Bishop Hill Try, try again
Sep 22, 2011 Climate: other Media Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic reckons the problem with the whole climate change thing is just some nuances in the message. Polar bears are out and people are in:
The nugget of the argument here is the framing fighting climate change as a way to help nature is flawed. Even in a really clear example of climate-induced ecological change -- the loss of many species in the forests Thoreau explored near Walden Pond -- other species are doing just fine. We're changing the ecosystem, but life isn't leaving the forest. We're applying a very certain kind of filter on the forest (specifically, which plants can change their flowering time quickly) but life there survives because ecosystems, even those stressed by rising temperatures, are resilient.
Human-built environments, on the other hand, are very efficient and very brittle. They function best in a very narrow set of temperature and precipitation conditions. Witness what happens when it snows in Portland or it gets very hot in a cold place or it rains somewhere where it's always dry. A people as rich as Americans can deal with any climate, but only if we put the right infrastructure in place. People in Buffalo have snow plows. People in Phoenix have air conditioners.
This idea that the answer to the climate change problem is more media or different media is one that gets wheeled out every few weeks it seems, without anyone seeming to get it - it's not the way you are telling the story guys, it's the fact that the message is so obviously politicised that nobody trusts you.
Reader Comments (89)
To assert that the change in the eco-system around Walden pond is due to CO2 is to assert a lie.
Not sure I see his media message in that piece. He seems to making a whole different error in actually assuming there is a provable intensity of extremes that voters will start noticing. He also seems to be one of those people who is a bit mystified about the infrastructure of the modern world. He obviously uses the web infrastructure bit that bombards him with every extreme weather event going on, and helps him come to strange interpretations, like this:
I think he assumes that if you had a spell of really warm weather in Finland or really cold in Singapore then two of the most advanced countries in the world couldn't cope ;)
What's "Climactic chaos"!?
Mr. Montford, I don't believe I have ever seen such a succinct and accurate framing of the problem facing the consensus team. Well put.
Well, that's very kind of you to say so, Tom!
Social progress by blame and shame. Yeah, that's the ticket.
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'Resilient'. There's that word 'resile' again. If I use it 96 more times I can sustain its use in conversation.
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With the greatest of respect, Your Grace, it's not 'the message' (or even, most especially, its 'nuances') but simple, real-world evidence-based, fact.
N'est-ce pas?
He appears to believe that humans are the only driving force behind ecosystem changes, but that they are themselves unable to adapt to changes in the ecosystem. As far as I know he's precisely wrong on both counts. Nonetheless, if his idea is to put the emphasis back onto human needs, then doesn't that also change the politics of the message?
BH says:
So is it correct to dismiss the scientific consensus on the basis of presentation over substance?
The Hockey Stick episode and its long aftermath seem to show a naive determination by the IPCC and others to 'get the message across' by any means available.
TAR WG1 made an icon out of the Hockey Stick. It was a poor choice. It backfired.
So far from a conspiracy to promote a political agenda, we have a colossal f**k-up by TAR WG1 which cannot be acknowledged because of the inevitable loss of public confidence in the consensus as represented by the IPCC.
Does this invalidate the scientific consensus? No. Does it lead to BH's point? Yes.
So back to the original question, directly prompted by BH's excellent summation: is it correct to dismiss the scientific consensus on the basis of presentation over substance?
It is a bit like crying "Wolf" on a desert island with no wolves. There will always be people gullible enough to believe you.
It is also like crying "rising sea levels" on a desert island without any record, of any rising sea levels
Tom Fuller, any chance of an insight into the skullduggery that you engaged in with Paul Dennis that M Tuppen is so keen to expose?!
The last point "so obviously politicised that nobody trusts you." is well exemplified by the current furore over the Times Atlas.
The Atlas is (or was) a work of reference, a statement of fact: not a platform for propaganda as evidently happened in the 'press release': and now, the total humiliation of it proving inaccurate, well . . . .!
I shall stick with my old c.1970 version: I dare say I can still fathom the various name changes etc. since, and take comfort from the fact that the asylum was then still in the hands of the doctors.
BBD
The problem is that we know that the scientific scales are tipped in favour of global warming being a problem - funding, peer review, the IPCC all biased against sceptics. The word "consensus" seem inappropriate in those circumstances.
BBD
If matter can travel faster than the speed of light then scientific consensus has no meaning at all.
CERN
What makes this discussion on the changing flora in Massachusetts and the related recent release of the changes in the bird population in the state rather interesting, is that while the bird study looked at the data after 1965, there was a sharp fall in average temperature across the Atlantic States between 1950 and 1965. This included the state of Massachusetts, yet that fall, and its effects, go unrecognized in the analysis.
