March 7, 2008
by C.M. Burns
We are not scientists
I am not a scientist and you are not a scientist. In the real world, the density of scientists is quite low. On the web, where real science can be found, the density increases significantly but in the worldwide climate-change-debate-o-sphere the density approaches zero. Science is not debating the big conclusions. Scientists are complaining about the media scare-mongering, individual findings are debated, methodologies challenged and the magnitude of predictions are doubted but not that greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed increase in global warming over the last 50 years. Read that last part carefully because that is the core of the IPCC consensus. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that there is some other scientific consensus - there isn't. Any stories you've heard about any other scientific consensus on AGW are the result of science illiterates doing the reporting or worse.
Unfortunately, most of the contributors to the online wars are not scientists - they may like to think that they are, just like they prefer to think that they are attractive and witty and slim but are not. The attractive, slim and witty of the world are not at home on a Saturday night, penning venomous posts about how the anomalous cold of 2007-08 wipes out one hundred years of global warming. We like to think that we understand science and when we can follow a well written article or two about climate science we think we are prepared to wade in on the subject. We aren't. In Canada, where I live, adults appear to be struggling with science literacy (and Canada ranks in the top five). Researchers performing international comparisons estimate that fewer than 20% are scientifically literate[1][2]. In the USA, the amount is fewer than 7% for adults[3] (a bit better than Romania and Bulgaria - no offense). We think that we understand science but the fact is we don't – not really. A person who posts or defends the argument that the strange weather of the last year wipes out the effect of global warming barely understands a simple arithmetic average, let alone science. When it comes to science, unless you are a scientist, you necessarily have a naive view of science. The ability to understand something scientific does not make you nor I a scientist – it does not even mean that we are scientifically literate. You may have taken some basic science courses at the university level but you are not a trained, working, contributing scientist.
Yet for years now we have been copying and pasting scientific sounding arguments in online forums that deny climate change and we quote scientific figures around the water cooler in defense of C02 reductions. Yes, we have the natural ability to understand a logical argument but we do not have the training or experience necessary to recognize when a premise or condition is just plain false. We haven't published any papers, we certainly don't understand complexity or chaos, we haven't got a clue how climate is modeled, we haven't made a single climate observation on our own and, to be perfectly blunt, most people couldn't even tell you what climate actually is. In point of fact, we have nothing at all of any value to contribute to a real scientific debate about climate change and it is time for us to shut up and act. I know it's going to be hard to drop out of one of the great debates of our time but it's for our own good.
An example
One of the more infamous denier claims is the 'U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007'. One of the scientists on the list, Physicist Dr. Gerhard Gerlich, claims, "... the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately." Does anyone doing battle in the forums understand this criticism? Hint: it has nothing to do with your toothache. For a non-scientist, thinking that you've punched a few holes in a theory that you're not capable of fully understanding is... well, let's just say that it's understandable.
It's all a hoax!
Now, there are many out there who do not argue the science of climate change because they know it is a hoax and so they post or blog about this. Most will not admit their belief in a hoax publicly for fear of ridicule. They will waste our time and their money pointing out the truth that only they know at every online opportunity, these opportunities are much more available and have fewer consequences than those in real life. Where is their evidence? The very best that they have to offer are quotes from a few handfuls of real scientists who are skeptical about one aspect or another of the science; the worst they can offer are outright lies from paid deniers. Where are the documents describing the betrayal? Where are the whistleblowers? The hoax/conspiracy proponents have no smoking gun, no bullet, no blood trail and no body, ergo no crime.
While it may be technically possible for such a hoax to exist, a few quick back-of-the-envelope calculations will demonstrate the improbability of a hoax or conspiracy. How many climate-related scientist and technologists are there in the world? They will all have to be bought off or threatened and their projects and emails and publications watched until the day they die. More than 2,600 scientists contributed to the IPCC report and, back at the lab, there are two or three other scientists and a few supporting technologists. It doesn't take long before the number of scientists hits 10,000 and beyond. How many science professors are there? They too, will need to be brought into line. The science text-books would have had to have been manipulated for many decades into the past. Then there has to be a hoax-management process in place and it, too, would have had to have been in place for decades. They will need IT staff to track their progress, their accounts and their HR files. They will need support staff and parking spaces and coffee machines and a health plan. Even if there are only 10,000 doing the basic science who need to be monitored it means at least 10,000 must be found to do the dirty job of surveillance 24/7/365. And just where do the watchers get their expertise to decide when a scientist has crossed the line?
