Thursday
Oct212010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Nature on sceptics
Oct 21, 2010 BBC Climate: Sceptics Journals Nature has published an opinion piece on the subject of the BBC's science review and in particular the way it handles global warming sceptics.
In reality, perhaps the most common complaint from scientists about the corporation's coverage of global warming is the exposure handed to sceptical non-scientists, such as former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson. This is the source of the long-standing 'false balance' problem. The BBC Trust, which is running the review, should take a stricter line here. If BBC staff want to use non-experts to criticize widely accepted science, they must explain this lack of expertise to the audience, and why the BBC has invited them to participate.
Reader Comments (86)
David Adam
Pielke Jr has picked up on this, and in a rather better argued way makes the same point as I tried to - there is no argument about the pure science of agw that is not 'embedded in a broader political debate' as Pielke puts it.
He makes some other good points too.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/10/natures-muddled-views-on-science-and.html
Roddy Campbell
I can certainly concede it is an irresistable response, but it's a 10 year old newspaper clipping with no context at all to the quote. Frankly, it was silly/a cheap trick by the person that posted it.
If someone is able to point me to a recent published paper saying that UK winters should pretty well be a thing of the past, then I'd certainly sit up and take notice.
However, I'm fairly sure there's no such thing.
Dear David
Yes, it is the Busan draft that I referred to. The article misrepresents the draft text.
The draft text simply asks authors to 'jettison' uncertainty qualifiers where possible.
But the Nature article, rightly begins by suggesting authors should "proceed with caution", then veers to say that policy makers and communicators can make that call, and that scientists could just stick to emphasizing "remote possibilities".
This is the exact opposite in meaning when compared to the IPCC draft statement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plunging-temperatures-herald-arrival-of-winter-2112735.html
10 years is a long time, is it weather or climate.
Ah - I see JohnH is back. Your fellow posters will be pleased to know that it is your belief that climate messageboards should be distorted to give a false impression, which bought me here in the first place.
They have a lot to thank you for.
Does your lack of integrity ever weigh on your conscience?
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) and BBC must be in cahoots. CBC radio just played this ad for an upcoming show promoting low-emission cook stoves for the third world;
"It's the second biggest cause of global warming on the planet - smoke from cooking fires." !!!
David - thank you for the response, I appreciate the opportunity to clarify my remarks. :-D
Ad hominem refers to your comment concerning the "basis of the oil-funded climate denial stuff in the 1990s, which still pervades the 'sceptic' community today". Consider for a moment (in light Climategate emails that reveal proactive supression of alternative views) the argument that independent funding may have been a RESPONSE to a closed system driving toward a political end? Just a thought.
With a pure and open market on ideas - it need not have arisen... Independent funding isn't a CAUSE - it may in fact be a CONSEQUENCE. My hope is that Climategate has put Journals on notice - and are guarding against confirmation bias and opening their apertures a bit...
As to the notion of assertion vs. fact - you seem to arguing from the basis that the science is settled and that fossil fuels pose a danger to mankind? But even Nature continues to publish articles that call into question assumptions and interpretations (eg., Haigh et al. 2010). And given that we have seen changing positions on "unprecedented" (Phil Jones comments) and recognition on the quality issues associated with both measurement and correction of land-based temperatures in the USA, Russia, Australia, New Zealand - in my view - it is far from any kind of a slam-dunk argument. Lots of work remains to be done...
Heston Blumenthal is listed as no 73 in the UK's 100 top scientists - or "most influential people in science" - in Eureka magazine
Consequently, according to the Nature definition of who is or is not qualified to comment on the science of climate science, Blumenthal is so qualified but Lord Lawson isn't.
The list isof the top 100 is here
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/sts-observatory/?p=532
The previous IPCC guidelines employed a numerical scale to be used in conveying:
1) likelihoods
2) confidence levels
The present draft guideline proposes a numerical scale for use in conveying:
1) likelihoods
In effect, the IPCC appears to be moving away from affixing hard number values to statements constructed with expert judgement, per the IAC's advice. In the summary of the draft, reiterating this approach, the authors write:
Nature,...has a problem with this.
