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)
Dec 28, 2011 at 11:56 AM | Ben Pile
Dec 28, 2011 at 11:56 AM | Ben Pile
So, Hulme has nothing to fear from the "Precautionary Principle." You are reading into my claims a bit much. I did not mean to tie Hulme to the PP. I meant to condemn the PP and I do that every time the topic arises. The topic arose in this blog.
By the way, if you will read my earlier comments in this post you will find that I believe that Hulme's article offers common ground for discussion. I would greatly enjoy discussing the article with Hulme. However, for expressing these views I was roundly beaten about the head and shoulders, good naturedly of course.
Theo:
As far as I can tell, you brought the subject of the PP up. Save for a brief mention on pg 1, It didn't arise of its own accord until Dec 27, 2011 at 10:35 PM:
If you didn't mean to 'tie Hulme to the PP', why bring it up? I apologise if I have misunderstood your intentions, and overlooked your previous comments here. But I hope you understand my confusion. Let's start again.
I suggested that there is a problem with the implication that 'post-normal science = postmodernism = marxism = wrong' and that it is 'a fantastic example of how 'sceptics' can mirror the excesses of 'alarmists''. In a discussion about Hulme, his past alleged transgressions, and his current thinking, this concatenation of poorly understood categories is merely a regurgitation of an unhelpful mythology. There's nothing wrong with criticism of Marxism, of PNS, or of pomo. But there is a great deal wrong with using them as equivalents in a narrative which seeks to explain the development of events to now, simply to attack somebody.
To PNS. I don't see anyone criticising Hulme for what he has actually said about PNS. It strikes me that all that it takes for people to be angered by him is that i) he said some daft things in emails a decade or so ago, ii) PNS looks a bit pomo, iii) His articles in academic journals are a bit academic, and thus hard to follow, iv) he works at UEA. Honestly, I can't see any more to it.
Hulme does not seem to me to be peddling some radical postmodernist, 'science-is-just-another-narrative' type of claim. On the contrary, PNS applies where science is important to social policy. It says nothing about string theory, for instance. My reading of his book suggests that he thinks it is a problem that science has been guarded by gatekeepers, by monolithic scientific institutions, and tribal scientists; that there is a problem in which institutional and wider culture and politics have obscured a view of what is certain and what is not certain in science; and that people are invested in emphasising the most catastrophic scenarios. In short, he addresses many of the problems that are discussed on this blog. When somebody says in response 'ha! That's postmodernism [etc]', I can't help thinking, 'Christ, what a complete moron'.
Ben.
Your tactic is the same: Say that 'we' are saying something and then, fight that.
I'll speak for myself: we want Hulme to say the things that are said in this blog, in the same way they are said in this blog.
Hulme certainly does plain-talking when writing emails to faculty and reviewers asking them to resign from editorial boards, or ostracize an employee. If I want high ideas, I want them from a high-minded person.
And that is why I said that things said in this discussion are 'a fantastic example of how 'sceptics' can mirror the excesses of 'alarmists'.
You know as well as I do, what I meant. Blog commenters strive to write as plainly as possible. Hulme writes in the exact opposite manner, in order to say what can be said plainly.
Dec 29, 2011 at 2:28 AM | Ben Pile
I thank you for the extended and clear remarks that you made to my comments. I do not disagree with what you have said. Maybe I introduced the "Precautionary Principle." It is true that whenever I am reminded of PNS I also think of PP.
Other commenters distrust Hulme and they have made that clear in this blog. They want a clear statement of reversal of course from him. I accept their positions but I do not share them. I would be willing to converse with Hulme or debate him on the basis of his article. But I have spent my life among academics and am not surprised by the apparent slipperyness in the way he expresses himself. I believe that no issues remain between you and me at this point.
Dec 29, 2011 at 2:28 AM | Ben Pile
One more small thing. You might want to take your own advice and drop the following sentence from your comment:
"When somebody says in response 'ha! That's postmodernism [etc]', I can't help thinking, 'Christ, what a complete moron'."
@ Phillip Bratby Dec 27, 2011 at 3:41 PM
At the risk of being accused of engaging in "Hulme-bashing" ...
According to the "research narrative" from which I quoted some excerpts earlier, he did take such a course (p. 10):
An interesting combination which (from where I'm sitting) might have led to his relatively new-found (p. 12):
Which, in turn, may have led to his contributions to the June 2011 "Culture and climate change: recordings". In response to Quentin Cooper's:
Hulme replied (p. 71):
Oh, well, perhaps all those who "see themselves" as "climate scientists" (including the modellers) also should back off - and take some courses in Creative Writing (as Hulme did) so that they, too, will see the cultural imperative of climate change, instead of "invading that very contested place".