The Data
The real proof of the improbability of conspiracy lies in the data. All those reports are based on observations that have been made over many decades of climate related science. These data not only have to be self-consistent but they must also agree with observations made by scientists not party to the conspiracy as well as to the foundational sciences like Math and Physics. Gigabytes of data and millions of pages of documents would have to be consistent with the goals of the hoax. The probability approaches zero quite quickly.
Those who are still looking for a fight will say that there is no conspiracy, rather the process is corrupt or at best broken. They say that the scientists producing the climate change papers are just doing what they have to do in order to keep their research grants rolling in. This brand of denier claims that all the scientists are either greedy or cowards and that they are perpetrating this massive fraud just to keep their jobs.
As Dr. Phil is so fond of saying, the best way to predict future behavior is past behavior. The actual history of science is chock full of contrarians who fought the scientific fight and prevailed. Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Pasteur and Lister, just to name a few. How then do these deniers claim any basis for their theory when history disproves their thesis? They can't - and it's not even a theory, it's conjecture at best and irresponsible ranting at worst. They deserve not one second of our time.
Let the conspiracy theorists and hoax proponents rant and post and blog to their hearts' content. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing and so is the freedom to not read or click ‘post reply’.
Cui bono
'Who benefits?' is the last question that needs to be addressed. Who does benefit from accepting the validity of anthropogenic global warming and climate change? Is all this being done just to support a fifteen or fifty dollar per ton tax on carbon? Any government in the world could implement this tax with much less trouble than a conspiracy would require. Does anyone in the Military Industrial Complex benefit? It sure isn't doing anything for Lockheed Martin, Boeing or BAE System's bottom lines (the top three global defense contractors). It certainly doesn't benefit big oil. Climate change hurts their share value. So who actually benefits? The earth? Definitely, but not even I am willing to push the Gaia hypothesis that far!
So what's a person to do? Given the complete lack of evidence of fraud, conspiracy, hoax and corruption, the only reasonable alternative is to accept the conclusions of the people actually doing the science. Follow the same rules that judges use: base your decision on the preponderance of evidence. Listen to what the scientists are saying. For many scientists the so-called consensus does not exist; they think the IPCC assessment is a dangerously watered-down version of the science. Then think of the risk we run for ourselves and our children if we do not act and weigh that against the benefits of a cleaner, cooler planet.
Should we be able to discuss climate change intelligently? Absolutely! But that's a far cry from what goes on today. Every adult in the world would be better off by improving their science literacy. But even if we are more scientifically literate we will still need to put in the time, from the bottom up, reading, researching, discussing and one day, hopefully, truly understanding what science is and is not, and what climate change is and is not.
In the end, reversing climate change will require effort and change from all of us. We will have to drive less and walk more; eat more local veggies and less imported grain-fed meat; we'll have to make smarter choices about how we live. What's bad about that? We will also have to admit that we do not hold the moral high ground and that we can't expect lesser developed nations to remain have-nots while we have so much more. This will be very difficult.
First, we have to stop arguing and start learning and then acting. Call your government representatives and demand legislation that penalizes greenhouse gas emitters. Demand that revenues from those penalties go towards lessening the impact on those with low incomes. Demand more funding for research into mitigating the effects of climate change in your country and region, and less for war and defense. Hold your elected representatives accountable and let them know you are watching their every move.
Today, not tomorrow. Now is the moment to decide what our history will be.
[1] Miller, J.D., R. Pardo, and F. Niwa. 1997. Public Perceptions of
Science and Technology: A Comparative Study of the European Union, the
United States, Japan, and Canada.
Chicago: Chicago Academy of Sciences.
