureacracy, the bulk of the financial world and etc have become inured to economics, economists and all their various predictions, claims, falsehoods and doomsday analysis.
On their predictions, just like climate alarmist science, it is said that economists have predicted the last nine recessions out of the last three.
The point here is that totally unlike climate science, the political appartichiks have learn’t to treat the predictions of economists with a very large degree of questioning of their credibility and have adjusted their economic policies to reflect and account for this by never going for extremist policies in economics if it is at the behest of economists.
Catastrophic Climate science and it’s predictions have to a large extent and no doubt temporarily broken this economic conservatism by convincing the political appartchiks to legislate for extreme economic policies to “Save the planet”.
It hasn’t worked and in fact it seems the economists might be the force riding to the rescue as they show the long term predicted economic data to the politicals so as to convince them they are now trying to ride a very dead political and economic horse if they continue to follow climate science advocated economics.
It will need another decade for the climate science economic solutions to be seen for what they are and that is likely to be nothing short of an economic disaster.
It will take until the next generation before the predictions and platitudes of science of every description are also treated with the same level of public and politically questioning credibility as economics and it’s practitioners are now treated and regarded today.
Then and only then will the world see a politically practical and conservative approach to the pronouncements of science and scientists.
And that also will be the salvation of scientific standards, the hard questioning by politicals and the public on every claim made by science which will again be forced to set a level of standards that provides acceptable science and outcomes to science’s paymasters, the wider public at large,
Hmmm.
While I agree with some of what Judith excerpts here, these two sentences in sequence are bothersome.
The sequence suggest a cause-and-effect between what is described in the first sentence and what is described in the second sentence. As such, the analysis simplistic, and more likely confirmation bias than anything else.
Let’s take stem cell research. Data show that over the last 30 years there has been a loss of “trust” in scientists among a % of “Repubs” but not Dems or Indies. This took place concurrent with a growth of political activism from the Christian right, and concurrent with an increasing distrust among that % of Republicans in public and government institutions.
So how does Nisbet manage to leave out the influence of the Christian right as a causal influence for the widening gap in beliefs on stem cell research, to imply that the reason is the “unintended consequences’ of the “war on science” rhetoric? Does he have longitudinal evidence to support his implications?
Similarly, with climate change, there is longitudinal evidence that is useful for understanding the trends in public opinion. Does Nisbett take a look at that evidence and explain how it relates to his analysis?
Joshua
Is there any comment that Judith can write that you would not see as a potential problem? Is it an case of your motivated reasoning in regards to her views?
Rob –
First, that comment was not aimed at what Judith wrote, but what she excerpted.
Second, because I criticize some of Judith’s reasoning does not mean that I see everything that she writes (or excerpts) as potentially problematic.
Third, motivated reasoning affects us all. Sure, I am “motivated” (in the sense that “motivated reasoning” refers to biases such as confirmation bias) to criticize Judith’s reasoning. The way that I can come to understand my “motivation” better is through good faith exchange with people who have different “motivations,” and who are interested in such a shared exchange. Along those lines, I assume that you think that my comment reflects flawed thinking. Could you be somewhat specific? I have long asserted that “motivated reasoning” affects all of us, myself included. Why would my acknowledging that, yet again, in some generic way, move our shared insight along?
Read the entire article for more details and references.
Why don’t you summarize how he factored in the influence of the Christian right and the growth, among a sub-group of the American public, of a desire to drown government in a bathtub?
Surely, you must have wondered about those questions – so for you to feel that his analysis is insightful, you must know how he dealt with those influences.
I mean simplistic “correlation = causation” is not insightful, right?
Or were the excerpts you provided not examples of what you found insightful?
always the denier.
If you think the rise of the christian right explains facts, then publish your own damn science. I tell you what I tell every denier. Finding objections is easy. its a given. provide a better explanation and back it up.
Is he going on about the Christian threat to civilization, again?
Mosh
To your challenge:
Billions of years of major natural climate change on this planet, totally unrelated to atmospheric CO2 levels – including (just one example) the Ordovician “ice-ball Earth” period, when CO2 levels were ten times as high as today.
Mother Nature is still in charge of our climate, Mosh (as the current “pause”, despite unabated human GHG emissions, shows).
Max
Don, it’s more like there’s a civilization threat to Christians, if you ask me:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9041841/the-war-on-christians/
manaker. the changes are not unrelated to C02. Further if you find a case in which they are unrelated that’s becuse c02 is not the whole story.
its a part of the story. Stop pretending that that you dont know the physics that even Roy endorses. We can explain the climate of the past and predict the climate of the future only when C02 is a term in the equation.
you want to fiddle with the weight that variable gets? do you own damn science. you want to say that variable has no effect, has never had an effect, and could never have an effect, then show your work.
Physics tells us it will have an effect. constructing a complete accounting is real science. denying that c02 has any effect or is not needed in an explanation requires more proof than you’ve offered. go away
Pretty obviously, too, moshe, is that the effect of more CO2 is always beneficial for life.
===============
“We can explain the climate of the past and predict the climate of the future only when C02 is a term in the equation.”
When you can actually explain the climate of the past, and accurately predict the climate of the future, get back to us about an alternative theory. (This is why progressive hate adverbs.)
Mosh,
I am not religious, and disagree with the christian right on many issues, but don’t lump all skeptics, or even all conservatives, with the christian right. Calling anyone a denier because you disagree with them is a sign of bad manners. People can be wrong on some issues and totally correct on others, and in fact I am sure this is true of all of us. I think the liberal left is wrong in as least as many ways as the christian right.
Do you understand that it is NOT the requirement of any skeptic to prove anything or provide a better explanation for anything. It is totally the requirement of the person or group claiming a hypothesis (or claiming it is actually a theory) to back the claim with critical data that is able to be falsified if it is wrong. Data that is valid for the hypothesis, but can be also valid independent of the hypothesis is not supportive. In addition, any SINGLE falsified claim makes the entire hypothesis (or claimed theory) invalid. If you understand this, you can see why skeptics that falsify almost every single critical claim of CAGW do not need to come up with explanations themselves, but have shown it is wrong.
Steven Mosher: Physics tells us it will have an effect.
Tell us what “physics tells us” will happen at the surface of the oceans when downwelling LWIR increases a little bit, and whether that is the same in summer as in winter. (I think physics tells us that some energy will be absorbed and appear as tangible heat in warmer water, whereas other energy will be absorbed in vaporising water without raising its temperature. ) Tell us what “physics tells us” the effect of increased CO2 will be on cloud cover.
gary
“When you can actually explain the climate of the past, and accurately predict the climate of the future, get back to us about an alternative theory. (This is why progressive hate adverbs.”
go read any of the IPCC reports.
each offers an explnation of the past. Like all explanations they are uncertain and incomplete. All of them each and every one is superior to
the explanation given by skeptics; natural variation.
Second, go look at all the IPCC reports. Each presents projections and predictions for the future. The last one was fairly accurate. Only wrong by half. Given the complexity of the system being simulated i’m shocked they did as well as they did. very accurate for a complex system. hell, I built defense systems that protect your liberty with less accurate predictions.
So if the consensus is turtles, it’s got to be turtles until somebody figures cosmology out?
“All of them each and every one is superior to the explanation given by skeptics”
I think you are stuck on the erroneous idea that there is such a thing as a ‘superior’ explanation. There’s the explanation and then there’s not. There’s no such thing as a ‘superior’ incorrect explanation.
Andrew
Well, pretty obviously we need something built to protect our liberty.
==============
Steven Mosher: go read any of the IPCC reports.
The fact is, no one knows what will happen at the ocean surface and wetlands and forests if the intensity of downwelling LWIR increases.
There are now lots of models making diverse predictions about the future. It’s possible that one or some may be good enough to use in planning for the future, but the recent divergence between actual temps and modeled temps provides little support for the idea that it might be one of the models cited by IPCC.
It’s too bad we do not now have a model demonstrably accurate enough for future planning, but that’s the way it is.
Steven Mosher,
You said “We can explain the climate of the past and predict the climate of the future only when C02 is a term in the equation.”
Who is “We” and where are the explanations of the Hadean climate, dependent on an equation containing CO2? Where is any evidence that an equation containing CO2 (accurately) predicts anything at all related to climate better than and my chicken entrails?
Consider this, if you will.
If one hundred climate models provide one hundred different results, then ninety nine, at least, are wrong. Whether this is due to poor physics, poor programming, or just general lack of knowledge of Nature, is ignored for the moment. But I digress. So a “climatologist” may decide that because it is not known which ninety nine models are wrong, (out of the hundred), then taking an average of the ninety nine known to be wrong will produce a correct answer? And you agree with this?
Surely you are joking, Mr Mosher!
I know we lay people are not the “elite”, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. We might not all be as thick as you think.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mosh
Major changes in our planets’ climate have occurred without any corresponding change in CO2. Most recently these include the Roman optimum, the Dark Ages cold period, the MWP and LIA, all occurring before humans were generating any appreciable CO2. So why should CO2 now suddenly be the principal driver of climate when it wasn’t in the past? (Use your head.)
No. IPCC seems to be doing a pretty consistent job at that, using all kinds of rationalizations when the assumed CO2 temperature response does not work out that way in real life. I’ll provisionally accept the results of several recent independent observation-based studies, which suggest a value about half that ASS-U-MEd by the IPCC climate models.
Nope – neither do you and neither does IPCC (see answer above).
Nope. This is not what I have said (see above). I am convinced that CO2 could well have an effect, although I have also concluded, based on the empirical evidence out there, that IPCC has exaggerated this by a factor of two or more.
“Physics”? Whodat? (Certainly not “IPCC’s politically-motivated interpretation of “physics”.) You are not so naïve to believe that are you, Mosh?
Never made that claim, Mosh (see above comments).
I have no “proof” that CO2 has a minor overall effect on climate, just as IPCC (and you) have no “proof” that this effect is major (and that CO2 is the principal climate control knob, which will lead to CAGW if we do not dramatically curtail CO2 emissions now). That’s all agenda-driven speculation, Mosh, and I’m sure you are smart enough not to fall for it “hook, line and sinker”, like lolwot, FOMD, Joshua, and some other more naïve types that comment here have done.
Hope this clears up your apparent confusion regarding my position on the “CO2 climate control knob” and resulting CAGW premise of IPCC.
Max
Mosh
Re natural variation
The Met Office certainly seem to be revising their thoughts on natural variability prompted by Phil Jones who in a 2006 paper wrote;
‘The rapid warming in the CET record from the 1690’s to the 1730’s and then the extreme cold year of 1740 are examples of the magnitude of natural changes which can potentially be recorded in long series. Consideration of variability in these records from the early 19th century, therefore, may underestimate the range that is possible.’