Carbon dioxide as primary cause?! Nah, no need to discuss that any more ... it doesn't fit with the cultural imperative.
In his further contribution to this panel, Hulme also says (p. 80):
And no doubt, a course in Creative Writing will reduce this "vulnerability" to such an extent that it will fade into insignificance once overtaken by the cultural imperative of climate change.
Totally agree with Ben here I notice that when Ben mentions specifics (a lot) he doesn't get responded to, rather I notice another tendency that is annoying from any side (but I assumed that it was 'larmists who use it as a refuge more often) but the response by Shub above is a typical melting back into the amorphous masses that it make it harder to pin down what is said.
I don't know if that was supposed to to include a joke there - starting with "I'll speak for myself:..." and saying what "we" want ;)
Whatever, it seems not very helpful, there are many interpretations of what is said on this blog
1) What the Bish says (is the Bish always saying the same thing? Never revising changing?)
1) What the Commenters says (are the Commenters always saying the same thing? Never revising, changing?)
People seem willing to melt back into the massed stone throwers (Like in Life Of Brian) when challenged. Don Pablo went quiet when I asked him about what he found "meaningless" is a notable example. He rather seemed to make generalities that fit in with the crowd.
I sometimes wonder if there is a feeling that real dialogue is "damaging" to the sceptic cause. This reminds me of the worst excesses of the alarmist echo chambers.
Ben Pile makes some good points: we may distrust Mike H due to his Climategate persona, but should at least try to go beyond that when discussing his paper. For what it is worth, I did not find it all that hard to read, though "Peter and Jane" it is not. There are two reasons why people use long words and complex sentence structures: to express thoughts in a more precise way, and to signal belonging to a certain linguistic community. From what I can see Mike Hulme is by background a physical geographer and is moving towards Human Geography. Maybe that's why he writes in humanities-speak. I am certain that his intended public understood his paper easily. The fact that some of us here do so less easily is in one sense not his problem.
As I understand it, his paper does go beyond the somewhat trivial point (to sceptics at least) that AGW is not just a problem of physics, but a political and cultural one also. What he tries to provide is a historical context for ways of understanding environmental determinism. I found that quite interesting, and novel - I hadn't drawn that parallel or indeed been all that aware of previous versions of env. determinism.
Finally, about PNS: I've defended it here previously and would do so again had it not been done by others above. I wonder, though, if the hostility does not come from a perception that the "urgent decisions" it discusses are usually held to be top-down statist decisions. For Mike Hulme, you sense that he may be of the opinion that whatever the physics of the atmosphere, we should all stop using our cars. That may be unfair, but there are certainly other people who argue that the physics do not matter, AGW is a political matter, and we should urgently stop emitting so much CO2.
I'm curious as to who would be the intended audience of Hulme's essay. It says that it is to be published in Osiris, which apparently is a journal for papers on the history of science, published by Chicago University. I thought I'd have a look at some of the other papers in the journal to see if they're written in similar language, but of course, being a mere pleb I seem to only have access to the abstracts online.
Anyway, is it historians who communicate with each other in the language that Hulme uses?
James, lots of academics use that sort of language when writing for their academic colleagues. I'm not saying that they could not write the same thing more clearly if they had to - but they don't. If anything, Hulme is quite a bit clearer than others.
@hro000:
That simply isn't what Hulme says. You seem to be simply scanning text for opportunities to deliberately misread it. Why would you do that, just moments after agreeing that there's more depth to his argument than was being acknowledged, that the Hulme-bashing is a problem, and so on?
If you can't see the point Hulme is making, you must be labouring under the same misapprehension as the worst alarmists: that climate is a purely scientific concept, and that climate change and its consequences (i.e. effects on human society) can be understood through predictive models, and that society and climate both conform to such predictable forces.
As I've long argued, in 'denying' that there is a cultural component to the understanding of climate, and of climate change, you are essentially agreeing that as soon as any change in climate can be detected and safely attributed to humans, the policies and politics of environmentalists and climate alarmists are legitimised, as if the sensitivity of society to climate is the same order of problem as the sensitivity of climate to CO2. This is the mistake 'sceptics' make. They believe that all you need to do is show that 'climate change isn't happening', and the rest will disappear. But the corollary is that if it is shown that 'climate change is happening', then the rest holds. Then sceptics are forced to imagine frauds, conspiracies, and the reinvention of communism to explain how science has been corrupted, in much the same way that alarmists imagine conspiracies of 'deniers'. Fantasies about PNS=pomo=marxism turn up. Etc. There is a curious symmetry to the shallower ends of the climate debate: its scientism, its suspicion of people and of academia, its conspiracy-theorising, its a-historical claims.
