Bishop Hill Hulme on climate modellers
Dec 26, 2011 Climate: Models Via Hans von Storch (who calls it `remarkable') comes this paper from Mike Hulme on how climate modellers have imposed a hegemony on academic thought about the climate.
One hundred years ago, a popular theory contended that various aspects of climate determined the physiology and psychology of individuals, which in turn defined the behavior and culture of the societies that those individuals formed. As the ideological wars of the twentieth century re-shaped political and moral worlds, environmental determinism became discredited and marginalised within mainstream academic thought. Yet at the beginning of a new century with heightening anxieties about changes in climate, the idea that climate can determine the fate of people and society has re-emerged in the form of ‘climate reductionism’. This paper traces how climate has moved from playing a deterministic to a reductionist role in discourses about environment, society and the future. Climate determinism previously offered an explanation, and hence a justification, for the superiority of certain imperial races and cultures. The argument put forward here is that the new climate reductionism is driven by the hegemony exercised by the predictive natural sciences over contingent, imaginative and humanistic accounts of social life and visions of the future. It is a hegemony which lends disproportionate power in political and social discourse to model-based descriptions of putative future climates. Some possible reasons for this climate reductionism, as well as some of the limitations and dangers of this position for human relationships with the future, are suggested.
(The link in the paper is to a preprint - I hope somebody picked up the misspelling of Geoffrey/Jeffrey Sachs name in the meantime. Although perhaps I don't - it's always good to have people in Sachs position brought crashing down to Earth occasionally.)
Reader Comments (133)
It is disappointing that much of what Hulme writes is couched in such post-modernist neologistical constructions. But when he wants to, he is capable of writing just like a real person - as he does in a more recent essay that can be found on his site:
http://mikehulme.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Hulme-Research-narrative.pdf
In his Preamble, Hulme notes:
From my reading of this portrait of the geographer as a climate scientist, Hulme's varied career seems to have included a multi-year stint at The Guardian in which he provided a monthly narrative - about which he notes [all bolds below are mine -hro] (p. 4):
During the years 1988 - 2000 at which he was associated with CRU, Hulme seems to have collaborated with all of our favourite personnae. And he also comments (p. 5):
and (p. 8):
Oh, well, looks like one becomes a "climate scientist" by simply seeing oneself as such!
(from p 10:)
(p. 12:)
In Jan. 2010 (p. 12):
I could accept Hulme's "evolution", if he had acknowledged in any significant way the influence he seems to have wielded over the years - and as a consequence his share of responsibility in creating (e.g.) the catastrophic alarmism he now seems to decry. But he doesn't do this: he simply moves on to something else.
To my mind, there is something wrong with this picture. He's already got his fingers in the IPBES pie, btw:
Source: http://mikehulme.org/2011/06/how-to-design-ipbes/
Search Hulme in the climategate emails and he turns up as a bad smell time and time again. A controlling mind frightened always of the weakness of the teams position.
A true member of the cause hence the verbosity he uses to provided meaning to his usual drivel.
I am surprised/amazed/frightened/ that so many find the Divinely Inspired post-modern twaddle uttered by Professor of Climate Change "Mike" Hulme so compelling. I really believe that Phillip Bratby said it best with:
Perhaps a post-modern explanation is in order. What "Mike" said was an effete pedantic orgasm of bombastic epistemological hyperbole.
'nough said.
Pretensious piffle. Yes.
Effective communication. No
Mark Twain would have wrapped it up for tuppence!
Don Pablo – I think you are confusing the message and the messenger.
Hulme can write hyperbole, and be correct. Other people write direct sentences that are utter rubbish.
In your latest post you are merely engaging in foul appreciation of his poor writing style, without engaging with his ideas at all. That is pure Team tactics, if I may say so.
Tell me where his ideas are wrong, and we might have a conversation. Otherwise you are adding basically nothing except ill-will. Oddly against a man who appears to agree with your position.
Don Pablo writes:
"I am surprised/amazed/frightened/ that so many find the Divinely Inspired post-modern twaddle uttered by Professor of Climate Change "Mike" Hulme so compelling."
I apologize if I frightened you. In my first post on Hulme, I wrote the following:
"Translating the point into something close to the terminology of the IPCC, the point would be that our response to climate change, dire change as predicted by the modelers, cannot be mitigation alone but must include adaptation and, in addition, there is no basis for predicting the nature of adaptation. It is possible that adaptation alone is the best policy."
