Bishop Hill Mike Hulme on Climategate
May 4, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: other This is a guest post by Simon Anthony.
Why do we disagree about climate change?
Lecture on 29th April at School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford by Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia.
MH’s talk was based on his book of the same title. His aim is not to investigate climate change via models, analysis etc but to discuss other ways of seeing the world, for example, through the work of Mary Douglas, an anthropologist who originated the field of “Cultural Theory of Risk”, to try to understand the underlying source of disagreement.
The idea is that different people have different attitudes to risk, depending on their personal situations, characters, experiences, values, ideologies etc. For example, MD classified people into 4 types: fatalists, hierarchists (want to preserve existing order), individualists (want to preserve private freedoms) and egalitarians. Each type is claimed to have a particular attitude towards nature (fatalist sees nature as capricious, hierarchist as resilient/stable against small perturbations but unstable against larger, individualist as benign/stable, egalitarian as ephemeral/unstable).
When faced with a complex and potentially threatening situation with no utterly conclusive interpretation or solution, people’s perception and approach to the situation is shaped by their attitude to risk. Climate change is such a situation and, lacking certainty, people disagree because their attitudes towards nature conflict with one another.
MH went on to detail various ways of approaching CC: geographical, historical, religious, scientific etc and talked of different myths, world-views, pluralism in discourse etc. However, he didn’t add much to his starting point that CC is a current battleground in an age-old war between essentially opposing attitudes towards risk, nature and change.
MH was in a hurry to catch a train so the lecture was short. He did however have time for some questions.
Q: Is the science settled? Making such a claim shows misunderstanding of both science (which is always open and unfinished) and policy making (science doesn’t determine policy; to allow it to do so would close down debate and be anti-democratic)
Q: What about the media post-Climategate? Fred Pearce was unfairly criticised by AGW “supporters” for a sequence of post-CG articles in the Guardian. MH thought FP was trying to decide whether climate scientists hadn’t been properly held to account or whether the emails and the consequent furore were somehow due a conspiracy. MH thought the truth was somewhere in between.
Q: What about new media? Before CG, MH had never looked at a sceptical climate blog. Having now done so, he’d been astonished by the energy of the bloggers, although taken aback by the etiquette, which wasn’t what he was used to. He thought some sceptical blogs were useful and that some criticisms of climate science have a great deal of validity. Blogs challenge the peer review process. As a journal editor, he was familiar with the usual peer review methods and their shortcomings (eg reviewers chosen by a nod-and-a-wink) and accepted that some bloggers’ criticisms were valid.
Reader Comments (25)
The attitude to risk is just the blue touch paper in this saga, there is a fifth type of personality that wants, indeed is devoted to, telling other people how to live their lives in great detail. In the past this has manifested itself in the great religions of Christianity and Islam, in fact it still does, I would put environmentalists in the same category. All these groups cluster round a set of principles that everyone can adopt, many adherents are moderate people, but ultimately they are driven by the fundamentalists who keep the religion alive by terror and fear. In the case of the Christians and Islam a combination of fear of the after life and persecution of the heretical seems to have done the trick, while in the case of enviromentalists a combination of fear for the future and constant lobbying of politicians has caused them to reach what I hope is, the peak of their powers. The environmental movement has, like Christianity and Islam, a set of undeniably good principles, look after the environment, take care of out fellow creatures on earth, garner our scarce resources etc. Who could argue with them? However the militant wing has other, more sinister plans for us, enforced vegetarianism being the mildest, while reducing our economies to the level of some previously perceived golden pastoral age when we lived in harmony with Gaia with no flying, no industry, no cars and no electricity being the other end of the spectrum.
The global warming scare is just what the green movement needed, here we have "proof" given to us by "scientists" (prophets in another time) that humans are sinners, and that unless we change our ways to those of the greens we are all doomed.
While we were sleeping the environmentalists have insinuated themselves into all the organisations they need to keep this scare alive. I don't for one minute think that there was a conspiracy, more an accident of history (with the possible exception of Jim Hansen). The natural "science" for an environmentalist is an earth science, so they were naturally attracted into these disciplines. Clearly not all climate scientists are environmentalists, but the Met Office gives a clear indication that some of them have gotten themselves into positions where they can read the omens for the Hoi Polloi.
MH had never looked at a sceptical blog before Climategate! Such a blinkered life academics live. You would have thought he might have had a slight interest in what SM had to say at ClimateAudit.
This blinkered view is why to them the science is settled.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought MH commented as thefordprefect on CA well before Climategate.
Perhaps he doesn't class CA as a sceptical blog and in that he may well be correct.
LOL! No, thefordprefect is NOT Mike Hulme (though he does sign off as Mike sometimes). I've no personal acquaintance with either of these people but if they are the same person I will eat my hat :-)
Not looking at sceptical blogs? It is worse than that the hidebound mentality..
Did I mention the friend I have that worked for the IPCC, is still part of ‘climate science’ and even has their own emails in the leak to and from 'team members' …
And my friend still HAS NOT looked at anything in FOIA2009.zip
Last time I spoke in amazement about this, they said they thought it had all blown over, None of them look at any of the blogs, just refered me again to realclimate!