Dec 29, 2011 at 1:00 PM | Jeremy Harvey
Yes. Historians of science, sociologists of science, and philosophers of science will find Hulme's language commonplace. That is not to say that they will approve of the article.
"Shub above is a typical melting back into the amorphous masses that it make it harder to pin down what is said."
Leopard,
Maybe. But there are reasons for that, the more immediate one being not wanting to get drawn into a discussion of Marxism etc arising from Ben's long comment.(We've already done that before, and I know where it'll lead).
Secondly, I disagree that commenters here are dismissing Hulme as being pomo, and therefore marxist, and therefore bad. For instance, I am dismissive of Hulme merely because what he has conveyed in this paper could have been put across in a more straightforward manner. Therefore, my aim specifically was to disagree with Ben's point and nothing more. My feeling is that Ben Pile doesn't appreciate what his readers/commenters have to say.
Here is a litmus test: Let Ben write in Hulme's style, on his blog and in his spiked column. Let him see what good comes of it and tell us about it.
Call me cynical, but when I see people supporting each others ideas and concepts, it doesn't sit well.
Ben, who writes so clearly, should be able to see that Hulme's sudden revelation, namely,
has nothing novel, insightful or particularly clever about it. When I see other responses above, that is what I take them to be saying.
Indeed, I would go a step further and say that reductionism, (and not just in the case of climate reductionism) is itself faced by a dead end. That is actually my reason for not taking Hulme seriously with his offering of his. He is still stuck.
Plus I can't get over the man's apparent disingeniousness as revealed by the CG2 emails.
Dec 29, 2011 at 1:27 PM | Ben Pile wrote:
[in response to my obviously flippant - but presumably unforgivable, even if clearly differentiated - commentary, in response not to him but to an observation by Phillip Bratby]
Nor did I claim that it was.
Well, I suppose stripped of the context it might appear that my comment is, as you claim, a "deliberate misreading".
It was not intended as such - although, perhaps in hindsight, I should have anticipated your objection and appended a sarc tag. However, considering your very selective readings of the comments I (and others) have made here, I'm not sure that a sarc tag would have avoided your reduction of all criticsm into your "Fantasies about PNS=pomo=marxism" paradigm.
You seem to hold Hulme in very high regard, and that is certainly your prerogative. But I'm not sure where it is written that we are all obliged to share your view and refrain from highlighting anything which might in any way detract from (what appears to be) so rose-tinted a view that it requires that one gloss over any (if not all!) of his history which does not conform to the view from your chosen lens.
You may not find it problematic that Hulme was largely responsible for crafting, drafting - and securing the "endorsements" of "scientists" for - a pre-Kyoto 1997 "Statement", the main purpose of which was to:
You might also not find it problematic that this "Statement", which he co-authored, concluded as follows:
You might also not find it problematic that the key message of this "Statement" obscures the primacy of human-generated CO2 emission reductions as the "target". Not to mention that in the intervening years this "message" has been picked up and repeated ad nauseam.
And speaking of "key messages" and Hulme's views thereof, I found it somewhat ironic that in his March 2009 essay to which you referred earlier he also wrote:
But I digress ...
You might also not find it problematic that he was a more than willing executioner in the shameful treatment of Soon, Balliunas and de Freitas.
You might also not find it problematic that, while he shrunk the consensus™ (if not the "overwhelming scientific consensus") and has criticised the IPCC, he thinks that the IPCC way is " is an entirely credible process of knowledge assessment" and (at least as of June 2010) that he believes:
Although it's not entirely clear to me whether this was a "political" or "scientific" message he was endorsing. Whichever it was intended to be, it still obscures the primacy of human-generated CO2 emissions as the target (or, to use the increasingly more prevalent "target" substitute, "level of ambition")
Some might be inclined to conclude that 'Clarity from thee, but not from me' is his motto! It certainly fits in with his 'climate change is plastic' paradigm.
Excuse me?! Where did I agree that there is "more depth to his argument ..."?!