[2] Miller, J. D., and R. Pardo. 2000. Civic scientific literacy and
attitude to science and technology:
A comparative analysis of the European Union, the United States, Japan,
and Canada. In Between understanding and trust: The public, science, and technology,
edited by M. Dierkes and C. von Grote, 81–129.
Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Time To Shut Up And Act
Posted on Friday, March 07 at 12:50 by C.M. BurnsContributed By
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We should be talking about what to do, and instead the conversation keeps returning to whether we should do anything at all. They make economic and political arguments to back their position, even as they question the science.
The truth is that there has never in our history been a time that new technology did not increase our wealth. From the discovery of the pointed stick to the computer, every advance in technology has made us better off. The vast majority of those advancements have also brought us more freedom.
So it's time to move the conversation to what we should be doing.
1.) fill a clear glass half full of water, mark with a marker
2.) ad ice to glass, enough to raise the water level to 2/3 full, mark with a marker
3.) leave glass and let ice melt, mark with marker
4.) observation: water lower in #3 than in #2
5.) unscientific conclusion, polar ice melts water level goes down, more water in atmosphere, more storms, more rain, more snow, glaciers grow, new ice age, as was the gist of the fear mongering way back in 1975
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Then there's the albedo effect. Glaciers on land close to water will melt more quickly, adding more water to the oceans.
Then there's the absorption problem. Warmer water absorbs less heat and can hold less CO2, so warming will be accelerated.
By the way, there were more than 40 scientific papers written on global warming in the 1970's. There were fewer than ten written on global cooling.
It is indeed. And in it's place has a belief system ideology appeared to replace conventional religious belief systems.
Even a causal examination of the CO2 AGW reveils leaps of faith. However those convinced by a sci-fi movie are unmoved by documented evidence of fraud, misrepresentation and outright lies.....which is consistent with an ideology based upon faith.
In another part of the world religious fanaticism has inspired suicide/murder by suicide bombers committing absolutely barbarous acts.
There is a parallel here. Despite observed and documented evidence that any observed warming was minor and cyclical, ending a decade back, the same BS is repeated by the same hacks.
Demands for proof are met with ad homonem attacks and computer models which produce the results they were programmed to produce......and the mythical consensus which has finally boiled down to 3-4 individuals at REAL CLIMATE.
There is a parallel with religion though. The scientific illiteracy that the denial industry preys upon is also spread by fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
The mythical consensus make less sense and has less evidense than the mystical magical molecule.
Storks really do not bring babies.
The issue here is not simply the avoidance of bias. The issue is how to avoid bad information. In areas of contention, critical and profoundly influential information is often stunningly flawed.
By way of illustration I'm going to discuss a recent example from climate science, and also show you a graph - the so-called "hockey-stick" graph. Many of you will be familiar with this.
Here's how the hockey-stick graph came to the public's attention.
In 1998, an American climate researcher named Michael Mann, along with his co-workers, published an estimation of global temperatures from 1000 to 1980. They arrived at this estimate by combining the results of 112 previous proxy studies. By "proxy studies" I mean tree-ring and isotope and ice core studies that are intended to provide an indirect measurement of temperature in the time before thermometers existed. Mann's results appeared to show a spike in recent temperatures that was unprecedented in the last one thousand years. As a result, his report achieved immediate and world-wide fame. It also formed the centerpiece of the U.N.'s Third Assessment Report, in 2001, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Mann's assessment of the data was criticized on several fronts. The first was historical fact: his chart didn't appear to show the well-known medieval warm period, or the so-called little ice age that began around 1400. This his advocates explained away by saying that those were European but not global phenomena. That started a hunt through historical records in China and elsewhere. And now, I think, many people are inclined to believe that the sharp rise and equally sharp fall in medieval temperatures were, indeed, global phenomena.
The next chapter in the story began when two Canadian researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, obtained Mann's data and repeated his study. They found numerous grave and astonishing errors in Mann's work, which they detailed in 2003. For example, two statistical series in Mann's study shared the same data. The data had apparently been inadvertently copied from one series to another. In addition, nineteen other series had had gaps in the data, which Mann's team had then filled in - a fact that had not been disclosed. In addition, all 28 tree ring studies had calculation errors - and so on and so forth. Such that in the end, the Canadians' corrected graph looked quite different:
The corrected graph suggests that the global temperature today is very far from the warmest it has been in the last thousand years.