I think I boiled it down to the essentials and eliminated all references to Postmodern science, so-called. In my assessment, Hulme's article looks like a surrender. Even if the climate models are correct (which they are not) that leaves the question of how much adaptation versus mitigation unsettled and there is no science, reductionistic or whatever, that can settle this matter. In my reading of him, Hulme implies that everything produced by climate science has failed to guide us in our response to it because adaptation necessarily must incorporate human imagination, creativity, and ingenuity.
I do not mean to praise Hulme. But I believe he has given a rational argument to the effect that mainstream climate science should run up the white flag.
His ideas don't appear to be new, but nontheless it's gratifying to hear them articulated. It's what I termed "static analysis" many years ago when dealing with market places. One example I used to give was to imagine you're a cabby in London in 1910 and someone told you that two thirds of families would own their own car by 1990, what would be the market for cabs? Doing static analysis you would look at the world as it is in 1910 and foretell drastic reduction of the number of people making a living from taxi driving. In fact the number of taxi drivers in 1990 was vastly greater than in 1910. It is simply not possible to foretell the future, no matter how sophisticated the computers because there are unknown unknowns galore.
I'm ambivalent about Dr. Hulme's motives, because I've seen this reasonable approach before, and also because he appears to take a chapter and a half to develop the simplest of arguments, often in a form of English pretty much unknown outside the post-normal science fraternity. His public views appear to be reasonable and straightforward, to the extent that I'd imagined he was a sceptic who measured his words carefully so as not to bring the wrath of the Team down on his head. Then I read the Climategate 2 e-mails where he's with the pack trying to get De Freitas sacked for publishing Soon and Ballinius
Moolloo wrote:
The question is, why can't Hulme write direct sentences instead of hyperbole. Life (mine anyway) is too short to read lengthy hyperbole. At one time I used to have to read and understand several technical documents a week. If Hulme worked for me I would tell him to go away and rewrite what he has to say in a few paragraphs in plain English and then I might read it and take him seriously.
I think Hilary has hit the nail on the head with:
Too many "top climate scientists" are not scientists at all, but are just self-styled as such.
While I agree with Ben, Gösta and the Bish on the level that Hulme is re-evaluating his a priori knowledge, I do see the need for him to step beyond the pale and make a clear statement of his newly found discoveries. It may appear to Hulme that it is currently a big step, but a step in mental musings is none too substantial, to most.
An awesome step would be for Mike Hulme to stand with Tim Ball (Brothers of Geography) at the Mann trial and state just what he said in this paper...
(Just for you BBD :*, Unless Mike H. is not a climate scientist, but just a Geographer...)
He is making a very simple point, at inordinate length. His substantive point is that particular changes in climate do not entail particular social, political and economic consequences. This is because it is hard or impossible to predict how societies will react to changes to the environment in which they live.
He then argues that the contrary view, particularly about climate, has historical precedent - climate has been considered the one determining factor of human society and behavior in the past, going back to the 19c and earlier.
The argument then was not that climate was changing and this would have particular consequences. The argument was that the climate of particular regions determined the character and behavior of the inhabitants. Hot climates made people promiscuous and lazy. Cold ones were invigorating. This argument is generally discredited now. But, he says, the current climate catastrophe reasoning is another form of it.
The underlying premiss of the current (fallacious) argument is also that climate determines behavior and society. It will get too hot, there will be nothing that people can do except migrate, so they will do so. It will get too hot, this will excite them, so they will make war. The point is that things like migration, war have complex causes, including failures to adapt to circumstances. A warming climate will only lead to famine if no adaptation turns out to be possible.
He could have made the point a lot more simply and with less jargon by pointing out that the predictions of social catastrophe following on warming (or cooling for that matter) include another hidden premiss. That premiss is that technology will not change. The assumption on migration is for instance that there will be nothing that the inhabitants can do that will be cheaper or less dangerous or less attractive than mass migration. In fact however, they may grow different crops, cultivate differently.
You can see the same argument in some obsessive futurists' account of the impact of some particular technical change. Sometimes people exaggerate wildly, sometimes they fail to see the impact. How many people saw what the impact of the semi conductor revolution would be on supply chain management and subsequently retailing? Read the crazed ideas about flying cars.