Whatever point Hulme might have been making, in the context of a series of discussions focussed on the views of those who are involved in the arts, i.e. literature, theatre, (as "culture"), it struck me that he had glommed onto the non-artistic connotation of "culture" and was veering off in a completely different direction - and that he was doing so in a manner which (to my mind at least) was consistent with choosing to make a simple statement of the blindingly obvious considerably more verbose than it needed to be.
Well, I'm not sure how you might have arrived at that particular conclusion regarding my views. All I've ever asked for is more accountability, a lot less fog and considerably more clarity. It would also help if he were to practice what he preaches - so that one knows when he is wearing his "scientist" hat and when he is wearing his "political" hat.
But perhaps next time you're talking to Hulme, you might ask whether his convictions regarding the primacy of human-generated CO2 derive from his knowledge as a scientist (and erstwhile modeller and keeper of the IPCC Data Distribution Centre) - or from his cultural-political endeavours.
And you might also him whether he still believes (as he evidently did in March 2007) that:
>> "That simply isn't what Hulme says.
> Nor did I claim that it was.
Then what was this about:
You complain that the comment was 'stripped of context'...But even if it were in 'sarc tags' (the 'context'?) the point -- if there is one -- would still be obtuse. Some irony, then, in your commenting, "Clarity from thee, but not from me".
You are right, I took Theo's comments (which I paraphrased) for yours. I apologise.
I don't see the problem. 'Culture' is a broad category, which, in my experience is usually used in the 'non-artistic' sense, but which encompasses it. Anthropologists, study 'culture', but it doesn't only take them to the ballet, theatre, opera, or concert. Moreover, given that 'culture' in the artistic sense reflects 'culture' in the broader sense, to claim that the broader sense doesn't belong in a discussion about the narrower seems specious, to say the least. 'Art' is not born out of a vacuum.
We might want to be critical of the 'culture' which develops within climate change institutions ourselves, as indeed Hulme is. We might also want to look at the culture which has expectations of science to answer broader political and moral questions, as indeed Hulme does. It seems to me that the rage and rush to find individuals to blame obscures the substance of the debate, even when it is substance we might find useful, and agree with.
I find it a little absurd that at the same time you are arguing that Hulme made a 'statement of the blindingly obvious', you seem to be confused by it. Geography has always been at the meeting point of physical and social science. And Hulme answers you in Why we disagree about climate change. indeed, it's a discussion about all the different 'hats' that are worn in the debate, their de/merits, the conflicts between them, and how they can be reconciled, etc, hence, 'why we disagree...'.
You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between a positive and normative claim. Or do you believe that, in 2007, there was no trouble telling facts from values? I've often made the point that 'climate change is happening' is a completely empty statement, not just because of the fact of its imprecision from a strictly scientific POV, but also because it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. (And Hulme does a good job of explaining this phenomenon in great depth.) So is the expression 'climate change is happening' in the hands of a mealy-mouthed politician, a (contested) fact or a value? We know full well that the politician doesn't give a stuff, and has never read more than a PR from Greenpeace. But 'sustainability' and all that stuff sounds good.
It has the appearance of a fact, but it functions as a value. Now, you can shout at the appearance of a fact until you're blue in the face, but, QED, it simply does not work. The problem is compounded by the fact that climate change really does seem to be happening, though questions exist about to what degree it is happening, to what extent we caused it, and what the consequences are. Much more can be gained, I argue, by understanding 'climate change is happening' as a 'value'. Because as a value, it's possible to interrogate, and to establish that the problem of climate change really is defined by a system of values (I call it 'ideology'), which precede the science.
http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&article=what_are_conspiracy_theories.php
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/8/19/has-the-climategate-hacker-just-spoken.html?currentPage=3#comments
OK, Ben ... I give up!
Perhaps you would find my statements somewhat less "absurd" if you would at least do me the courtesy of reading them in the context in which they were actually written. For example:
You cited my:
And followed it immediately with your:
When in fact my comment about Hulme's statement of the blindingly obvious had absolutely nothing to do with the paragraph you chose to cite. My observation quite clearly pertained to Hulme's contributions to the June 2011 Climate Change and Culture discussion.
But I'm beginning to get the sense that you are far less interested in engaging in dialogue than in using selected snippets from the responses of others as hooks for expounding on your own view of the world. That being the case ...
You wrote:
Well, I'm not sure how one might "interrogate" a value (or maybe the "value" does the interrogating?!) But, that aside ...