He reckons the 1730’s were only marginally cooler than the present, something i wrote about some 10 years ago and Hubert Lamb 30 years before that. Its all there but needs to be teased out
tonyb
Beware the millennial at your perennial.
=================
If I say that communism has fatal conceptual and implementation flaws, it is not incumbent on me to invent a better system. If I can see that the financial system was relying too much on sub-prime mortgages, I do not need to design a better financial system. And if I do not accept that climate models do a very good job of predicting anything, I am under no obligation to build my own model. It is perfectly valid to argue that we don’t yet know enough or the modelers aren’t clever enough to turn our economy upside down and shut down all coal plants (as Hansen and EPA want to do) on the basis of their models. “not good enough models” is a valid response. You keep pushing this “alternate model” meme as if it were self-evident–it is not.
Craig Loehle,
+1
“Let’s take stem cell research. Data show that over the last 30 years there has been a loss of “trust” in scientists among a % of “Repubs” but not Dems or Indies. This took place concurrent with a growth of political activism from the Christian right, and concurrent with an increasing distrust among that % of Republicans in public and government institutions. ”
1) Is it only people on the ‘Christian Right’ who have ethical concerns about embryonic cell research?
2) Human eggs for research can either come from excess generated during fertility treatment or from paid/willing/unwilling donors. Why have feminists ignored the implications of asymmetric power relationships on women who are desperate for either children, money or employment?
3) Why is it that fears of ‘Frankenstein Foods’ come from those on the political left and yet worries about chimeric humans from those on the right?
4) Why is it that the UK, which has no political ‘Christian Right’, during its full public inquiry (Warnock) had many people, religious and secular, raising the ethical points that are generally attributed to the ‘Religious Right’ ?
5) Why, given that the USA legally allow abortion up to time of fetal viability, but, not define what viability is, is it that those who wish to define viability are labeled pro-life fundamentalists?
A an Englishman living in the US I find the very deliberate dragging of individual moral choices into the party political domain, and that the US public accept such debates in party political terms, quite astonishing.
You beat me too it!
Oppose research on human embryos and you’re an anti-science religious tea bag idiot fool attached to a whole political party of ignorance according to Mooney and Joshua.
Oppose research on corn and, well, you’re the enlightened one. Especially if you physically destroy the research, as Greenpeace is happily doing.
The funniest thing about this argument is that the Joshuas of this world are so overwhelmingly biased that they think the rest of the world wont notice the contradiction.
In fact the opposite happens- leftists bearing “the latest research” is generally seen in the same light as used car salesman advertises “best deal ever!”
Doc, you say “I find the very deliberate dragging of individual moral choices into the party political domain, and that the US public accept such debates in party political terms, quite astonishing.” I’m very uncertain whether the US public “accepts such debates” or not. It’s not clear that public opinion polling gets at the underlying heterogeneity of opinion very well, or is even designed to do so.
I should add, the sensitivity of elicited opinion to question order and minor wording changes says to me that opinion is typically nuanced (and so highly dependent on immediate context). I did some work years ago on question order in political-economic surveys.
We need to appoint a mediator on embryonic stem cell research, and abortion.
Let’s get a bunch of “objective” moderates in a room and let them decide for everybody else.
Maybe we can get some scientists who have been living in caves for decades, and thus have no opinions on the issues, to do an assessment of the “science” for us.
If we can just reframe the debate, maybe everybody will just get along.
(Anybody got a barf bag handy?)
Shortly after I first saw Ryan Maue’s graph of Accumulated Cyclone Energy, nearly five years ago, I directly asked Chris Mooney when he was going to write ‘Calm World’, and given the madness of CAGW, when he was going to write ‘The Democrats’ War on Science.’
So far, crickets. Not Aussie, Indian, Caribbean or English ones, either.
===========
When schoolteachers actively participated in hiding the truth while pushing superstition and ignorance on the society’s young, that was proof of the fall of Western civilization.
Search ‘Credentialed to Destroy’.
=======================
The darkness was lit, bells rung; but, these schoolteachers have fallen asleep.
. . . as scientists are increasingly viewed not as honest brokers, but as advocates aligned with the goals of the Democratic party, scientists and their organizations risk losing public trust and only likely contribute to polarization on hot button issues like climate change.
“Science communication research” offers the solution to this problem and the path to achieving it. If you are increasingly viewed not as honest brokers, then use these “ethical” techniques to change the way you are viewed.
Don’t change the fact that you are advocates aligned with the goals of the Democratic party, mind you. Just change the way you are viewed.
“Science communication research” is the study of propaganda methods. We need fewer “scientists” learning about “science communication research” and more scientists learning about science. The problem we have in ‘climate science” was caused by people with an amateurs knowledge of political tactics, an amateurs knowledge of statistics, and effectively zero understanding of epistemology. Upping their political acumen does not fix this problem, it exacerbates it.
Heh, just think of all the money wasted.
===============
I read an interesting poli-sci book by a communications theorist who in passing referred to his academic department as ‘the War College of the university.” Something to bear in mind.
Nature won’t cooperate with the weather commies but, no matter. Still, we face the fantasy of a hot apocalypse.
“Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask `Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted `no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand – ignoramuses that they are – is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.” ~Brendan O’Neill, ‘The icy grip of the politics of fear,’ 4-Jan-2011
Mother Nature has the AGW True Believer Cult backed into a corner. All of them were so looking forward to a free ride with Al Gore to the promised land in their Utopiamobile and wake up tied to a bedpost with hockey sticks up their consensual arses.
Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, as well as forging his work on human cloning/stem cell generation, used his powerful position to force the young women in his lab to take powerful fertility drugs and collected eggs from them.
In the USA, there is STILL no legal protection for young women in science not to be pressured by their pay masters to become egg donors.
“Effectively and transparently communicating the values”
advocating for integrity.
As a big fan of integrity, perhaps you can specify what exactly you refer to when saying: “I built defense systems that protect your liberty with less accurate predictions” [than those published by IPCC]. Was it sales systems ?
Since most of the posters on here are libertarians, have a look at libertarian Michael Shermer’s rethinking of his “ideology” … especially about climate change.
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2013/10/when-science-doesnt-support-beliefs/
JC, don’t concern yourself with Mann’s childish taunt of serial disinformer; Mann is a serial purveyor of crocks of XXX. (Approximately what Rob Wilson said.)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/10/21/wilson-on-millennial-temperature-reconstructions.html
Why not start by bringing back the scientific method? And, for anything that has attained the visibility, notoriety and infamy of the notorious science of global warming, how about some accountability? Michael Mann is the Ward Churchill of Climatology.
But Ward Churchill remains a hero of liberals. Accountability is only for conservatives and libertarians.
The Leftists-libs do not have a viable ideology. Appealing to the reptilian brain is all they’ve got. Problem is… That’s been working well for them.
Wagathon,
Bring back the scientific method? Who is this raving lunatic? We don’t need no stinkin’ “scientific method”! Away with him! Any other deniers?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
The prospects for Scientocracy have never been impressive.
For an advocacy or ethics orientation to have meaning or consequence, requires that it exercise Authority and Power. All of the legitimate such Authority & Power in the known universe is presently held by actors who will share it when it’s pried from their cold, dead fingers.
For science institutions to align themselves with projects designed to ‘soften up’ the citizenry to accept a new (proxy) science-Authority over them (and there are several notable examples underway), is ‘begging for it’.
The notion of “best science” guidlines, for example, can’t be used to ‘force’ the conclusion of scientists and science-bodies, onto the public. Long-term, at-all-seriously, attempting it will eventually prove disasterous.
To say to the public; “This stuff is too complicated & difficult for non-professional citizens. It is therefore necessary that they accept our expertise, and relinquish their decision-making Authority, to us” … should, hopefully, sound as ludricous as it is.
Nobody wants to say “Scientocracy”, because saying it bells the cat.
It’s hard to square the persistence and popularity of the FDA’s drug regulations with this view. And I say that as one who thinks they should be radically revised.
Stephen Schneider, climate modeler, co-author on AR 4, whose passing was morned by the Stanford’s Environmental Biology and Climate Change Department, the West and East coast elitist advocacy groups, international advocacy groups, and various White House and federal agencies of whom he was a consultant.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
With his access to political power; access to Silicone Valley billionaire financial support; and a well honed relationship to World Wildlife Federation and GreenPeace, his ethical balance between being effective and honest was not seen as struggle, rather, as a way forward. For those published advocates, it is not hard to observe the direction is towards effectiveness, and honesty not even on one’s radar.
Judith Curry: Several years ago you had nine questions about climate scientist’s conduct and the teaching, role modeling of integrity. At that time, I had said, that integrity came with the scientist and could not be divined nor enforced. One has “it” or one doesn’t. According to Schneider, to be effective, you only need to find those scientists who do not have integrity, use them strategically, to move one’s advocacy message along.
Isn’t this thread the same issue?
This interests me: “I [said] that integrity came with the scientist and could not be divined nor enforced. One has ‘it’ or one doesn’t..” I’m not sure it’s that simple, but I’m close to your opinion here. However, I wonder how long it will be before one of the many hard-core materialist denizens comes along and insists that everything boils down to material interests. :)
+1000
Comin’ in to Los Angeles.
======
RiH0O8.
I agree with your comment, except this part: “integrity [comes] with the scientist and could not be divined nor enforced. One has “it” or one doesn’t.
Integrity is a choice. It can indeed be divined, by watching the person’s behavior/choices. It can be enforced, if there are rules in place and the willingness to enforce them. (In my profession we have lots of the former, very little of the latter.) And one chooses it, or not. It is not an innate attribute; it is a choice of character and principle.
Nothing has changed since this old paper, we do not even look at the right things to analyze ethics isues: http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/92prom.html
Gary M
Indeed, integrity is a choice one makes. Integrity does not come out of the “blue”, rather, it comes from multiple times of opportunity, mostly at times of inconsequence, which then shows itself to be in the normal course of one’s daily life. One does not display integrity at select times, integrity is what you have practices all your life, even learning much from those episodes when you did not display integrity. You had a think on it.
Integrity is who you are.
Schneider was not constrained by integrity. His words speak to what he was.
ntegrity…can be enforced, if there are rules in place and the willingness to enforce them.”
I would say that if enforced rules produce anything, it should be called “the appearance of integrity” rather than the thing in itself, inasmuch as the definition I find online is “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.”