The article continues...
Why?
Because it makes it easy to stick something in someone's head if there are numbers. And another lazy, insidious process becomes easy as well - once you stick numbers onto what are strictly unquantifiable entities, i.e., expert judgement, you can actually manipulate them mathematically as though these numbers carried any meaning mathematically. The Nature article does not warn its readers or consider this possibility.
@David Adam
Of course, Nigel Lawson would be laughed at by all and sundry if he were to say global warming science is solid and fossil fuels pose a real danger on one hand and oppose the policy options -no matter how expensive- to deal with that threat on the other hand.
One doesn't have to be a scientist in order to demand precision from that scientific field, especially if zillions are to be spent in policy responses. Americans could justify one trillion dollars they spent on the Apollo program because the science underlying it was solid and precise enough to predict the movement of objects in space. The underlying science was centuries old and was being formulated in terms of "Laws" of gravity and motion. And the same science is being used to send a probe as far away as Pluto in a mission that will take a decade, with the date of arrival, speed, angle of approach, distance, etc, etc, already known precisely enough to justify the cost of the mission. The challenge of robotic space exploration program now is mostly one of engineering, not scientific one.
What are the "Laws" of climate science? Where is the evidence of its precision? How could it make any confident prediction for a century from now? Would the US and Russia spend as much money on their space programs, would they have fired a single rocket and satellite into space if the best their scientists could do were to predict their movements at 95 per cent confidence?
As a layman, I would not care a single iota if the debate was about whether a particular piece of rock is a billion year old or only a million. But if a debate is about whether we are all going to fry in a century if we don't change our sinful ways, I have every right to demand the proof, made intelligible for a layman and at the same confidence level that sent a man to the moon and returned him home safely.
David Adam
" Nigel Lawson says on the BBC that wind farms are too expensive and intermittent to base UK energy policy on? fine. Nigel Lawson says they are an expensive waste of time because global warming science is shaky and fossil fuels pose no danger? not so."
Oh yes so
AGW theories rest on two planks:
1. Current warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
2. Continued increases in CO2 emissions will lead to catastrophic warming of 4 degrees C.
Recent peer reviewed paper in Quarternary Science.
B. Stenni a,*, V. Masson-Delmotte b, E. Selmo c, H. Oerter d, H. Meyere, R. Ro¨thlisberger f, J. Jouzel b,
O. Cattani b, S. Falourd b, H. Fischer g, G. Hoffmann b, P. Iacumin c, S.J. Johnsen h, B. Minster b, R. Udisti i
a Department of Geological, Environmental and Marine Sciences, University of Trieste, Via E. Weiss 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy
b LSCE /IPSL, UMR CEA CNRS UVSQ 1572, CEA Saclay, L’Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
c Department of Earth Sciences, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
d Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
e Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany
f British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK
g Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Sidlerstrasse 5, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
h Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
i Department of Chemistry, University of Firenze, Firenze, Italy
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 30 January 2009
Received in revised form
13 October 2009
Accepted 15 October 2009
a b s t r a
The last interglacial in the current ice age was 4 degrees C warmer than today, no catastrophic events.
The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today.
Idso et al:
CO2 lags temperature during all of the current ice age.
In particular at the temperature peak in all the 7 interglacials in this ice age, , levels of CO2 continued to rise for as much as 2500 years but temperature fell during that time and kept on falling.
Chief Scientific Adviser on Climate Change to the UK Government Prof Bob Watson, said at the Guardian Climategate debate that Mars was a cold planet because it had no GHGs. (I have a recording) the Mars atmosphere is 90% CO2.
I can get even more shaky if aroused
What Nature are overlooking is that the BBC fails almost totally to report any SCIENTISTS who present science sceptical of their "accepted consensus".