I can see why you might have a far greater appreciation of Hulme's latter day words of wisdom than I am ever likely to. Unfortunately, I've seen far too much damage done - to far too many good people - in the name of "values" (and the articulation, adoption and application thereof) to have any measure of optimism that such a framework (for want of a better word at the moment) is likely to result in any greater clarity regarding the validity of the assumed primacy of human-generated CO2 emissions which, as far as I can discern, neither you nor Hulme (amongst many others) seem to think is even worthy of mention,
Mind you, the discussion you would seem to prefer to have is a vast improvement on all the scary stories of which the politicians, NGOs, media mavens - and of course the "scientists" - among the axis of shrill (as you so aptly named them) are so enamoured.
However, I am far from convinced that "climate change" aka "global warming" is a problem that needs "fixing"; nor am I optimistic that your preferred framework is likely to be readily adopted by the axis of shrill.
But what do I know, eh?! I'm just a Bridgeplaying, cat-loving, Canadian ... who happened to have the benefit of a pre-post-modernist education. That was back in the good old (relatively) jargon-free days when science was science - and climate was, well, climate.
Shub
That's a very good sample and I agree it could be be far better and easier written, that is why I congratulated myself for ploughing through it and understanding Hulmes piece. - a more fun sideline may have been if people had started quoting sections and summing them up more pithily, but I do tend to the frivolous end of the spectrum ;) .
Writing style is important, I think there are some possible interesting meta points to be made about the choices (or innate failings) in styles used by Hulme. I am far from an English major myself and realise I can't claim to have made a point (even if I think I have) if it isn't communicated well or responded to as I expect. For instance I thought I had made some acute observations above about what *we* should really be criticsing here about Hulme, but I notice that the tendency here seemed to tend to general dimissive low level barracking. There are lots of good comments, but there are also lots and lots of comments here - the good are swamped (the comments fade into one). To be unctuous I think you and Ben write interesting stuff at opposites that draw interesting points out.
I generally agree that Hulme is writing nothing new here and it has been better said by sceptics. What is interesting though is the fact that Hulme is saying it. Even if in a very prolix way, he is entering the ideas into the academic literature under his name. Maybe to be buried and pulled out at a later date.
I too find the contrast with Hulmes CG2 persona striking, but I also worry that the CG stuff has a detrimental effect on sceptic debating style in that it has imposed/allowed a tendency to think one has *won* the argument by allowing selecting from the vast smorgasbord of examples of *bad* behaviour and so used whenever current behaviour is hard to deal with.
I think Hulme is an interesting cove who needs watching but not dismissing.
@hro000 (ignoring the 'Help! I'm being taken out of context!' stuff)...
I hope I have quoted you sufficiently here, to be allowed to proceed without being accused of quoting you out of context...
You say that you have 'seen far too much damage done - to far too many good people - in the name of "values"', but that you're 'not sure how one might "interrogate" a value'.
I tried to explain to you how one might interrogate a value:
I am surprised that you are aware of the problems that values present, but were concerned that they cannot be interrogated. How could you identify them as values, and as problematic, were it not for 'interrogating' them in some form or another? I'm fairly sure also that you'd agree that public policy without values whatsoever would be possibly an even bigger problem. Even science can only aim for a value-free understanding of the material (not human) world, but as we can see, such an ambition is far from straightforward. Indeed, where there is confusion about what are facts and what are values, it's very hard. But we might also notice, though, that science is another way we might be able to interrogate values.
You express your desire for: "clarity regarding the validity of the assumed primacy of human-generated CO2 emissions which, as far as I can discern, neither you nor Hulme (amongst many others) seem to think is even worthy of mention,"
I believe I attempted to address precisely the point of this 'assumed primacy':
Far from 'neglecting to mention' the 'assumed primacy of human-generated CO2 emissions', I would estimate that it's the subject of more than half of the posts on my blog. Indeed, the point is rather to understand the presuppositions or ideology of environmentalism, which precede the science -- you call it 'the assumed primacy'. As wonderful as science is, it can't tell you anything about what it excludes, if indeed, it is capable of detecting and excluding assumed primacies. In some instances, it's perhaps perfectly legitimate to do science, proceeding from assumed primacies. The problem comes in the forgetting what you've assumed. My reading of Hulme is that he really is interested in establishing what is presupposed in each of the approaches to climate change.
It's not them I need to convince.