Integrity is learned.
RiHo08’s provides quite a long quote of Schneider but curiously omits his last sentence.
Stephen Schneider: “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Why was the bold part omitted in RiHo08’s version? It cannot have been accidental. Nor is it out of context. And you can’t argue shaving off 6 words of over 50 is necessary to save space.
There’s only one motive left for why that sentence was omitted isn’t there? A rather ironic motive. It seems the one responsible decided to be more more effective than honest.
lol!
lol
You are right, I left off the sentence you added back. However, the quote is from the middle of a dialogue he was having and I recommend that you get a copy of Discover and read the context. Then obtain his explanation in APS News, “its not as bad as it sounds.”
(Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989. For the original, together with Schneider’s commentary on its misrepresentation, see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996)
I chose to leave the ending with the word “honest” pointing directly at the issue:
He was not advocating being “effectively honest”, rather, to be effective one has to diminish one’s honesty, which I believe he was advocating and had done so himself.
Until his death, he was in the “halls of power” whereby he took advantage of his status as a scientist deeply involved in climate change consensus building, perceived integrity, and media access to advocate his personal viewpoint.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing, just as ferocious and damaging to the flock.
lolwot
“I hope that means both” was a superfluous addendum to an essay that suggested lying was OK in order to get the desired message across.
Quite simple, actually.
Sort of like closing his justification for lying with, “hopefully you won’t need to lie, but it’s OK if you do”.
Max
Why leave it out. Because the ACTIONS of Schneider and his followers of not being honest makes it clear that he did not mean it.
lolwot: Why was the bold part omitted in RiHo08′s version?
Because the emphasis in Schneider’s passage was how to act when “both” could not be achieved, and he advocated a strong role for effective advocacy and the sacrifice of truth.
Had I been there, I’d have warned him (not that I think he’d have cared, but we all work on finding the best expressions for our ideas) that in the long run if he was known to sacrifice truth for effectiveness he would lose both.
“Hoping” to avoid difficult choices is empty.
bacpierre: At that time, there was no contradiction between being both effective and honest.
The thrust of Schneider’s quote is what to do when there is a contradiction. He advocated for everyone to consider at least some lying. My argument is that lying by scientists isn’t even effective.
Would you believe a pharmaceutical company scientists who had a record of telling little white lies about the effectiveness of the compounds they produce? Probably not. But the scientists who produce those compounds have the same urgent desire to inform the public of their great value, in the public interest. It’s of immense value to have a malaria vaccine that works, for example, but if you knew a scientist had a record of shading the truth you wouldn’t believe his claim to have developed one. With the highest self-regard, Schneider became indistinguishable from a snake oil salesman who believed in the product.
For a scientist, be honest or get out of the business. Simple.
May be it is not that simple. I remember the Club of Rome time, the late sixties. At that time, it was not about climate change, more about pollution and energy resources. About the limits of growth. At that time it seemed important to make the general public aware of our having become recently conscious of the fragility of the equilibrium of the world we live in. At that time, I would have agreed with what Schneider wrote. At that time, there was no contradiction between being both effective and honest.
Today, as far as climate change is concerned, as far as nuclear energy as well, it sems that to be effective you need to be dishonest. As a scientist, my choice is clear: be honest at the price of not being effective. But others choose differently. There is the point of contention, isn’t it?.
Pierre, you write ” As a scientist, my choice is clear: be honest at the price of not being effective. But others choose differently. There is the point of contention, isn’t it?.”
The problem is when and in whose company you are dishonest or not. If this is merely a discussion between scientists, then in the end, the dishonesty will become apparent and no harm will be done. But when the scientists have the ear of the POTUS, or the German Chancellor, or the Prime Minister of the UK, that is a different issue. If scientists are in this sort of position, such as the Scientific Adviser to the British Government, and he/she is dishonest, then that is a major problem.
And that is the issue. Scientists who have the power to influence our politicians, being deliberately dishonest, because they feel they must support The Team in furtherance of the Cause.
Jim Cripwell
Well said.
And when the “science adviser” of the POTUS (John Holdren) is an old-time Malthusian, who even advises him to shoot massive amounts of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere to save us from global warming, there is a REAL problem.
Max
JIm and Max,
I understand what you say and I agree with it,
Pierre
oops. I ought to have placed my comment to bacpierre here.
RiH008,
Good post.
In a democracy with free public debate and recurrent elections, you have to be concerned with the long-term. You have to anticipate that it will take a long time to prevail, even if the majority is absolutely correct. If you take a longer-term perspective, I think you can see that Schneider’s advice is counter-productive. As self-appointed science lobbyists tell little white lies and gross exaggerations, the opponents in the debate learn of these self-justified transgressions, and inform the public of them. The public then downweights the self- proclaimed expertise and self-righteousness of the self-exonerated liars.
Someone (in my memory it was Henry Kissinger) wrote that in pubic policy you are allowed one lie. Once the public learns that you are willing to lie on behalf of your cause, they won’t believe anything you say afterward.
It is doubly self-defeating for scientists to follow this example of Schneider when the public learns that one of the effects is to persuade government functionaries to steer tax money toward you and your friends. Everyone except Schneider (evidently, on that quote) understands that lying for money is a form of corruption.
It may be annoying for the self-righteous who perceive themselves as much better informed than Joe six-pack to realize that in a democracy they have to lobby hard for a long period of time in order to prevail, but that’s the way it is, and for good reason. In the long run, the period of time necessary to win an expensive public policy debate, the most important tool in the possession of the scientists is their absolute dedication to getting the facts right, with every attempt to attain the classic “disinterestedness” to which they aim. When they intentionally give that up, they become just another interest group.
Matt, good points. While reading Nisbet, I wondered whether his recommendations suffer from a kind of common-pool resource problem. A lot of Nisbet describes some kind of “social cost” that some group will bear, if some individual in the group takes some kind of action. In Nisbet’s reasoning, this is a frequent reason for some suggested imperative or prohibition on framing by individual scientists or journalists. You are describing something similar. What I wonder is whether individuals who violate the suggested norms get “private benefits” from it that would tend to undermine any dependence on a group norm. Individual scientists and journalists reap certain kinds of rewards from bombast, exaggeration etc. even if they are “peeing in the pool” for others. I suspect that without certain norms, and without group sanctions against violators, the bomb-throwers will continue to misbehave.
Wagathon
I’d say a better example is Charles Dawson (of Piltdown Man infamy).
Max
JC comments: Matt Nisbet’s analysis provides some important insights.
Matt Nisbet’s analysis firmly rooted in the assumption that the ‘global warming’ narrative is scientific, and that the only problem is with communicating this good science in a manner that achieves policy objectives.
I found the frame typology for the climate change debate to be particularly illuminating.
I find particularly illuminating the fact that Nisbet did not include “The only problem with climate science is communication” as a frame in his typology.
I like your last remark. There is something condescending about this particular “frame.” It easily translates as “You (they) just don’t get it” which can be infuriating if you are in the wrong mood for it.
You note that all of these great intellects coming to the conclusion that the problem is communicating the science still hold the fear of apocalypse firmly in their minds. Perhaps they’ll take a look at a thermometer one of these days.
============
NW
The “problem” is “communication”?
How do you “communicate” with all those thermometers out there that say it isn’t warming (even the ones next to AC exhausts in summer or heated buildings in winter)?
Max
Easy, Max, telepathetic connections.
=======
Kim and Max, perhaps you are right, but I see no point in rehearsing the skeptic snark at every dam opportunity.
Otters might see a point:
http://planet3.org/2013/10/21/evidence-murdoch-organization-behind-blog-astro-turf-attacks/
Yes, and sea lions too. :) But seriously, even sophisticated marketing firms think there comes a point where the consumer is saturated with messages, and endless repetition gets tiresome, even if you mostly agree with the message.
You’re right about the saturation effect, NW.
I suspect the payoff is asymmetric and would bet it favors inactivism.
For more discourse on the otter:
http://discourseontheotter.tumblr.com/
Entertaining, Willard.
OK, let’s try this again.
All the “acrimony” is not a flaw of the debate to progressives, it is a feature.
There was this guy, named Saul Alinsky. If you want to actually understand the dynamics of the debate, you have to learn who he is, what he wrote, and how influential his writing still is on the progressive movement.
Progressive, including progressive scientists, are progressives first and ever4ything else second. Steven Schneider did not advocate lying because he was a scientist. He advocated lying because he was a progressive. Schmidt, Jomnes and Trenberth don’t demonize and ridicule skeptics because they are scientists, they do so because they are progressives.
The IPCC doesn’t engage in a highly partisan political debate because it is made up of scientists. It does so because it (it’s leadership, lead scientists and sponsors) is made up of progressives.
You moderates and independents can keep asking yourself the Rodney King sociological questions, or you can actually look at what is going on around you. It’s really not that complicated.
Ignore what people say, and watch what they do.
I once heard Saul Alinsky speak and stuck around afterwards to ask him a question. I was three feet from him, but haven’t the slightest memory of my question or his answer.
===========
I never heard from Saul himself, but his acolytes wouldn’t shut their mouths about him when I was being recruited to be a “community organizer” in the 70s. Hillary wrote her baccalaureate thesis on “updating” Alinsky for the way society has changed (meaning resisted his tactics to that point).
Alinsky is the Karl Mao Marx of the vicarious communists/AKA progressives.
Give Steven Schneider his due. He was against using bombs or soot or whatever to fix global cooling. (It was the 70s, okay, and those flared jeans were kind of draughty.) Steven thought it could be done – but there might be side effects! He must have been some sort of moderate then.
Gary, remember Buckley with Alinsky.
Amazing. Thanks for posting this.
Bob, kudos for posting the Buckley/Alinsky clip. Alinsky, out of his own mouth, comes across as a slippery, dishonest twister.
And, quelle surprise! He states that he refuses to debate his critics. His acolytes in climate science certainly picked up on that lesson.
Yes, indeed. Which clearly explains his presence on Firing Line.
You will find, Joshua, that he refused to engage with any of Buckley’s substantive points, and openly lied, prevaricated and avoided Buckely’s questions.
If that’s your definition of “debate” (it seems to be Alinsky’s) – so be it.
Actually I did not remember this. It is fun to watch the class of Buckley against the smarmy arrogance of Alinsky.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here is a longer clip from the same show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ9Si5pkAqg
Buckley is sorely missed. National Review is not what it once was.
looks like the disciples of alinski won
Mosher +1
Won what? Or one wot?