Its a really simple point: the point is that even if you know how what the climate is going to be, you can't predict what the social and political and economic consequences of that will be, because you can't predict how people are going to react.
The fact that this can be considered controversial or a revelation is quite extraordinary, and shows to what a low level the debate has sunk. Its rather obvious. I guess maybe in the halls of UEA it comes as astonishing insight, but to anyone who has lived through the last 30 years in the real world the astonishing thing is that anyone finds it in any way controversial.
Its a statement of the blindingly obvious spoken through a dense layer of flannel, that's what it is.
I think many of those bashing Hulme here seem to have missed how much he has withdrawn from his previous dogmatic beliefs into a much more reasoned approach to modelling and how its overuse has been misinterpreted.
In another recent writing from Hulme, here he makes it clear that post-normal science is not in any way better than traditional science - it is biased and inadequate.
In the same essay, he breifly discusses Climategate with no attempt at justifying the emails.
So surely we should be rejoicing at a sinner repenting rather than bashing?
Academic writing can be infuriatingly obscure. I haven't (yet?) read more than this excerpt but it seems likely not to be the runaway winner of the Campaign for Plain English gold prize for 2011... But apart from that it seems very much in line with recent utterances by Hulme that we've discussed here. I.e. making the fairly reasonable point that "the science" is distinct from the policy response, and that the latter should be debatable in language other than that of radiative forcing.
@ Theo Goodwin Dec 27, 2011 at 4:09 AM
If taken at face value - and assuming that his definitions of all the words he used are the same as those one might infer from those which are found in the dictionary and from which he will not subsequently pedal back - I might be persuaded to agree with you :-)
BUT, until I see/hear him say words that indicate - unequivocally - that he was wrong when he suggested (as he did in 2010, in his book) that:
I reserve the right to reserve judgment (although I must confess that I'm leaning towards the view that his coat of teflon leads him to shift with prevailing winds - as he perceives them through his green-tinted glasses and/or post-modernist thought processes.)
All of the above added to his circa April 2010, as reported by Pielke Jr:
gives one little confidence that Hulme can mean what he says, or say what he means. Demands that we take a position on?! Gimme a break, eh?!
Not to mention Hulme's pedantic walk-back from his [somewhat too little, somewhat too late] circa June 2010 declaration that the "consensus"™ is merely the views of a 'few dozen here, a few dozen there', which does not (or at least then did not) change his view (however he might have arrived at it) that:
Perhaps our gracious host could prevail upon Hulme to enter into a dialogue with us, so that he can clarify his many splendoured (and contradictory) themes.
But until Hulme chooses to engage and answer these questons, please colour me somewhat skeptical of the sincerity (not to mention "sustainability" ;-) ) of any and all of his pronouncements - whether he's speaking in "plain language" or "language" that can only be fully comprehended by those who are "experts" in the interpretation of post-modernist dialectic!
Wrt the latter, it would also help (as I've noted elsewhere) if Hulme could acknowledge (and, Gaia forbid, aplogize for) his many activities and postulations which have contributed to the non-productive polarization that exists today.
This is a man who desires to be a Newton but in fact is a Nostradamus.
The cult will quote the quatrains at every climate related incident for generations to come.
I've always worked on the principle that if I wanted people to read what I'd written, I'd better make it readable even though the subject matter might be technically very difficult.
I've never quite worked out whether people who express themselves in impressive-sounding but difficult-to-understand language are doing it in an attempt to convince themselves and others that they have something profound to say or whether they simply have never made the effort to master the art of writing in plain English.
Perhaps it's always a bit of both.
Theo Goodwin
Yes, I agree I think Hulme makes some good points about human adaptability and he obviously sees the flaws in adopting the uniformly gloomy outlook.
However I also agree with commenters that Hulmes use of language seems convoluted to the point of obscurity, it certainly tested my ability - for instance I am still not sure what is "eponymous" about Crispin Tickell's book "Climate Change and World Affairs"?
A large swathe of what Hulme says here can, and has been, summed up more succinctly by sceptics, e.g. saying Climate science is an immature science that oversteps its bounds and overeaches its epistemological grasp would do most of the trick for me.