Part of their job is to advice big business on 'climate change'.
Nice points Geronimo but I for one consider myself an environmentalist. As an angler I fought for cleaner rivers and tried to prevent the damage the water authorities dragging up bank-side trees etc. I have taught my children and now grandchildren how to be responsible for their world. I am sure we all agree that we have to protect where we live.
What we are dealing with is not, on the whole, true environmentalists but fanatics who have taken over, once fine, organizations such as Greenpeace etc. I actually do suspect a degree of conspiracy and collusion, otherwise what would Hansen be doing in the UK with the unwashed rabble.
I would liked to have thought that Jones etc, at the U.E.A., were just shoddy scientists but the emails show that to be untrue.
As you said, "While we were sleeping"! Well, we woke up some time ago and I for one will not be sleeping till this total farce is destroyed! (Rant switch to off ;-) )
And he isn't taken aback by the etiquette at warmist blogs? Or hasn't he looked at those yet?
My thought exactly, ML. Given his apparent lack of curiosity, perhaps he doesn't even know there are warmist blogs - if he'd been to RC, he'd know a lot more about their behaviour and etiquette!
Hulme has been one of the main promoters of AGW, but he has moved away from doomsday scenarios which he used to espouse as Director of Tyndall and is now Mr Nice Guy, the sceptic's friend. He is a believer in post-normal science and there is a good discussion about it here:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
I believe the answer to the question is in his occupational title, Professor of Climate Change. He has made his preconceived conclusion to all his experiments and research his title.
On sure sign an argument is lost when one shifts from facts to interjecting a debate about how people think about fear. This is one of those discussions that have as much practical use as pouring liquid out of your boot in the morning after a hard night at the pub. At least you might end up with a dry boot whereas with this all you do is just continue to pour it on yourself.
I would submit that the leaders of academia have been woefully negligent in maintaining traditional standards of rigour ethics and reason to prevail in climate science. By encouraging such indulgent practices (cf 'inappropriate torquing of data' Judith Curry) and blatant pillorying of those holding sceptical contrarian views, however eminent, they have only themselves to blame for the backlash they now flounder in.
I think the framework is wrong. It isn't about people's attitudes toward risk. It's all about their attitudes toward themselves and others. You will learn more about enviro-wackos from Thomas Sowell's "Vision of the Anointed" (which is about the political left) than you will from this cultural theory of risk. Alarmists are the good people who are saving the planet from the evil, selfish, unenlightened people. No more complicated than that. They know better. They care more. So they need to regulate and control the bad people. The environment is just one more area of life where the personality type directs its energy.
And of course, you have to add in the Chicken Little types.
Some humans will always see apocalyptic scenarios. History is rife with examples. And some humans have a deep need to see themselves as part of a struggle which is critical to history. It makes them feel noble.
Actually, MH is on to something here though I suspect he hasn't quite modelled it properly yet. But the climate science debate has a strong socio-political element. For example, there is a very clear left-right split on interpretation even among scientists. Having a degree in humanities and the social sciences prior to taking on a STEM subject, I can see a great deal of merit in his approach. although it would be nice to widen the scope of enquiry beyond the current debate e.g. how we dealt with the volcano crisis would make a very good paper for this kind of area of enquiry. ** RT - here to annoy everyone in equal measure **
This was the Lick Hulme who notoriously wrote in the Guradian about how "post nornal science" was so much better than the traditional sort because:
"Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking,"
&
"post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science"
&
"scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
As a scientist the man would be a disgrace to the University of Toytown.
Risk tolerance? You must be joking. What I see is that the leaked emails are more than the skeptical bloggers had bargained for. The skeptical bloggers have a symbiotic relationship with their host, the AGW proponents. They do not want to kill or mortally wound their host, as this will kill their own fame and livelihood as well. They must keep the host alive and in full threat in order to sustain their own relevance. The relationship has become one where the skeptics cannot allow AGW to lose relevance and are now starting to align with the AGW proponents to prevent a total collapse. Odd bedfellows indeed!
This "we" vs. "them" dialogue and labeling ("alarmists" vs. "deniers") is counterproductive. Not all sceptics are alike, nor all AGW proponents, nor all environmentalists. That's the black/white mentality that encourages RealClimate fans to equate sceptics with creationists.
I have been an environmental activist all my adult life, contributing, demonstrating, lobbying whenever I had strong beliefs about an issue. But creeping extremism and politicization within the environmental movement have driven me out of outfits like Sierra Club, WWF and Greenpeace. It's not possible to work with organizations which demand that you stop thinking for yourself.
Much as I respect Mike Hulme for seeking some common ground on climate, I disagree with his simplistic categorization by risk assessment. My own evolution from climate agnostic to definite sceptic had nothing to do with risk, and everything to do with two statements:
"The science is settled."
Science is never settled. Claiming that it is is just another way of saying "don't ask questions." People who are afraid of questions usually don't have good answers.
"The consensus on AGW is robust."