=========
Hear hear *applauds GaryM* Rules for Radicals should be required reading for everyone, as a preparatory warning. It’s also worth looking at the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School philosophers, all contributors to the progressive viewpoint.
In any case, there’s nothing new about this so-called “framing”. Politicians have been doing it for decades. It’s more usually called spin in the UK, as exemplified by the spin doctor Alistair Campbell in the last UK government.
Janet, it’s spin here too. 20 years ago, there was even a popular US band called the Spin Doctors.
” Schmidt, Jomnes and Trenberth don’t demonize and ridicule skeptics because they are scientists, they do so because they are progressives.”
What makes you say they are “progressives?”
because they ridicule skeptics!
Joseph,
What makes me say they are progressives is that they favor centralization of the global energy economy. Centralization is statism by another name. Progressivism is the modern for statism has taken. It combines elitism with a lust for control, ie. power.
They don’t want to “do science”. They want to change the world to conform to their idea of how it should be. And their “science” has become a means to that end.
Also, their tactics are the tactics of progressivism. Demonization of their political opponents, etc..
All the CAGWers are statists tending toward totalitarianism whether they know it or not. The “cure” for global warming involves the state forcing ,by firearms and other weapons, people to act in a given manner.
“What makes me say they are progressives is that they favor centralization of the global energy economy’
Do you have any evidence to support they favor centralization of the global energy economy?
December 1967 Firing Line episode with the Buckley-Alinsky interview, on a webpage. Link to PDF of entire program transcript.
… For us low-band & text-oriented folks.
True story. At a dinner with a number of people, the name Alinsky came up. A professor at the University of Chicago (yes, THAT U of C) who’s a very well known public intellectual said that she didn’t know who Saul Alinsky was. For about 300 milliseconds I thought she was joking/lying. Then it became very evident that she was dead serious and honest.
Among the yammering classes, Alinsky is the new Alger Hiss. He didn’t exist, and besides, he wasn’t guilty.
+1
Alinsky taught the progressives in the US how to use the poor to gather power for themselves. Their “community organizing” was about getting the names, addresses, financial contributions, and most of all trust of the poor and lower middle class. To that end, they organized around goals from generic drug laws to emergency medical technicians to welfare expansion.
The programs they used to “organize” were never the goal. The goal was to gain a political base of power, and with that demand concessions from the powers that be. The concessions were specifically designed to undermine the community and its economy, with the goal of creating a crisis environment in which the organizers would then acquire more power.
Obamacare is a classic Alinskyite strategy. As is CAGW. And the ultimate goal is not the empowerment of the poor. It is to use the poor to destroy the capitalist system to allow the imposition of socialism, with the poor ever even knowing that is where they are being lead.
This is not the delusion of a neanderthal conservative, this is the express intent of their movement, as set forth in their own writings and speeches (including Obama’s) before they entered the mainstream of politics in the US.
The fact that the web site also signs up people to vote tells the whole story.
Much of the “mitigation” or “fry” rhetoric is founded on the False Dilemma logical fallacy of ignoring adaptation, and placing nature above people. The Cornwall Alliance counters with ethical discussion focusing on people and including adaptation from an Evangelical perspective informed by climate skeptics.
lol!
WHAT WE DENY
-We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
-We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.
-We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.
-We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.
This suggests they deny the holocaust. Doesn’t seem very religious!
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.”
This part is obvious.
Andrew
huh? where do you see that?
Lolwot,
Could you let me how implied accusations of anti-semitism are relevant to an opinion of facts about physical science?
I think I must have missed part of your logic.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
lolwot. Only in your imagination. No they do not deny the holocaust.
The Cornwall Alliance also states:
That is foundational ethics, science and economics of the Judeo-Christian Western Civilization.
If ever there was proof needed that the Christian Right and denial of climate change were perfectly irrationally made for each other, this is it.
quarecuss
Then perhaps you could explain why it is scientists affiliated with the Cornwall Alliance that are exposing the epic failures of global warming models, and not the likes of Mann et al.?
See Roy Spender Oct 14th showing 96% probability (87 out of 90) model projections based on 1979 are now hotter than actual global temperatures. So much for IPCC’s 95% confidence!
In science, data always trumps models!
See Spencer’s post
and Figure of 90 CIMP5 model predictions
Showing both surface and lower atmosphere temperatures.
On what ethical basis do “climate scientists”/IPCC publicize 95% confidence, when the evidence is 96% failure?
See Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
The potential for science to get a massive black eye here is quite real. If temperatures were to drop significantly over the next five years the backlash would be severe. And it wouldn’t just be climate scientists in the firing line. Funding for science as a whole would be endangered.
The nature of recent variability suggests a 1970s type plateau or slight decline over the next 20 years. A plateau of that length would break most of the models but in PR terms a plateau is survivable and would leave the reputation of science merely severely dented. The joker in the deck is the sun and the possibility of a Maunder type climate event involving a significant decline. If that happened the media would turn on science and things would get very ugly very fast.
Climate is inherently chaotic and unpredictable, complex, and not yet fully understood. In my opinion the biggest sin committed by climate scientists has been the unjustified pretense of certainty. The whole “95% certain” thing in the IPCC SPM is absolutely outrageous! Essentially the reputation of science has been wagered on what is an extremely risky bet.
“The potential for science to get a massive black eye here is quite real. If temperatures were to drop significantly over the next five years the backlash would be severe.”
There’s certainly potential for black eyes.
Here’s my prediction: Despite a cold Sun and a negative PDO, the world continues warming. Skeptics suffer damage on multiple fronts:
1) Dozens of failed skeptic predictions of cooling litter the internet, diminishing their credibility.
2) The scientists are shown to have been right, boosting their credibility.
3) Skeptics can no longer blame the Sun or the PDO for the warming, leaving them short of excuses.
“The whole “95% certain” thing in the IPCC SPM is absolutely outrageous!”
It’s only outrageous if you believe rising CO2 has a ridiculously small warming effect.
Empirically, we’re due for a cool-down. It’s not because the sun is cold, since the changes in it’s energy output across cycles is not sufficient to call the climate-shots on earth.
Nonetheless, for reasons we don’t yet see, cycles on the sun correlated with climate-excursions, on earth.
Pragmatically, the empirical record points to a cool-down. It could be moderate, or it could be severe.
All that really matters, is that following the pause, temps start heading down. At that point, the game is up.
I predict cooling, becoming apparent as we head down the backside of the current (moribund) Cycle 24. Sooner, rather than later.
The radiative properties of CO2 are well understood but we have poor knowledge of the nature of the feedbacks which are supposed to cause the majority of the warming. We can’t even be confident of the sign of the feedbacks! In those conditions claiming 95% certainty is absolutely outrageous. In fact it is totally indefensible. What procedure or statistical test was used to calculate this ridiculous and meaningless number?
Falling tempertures could bring a whole new meaning to inconvenient.
No need for mile-thick icesheets, cruising down from Canada.
Just let the new consensus become, that the public & media were hoodwinked.
Ted Clayton
And to “truth”.
Max
Well, they were, so it’s almost inevitable. The new consensus will be a mile thick, and oppress all of science, too.
================
Kim,
Minimizing the babies in the bathwater should become a key focus, if a cool-down does give the climate-topic whiplash. While the public & media may go on the warpath, folks called skeptis etc tend to put a hight value on science.
Hopefully, the blowback would be mostly peanut-gallery grade.
Ted
OK, good for you; I’d rather peanuts pouring from the gallery instead of a glacier. And that is a good point about the skeptics’ value of science.
===============
As far as the babies go, thank God Mama Judy’s in charge of most of those puppies.
================
The biggest sin that is being committed in climate science is the drawing of conclusions based on short term data trends that have not, as yet, been adequately assessed for the impacts of natural variability over centuries and millenia. Will regional climates get warmer or colder over the next 50 years?
Who knows but one thing is for certain, global average temperature trends over the short to medium term will have zero impact, on longer term climate to be experienced in regions and on public opinion because the public will not believe in something that they are not feeling or experiencing.
a different version of Mcintyre
http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/
Many of us think Ian H’s comment is accurate, Mosher. For a long time
SMc happens to be included in this group. He’s certainly prominent, but not the originator
Hubris is the utterly inseparable handmaiden to power (in this case, the power of the MSM as abused by alarmists)
http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/
‘When a teacher at University of East London suggested he contact Fredrickson directly and say he’d found a mistake, he resisted. “It occurred to me that the level of proof someone would have to bring to me if I was Dr. Fredrickson, if I was a senior professor and you were a grad student who’d been in psychology for three weeks, would have to be pretty big.”
Humility and deference. How quaint.
So who else has got the Cahonies to publish that most of the warming is natural? Will it end up requiring taking every single paper that made poor assumptions of catastrophic CO2 forcing apart one by one or is there a Climate Science easy button?
Marvelous story of Nick Brown et al(an) Sokal, et cetera. Another absurdity is numerically differentiating positive from negative emotions. There is a large disputed frontier, there, sans douane
=========================
“Another absurdity is numerically differentiating positive from negative emotions.”
There’s a distinction between ordinal measurement and cardinal measurement, Kim. The Mohs Scale of mineral hardness is a good example of the former in a bona fide hard science (tee hee). Orderings of subjective sensations can be similarly measured; indeed the assumptions that an empirical relationship must satisfy for such measurement are considerably weaker than those needed for cardinal measurements (such as length).
I now know Moh than I did befo, so thanks, NW. But I still wonder at the distinguishing metric? Was it ratios of smile muscles to sad ones? Or something subjective?
============
How many times have you seen a ‘lol’ cover a negative emotion? By the way, your ‘lol’ was after a lovely one.
==============
Oops, your ‘tee hee’, a talcum touch.
=============
Statistics is the modern alchemy, transmuting opinion into science..
If you say “NW is more annoying than captdallas,” would the captain and I be able to publicly agree that you made this comparison? If the answer is yes, then in what respects is the “more annoying (to GaryM) than” relation any less amenable to mathematical representation by numbers than (say) your judgments as to which stick is longer than another? Does this sound like a statistics question?
NW,
No, but
“Appealing to research he performed in the 1990s that coded the language of sixty business teams for positive and negative affect, Losada said he had ‘developed a mathematical model—based on nonlinear dynamics—of (Fredrickson’s) broaden-and-build theory.’
Two independent tests by Fredrickson studying the emotional ratios of individuals seemed to confirm Losada’s findings. In 2005, the two unveiled the critical positive ratio in an American Psychologist paper titled ‘Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing.’”
does “sound like statistics.”