I think a sharper criticism of Hulme would be to point out what he misses. He misses making criticisms of people near the centre of the climate orthodoxy. He names writers in the popular science sphere such as Jared Diamond when he becomes more direct. But when he says that the epistemology is over-reaching he is shy to state "damaging" specific examples and show clear outright errors. An instance that struck me as glaring was when he name checks Norman Myers. He merely mentions Myers 1993 prediction of 150-250 million climate refugees by 2050 and yet ignores Myers later existing already proven ridiculous overestimations of millions of refugees being seen today (and Myers unapologetic defense). Hansen could be included in that missing list also - but I suspect that this is where the religious analogy comes useful. I don't think Hulme can be that direct - I can hardly see Hulme, the trendy vicar here, going as far as criticising any of the Archbishops of the church directly ;)
The lack of desire to be seen by the high priesthood as heretical might also explain his couching the whole thing in such convoluted language and hoping they wont read it? Though maybe it is his style.
Hulme would not know a thought if it bit him in the behind. There is no such thing as post-normal science. There is only science. There is no such thing as post-modern science, or marxist-leninist science. Or mathematics. Or statistics.
What all this shows is nothing about science, climate or mathematics or geography. What it shows is the total deterioration of education in the West, where people seem to think that any set of words they string together will be both thoughts and in English.
Maybe its the result of too many English Literature degrees and courses, obtained by studying 'Jaws' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?
I'm afraid I agree with those who are criticising Hulme's style.
I don't know who he is trying to communicate with but none of the people I have been paid to talk to or write for in the course of a long life would have understood what he was on about. In fact I am struggling to get to grips with it myself (possibly the effects of Christmas!).
Language can be used to get a message across; it can equally be used to conceal a message and to impress the less knowledgable with the writer's apparent superiority. If this is Hulme's natural style then we have to assume that he is not really interested in communicating with anyone whom he considers to be his intellectual inferior. Does he actually want us to understand what he is saying?
Take the quote above and run it through here:
http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp
and see what you come up with. The Gunning Fog Index is 20: 20 years of formal education needed to understand this passage at first reading. Hands up all those who were still in formal education at 26!
The passages Hilary quotes are better — but not by all that much.
Yes, I get the gist of what he is saying but I am hung up on the idea that what he is saying doesn't actually mean a great deal. The man is a thinker and he is in effect thinking aloud but what he is saying doesn't in the end amount to a hill of beans.
Sounds good, though.
Well, if you recast the sentence as 'science in the service of Marxist-Leninist thought', then Lysenkoism would fit the bill.
Similarly, science that serves post-modern notions of "global equality, harmony and justice" can be seen in pronunciations from everyone from James Hansen to Desmond Tutu.
You might balk at the description of these efforts as 'science', yet it is what is being carried out in science departments all over the world with science research grants.
Chapter 6 of Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole, by Stephen Law, discusses pseudoprofundity.
Mike Jackson
An excellent translation of the post-modern statement I made earlier.
Beyond the excellent reading suggestion made by Martin A with regard to Steven Law's book, may I point out that I suspect Professor Hulme sees himself as a latter day Oracle of Delphi. And while no vestigial virgin he is nevertheless making meaningless rantings which any who wish can see whatever message they choose to see -- or read as in this case.
Just read over the comments by those who are positively impressed by his mighty epistle and count the the number of occurrences of phrases such as "in my assessment", "I see", "I believe."
Subjective. Totally subjective. And it is in my mind subjunctive.
I remember doing a technical report writing course at work many many years ago. We had to analyse the "fog factor" in some of our own work. I've just entered Hulme's quote that the Bish gave at the top into the Gunning Fog Index:
Guess what Hulme's writing comes out as?
21.18
No wonder it just reads like BS. He must have been on the UEA Creative Writing Course when he should have gone on a technical report writing course.
Mike Jackson: Sorry, you beat me to it. I should have read all comments first.
Don Pablo de la Sierra
Can you justify that?
Speaking as someone giving my mere subjective opinion here (I just love people who can claim to emanate utter objective truth with their every statement) i.e. I have said that Hulmes style looks obscure to me and I have named at least section place which I didn't understand (I suspect Hulme made a mistake). I still see what Hulme is saying and it is not contradictory - he isn't saying anything that is not comprehensible. If anybody has a problem understanding any part of what Hulme has said I will help them out and explain it for them ;)
Phillip
Nice to have my reading confirmed. I'd forgotten what the ideal figures were.