Okay, Grandpa... But you had other problems, right? So science wasn't a source of legitimacy for political ideas in the same way then as now, but didn't you see 'far too much damage done - to far too many good people - in the name of "values"'? The 'postmodern condition' has its origins in the modern era, or at least in its collapse. As the postmodernist philosopher, Lytoard put it in 1979:
Over a couple of days of a toothache starting a retreat thanks to antibiotics and painkillers, I have been enjoying the discussions on this thread and hoping they will continue to some kind of conclusion. Science, policy, and something called ‘values’ have all had a mention. Here are some thoughts of my own on these.
The science side of the climate debate is, in a sense, being taken care of by our old friend and occasional foe, Mother Nature. She is proceeding pretty much as you would expect if the additional CO2 in the air was of little consequence for the climate system. Her failure to remove on schedule the snows of Kilimanjaro and the glaciers of the Himalaya are but two instances. Others abound such as the failure to spread the sands of the Sahara, increase the tropical storms, accelerate the sea level rise rate, destroy the icecaps, warm the upper troposphere, warm Antarctica, flood New York, make snow a distant memory in temperate latitudes, etc etc etc.
But the policy side remains for we humans to sort out, not least because it was all our invention in the first place. This of course is where the scope for harm lies. If climate science had remained where it belonged in the groves of academe, no problem. Many a pleasant coffee break could have been spent speculating about this and that, and maybe for fun plan to see what the GCMs might be persuaded to do the following week. As responsible adults, the scientists involved would have chuckled at the media following whatever the short-term temperature trends were (the alternation of cooling and warming every 30 years or so we have seen for the past 100+ years, every time accompanied by headlines on some corresponding doom). But no, many of them far from chuckling went out deliberately to add fuel to the flames, and with such success that we have large-scale panic underway as evidenced in the UK by the Climate Change Act.
Now for some of those who see themselves, not as charlatans or irresponsible adults or political opportunists, but as saviours of mankind by alerting it to the awful dangers of airborne CO2, the science seems to have been left at the starting post (where it was little more than a misleading analogy called the greenhouse effect) while the horses and riders and the wagons they tow are now well down the course, belting along with more and more initiatives and well-intentioned people jumping aboard. Their thing is policy or education or fund-raising or fortune-making, or maybe even mere promotion of their values (which I tentatively take to mean things which are important to them and which could provide criteria for helping with decision-making). They can be totally absorbed with all of this, discussing this or that variant, this or that solution, and exploring opportunities to add to their own dreams of a better future (the nice guys) or ways in which to destroy industrial civilisation itself (the nasty ones). All without needing to refer to science again except, if the crazy deniers get too uppity, to refer to some recent weather-related catastrophe, a convenient trend in some data set, or, ultimately, to some authority such as the Royal Society or even, for some, the IPCC. Their position if pushed seems to be: the radiative properties of the CO2 molecule are settled science, and more of them are going airborne, so what is there to discuss?
Now Hulme seems to be in the nice camp, not least as evidenced by his attachment to a very compassionate religion, and his obvious willingness to engage in some reflection albeit in ways which seem remote and off-putting because of his writing style. He has had a spell in geography and a spell in science and now a spell in philosophy and politics. He has played an appreciable part in the promotion and defence of the CO2-based alarmism, but has also pointed out sillinesses such as the claimed consensus of 2,500 scientists in the IPCC, and the peculiar reliance on computer models (which I would say are known to be inadequate for their putative tasks).
As one who is appalled by the harm done already by CO2 alarmism, I am quite happy to see some intellectual and moral bashing of the proponents of it. That seems natural, and may even help expose flaws of logic and personality on all sides to help us better understand the vulnerability of our political system to such agitations. But I also agree that we should do our best to listen and learn from influential figures such as Hulme. As and when or if they modify their views and actions in ways which give some hope for calmer, more adequate policy discussions than we have seen so far. How good, for example, were the debates in the House of Commons about the Climate Change Act?
So well done, hr001 and Ben Pile and many others on this thread for getting stuck into this. I wish you all well in your struggles with the various contentions. While I am going back to feeling sorry for myself in anticipation of a tipple-free week (at this time of year!) and the taking of many more tablets.
LOL :)
@John Shade Dec 30, 2011 at 5:15 PM
Thanks, John, for such an eloquent and accurate summary - in plain English :-)
I doubt that there's much more to be said. Although I will step out on a limb and suggest that, from where I'm sitting - when the history book is written - the work of Judith Curry and Donna Laframboise will both be shown to have had far greater influence on turning the tide back towards reason than Hulme's.