And that is from the article, if you actually read it. It wasn’t a simple “greater or lesser than” comparison. It was supposedly a mathematical model of human behavior based on study of sixty groups.
“Paleo climatology” doesn’t sound like statistics either. Unless you read the papers.
I’m not trying to defend that dreck. It’s obviously crap. I think there are some excellent practitioners of clinical psychology, but large swaths of the researchers are… room temperature if you get my drift.
Oh yeah I read it this afternoon. Appalling.
Rob Wilson pushed the Climate Science easy button :)
Wait! I know “Bully” :)
I heard about this, but it’s good to read a detailed account. I had no idea Sokal joined the party.
Personally, I would not call American Psychologist the flagship journal of the APA. Maybe it is for clinically oriented psych, and maybe clinicians outnumber the cognitive research folks. But I would’ve guessed either Psychological Review, Psychological Science or the Journal(s) of Experimental Psychology (if you asked me what the premier psych journal is). I guess that from the viewpoint of the author, casting this the way he does makes a more compelling story.
Thanks for posting this.
“Framing science”?
Schneider, Mann, Jones, Watson, Gleick, Wahl, Amman,…
an’ da beat goes on…
When I took a Psychology class as an undergraduate, the first thing the book and teacher said was “Psychology is a science”. After a very short while, it was clear that it was not. On the final one question was: “Is Psychology a science?” I answered no, and was clearly cut one letter grade (based on everything else in the class).
Some of it is very disciplined and progressive (I don’t mean in the political sense, but rather the Lakatos sense), but I can’t blame anyone for the impression they may get from a first survey (or the story Steve Mosher posted above).
Parts of psychology seem to be highly repeatable and pretty precise given the complexity of mental phenomena. One problem seems to be people stretching to find “interesting” or “surprising” results that will get published in the better journals and create buzz. Daniel Kahnemann intervened publicly recently to address the credibility problems of research in the sub-sub-field of “priming,” where some dubious findings have been published of late. Even there, I’m pretty sure the underlying mechanism exists–as a kid, I was taught a (somewhat annoying) joke/trick based on priming that worked over 90% of the time for me.
Framin’ da climate science
(with apologies to Johnny Mercer)
Ya gotta
Ac-cent-tchu-ate the po-si-tive
Ee-li-mi-nate the ne-ga-tive
Hide stuff that’s not af-fir-ma-tive
Don’t let the facts get in between
Ya gotta spread panic to the maximum
Keep reason to the minimum
Sell climate pandemonium
Pro-ject a catastrophic scene
What can you do when things look sick?
Michael used his trick, so he could sell his shtick
And you can too, just to make the story stick
Because it’s clear ya gotta
Make sure your models simulate
No sweat if you prevaricate
But be sure you never hesitate
To sell the climate doomsday scene.
+1
That’s a mighty purty song, fellow serf, ‘n a
powerful message fer affirmative ack-shun,
‘Ya gotta spread panic to the maximum …’
O when they said ‘repent’ ah wundured wha-a-t they meant,
Now ah know fer ah can see the money they have spent.
It made Al Gore a mint, more tax fer guvuhmint,
and hefty grants fer climate scien tists.
Howdy feller serf an thankee fer the com-pli-ment
Yew shore sed it rite.
Them sci-un-tist fellers hav made a mighty big sumthin’ outa nuthin’
An shore enuff, them po-li-ti-shuns an tax revenooers luv it.
Ah reckon everbodys gettin rich offa nuthin.
An I larned in skool ya caint cre-ate mass outa nuthin – but them fellers ar shore nuff doin it.
Aint climb-a-tall-a-geee grand?
Yore feller surf
Right on topic!
Here is an article from The Economist:
How science goes wrong
Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself
Oct 19th 2013
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
Gene, you may also enjoy:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/18/trust-and-dont-bother-to-verify/
Junk science in Big Pharma taints science but this junk journalism grossly generalizes.
Actually, academic junk science in biomedicine was recently exposed by industry scientists:
“A few years ago scientists at Amgen, an American drug company, tried to replicate 53 studies that they considered landmarks in the basic science of cancer, often co-operating closely with the original researchers to ensure that their experimental technique matched the one used first time round. According to a piece they wrote last year in Nature, a leading scientific journal, they were able to reproduce the original results in just six. Months earlier Florian Prinz and his colleagues at Bayer HealthCare, a German pharmaceutical giant, reported in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, a sister journal, that they had successfully reproduced the published results in just a quarter of 67 seminal studies.”
Your prejudices are showing.
You’re agreeing with me about Big Pharma junk science, so what’s the problem with my “prejudice”?
Read harder. The Big Pharrma scientists exposed the junk put out by the academics.
Currently large numbers of bush fires are burning across the State of NSW and homes are being lost to the flames. Bush fires are a part of our history and every year inflammable fuel on the ground has to be cleaned up before the start of the fire season. An international effort between the US and Australia has been forged and fire fighters travel each way across the Pacific in their respective fire seasons.Of course some blame global warming for this problem and are incredulous when told that climate has been steady for the last 15 years. No, in both of our countries, people like to live in the bush or forest and often livelihood depends on it despite the risk.. The fire fighters, both men and women, are the real heroes of our times.
Alexander Biggs,
Good point and it’s great to see the commendation for the fire fighters. The recent politicization of the fires in Australia – the Greens are blaming the fires on Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s policy to repeal the carbon tax – It raises the question about what types of policies should be implemented: GHG mitigation or adaptation?
To those who argue for GHG mitigation, can someone please explain how carbon pricing and renewable energy will reduce the fire risk this summer, next summer or any summer in future years?
http://www.venganza.org/images/spreadword/pchart1.jpg
Cute.
I have just written a blog praising the fire fighters of the US and Australia for their efforts in both countries, but this was rejected by your automatic editor. What is going on?
Sorry, my blog above was only temporarily rejected.
“as scientists are increasingly viewed not as honest brokers, but as advocates aligned with the goals of the Democratic party,”
Very narrow American point of view. Most of the world has no idea what the goals of the Democratic party are, and do not think their scientists have anything to do with that party.
RoHa,
I don’t think it is a narrow view. While I do not know the goals of the US Democratic Party, I am well aware that climate scientists in Australia, UK, Europe, Canada are ideologically aligned with the progressive parties.
The climate scientists in these countries have been strongly advocating for high cost, totally useless, economically irrational policies like carbon pricing and renewable energy.
RoHa said;
Things have to happen somewhere. When it happens in Brazil, we have to know something about Brazil. Spain, Russia, China …. wherever, whatever, all stories have an origin & context.
Is there a national/political point of view that would be more familiar to you?
Ted
Here’s an example of scientists aligned with the Democratic party …
Scientists say climate change is challenging Iowa agriculture
October 18, 2013 By Pat Curtis
Scientists gathered for forum on climate change at Drake University, Gene Takle is directly behind podium
Scientists gathered for forum on climate change at Drake University, Gene Takle is directly behind podium
More than 150 scientists from 36 colleges and universities in Iowa are jointly issuing a call for action against global warming.
The director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State, Gene Takle, is one of the lead authors of the group’s Iowa Climate Statement for 2013. “The last couple of years have underscored the fact that we are very vulnerable to weather conditions and weather extremes in Iowa,” Takle says.
Both years were marked by heavy spring rains followed by droughts that damaged Iowa’s farmland. “This has become a real issue for us, particularly with regard to getting crops planted in the spring,” Takle says. “We had 900,000 acres that weren’t planted this year because of these intense spring rains.”
As the climate continues to warm and change in the coming decades, Takle projects even more harm will be done to Iowa’s ag economy. He’s encouraging farmers to update their management plans to make the land more resilient to extreme weather. “Practices that were installed 30 years ago just need to be updated for the current climate that we’re experiencing with these heavy rains,” Takle says.
The Iowa scientists are also calling on the USDA to update its policies to better protect the land. “We want to make sure that we have, for farmers, something that is going to address the current and the projected future situation,” Takle says.
Takle says it’s imperative the world reduce its dependence on fossil fuels because the rise of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is at the root of the problem.
http://www.radioiowa.com/2013/10/18/scientists-say-climate-change-is-challenging-iowa-agriculture/
Too much Spring rain. Generally they don’t want them to tile as that puts silt in the rivers and can cause floods. Perhaps the real problem is that most of the land is plowed up, and ponds have been fiiled. Climate change where more rain is bad? Maybe. More likely the natural prairie is gone.
“Takle says it’s imperative the world reduce its dependence on fossil fuels because the rise of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is at the root of the problem.”
Of course it is. That is what all the peer reviewed science says. That is why Iowa has to update 30 year old ag planning. Not because there is a 30 PDO pseudo cycle that changes weather patterns that the planners never factored in, but because fossil fuel modified the atmospheric radiant balance cause more rain to get dumped on IOWA.
Takle also noted that some of the farmer’s where not smiling as much and recommended more red wine and group hugs to improve their positivity ratio.
Seems they would have enough ethanol to pass around.
The story is they spike the ethanol with gasoline to prevent that.
That wouldn’t stop a real man.
I’m upset that I’m about to spend $40,000 to install a solar system. Why? I live in CA, and energy is really expensive. Not so bad as the up to 92c per KWH they charge in Chico on some days, but @ 35c per KWH max rate, it’s pretty high, and the economics work out for me.
Recently, California’s Public Utilities Commission has decided to make 1.3 GW of energy storage (don’t know quite what that means, but it is meant to be enough to power a million homes). No one knows how to do this. No one knows what it will cost. But our local Newspaper hails this as a “Bold Move.” Meanwhile CA has the following mandate: “California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, which requires utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind.”
Now, it strikes me that it would be cheaper, oh so much cheaper, to instead of mandating Solar and Wind (I suppose you can burn trees too), to get rid of all this business, and install new Natural Gas plants. All you can eat, in effect, and a 1c/KWH tax could be added to buy third world stoves. Even though the math would work out oh so much better, I am willing to bet this could never, ever fly. Even though it would be cheaper, and achieve the purported goals the Sierra club.
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24331470/california-adopts-first-nation-energy-storage-plan
Don’t forget Governor Moonbeams mandate of 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025.
California, the state whose motto was Eureka (I have found it), is transformed into Canutafornia, with a motto of “I have decreed it.”