I seem to remember reading somwhere that The Sun needs a reading age of about 8, the Telegraph about 10, The Times about 11 and the good old Grauniad 13 or 14! (But perhaps that's to help cope with the typos).
Certainly I was always taught that the aim should be below 12 and preferably below 10 — regardless of who you were writing for. Anything above about 18 was to be viewed as deliberate obfuscation!
This thread is hilarious!
Thanks all ;-)
Hulme is like a country vicar who impresses some of his flock with what looks like metropolitan sophistication, coupled with a boyish enthusiasm for talking about the 'right thing to do' by his own lights. Some of his flock on the other hand will be less impressed, seeing instead a somewhat weak minded passenger on a bandwagon that went out of control some time ago, but not before soaking him (mixed metaphor alert) in what passes for fashionable jargon-speak in some quarters, but which some rogues in his flock regard as deliberate self-indulgent obfuscation. If he is indeed now assuming the role of one udergoing salvation from the sins of his earlier ways, then I fancy the first-mentioned subset of his flock will be puzzled, and the second infuriated even further. A highwire act springs to my cliche-ridden old brain as my final metaphor here.
The Leopard In The Basement
I think you yourself do that with:
The Priest of Delphi is available of consultation, it would appear. Nice to know.
"for" not "of" --- Bad Dragon! Sorry
Don Pablo de la Sierra
What Hulme has written is not "meaningless" to my subjective understanding. You are noticeably shy of offering an example of what you have found "meaningless" for some reason. My offer stands. If you have found something you think is meaningless and are having personal, subjective, problems understanding it. I will explain it for you and possibly, between us, we will come closer to the objective truth ;)
re: "post-normal science"
Hulme is adopting a term tossed about in the 1990s as a supplement to the view sketched in T. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962). The term does not seem to be about "science" at all, but rather about various forms of hand-waving when the science (or at least the interplay between current science and recommended public policies) really isn't settled.
I'm not sure it means any more than "this is what WE (the advocates of a position) say to do in the face of great uncertainty and lack of knowledge" (my summary not his).
The mere fact of using this term does seem to backpedal from any pretense that "the science is settled" since the very idea of "post-normal science" (not really science at all, imho) is what to do when you don't know what the h### you ought to do:
"post-normal science" is.....
"attempting to characterise a methodology of inquiry that is appropriate for cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent" (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-normal_science
re: Mike Hulme and "post-normal science"
He also relies upon the idea in this article, which came out before his book was published. The way in which he tries to employ it in an "argument" (sic) against Singer and Avery to claim that their book does not allow for the subtleties of such "post-normal science"....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
Here (2007) he does also allow for some hint of weakness in the IPCC work and especially in the more extreme scenarios of global warming asserted by Lovelock, etc.:
[Mike Hulme]: "...Lack of such reflective transparency is the problem with "unstoppable global warming", and with some other scientific commentators on climate change. Such a perspective also opens a chink of weakness in the authority of the latest IPCC science findings.
hro001 writes:
'BUT, until I see/hear him say words that indicate - unequivocally - that he was wrong when he suggested (as he did in 2010, in his book) that:
"We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us."'
I accept this point. Hulme might be inviting us to become Postmodern Scientists. That doctrine turns upon itself endlessly and produces only nonsense. I would not be surprised that he is making such an invitation. All of the Warmists are Lotus Eaters. We need more evidence that he is awakening from his delicious slumber.
I find the discussion of Hulme's work refreshing. Several commenters have explained that Hulme's writing cannot be interpreted as a clear statement of anything and that his language hides his commitments to individual claims. I cannot disagree with that view. As we all know, one of the symptoms of our time is that language has become more a tool of obfuscation than elucidation. In the US, if a politician says "I accept full responsibility" what he means is "I accept full responsibility but none of the blame or punishment."
The interpretation that I gave of Hulme's main argument is nothing more than my interpretation, as Don Pablo, hro001, and others have pointed out. Hulme might reject everything that I said about his writing.
Much as I think the Hume bashing here is pointless, the 'post-normal science = postmodernism = marxism = wrong' a fantastic example of how 'sceptics' can mirror the excesses of 'alarmists'.
If you don't understand why those terms are not equivalents, you should consider that they might be words you shouldn't use yet. Unless you want to project your own misunderstanding into the world, that is.
I think I've said it before: It's enough to make me want to join Greenpeace.
To me post modern science had just meant waffle. Not marxism..