@David Adam,
"Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed." Defoe 1726
"Please remember the value of your investment can go down as well as up" Halifax 2010
"Conservatives - 329 seats, Labour - 222 seats, Lib Dems - 63 seats" Bookmakers April 2010
"At the 95% confidence level" IPCC AR4
Facts, uncertainties, predictions. Please excuse me if I want to make up my own mind and please excuse others more cautious than yourself, particularly those that have spent some time on the subject and remain either cautious or unconvinced, expert or not.
David Adam says here that there should be caveats trailing non-climate experts talking about climate on the BBC. Then I say there should similar caveats trailing everyone interviewed by the BBC on any subject, I think there should be warnings about not being an economist, not being a soldier, never held a job outside academia, very narrow specialist etc, etc. Of course how narrow someones point of view is very relevant. It is a good point most of the time.
Although there seems to be an exception for the people who are part of this peculiar science called "climate".
A climate scientist has some moral trump card that can allow implying the bias or selfishness of his critics without having to provide evidence for it. He can expound upon morals, economics, the future, hindsight, weather, politics and policy while just risking a sunny smile thrown his way. It must be a very calming and serene feeling to own the security that David Adam bestows..
Please note, David Adam is neither an economist or a climate scientist.
Nature's comments are alien to the normal scientific tradition and spirit of free debate in topics of great controversy, and very nakedly reveal an ugly face of campaigning advocacy.
They are not only arrogant and insulting to sceptics in general, a great many of whom have highly relevent scientific credentials, but also insult the intelligence both of Lord Lawson himself, and the public in general, who need no introduction to precisely who he is.
As a leading participant to the Lords Select Committee on the Economics of Climate Change, a committee which took copious statements and oral submissions on the whole scope of the subject, heard innumerable presentations and so on, and as an author himself, he has developed what amounts to a unique grasp of the subject and is only too fully aware of its fatal entanglement with political policy. I would suggest that Nature's disquiet concerning Lawson on the BBC is not that he knows too little, but that he knows too much.
Dr G Hegerl, in a recent talk, gave quite a different view of what teh IPCC reports do. She indicated that if there were conflicting views on a matter then the writing team would determine which view was fit to publish. Hegerl statement is compatible with statements that I have seen published by Peilke, McIntyre and McKittrick. So the IPCC does not just report on published studies. The chapter authors make judgments about the quality of these studies and decide what is to be published.. Some chapter authors use the opportunity to highlight their own work
As a general rule, demanding expert credentials for matters that demand expertise is perfectly justifiable. If the subject matter is evolution, one ought to consult a biologist not a priest. When a mountain begins rumbling, one must listen to a volcanologist not a shepherd who herded his goats in the vicinity all his life. One must take the advice of legal experts on matters of law, not radio shock-jocks.
Climate science however is a peculiar monster. Although Climatology presents itself as old hat, none of the leading climatologists actually have a degree in the field. Why? Because it is not an old scientific field at all. It is a very new one, staked out and populated by petulant egotists with frontier mentality.
For these 'pioneers', the matter of expertise is a rather convulated one, although they deny it is hypocritical too. It is not good enough anymore to have a physics or a geology degree to have an opinion on climate. No, one must be exactly a "climatologist". Oops, still not good enough because one must be an active researcher in the field regularly publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Oops, sorry, they actually mean reputable peer reviewed journal, like Nature and Science, where they have already established themselves as the gatekeepers. And from those lofty positions, they can say, with breathtaking arrogance and confidence, they may have to re-define what peer-review is so long as they can keep contrarian views out of those supposedly reputable journals.
The final result of this process is that Mann, Jones, Hansen and their tribe are the 'real' experts, while everybody else is a pretentious idiot. Everybody else, of course, except those citizens who hang around Real Climate website and those who yell out "climate justice now!" in the streets; they happen to be scientifically literate individuals who understand the dangers of looming climate catastrophe.
Odd, is it not, that one doesn't have to be a scientist at all to conclude that Mann, Jones, et al are right, whereas one must be a climatologist being published in reputable journals to have the right to say they are wrong?