I think this guy has a great point and some good examples. especially comparing Obama’s and Bush’s statements on stem cells. Where his recommendation for how to interact with the audience to get scientific ideas put forward in a way that allows deliberation. He apparently believes the climate scientists failed because they allowed the public to get polarized due to the fact that they came at it with the ‘from on high’ form of communication:
“This tendency to reduce science policy decisions down to debates over science rather than values is perhaps principally responsible in the United States for lingering political gridlock over climate change. To date, so-called climate skeptics continue to successfully downplay public concern by narrowly framing the issue in terms of scientific uncertainty. In contrast, Al Gore, many environmentalists, and even some scientists have attempted to counter the uncertainty frame with their own message that climate science in fact compels action, dramatizing this science by way of a Pandora’s box emphasis on a looming “climate crisis.”
Publicity for Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth led with this storyline, including a movie poster with the frame device of a hurricane-shaped plume spewing from a smoke stack and a trailer that told audiences to expect “the most terrifying film you will ever see.” With an accent on the visual and the dramatic, the catastrophe strategy triggered similarly framed news coverage. For example, a much talked about Time magazine cover from 2006 featured the image of a polar bear on melting ice with the tagline: “Be worried, be VERY worried” (See Nisbet, 2009b for an overview.)
Yet these claims are effectively challenged by climate skeptics as liberal “alarmism,” putting the issue quickly back into the mental box of scientific uncertainty and partisanship. Polls suggest that the American public has picked up on these claims of “climate exaggeration,” likely filtering them back through their preferred partisan lens and their existing views on liberal media bias. The result is that many otherwise well-informed Americans increasingly discount the climate change problem, while also believing that the mainstream news media is exaggerating the issue (See Nisbet, 2009b).”
NOTE that one sentence:
To date, so-called climate skeptics continue to successfully downplay public concern by narrowly framing the issue in terms of scientific uncertainty.
It looks like Dr. Curry is one of the most powerful and successful anti-science propagandists of our time according to that viewpoint.
I think the idea that the public highly respects science above the politicians is a little misleading. I think the public looks at and marvels at all the modern technology (going to Mars, computer science, modern life convenience, etc) and thus have a high opinion. when it comes to contentious issues in science the story is different.
I looked and two different polls regarding contentious issues in science and see both as a failure of scientific communication. Here is the first:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-965223.html
I used that one due to the excellent title:
Poll: Majority Reject Evolution
All the other polls are in a similar vein. the reason science has failed, for years, to get the public thinking about evolution and molecular biology put in the proper context is that it is, and always has been, looked at as evolution vs god. I think that is why the religious view of creationism and so-called intelligent design sprung up was due to the overwhelming evidence about the theory of evolution.
If, from the beginning, science would have been successful in communicating the science it should have been done whereas belief in god has absolutely nothing to do with it. If you believe in god (although some religions and religious beliefs would be impenetrable) you could look at the science of evolution and molecular biology as the work of god … end of story. You will notice that poll closely reflects the % of the population that is atheist. The right questions to ask in a poll, if this had been properly framed from the beginning, would be: Is there a scientific basis for evolution and molecular biology? Y/N and: Does God play a role in evolution and molecular biology? Y/N So eventually with all the education the headline would read: Public believes in evolution and God.
The climate debate is very similarly framed as being black or white:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/environment_update
Looks like the ICPP has been winning lately but it’s still close to 50/50.
Once again the proper communication by science would have the questions in the poll ask: Do you believe human activity such as greenhouse gases have an effect on the climate? Y/N and: do you believe the natural cycles of nature such as ocean and wind cycles and solar cycles have an effect on the climate? Y/N. Headline: Public believes in AGW and Natural Variation.
Unfortunately Matthew Nisbet is presenting a pipe dream!
Interesting observations, even though I might demur from a few points. Thanks.
Thanks for reading it; it was a little long.
Financing of projects that reduce carbon emissions and protect against the effects of climate change fell 1 percent last year, hampering efforts to slow global warming, according to a research report.
Spending from governments and companies on renewable energy and other mitigation measures declined to $359 billion in 2012 from $364 billion a year earlier, according to the study by the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based analysis firm.
The expenditure is less than three-fifths of what the International Energy Agency says is needed to bring emissions down fast enough to limit global warming to a United Nations target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
“Investment to combat and adapt to climate change is happening around the world, but it’s short of where it needs to be and efforts to grow it have not been successful enough,” Climate Policy Initiative Executive Director Thomas Heller said in an e-mailed statement.
The IEA said last year that $5 trillion in total spending is needed through 2020 to moderate temperature gains since industrialization to 2 degrees. That’s equivalent to $625 billion a year for eight years. The World Bank estimates that on the current trajectory of carbon emissions, the planet is set to warm by 4 degrees.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/global-climate-change-finance-fell-1-in-2012-study-says.html
????The World Bank estimates that on the current trajectory of carbon emissions, the planet is set to warm by 4 degrees. ?????
There’s your science folks.
In the end it is science that progresses and tells us about climate shifts, ocean and atmosphere patterns, stadium waves, synchronised chaos and much else that is informing the new climate paradigm. In the end science is providing the answers – but in the meantime the obsessions of the climate space cadets inhibits progress. Inhibits progress on policies and responses to carbon emissions especially.
I have been having the usual discussion with webby – this time about to accumulate or not. he cumulative ENSO method works because it is an index. It oscillates around zero. The cumulative values show the preponderance of negative or positive states over time. In the decadal mode the values stay predominantly positive or negative for decades alternately cooling or warming the planet. Accept it or not – it is the scientific consensus. I suspect that with webbies history he is more interested in anything but reality in the quest to deny that there are complexities and natural variability.
Many of us were at that stage of understanding that things were not quite as simple as made out a decade ago. It hit me in 2003 while continuing a decade and a half study of rainfall regimes. After thinking about it non-stop for three days – I spoke to a leading Australian hydro-climatologist who knew all about it already. My 2007 American Thinker article expressed what was known in response to the IPCC failing to rethink natural variability. The space cadets continue a policy of resisting the reality of the science and ongoing post-hoc
rationalisation when they can deny no longer. It is why they are 10 years behind the curve clinging to obsolete science.
Do not blame science – it toils for thee. Blame the space cadets.
Terday’s me day fer giving out plus ones’. Herewith, re
natural variability, even a serf, out in all wethers, gits
it.
Webby has been on a roll lately. His greatest model in the world projected exponential increase in temperature pretty much seals the fate of mitigation. Plus we now know that CO2 causes volcanic activity due constant strain on the Earth’s crust due to AAM induced LOD disruption which is a bit remarkable with a “fixed” lapse rate and constant surface wind velocities. Perhaps now he can branch out into some of the more pressing issues like volcanically forced tree hibernation.
“This new learning amazes me. Explain again, how pig’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.” –Monty Python
Cap’n refers to his analysis as “Red-neck Physics” yet he has all you rubes convinced he knows what he is talking about.
Webster I am hurt. I was paying you a compliment. The quality of your most recent work is up there with Nobel Lariat Michael Mann. He also noticed how climate forces volcanoes :)
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/10/sol-y-vol-with-the.html
Of course that is just “regional” Rednecks can only focus on so much at one time.
Webster, Maybe you can help out a Redneck here.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-siwd1DgPsKY/UmZ_Ic8jKEI/AAAAAAAAKFw/6yAmp-CLZyk/w729-h471-no/Sol+y+Vol+with+3+tier+cascade+smooth.png
SOI drives the hemispheric volcanic aerosol imbalance which changes the Atmospheric Angular Momentum which causes LOD to wiggle, right?
The SOI shows no bias after it has been integrated. Over a span of 130 years it goes up and down bu +/- 5 to 7, but the mean over that time is approximately -0.1.
?- soi(L), length(L,N), mean(L,M).
L = [2.1, 1.5, 2.5, 0.7, 1.6, 1, 0.2, 2.1, 1.4|...],
N = 1601,
M = -0.11374141161773887.
You are integrating and seeing phantoms. Boo!
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
For everyone else – see figure 1 with a cumulative SOI.
Here’s the original paper – http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/FosteretalCommentJGR10.pdf
Webby – do you continue to deny – in the face of overwhelming science – that these ocean patterns have alternately warmed and cooled the planet over decades in the instrumental record?
If so you simply don’t know what you belligerently insist on.
If not – well just accept the inevitable gracefully (lol) including that your method is a dead horse because it cant attribute between CO2 and natural variability – because over the last few decades (to 1998) they are collinear. Since then of course they are heading in opposite directions.
Left out the cumulative SOI link. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1828v1.pdf
Let’s just address the series a little.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation.
The climate shifts are associated with changes in the behaviour of ENSO. The mean of the SOI in the periods 1910 to 1945, 1946 to 1976, 1977 to 1998 and since are all different. This makes it a nonstationary tinme series. The cumulative index simply adds up successive values of the index. It shows how the index is predominantly positive or negative over these periods between climate shifts. It provides a way of analysing for the decadal contributions of the IPO. (ENSO + PDO = IPO)
As I say – it is not a terribly interesting method at best. The best idea comes from the original McLean et al paper which puts a number on the influence of ENSO on surface temperature variability – 70%.
On another issue – I have been thinking about positive psychology. Three positives?
I stained the handrail in the stairwell. Worst job you have ever seen and I have since stripped it back to bare wood. Progress of sorts I suppose.
I got a free upgrade on my timber blinds.
I was offered some lucrative work – sufficient to my modest needs without challenging my semi-retirement.
Bonus – I just saw some guy on TV surfing a 21m wave off Tasmania.
It works – life is good.
Chief is up to his old antics of providing conflicting explanations as he gets backed in to a corner.
The temperature can’t be both proportional to a measure and proportional to the time integral of that same measure unless that measure is an exponential with time.
I do agree that global fluctuations in temperature are proportionately explained by SOI, but not by the integral of SOI, which is what Chief Tisdale desperately wants it to be.
Chief Tisdale is desperate for this to occur because then Chief Tisdale can eliminate GHG as a cause of the global temperature rise. These people are absolutely desperate for it to be ABCD (anything but carbon dioxide) and they will contort the data and math any way they can see fit to match their desperation.
See the name of this top-level post — we are talking about ethics in science and Chief Tisdale are serial violators of scientific ethics.
“These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
Which bit don’t you understand? You would do best to try to understand rather than indulge in your usual practice of prevarication, obfuscation and calumny.
The integral of SOI guy.
The SOI is n index of pressure differential at a point in time. The cumulative SOI is a poor attempt to analyse the memory of the system.
The decadal modes warm and cool the planet and unless you understand this you are going nowhere sunnyboy.