But, I take the point about sometimes feeling like running off and joining greenpeace.. Though I would prefer the green party myself :-)
Ben Pile
Yup.
Dec 27, 2011 at 6:28 PM | Ben Pile
"If you don't understand why those terms are not equivalents, you should consider that they might be words you shouldn't use yet."
What can be found in "Postmodern Science" that is not in William James' "The Will To Believe," a speech delivered in 1896? Thomas Kuhn updated James to address scientific method more directly but his theses have been playthings for years. Kravetz has added nothing. Wolfgang Stegmuller attempted to update Kuhn in a more technical way in the 1970s but Isaac Levi laid that work to rest. What is there in "PMS" that is worthy of consideration? The last great pragmatist was W. V. Quine and I am quite happy to debate his views. Unlike "PMS," Quine is unwilling to surrender the claim that there is a fact of the matter in scientific theory. The "Precautionary Principle" is laughable. What is there?
"It's enough to make me want to join Greenpeace."
Ben Pile,
If someone having a different opinion than yours makes you want to join Greenpeace (of all choices), I'd say you have some issues of your own to work out.
Andrew
What can be found in "Postmodern Science" that is not in William James' "The Will To Believe," a speech delivered in 1896? Thomas Kuhn updated James ...
I don't care to speculate about what can be found 'in postmodern science'. What I said was:
The category 'postmodern', much as with 'modern', puts a thing in a time. Nothing more. 'Postmodern' ideas -- much as with 'modern' ideas -- can be found in contradiction. There are some daft excesses, of course. But many 'postmodern' ideas are simply descriptive, rather than prescriptive. It's not clear to me that there are any *actual* advocates of 'post normal science' in any meaningful way. Nobody is saying 'hey, wouldn't it be great if "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent"'.
Whatever problems PNS has, however, it doesn't turn up until 1991. The UNFCCC process has already begun, 'sustainability' is already on the international agenda, and the Montreal Protocol (the first application of the precautionary principle in international agreements) is already four years old. The idea that Ravetz et al had anything to do with it is nonsense.
It's not the fact of other people having different opinions that bothered me, as I said on the first page of comments here. Let me remind you:
@ Ben Pile
With all due respect, Ben, I don't believe that any of us who have chosen to highlight some of Hulme's very own words (and past choices of actions) have taken up the "...=marxism=wrong" cudgel against him.
My own view (FWIW) is that Hulme is a very shallow thinker who chooses to leap from one position to another without acknowledging his contribution to the damage that follows in wake of his earlier words of "wisdom" (cf, as Shub noted earlier, and as CG2 revealed, his somewhat pivotal role in the shameful treatment of S&B and de Freitas).
More recently, yes, he has criticized the IPCC (and downplayed the so-called consensus™) but then he backtracks (perhaps to hedge his bets?!) by declaring (circa June 2010) that:
I'd be among the first to concede that - compared to the screeching we constantly hear from the likes of Pachauri, Edenhoffer, Stocker, Mann, Monbiot, Santer, McKibben, Trenberth, Carrington et al - Hulme might seem to be the voice moderation, i.e.one who could lead us out of the desert of sterile and futile "debate" into the promised land of reason and reconciliation.
Yet, IMHO, Hulme comes with the baggage of a considerably less than virtuous history. And I, for one, am not inclined to trust him any more than I would trust (the equally superficially seductive) words of Ravetz (who, if I recall correctly, just happened to be one of Hulme's mentors).
I have yet to see any indication of the very public scorn heaped upon (for example) Judith Curry (who, in my books, has far more credibility and intellectual integrity than Hulme) by the self-appointed keepers of the CAGW flame, heaped upon Hulme.
And until that day arrives, well, call it "Hulme bashing" if you will, but - as a Bridgeplayer - I prefer to continue to call a spade a spade.
@hro001
I was responding to the concatenation of wrongs which seem to serve in some narratives here as a mythology. I was certainly not saying it applied to anyone critical of Hulme's words past or present. It seemed to me to be an especially blunt instrument for Hulme-bashing, and one that does a better job of demolishing the credibility of the basher than the bashee.
I don't see the point of the Hulme-bashing. You don't think he has any remarkable insight... So move on. You recognise that he is not part of the axis-of-shrill. And I suspect that you must recognise that he has been most critical of alarmism. And surely you must also notice that, whatever his actions in the late 1990s, he has at least reflected on his position, even if he hasn't issued a mea culpa.