But there were more problems to come. Mann's statistical approach to the data was somewhat unusual, and raised questions about the validity of the formula he had used to do his metastudy. When researchers tested Mann's formula, they discovered that a table of trendless numbers (generated by computer) would invariably create the hockey-stick shape.
Here you see a series of hockey-sticks. One is Mann's original graph; the others are created by sequences of trendless numbers. So it appears that Mann's formula will turn any data into a hockey-stick - and had apparently never been tested by Mann prior to its use in his study.
Mann's work has since been attacked by a number of laboratories around the world:
Slide
"An artifact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components."
Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, Energy and Environment, v 14, 6:2003.
"The graph contains assumptions that are not permissible…Methodologically it is…rubbish."
Hans von Storch, quoted in Der Spiegel
"A real shocker...the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen?"
Richard Muller, MIT Technology Review, 15 October 2004
Mann's work has been called "phony" and "a shocker" and "rubbish" by climate scientists who believe in global warming, and who are concerned that such sloppy work might undermine the legitimacy of the claim that global warming is a dangerous and alarming fact; as indeed it has undermined it-although I would say, very little.
But to my mind, the real point of the story is that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, accepted Mann's study without question and without independent review. And therein lies the real warning to policymakers. Because even the most widely-touted and allegedly reputable studies may be significantly less reliable and substantive than they initially appear to be.
And if I may digress for a moment: one explanation for the public's credulity may be the assumption - widely held by non-scientists - that scientific reports are repeated and therefore verified by other labs. But the reality is that most studies are not. A very, very small number of them are verified. So one can't just assume that because a study has been published, it's accurate.
So bad data is out there, and severely biased studies are out there, and policymakers have the unenviable task of separating the wheat from the chaff. (You remember what Adlai Stevenson said, that newspapers have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff - and then print the chaff.)
In that vein, I know of only three strategies that are useful in the effort to improve the rigorousness of data, and verify its integrity. Two of these strategies are already well-known and established. And the third will, in my view, soon become a reality.
I call the first strategy the "FDR Tactic" - let the participants air their views and slug it out.
Franklin Roosevelt was famous for inciting conflict and confrontation between his advisors. And he made sure that when his people fought the issues out, they did it in front of him.
In addition, he always maintained two different sets of advisors. The first was made up of the members of his Cabinet. The second was comprised of assorted friends, mentors and cronies - FDR's kitchen cabinet. The variety of views, prejudices and motives thus exposed made for an incisive and effective information management technique.
But the closest we now come to that level of inquiry, and its exposure of partisan bias and equivocal advocacy, is the dog and pony show of Congressional testimony. And those hearings tend to be more concerned with the scruples of deference than the investigation and determination of fact. They reflect the chair's obsession with process, not product. Questions are neither penetrating or challenging. Nor are the answers that members accept either instructive or informative. Congress lobs softballs at witnesses - questions designed to elicit a specific response that will prove the member's point, support the member's stance, and placate the member's constituents.
But this is a cruel farce. This is show-biz, not the people's business; this is vaudeville, and not democracy.
Far better for policymakers to create a forum in which opponents can engage in direct debate - the much-touted free marketplace of ideas. Insisting the debates be public is also a good idea, as sunlight always has a sanitizing effect. And a prolonged series of debates, in which opponents knew they would face each other again, would be extremely helpful.
Why? Because to cite just one example: there is at present no good public forum in which to debate and evaluate climate data, in an atmosphere of aggressive and penetrating inquiry, full of challenge and true debate.
A second procedure of the FDR variety would be to give grants for research to multiple laboratories at the same time. I really don't know why this isn't done. In areas where policy is very important, you don't give the research to just one lab. You give it to three, and you make sure that two of them are strongly opposed to each other.
All three should know they will have the right to inspect each other's data and procedures. All three should know that their results will be published in concert, simultaneously. Such simple procedures would make everyone clean up his act real fast.
Of course such a procedure is more expensive. But let's face it: bad information can also be very expensive, especially when it leads to bad policies.