We see on this thread another type of framing that was not mentioned but is equally alienating, which is to frame anyone who thinks carbon emissions should be limited for the benefit of future climate, as leftists who want world government and just use climate as a means to that end. This is just as fake and broad-brushed as the war-on-science meme. It is a valid scientific viewpoint to say that less is better when it comes to carbon emissions. It is a conclusion of the science. How that is achieved is a separate question. A scientific statement doesn’t have to imply a political view or even leaning, but many here can’t untangle them. A politically right-leaning scientist could equally make the statement that less CO2 growth is preferable for a beneficial climate, but may advocate for a whole different set of policies, such as the government paying private industry to reduce emissions. The policy is separate from the reason and the reason comes from science.
The only frames that have any chance of succeeding for some climate change policy, IMO, are economic development/competitiveness and middle way/alternative path. And any way forward needs a realistic accounting of scientific and technical uncertainty.
Space cadets seem overwhelmingly progressive and use scary stories in an attempt to engineer economic and societal transformation into some simulacrum of a socialist utopia. Less money in the west and development in the rest and we would all be happier they say.
It is a tilting after windmills rather than anything practical or pragmatic – and stands in the way of any practical progress. The climate paradigm is shifting – but the fundamental objection is to progressive policy. The world is not warming – I look forward to progressives shutting up and moving on to something else.
“We see on this thread another type of framing that was not mentioned but is equally alienating, which is to frame anyone who thinks carbon emissions should be limited for the benefit of future climate, as leftists who want world government and just use climate as a means to that end.”
Not anyone, just the movement progressives who lead the CAGW drive for decarbonization. (And while they would be happy with “world government” in the form of progressives around the world exercising joint control through organizations like the UN, they are focused on power in their own countries.) But the vast majority of CAGW advocates, including virtually all of the pro-CAGW commenters here, are default progressives. They have no clue about the intentions or goals of the movement leaders, and don’t much care. They don’t really understand progressivism, and don’t feel the need to.
After all, it’s “for the children.”
Many of us on the right believe that burning coal, to produce cheap base-load electricity, should be replaced with nuclear power.
Many of us would like the US’s 18-wheeler fleet converted to LPG/LNG and for the government help pay for the interstate fueling infrastructure costs.
Many of us wish money to be spent on battery R&D so that in 20-30 years time we can make the transition to electric vehicles.
However, many of us think that the replacement of coal, by wind, solar and diesel, is a catastrophic policy choice.
Having now read the whole Nisbet piece, here are some observations.
The second “guiding ethical principle” Nisbet articulates is normatively dubious to me. That principle was: “scientists and journalists should always emphasize the values-based reasons for a specific policy action.” Here is Nisbet’s reasoning for this principle:
“The tendency by scientists, journalists, advocates, and elected officials to define policy debates as exclusively about science and not in terms of either politics or values is often at the root of conflict and puts at risk public trust in scientific research…In particular, if science becomes the perceived dominant reason for a course of action, then as a matter of strategy and politics, competing interests will have the incentive to claim that scientific evidence is on their side. As a consequence, an inevitable part of the framing of an issue will involve a contest over uncertainty, with each side potentially hyping or distorting the objective state of expert consensus…[reducing]scientific knowledge to just another resource that interest groups can draw upon in political battles, threatening the perceived integrity of science.”
Now standard vanilla decision theory, as well as folk psychology, decomposes preference into value and belief, so I get Nisbet’s drift with this. You might say the commandment here is “be fully relevant.” But the stated reason seems shaky. First, most of that reasoning could easily be rewritten with value words replacing all the belief words, without changing the force of the argument much. Here is an attempt:
“If religion and ethics become the perceived dominant reason for a course of action, then as a matter of strategy and politics, competing interests will have the incentive to claim that values are on their side. As a consequence, an inevitable part of the framing of an issue will involve a contest over the good and the right, with each side potentially hyping or distorting the state of religious and ethical consensus…[reducing] values to just another resource that interest groups can draw upon in political battles, threatening the perceived integrity of religion and ethics.”
I see no way in which this is less cogent than the original.
Second–and this is maybe more serious–in what sense is the original argument an ethical argument? What I see is a string of events that Nisbet suggests would lead to a particular outcome–a threat to the perceived integrity of science. There must be an assumed moral imperative here: Thou shalt not threaten the perceived integrity of science. This is really, really shaky–I see more than one problem here but the vast majority of denizens will notice this problem: Maybe some field of science should have its perception of integrity undermined. The problem here is that Nisbet advocates a third guiding principle–truth-telling or accuracy–and it may be that systematic biases have crept into the mainstream of some field and need unmasking. In this case, his second and third guiding principles are in direct conflict with one another.
Finally, what role should scientists and journalists play here? If you take a utilitarian and economic view of this, you might say that these actors should stick to their comparative advantages to maximize social welfare. Their comparative advantages are (presumably) on matters of belief. I don’t see any way to make a convincing case that scientists or journalists have special insights into matters of value.
Is Nisbet confused? I think maybe so–confused about what he can reasonably accomplish here. In general I thought he seemed well-informed about descriptive matters and various bits of theory floating around in psych, anthro and social psych. But in arguing for the second principle above, I suspect he’s confusing effective and ethical communication. Given his background and the literature he cites, this isn’t surprising.
Did anyone besides me notice that NO philosophy journals, nor any well-known living or dead ethical philosopher’s works, were cited?
> You might say the commandment here is “be fully relevant.”
Nisbet seems to have a knack for rediscovering Grice’s maxims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
This whole line of brokering may be dubbed itself “honest” for a reason, after all. Incidentally, there are 20 hits to date for “honest” on the page. Which frame uses words like “honest”?
***
Since Nisbett appealed to Frankenstein, he may have thought of mentioning Goldilocks.
There may always be a market for Laotzian claptraps.
Imagine the wonderful play you could do of charcters who followed Grice’s maxims.
‘So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do.’
H/t Ben Franklin.
========
“Did anyone besides me notice that NO philosophy journals, nor any well-known living or dead ethical philosopher’s works, were cited?”
yes, and I found it refreshing.
If a paper is titled “The Ethics of X,” I hope to read something about ethics. If Nisbet had anything fresh or interesting to say about ethics, I might find him refreshing. As it goes, he badly needs to read some ethics.
On target, NW. What Nisbet seems to be saying is that just doing your job as a scientist communicator–explaining what your best understanding is and why–is inadequate to get people to act on that knowledge, so you should switch to a slick PR strategy of appealing to the audience’s pre-existing biases (sorry, “frames”). It doesn’t help that he seems not to even understand the case against Urgent Mitigation of CO2. The whole thing is under-exampled and under-theorized.
Remember – sex sells. Use a hot, young thing to symbolize Global Warming and Viola!
Actually Dr Curry I think you are a science informer :-)
To what extent has funding and politics ruined climate science?
Progress in a scientific field often depends on having an open mind and the ability to challenge assumptions. When progress has stalled, sometimes it is better to go back to first principles, to start again. Breakthrough discoveries often arise from changing the viewpoint, adopting the devil’s advocate view. Nothing is sacred.
In a well run commercial R&D it is the role of the manager to drive this process. Projects often have periods of difficulty, when the results do not match expectations. The manager has to judge whether a change of direction is needed. Perhaps they should back-track and question earlier assumptions. Perhaps they should retreat to an early stage which was known to be sound. Maybe they should start again from first principles and take nothing for granted.
As I observe climate science today, if it had such a thing as an R&D manager, he or she would certainly be having sleepless nights. The results do not match expectations so something is wrong. Furthermore, the discrepancy is increasing, so it is badly wrong. Even if the results swing back the other way, credibility and confidence has been lost.
The climate scientists do not show signs of back-tracking or questioning their assumptions, they are making some new assumptions to explain the results. However, the new assumptions are not supported by observation and appear to be improbable in a number of respects.
The R&D manager, if they had one, would not approve. The problem must concern previous assumptions. Either an assumption was wrong or there are other factors that at this stage are unknown.
In the commercial world, the manager would probably take the decision to review and challenge all assumptions. Carrying on would not achieve anything and would not be an option. In the climate world, that seems to be the intention.
This difference in approach calls into question the objective or mission. The R&D manager is seeking knowledge or a solution to a problem. Taking the wrong direction will result in failure.
What is the mission of the climate scientist? Is it true understanding of the climate system even if the result were to make the Government and the Elite look foolish?. The result would never see the light of day and such work would not be funded anyway. Is climate science destined to build on flawed assumptions?
Now that the science resides with mathematicians and computer modellers, to what extent can the climate scientist back-track and challenge assumptions?
Given that the funding of the science is so politicised, is there anyone left to do the bidding of the hypothetical R&D manager?
Nature is nemesis.
======
Let me bring up an issue that has been discussed on the previous thread; WHUT’s CSALT model. Max and I objected to it, on the basis that it has never been validated. I think WHUT has been disappointed with this sort of reaction. But his model is exactly the same as all other climate models; NONE of them have been validated. The difference is the audience on to which they were presented.
The warmists, represented by the IPCC, RS, APS, WMO, AGU, etc etc, and many scientific journals such as Science and Nature, ensure that climate models and their results are never presented to a critical audience. Only true believers from The Team are allowed to discuss such things, because this in furtherance of The Cause..
WHUT was unfortunate, in that he presented his model on Climate Etc. This forum is unique, in that there is frequently a proper scientific discussion between both sides of the CAGW issue.
If only the scientific establishment would take notice of what our hostess has so wonderfully accomplished, and provide forums where both sides of the CAGW issued are discussed openly and scientifically, we might be able to make some progress. Unfortunately, at the moment this is impossible, and is likely to remain so into the indefinite future.
Jim “WHUT was unfortunate, in that he presented his model on Climate Etc.”
I wouldn’t call it unfortunate. Climate Etc. is kinda like Atmospheric Thermodynamics Broadway, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere :)
Atmospheric Thermodynamics Broadway, I love it :)
Captain, you write “I wouldn’t call it unfortunate.”
Well, it was sort of unfortunate. His model did not make it. But thanks for the chuckle, which our hostess obviously appreciated as well.
Cripwell has evidently not been exposed to how research science works. In physics there are the so-called “theorists” and then there are the “experimentalists”. Most physicists are in one group or another.
Experimentalists often work to corroborate or substantiate a theoretical model, unless they are simply doing exploratory research. No one ever really “validates” anything, because there is always room for improvement when it comes to modeling physical reality, while “validation” assumes a final value judgement.
So all Crip is pointing out is that it is difficult to do direct experimental measurements on certain theories. Whoops, there goes the entire fields of cosmology, particle physics, etc etc.