But he's critical of the UNFCCC/IPCC/COP processes, scientists, politicians, and the NGOs. What more do you want?
@Ben Pile
From my reading of Hulme, it wasn't just his actions in the late 1990's that have brought us to where we are today. Throughout the subsequent decades, he adopted a pattern of ambiguity and equivocation (with no acceptance/acknowledgement of responsibility). He wasn't a member of the Hockey Team, but the emails strongly suggest that he was one of the lead "coaches".
What more do I want?! Well, a clear and unambiguous Statement to the effect of, "OK, folks, regardless of what the climate may (or may not) be doing, it's long past time to take all our eggs out of the human-generated-CO2-is-the-primary-culprit-basket' - so we must act now!" would go a considerable way towards persuading me of the clarity and sincerity of his current position.
And a concerted effort - on Hulme's part - to gain endorsement for such a Statement from "prestige" scientists and hundreds, if not thousands, of others (which would reverse the direction of the ball he set rolling in '97) would go even further!
I cannot speak for others (and I doubt that this is likely to happen, anyway!) but you did ask ;-)
Dec 28, 2011 at 12:45 AM | Ben Pile
Those who have associated their name with support for the Precautionary Principle will live in the history of infamy just as Lysenko does.
I make that statement as a matter of calm and rational judgment.
@hro001:
I don't see the 'pattern of ambiguity and equivocation'. Moreover, I'm not sure what you think he should be 'accepting responsibility' for.
What concerns me -- why I think the Hulme-bashing here is reminiscent of alarmism -- is that Hulme isn't in one easily-identified camp in this debate. Like Pielke and Lomborg, who frustrate attempts to draw the debate into two, and pin their colours to one camp's mast: hence 'ambiguity'. It's a puerile with-us-or-against-us mentality that drives the reaction to them. The geometry of the debate matters more to this mentality than the substance of the arguments made in it.
Well, we can be pretty sure that Hulme does believe that a'genic CO2 is a problem. But I don't sense anywhere that he has suggested that 'we must act now' on that basis. On the contrary, he seems to me to have written at length about how the 'problem' of climate change is understood isn't a straightforward matter for science -- and certainly not physical science. Thus, what you decide to do about climate change depends at least as much on what you believe about human society's relationship or sensitivity to climate as it does to what you believe about climate's sensitivity to CO2. Are you sure you're not just demanding that the only way Hulme can' redeem himself is to lie on the floor in front of you, and denounce himself and all his sins, and admit that you were right all along?
@Theo
I don't care much for the claim that you're calm and rational. I can see for myself good evidence that you are neither.
If you care to read Hulme's book, 'Why we disagree about climate change', the chapter called 'the things we fear' discusses 'the construction of risk and its significance in discourses around climate change'. 'One of the reasons we disagree about climate change', says Hulme, 'is because we evaluate risks differently'. The next chapter is about 'the communication of risk', and it too demonstrates the many problems that exist with the concept.
Far from 'associating [his] name with support for the PP', Hulme has written fairly extensively about how risk and precaution are muddy concepts that aren't easily -- if it all -- made any clearer by science. Especially consensus science. Instead, risk and precaution are more fundamentally cultural/ideological/political ideas, or at least attitudes towards them are informed by the social sphere than by 'science'.
The fact that someone from the "climate establishment" is saying the bleedin' obvious is, I suppose, a good thing.
That he spends a vast amount of time clothing these simple ideas in pretentious gibberish is irritating, particularly as, presumably, I am paying him to do so.
My favourite story of implementing a sustainable future - The Forest of Dean:
http://www.infobritain.co.uk/Kymin_And_Beaulieu_Wood.htm
http://www.royalforestofdean.info/forest-of-dean/history.shtml
Just to add to the story of the Forest of Dean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Dean
So, the local iron industry was disrupted in order to make sure they had the wood needed for the Navy's ships. Great hardship resulted. And then it turned out they needed iron, not wood. Jeenyus.
Irony, I think.
Well Marxism is wrong, and AGW is wrong, but AGW is not = to Marxism.
Post modernism can be a huge waste of time if it allows opinion to overwhelm fact and ethics. But anything that overwhelms or ignores facts and ethics is also a waste of of time.