Science is not democratic. Throughout history, 'consensus' science has usually been wrong.
Many years ago, my parents taught me to ask questions, and not be swayed by what others are saying. Lesson learned.
Examples, Redbone? All I see is that a number of bloggers have invited some of the less hysterical CAGW proponents to debate the subject. Very few skeptical bloggers are making a living from this activity, and I am sure people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts, who are both retired from their main careers and are not doing this for the money, would be happy to see the threat to global prosperity recede rather than put warmism on a life-support machine.
Slightly O/T but tells you everything you need to know about the 'University of East Anglia':
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10093327.stm
This is from Mike Hulme before Copenhagen: His take away comment was, we need better politics, not better science.
http://scidev.net/en/latin-america-and-caribbean/opinions/climate-change-enough-science-now-for-the-politics-1.html
I view MH is an environmental enthusiast (from emails) . What he is proposing is basically looking for other reasons to implement carbon reduction now that global warming looks like a non starter.
Book summary
http://mikehulme.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Hulme-Carbon-Yearbook.pdf
I found the summary awful. Scientists should stick to science.
FWIW, I think MH is partly right - many people disagree about climate change for the same reasons they disagree about politics in general: their disagreements reflect their different views
of the world and how they'd like it to be. But I also think he's mistaken in
that, unlike political systems, it seems in principle possible to decide
whether AGW is correct or not: the temperature of the atmosphere (and
variations thereof) at some future date is a scientific matter which one can
imagine being answered, at least to some approximation. If, say, the answer
was that the temperature was much the same as today and the variability
likewise, and the predictions matched actual measurements for some years,
people would no longer disagree about CC.
This is in contrast to political systems because, even if economics was able
reliably to predict, say, income per head, people would still disagree about
how that income should be distributed. Some people would prefer everyone poorer but more equal while others would prefer higher income for all even with inequality, still others would like inequality, believing that it motivates people and leads to improvements for everyone. The
reliability of an economics model is mostly irrelevant to the discussion of these values.
Perhaps as MH knows that science doesn't determine policy, he also realises
that the facts of AGW could be established but still leave open the question of
what to do about it. If so, it wasn't clear from his talk as he steered clear of any scientific issues.
So I think MH is right that the underlying reasons for disagreement about CC
reflect people's hopes, wishes and fears rather than arise from the science.
However, should the science improve to the point of reliably predicting
climate, the disagreement will remain and go in search of another battleground. One hopes
that science hasn't in the meantime been trampled into the mud by the
opposing armies.
When historians look back at what I would call the "age of hysterians", I cannot imagine that they will judge Hulme very kindly. Hulme is part of the problem! No less so now than he was when he (along with Joseph Alcamo) actively engaged in getting the pre-Kyoto "consensus" steamroller ball rolling.
Ironically - but perhaps to his credit - while Hulme was running around telling folks that they should 'ask not what we can do for climate change, but what climate change can do for us', Alcamo stated quite clearly (Bali, Oct. 26, 2009) that the IPCC crowd should expect "a sharper questioning of the science behind climate policy" as "policymakers and the public begin to grasp the multi-billion dollar price tag".
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/interests-conflict-in-cloudy-climate-science/
These quasi-philosophical discussions, such as Hulme is now promoting, are all well and good. But the bottom line is that "climate science" assumes that the blame for "climate change" lies with the dreaded CO2 emissions - when it has provided no empirical evidence whatsoever that this is, in fact, the case.
So, fine ... let the Romm's, Schneider's, Monbiot's, Suzuki's and Gore's of the world bring on all the scary stories (glaciers melting, sea level rising, forests disappearing, more cancer, more mential illness etc. etc.) they want! Meanwhile, let Hulme and his ilk chatter away about values, social justice, environmental justice, sustainability etc. - and even how one's attitudes towards these concepts might affect one's approach to "risk, nature and change"; by all means let Mann, Briffa et al continue to dance happily around their tree-rings!
To my mind, these are all diversions from the bottom line: too many governments are currently (not to put too fine a point on it) tilting at windmills and rushing headlong into various and sundry other "decarbonization" schemes based not on what "climate science" has told us, but based on that which no (pre-post-normal) science currently known to man has been able to tell us.
As George Russell, the Executive Editor of Fox News, recently concluded - regarding the findings of the (little-known) UN's own Joint Inspection Unit (JIU):
"[The] U.N.’s external efforts at world “environmental governance” [are] a seeming jumble, and its internal environmental management an apparent mess [.The JIU] have made a striking case over the past year that one of the major environmental problems the world faces may be — the U.N. itself."
So, if the UN doesn't pay heed to the "hysterians" of the IPCC, why should the rest of the world, eh?!
"When faced with a complex and potentially threatening situation with no utterly conclusive interpretation or solution, people’s perception and approach to the situation is shaped by their attitude to risk. "
This threatening situation was totally contrived, or if we are generous in spirit, misinterpreted physics of CO2. A scientific theory used to be put to explain some or other observation, but AGW was never observed needing a theory.
Do these Post Modernists actually live in the same world we do?