Interesting what one can turn up on Google.
http://www.google.com/search?q=greenpeace+%22don%27t+have+to+be+a+scientist%22&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7HPND_en
Hmmm, that's funny, Nature, Science, and the BBC seem to have no trouble going to these guys for "expert" opinon.
Pharos & sHx
Great posts imo ^.^
ups and great post Steve2!
No shit.
The Nature position pretty much boils down to nobody should be commenting on anything.
How can Nick Stern comment on the science of AGW? Surely he doesn't understand the nuances.
How can Stephen Jones comment on the economics? He doesn't understand the nuances of that.
Can James Hansen comment on the potential threat of encroaching disease resulting from climate chnage?
Under the rules that Nature seem to want the debate on AGW would have to stop. Nobody could comment on anything just about.
I think the solution is that the BBC (should) employ talented journalists. The job of a talented journalist is enquiry. If Nick Stern or Nigel Lawson wish to talk about their view of the "science" it is of value. It is the journalists job to enquire and test the strength of such opinions for viewers/listeners.
Steve2
David Adam is also not a journalist, which I think is the expertise required in this instance in order to comment on this matter?
At the risk of spamming, the Nature policy gets even more obviously absurd the more you think about it.
What qualifies one as an expert? Which individuals who have the cursory qualificatins are then deemed of sufficient quality or standing?
Let the BBC and its journalists continue to do what they know how to do, but make sure that it's journalistic ranks are well distributed assortment of different types of people with different types of personal poiticl, social preferences.
I am a fan of the wisdom of crowds.
I think this is person...
David Adam Articles at the Guardian
Make your own mind up whether David can be swayed in his views...
Did my challenge to an actual scientific debate go unnnoticed? Bummer. I note Mr Adam did drive by again, but has he gone now? Would he like to make some comment on something entirely within his area of expertise and tell us about Nature's data policy and how it relates to AGW papers?
@ Jiminy
You're joking me. Guardian Environment Editor/Nature Editor.
I don't know why I keep getting suprised by these strange coincidences. It really is a small small world in the climate "science" industry.
Quote, Roddy Campbell, "We cannot rely on highly imperfect climate models as a basis for policy initiatives that cost billions and change how we live."
Roddy, your lack of faith in models means you are seen not to believe in CAGW. So to label yourself a luke-warmist is wrong. You are a sceptic, a flat-earther, a denier as Nature itself puts it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
As for the input from David Adam. I can remember an article from his Guardian days when he featured a claim from an IPCC co-chair, Martin Parry, that the IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers was 'robust and rigorous'. Not much journalism was evident in that article.
David Adam's views on sceptics are made quite clear here
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/27/how-to-report-climate-change-after-climategate.html
Thanks DR
The meaning of sceptic is very specific. It’s not taxi drivers or people who don’t want to pay higher electricity bills. It’s someone who knows better and takes a contrary view for pathological reasons. No journalists believe that climate science was undermined by the emails.
Pathological indeed... Why buy Nature? You might as well just read the Guardian online environment section. It is just as credible...
Mac - you what? Is that from my old Prospect article?
'Roddy, your lack of faith in models means you are seen not to believe in CAGW.' - er, ok, I don't think CAGW is very probable, fair enough.
'So to label yourself a luke-warmist is wrong.' - er, no, that doesn't follow.
Anyway I've gone off David Adam on the well-thought-out grounds of not liking his photo on the Guardian website. He looks very annoying. Sorry Dave .....
Roddy you are a target, as far as Nature and the Guardian are concerned, worth smearing in the CAGW debate.
1. Engage
2. Persuade
3. Dissuade
4. Ad-hom
5. Smear
Why am I worth smearing, and how have I been smeared?
i agree roddy, it's a terrible photo, if a few years old now. but yes, i am still annoying
david
David - I use a ten year old one for internet dating, I quite understand. Yours does have a very eighties whiff about it somehow? Have you lost a button off that shirt?