And I am not claiming to be a theorist. With the CSALT model (which you can play with here : http://entroplet.com/context_salt_model/navigate), I am simply corroborating and substantiating the initial work of the theorists who laid out the GHG theory.
This is also helpful to understanding the distinction:
I hope that helps you understand how physics research operates, Cripwell.
WHUT, you write “So all Crip is pointing out is that it is difficult to do direct experimental measurements on certain theories. Whoops, there goes the entire fields of cosmology, particle physics, etc etc.”
This is the issue which I have discussed before. When it comes to cosmology, particle physics, etc., we are not talking trillions of taxpayer dollars, decarbonizing our society, reducing our standard of living, etc. etc. in furtherance of The Cause. When it comes to CAGW, that is precisely what we are talking about. Therefore I try to demand that the science that supports CAGW is not only the best there is, but that this best is good enough to solve the problem. IMHO, the science, physics is, not good enough to solve the problem. THAT is the issue. CAGW was, is, and probably always will be just a viable hypothesis.
And that is what the IPCC should have concluded all those years ago, and saved us one hell of a lot of money.
Mosh
If you see this can you please post a link to the data for the BEST 1750 reconstruction? I couldn’t find it on the BEST site and want to graph it against CET. Thanks
tonyb
Capt’nDallas
For any atmospheric/ocean production to have “legs”, it also needs to play in Peoria.
Cripwell, What are you, a Canuck?
You aren’t going to tell us how to spend our money.
As Mosh has said, no one will listen to you, and that goes double when you are not a taxpayer.
But here you have a free model CSALT and you can’t find anything wrong with it so you moan about some cost strawman.
btw Dr. Curry, perhaps you and Marcia could team up with Crowley and Unterman on the “Big Stadium Wave” paper that includes hemispheric imbalances?
CaptDallas
This double act might fill Broadway but would they fill a stadium?
tonyb
tonyb, I sure it would be standing room only.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-siwd1DgPsKY/UmZ_Ic8jKEI/AAAAAAAAKFw/6yAmp-CLZyk/w729-h471-no/Sol+y+Vol+with+3+tier+cascade+smooth.png
Hemisphere imbalances set up the waves that propagate. From any reset you can trace the weakly damped “settling” or attempt to equalize the imbalances between the three major ocean basins, North Pacific, North Atlantic and well mixed southern hemisphere oceans. Once you allow for temperature “amplification” by the NH bottleneck and land in 30N-60N you have the sweetest 30 to 60 year decaying pseudo-cyclic oscillation.
I would even pay for the paper :)
Captain
Coincidentally I have just compiled a load of graphs to Map CET against all other data sets so I have been examining the temperature trend correlations in both hemispheres.
I remember posting something of the time when the SH and NH SST’s coincided the most in their warming phase, therefore both hemispheres oceans were potentially outgassing co2 . It was around the 1930 to 1950 period.
tonyb
tonyb, right 1940-1950 was nearly zero hemisphere imbalance which is like an ocean heat uptake speed bump. Reduce ocean mixing and you reduce ocean heat and CO2 uptake.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/10/sol-y-vol-adventure-begins.html
This is basically what I am doing. You could use the whole Crowley and Unternmann data set with your CET reconstruction.
The hemispheric imbalance issue is hugely interesting, and probably hugely important. I am waiting for a publication (not mine) to wind its way through the review process, and I will post on this. Judy
“The hemispheric imbalance issue is hugely interesting, and probably hugely important.” Ya think? Perhaps this anisotropy creates rogue waves? Perhaps this “hemispheric imbalance” may have some role in the major glacial cycles. I smelf a Noble Prize for the rediscovery of Geology 1A.
The simple fact that we now must especially treat government scientists’ claims to effective personal skepticism means we no longer see them as trustworthy–i.e., their status is not legitimate.
Sue Hobart, a bridal florist from Massachusetts, couldn’t understand why she suddenly developed headaches, ringing in her ears, insomnia and dizziness to the point of falling “flat on my face” in the driveway.
“I thought I was just getting older and tired,” said the 57-year-old from Falmouth.
Months earlier, in the summer of 2010, three wind turbines had been erected in her town, one of which runs around the clock, 1,600 feet from her home.
“I didn’t put anything to the turbines — we heard it and didn’t like the thump, thump, thump and didn’t like seeing them, but we didn’t put it together,” she told ABCNews.com.
Hobart said her headaches only got worse, but at Christmas, when she went to San Diego, they disappeared. And she said the same thing happened on an overnight trip to Keene, N.H.
“Sometimes at night, especially in the winter, I wake up with a fluttering in the chest and think, ‘What the hell is that,’ and the only place it happens is at my house,” she said. “That’s how you know. When you go away, it doesn’t happen.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wind-turbine-syndrome-blamed-mysterious-symptoms-cape-cod/story?id=20591168
”
The only frames that have any chance of succeeding for some climate change policy, IMO, are economic development/competitiveness and middle way/alternative path. And any way forward needs a realistic accounting of scientific and technical uncertainty.
”
Dr Curry:
(Leaving aside your terrible re-re-re-victimization at the hands of the evil climate “elite”…)
We just came through the hottest decade ever recorded.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html
This occurred despite the presence of major cooling factors, like La Nina and reduced solar activity.
Changes in the natural world of the kinds predicted as a consequence of the relentless ongoing energy accumulation that the globe is experiencing are certain to be the major drivers of policy, no matter how many “re-framings” or “realistic accountings” climate scientists such as yourself offer.
The future will present us with a decreasing set of choices, as crisis management becomes the dominant remaining policy-interface with a non-negotiating opponent that that determines the rules of engagement and that takes no prisoners.
Nature is the only “frame” that matters. Everything else is sophistry.
To put this another way: the temperatures, the sea-level rise, the acidification, the ice volume losses, we are currently seeing – they really don’t give a toss about what Michael Mann or Judith Curry think they are doing on Twitter.
reduced solar? huh.
you need to go read Svalgaard and get current. There was no modern maximum.
start here
http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home
Well if it becomes lesser, then the recent past was a modern max. Besides, hardly anyone thinks the mechanism is just through TSI anymore.
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kim of course its not TSI. the sun now has unicorns.
its the sun stupid. see spots run
err the sun hasnt changed.
Because its the sun, therefore, it must be something about the sun we dont understand. god forbid we give up the theory that its the sun stupid
welcome to your dark matter moment.
Mosher is a magnetic field-UV denier.
“it must be something about the sun we dont understand”
There are a lot of somethings we don’t understand about the sun. Observations of the sun are limited. We don’t have one sitting in our garages. Steve Mosher is not Ra. He just kinda pretends he is.
Andrew
Unicorns gambol around the pot at the UV end of the rainbow.
Eh, ‘edge of the rainbow’ is probably better.
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For the sake of argument, lets stipulate all your points, Jeb. I actually agree with most of your points.
Therefore, in what example in human history does inciting panic and hysteria to spur action been a successful policy strategy?
Obviously improving the science will lead to better policy. In the mean time, current policy should focus on the low hanging fruit like giving tax breaks for energy efficiency and using fracked CH4 as a bridge from coal to safe nuke power.
The west will not voluntarily put on a hair shirt and the developing world is working hard to cast theirs off. This is why the CAGW policy movement is going backward.
Nature is the only “frame” that matters. Everything else is sophistry.
anytime you use nature as a frame the discourse is not innocent.
it is the most pernicious form of sophistry.
Mosher,
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/342/296/b34.jpg
And, therein lies the problem with GCMs—i.e.:
“If our only evidence were observational, we might have to pause at this point, and wait for more years of data to accumulate. However, since we do have theoretical results…we can put the theory to use. Different models agree reasonably well as to the increase in globally averaged sea-level temperature that would be produced by a prescribed increase in CO2 concentration… [and proceed by] introducing a second null hypothesis, which would say that the difference between the means of two populations, one to which the earlier decadal mean temperatures belong, and one to which the later ones belong, is not different from the numerical value that the consensus of the theoretical studies stipulates…
“This somewhat unorthodox procedure would be quite unacceptable… for example, if the models had been tuned to fit the observed course of the climate. Provided, however, that the observed trend has in no way entered the construction or operation of the models, the procedure would appear to be sound.”
(See, Words of wisdom from Ed Lorenz, supra)
When somebody mentions “framing”, I’m reminded of Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics and “The ‘free market’ doesn’t exist”: More on framing from George Lakoff . While I don’t agree with him, wrt to either his view of politics or language science, there’s no question that his approach has been incorporated into “liberal” communications efforts.
BTW, the whole division into “progressives” and “conservatives” is, itself, a type of framing, and a very simplistic one at that. Progress means motion in the direction something (e.g. society) is going. “Progressives” have a view of how society is (or ought to be) changing, and regard movement in that direction as “progress”. Thus, there can be many types of “progressives” with wildly different agendas and visions of the future of society. The essentially Marxist Industrial Counter-Revolutionaries (sensu Ayn Rand) represented by Lakoff, etc. are actually reactionaries who’ve hijacked the term “progressive”. Their actual agenda is centered around returning our society to one in which a persons social status is determined entirely by their ability to manipulate their social surroundings.
“Conservatives” are generally opposed to some sort of societal movement that they perceive, but often mistake their own perceptions of how society is changing for the totality of societal change. Thus, IMO, they often end up opposing some changes while ignoring or tolerating others, while regarding themselves as trying to block any societal change. Thus, there can be many different types of “conservatives” as well, also with wildly different agendas.
Judith:
Speaking of framing science, I was wondering if you had a chance to watch any of Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Reality webcast (going on now). If so, it would be very valuable to learn from you any of your reactions regarding the scientific accuracy or validity of any of the statements made during the program.
Thanks.
Propaganda first and foremost! Al Gore is to science as Yogi Bear is to philosophy, only thing though, is that the bear does it better! :)
Dr. Curry, instead of finding it “interesting” that the article correctly points out that the AGW movement is left-wing why not just confirm and condemn it? It’s the essential truth that renders the plea for the “middle way” useless. There are many players and motives;
http://www.thegwpf.org/world-spending-1-billion-day-tackle-global-warming/
but it’s essentially totalitarianism of “experts” who are disproportionately left-wing in culture that drive the story.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/20/book-review-the-age-of-global-warming-a-history/
Without the direct acknowledgement of the facts driving AGW it perpetuates essential lies that propagate the movement. That make you an accomplice to political and science fraud. If you know “science” is an advocacy and authority term adopted by the democratic party you should say so on the key point observed. Then you should condemn it directly instead of worrying about who is offended and being plastered all over Climate Depot which will surely happen.
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