But more to the point: the notion that a single study by a single research team can be used to set policy is really outdated. We just can't do it any more.
And I want to make the argument-I think it's already true in many areas-that government-funded data ought to be publicly available, except in circumstances where privacy issues take precedence. Otherwise, I don't see why data isn't on the net at the time of publication. I don't see why anybody has to sue a laboratory to release its data. The public has paid for it, the public owns it, and the public has an absolute right to access it.
It strikes me as odd that in terms of availability and accuracy of data, we are ready to hold the heads of corporations to a higher standard of conduct than we do the heads of laboratories. We're sending corporate heads to jail, with the clear understanding that it will have a bracing effect on other CEOs. Frankly, if at some point we sent the head of a laboratory to jail, it would probably have a similarly bracing effect on the management of information in other laboratories. And I suspect that sometime in the 21st century, that will happen.
Let's move on.
A second method of securing reliable data is one we might call the "FDA Strategy" - a methodology aimed at systematically removing all bias from the process that gives us data we wish to use. I know the FDA is having some troubles at the moment. We can speak of them in a sort of idealized way. The core FDA procedure is the requirement for double-blind studies of drug efficacy.
Let's review what a double-blind drug test is. The drug and the placebo are bottled by one group. A second group-that does not know the first-administers the drug to patients. A third group evaluates the patients. A fourth group tabulates the results. None of the groups ever meet. They're in different cities and preferably different countries.
We know from experience that this is what we have to do to get bias out of the system. But many areas of research are not held to such rigorous standards. And I can tell you that if there were a double-blind assessment of climate models, the global warming debate would have been over yesterday. I can tell you further that if a blue-ribbon panel of disinterested non-scientists were convened to review the global temperature record, we would also witness a swift end to the current debate. Why? Because at the moment climate science is an insider's game, and serious outside scrutiny has never taken place.
I find this inexplicable. We're talking about spending trillions of dollars to control carbon emissions on a global scale because computer models of climate predict a dangerous future. And yet nobody is willing to subject these climate models to the kind of rigorous testing that we require to license a drug.
But so it goes. Let's move on.
There is third method for vetting data that is on the horizon. It's not here yet, but I am convinced it is coming. I'm talking about product liability for information.
We live in an information society. Nearly one American in three is a knowledge worker. More people are knowledge workers in this society than are engaged in manufacturing. By and large, what these knowledge workers do is generate information. And our society is totally dependent on the integrity of information. Yet we still do not define information as a product. And as a result it has evaded the Quality Revolution that has transformed other industries.
But product liability is already enforced for maps and charts, and will soon be applied to other information products as well. It's absolutely essential for the future.
As I expressed to CM Burns, I had hoped this thread would be about we should be doing. Apparently the same old deniers don't want such a conversation to happen though.
1.) fill a clear glass half full of water, mark with a marker
2.) ad ice to glass, enough to raise the water level to 2/3 full, mark with a marker
3.) leave glass and let ice melt, mark with marker
4.) observation: water lower in #3 than in #2
5.) unscientific conclusion, polar ice melts water level goes down, more water in atmosphere, more storms, more rain, more snow, glaciers grow, new ice age, as was the gist of the fear mongering way back in 1975
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Good lord. Apparently some people don't understand some very basic things about water.
1) Ice is less dense than liquid water - that's why ice floats.
2) Liquid water does indeed become more dense as it's temperature decreases.
3) As the ice melts, it decreases the temperature of the water significantly. When ice melts, it absorbs as much heat energy (the heat of fusion) as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, while its temperature remains a constant 0 °C.
4) The now much colder glass of water is more dense meaning less volume BUT the mass of the water + ice has not changed.
5) In this experiment an amount of ice equal to 1/6th the mass of the water is added.
6) All the glaciers and both polar ice caps contain 2.4% of all freshwater on the planet. This is a minuscule amount compared to the volume of all earth's saltwater oceans.
7) If all the sea ice were to melt the level of the oceans would rise a dramatic 0 (zero) cm!!!
9) You're right about #5 - it's a completely unscientific conclusion!