The one thing I do find quite curious - considering that his "epiphany" began circa 2007 and seems to have been completed by early 2009 - is why Hulme might have chosen to wait until December 22/2011 to write (or at least publish) his "Research narrative".
Oh, well ... happy New Year, John ... I hope that the tablets tame the toothache toute de suite!
Hilary
John Shade,
Pardon me for butting in uninvited, but I hate to see anyone tipple-free. Are you in that state because of the antibiotics? I was filled with joy when I first discovered that most antibiotics work fine alongside an occasional snifter. The whole "stay off the booze or the pills won't work" thing is (mostly) a myth, spread by evil people who hate fun. (There are some antibiotics that can clash with a drink, I gather, so I always check my pills out on t'internet to see if I have the irritating ones - can never remember the names.)
I should just point out that I am not a doctor, nor in any other way qualified to give you any advice of any sort, on anything.
Thank you James and Hilary for your good wishes for my plight, the worst of which I forgot to mention is the appointment in January for digging around in a root canal. I tried a Google on my anti-b (Metronidazole) and it made solemn reading, as did the leaflet that came with it. Is it that modern drugs are more powerful, or have these leaflets recently changed to include long lists of possible side effects? I imagine in due course they will all have virtually the same list, just in case.
Whoops, more than just a bit o/t! Toothache bringing out my inner solipsist ...
Best wishes for the New Year! Just in case you do exist after all...
@ John Shade. I hope the toothache clears soon.
I like your point about nature disobediently not behaving as she has been instructed to by various models, etc. However, I do not think this will be sufficient to tame the real monster in the debate: not the climate as much as environmentalism, which is a hydra. It concerns me that there is an idea of what conclusive end to the debate will look like, perhaps even with Curry and Laframboise standing above some defeated corpse of alarmism.
I've argued elsewhere that what is more likely is that climate alarmism will simply be subsumed into some other face of environmentalism: optimum population, sustainability, resource depletion, biodiversity, species extinction, and so on. The 'infrastructure' of environmentalism is established such that it doesn't really matter much whether it emphasises climate, or any of those other things, as the agent of our doom. The legal mechanisms, the international agreements, and the 'logic' of the arguments has already been established. In some senses, the decamping has already begun. An 'Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ was established this year, much like the IPCC, for instance. The maxim loved by many a green is that 'global problems need global solutions', but the real truth to the claim is instead that 'global solutions need global problems'. Institutional science obliges.
Remember, the climate thing is merely the latest in a series of environmental scare stories emerging since the 1950s. It didn't really catch on in the UN until the 1970s, and in the mid 1980s, the Brundtland report -- which imagined 'Our Common Future' barely made mention of climate, though it set out a vision for a world organised according to the tenets of environmental alarmism.
Defeating climate alarmism won't be much of a victory. The climate debate wasn't ever really about the climate, but something far more political. The problem with the preceding discussion, then, was that worrying about the suspension of 'normal science' is a bit of a distraction. The real issue is the suspension of normal politics. (I.e. where people are able to vote in their own interests, and deselect politicians and their ideas from positions of influence, which is not possible under the schema desired by the UNFCCC processes).
Happy new year!
Quote 'Defeating climate alarmism won't be much of a victory. The climate debate wasn't ever really about the climate, but something far more political. ' Ben Pile, Dec 31, 2011 at 2:11 PM
You make this point powerfully and clearly, and it has the ring of truth to it. I think I try to hide from that reality sometimes since I am particularly incensed that a subject I once studied and admired has been hijacked and dominated (in political and funding arenas - the moral, scientific, and intellectual high grounds have never been won and perhaps were never of interest) by such unimpressive work and unimpressive people. The duped participants were useful idiots, the eyes-wide-open ones were manipulators and schemers for 'the cause'.
A posting today by Donna Laframboise (http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/12/31/the-worlds-slowest-learners/) adds more weight to your thesis, and contains interesting observations about the role of the UN.
I do like the image of Curry and Laframboise standing over the defeated corpse of climate alarmism, but I take your point about the hydra. However ineffectual the chopping off of one head may be, the act could increase awareness of the beast itself and some of its ways. So perhaps not much of a victory, but a battle won at least, and that may attract more to fight the bigger fight against those troubled souls who are so obsessively determined to control us thanks to their possession of what they must take to be near-omniscience.
In the meantime, a Good New Year to you, and thank you, by the way, for the insights and inspirations in Climate Resistance.
The optimists need to recapture the moral and political ground from the miserablists.
(http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/12/the-art-of-the-possible-and-the-impossible.html)
That's a good encouragement to me for 2012!
@Ben Pile
Well, at least on this we can almost agree! As I, too, have argued elsewhere, for example:
Move over IPCC … here comes IPBES
Is the IPCC still relevant to UNFCCC?
IPBES, the new kid on the UNEP block, has already written the first edition of the "new testament" for the Climate Bible. And the new, improved scary stories have been surfacing for some time; not to mention that the dreaded (and misleadingly named) "carbon footprint" can be conveniently subsumed under the aegis of a kinder, gentler "environmental footprint" - as the bureaucrats recycle financial "mechanisms", "schemes" and "regimes" etc., while activists urge that we need to put "nature on the balance sheet".
Nonetheless, I am optimistic that, thanks to the efforts of Curry and Laframboise (not to mention the Internet), we have a much wider and better informed public - very much more alert to the potential impact on the bottom-line of their respective bank accounts - who will be far less inclined to permit this latest and greatest flight of environmental fantasy to take wing.
"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".
Hulme's paper may be an effort to reconcile the Christian beliefs he holds with the science that occupies his professional life.
Acknowledging the poverty of using climate as the exclusive determinant of man's interaction with his surroundings, Hulme introduces, and places a value on, the human ability - if not proclivity - for making 'imaginary' or 'visionary' versions of a future. That is to say, he identifies 'fantasy' as a primary motivating factor in human relationships to the physical space being lived in.
Having arrived at this point, Hulme might recognise that a fantasy is only ever about its author's domination over whatever object(s) it includes. The function of fantasy is either a starting point for, or a bolt-hole from, real action - depending upon the person's ability to accept frustration and/or compromise.
If man's interaction with the external environment has always been preceded with - and motived by - a rich fantasy life, we can begin to see that Hulme's elevation of this unique attribute must also accept an identification of dominance - rather than submission - as a universal determinant of humanness.
This, of course, is diametrically opposed to the apparent inside-out ideology of Environmentalism - which argues that the action to dominate has placed the external world in danger and that, instead, humans must be legally forced into a more submissive role. What is being submitted to - the environment or the environmentalist lawmaker - gets passed over... but we might suspect the demand as having a predictably human fantasy of domination driving it.
In his paper, Hulme appears to be searching for a way of having his cake and eating it. The Christian Hulme generously grants humans a fuller inner anatomy - whilst the scientist Hulme insists on the need to amputate it.
Inspired me to write this:
For the first time in our history we have the ability to see how the future climate will look on this planet. What we see is a hell-scape of famine, war, drought, disease and emotional and spiritual collapse. Our very future depends on the reduction of our total social, scientific, cultural, productive and etc. capital to climate-based efforts (Climate Reductionism).
The facts are clear – we are changing the climate substantially for the worse. Every disastrous weather event is partially, if not mostly, caused by our effects. Areas where climate is favourable simply haven’t been burdened by us yet.
As climate is such a large determining factor in all aspects in our lives – and those of plants and animals, we can also say that any detrimental effect caused by climate was caused partially, if not mostly, by our effects.
Now, simply by our energy-use, we are causing the worst human atrocities – bloody wars, widespread famine, economic collapse and so on. We are also causing huge damage to the natural ecosystems – mass extinctions, droughts, etc. The sea will soon swallow our coastal cities driving huge numbers of climate-refugees inland.
The humans that are left in 20 years will have no doubts about the need for Climate Reductionism but if we, as individuals, wish to survive that long we need to adopt in now. In doing so we must dissolve our individuality entirely and reduce ourselves to only climate based efforts. Our (moral/ethical/karmic/etc.) worth becomes inversely proportional to our effect on the climate (with bonus points and exceptions for missionary work).
Those who deny Climate Reductionism will soon be dead – literally killed by the climate they took for granted. But while that future can’t come fast enough for us (the true believers), the denialists must be confronted and exposed immediately. The future has no place for them.
Embracing Climate Reductionism means climate is in your every thought and action. Luckily we now have the intellectuals in place who are ready and willing to guide us, to ensure our zeal and enthusiasm is properly focused on the most efficient actions. There is no more need to fear – our future may be bleak but we can now act without consternation. We have but one reason to live, the complete transformation of our existence into carbon-neutral, climate-neutral beings.
Cal - would one's climatic karma go up or down as one flies the world to spread the noble message? ;-)
As I said, many exceptions and bonus points for missionary work....
But once the deniers are purged we can proceed with the hypocrites. ;D