As a result of the fall, the state temperatures are now at around the same levels they were in 1950, even though there was a slow but steady increase from 1965 until now. Being curious I looked at temperature instead of time in its effect on one of the species, and found it much more sensitive to that than to the year of measurement.
Sometimes what appear to be relatively clear pictures in the short term may have different answers in the longer.
BBD, the absurdity of the exaggerated presentations overwhelms any genuine substance.
This is what (I believe) the likes of Richard Betts and co are trying to correct.
Unfortunately the true cost of trying to maintain a manufactured consensus, may be very high for genuine scientists
If matter can travel faster than the speed of light then scientific consensus has no meaning at all.
According to Alexis Madrigal, Light needs a better PR agent -- that's all!
And to think they did it with a neutrino -- I was hoping for the tachyon.
Come on BBD, you KNOW the phrase "scientific consensus" at best oxymoronic - please keep it in quotation marks unless you want great gobs of (metaphorical) phlogiston heading your way through the medium of luminiferous aether.
Studies of flora and fauna will always be flawed. On the South Downs, -10 degrees is not uncommon in winter and near +30 has also occurred in summer (though not this year)
The simple change in use of a field from one crop to another, or back to grazing will have a profound affect on local flora and fauna, and not just from the pesticides used
New fencing on a field changes the movement of rabbits, foxes badgers and deer for example.
Before mans arrival, the South Downs were wooded, but steadily cleared for defensive forts, agriculture, housebuilding and shipbuilding
Naturalist enthuse about the diverse flora and fauna of the sheep grazed Downland. But none of it would be there without man's intervention
'Resilient'. There's that word 'resile' again. If I use it 96 more times I can sustain its use in conversation.
Does this count as two? :)
Phil R
One can always count as two in climate science
BBD,
So back to the original question, directly prompted by BH's excellent summation: is it correct to dismiss the scientific consensus on the basis of presentation over substance?
This is wrong. You are taking as a given that the "scientific consensus" has substance. It's correct to dismiss the "scientific consensus" simply because it is a "consensus."
Phil R
No. Scientific consensus simply means 'the best current understanding'. You don't dismiss the current state of knowledge 'because it is a consensus'. That would be silly.
To dispel the myth that human-built environments [...] are very efficient and very brittle, just compare the relative number of people who died in the past due to natural disasters. Unbeknownst to Alexis Madrigal, things are much better nowadays.
If the media began reporting that there has been no warming since 1998 or so and that there is no factual evidence that CAGW is true, I would not criticize their account. However, my reason for refraining from criticism would not be that their message now fits my politics. My reason would be that their message fits all the evidence and might even be true. Funny, how media persons just cannot get their minds around terms such as 'evidence' and 'true'.
BBD - 'Scientific consensus simply means 'the best current understanding'.
No it doesn't. The concept of 'best understanding' is subjective and transient. It merely means 'the viewpoint / opinions adhered to by the majority / largest minority of experts, defined as you will, at one time. It may turn out, in th efullness of time, to be demonstrably correct, it may not. Science is not a democracy.
Phil D is right and BBD is wrong.
Presenting 'consensus' is a political behavior.
Presenting evidence would be the scientific behavior.
Andrew
BBD,
No. Scientific consensus simply means 'the best current understanding'. You don't dismiss the current state of knowledge 'because it is a consensus'. That would be silly.
Thanks for responding to my post. I don't post here much because others (and I include you) know way more than I do (as you can tell because I don't even know how to do the blue quotey thingy).
My point was that your answer posed a false choice. Your question was, "is it correct to dismiss the scientific consensus on the basis of presentation over substance?"
I think many people (here and at other places) are dismissing the "scientific consensus" based on the "substance" of skeptical arguments and not on "presentation." As a matter of fact, I think your question could be turned around and I think this post is about the "scientific consensus" trying to dismiss the substance of skeptical arguments based on media presentation.
"The problem is that we know that the scientific scales are tipped in favour of global warming being a problem - funding"
Sep 22, 2011 at 10:21 PM | Bishop Hill
Well Andrew, if you have some actual evidence that climate research the whole World over has funding dependant upon pre-agreed results, I'd love to see it. But I've a funny feeling you don't have that evidence, and thus it's just an empty accusation.
Please, do prove me wrong.
[See the guest post by Koutosoyiannis a few days ago]
BBD, I hope we have exchanged enough views by now for us both to know that we are not out to kill each other.
You have used the word consensus, which around these parts is as contentious as denier
We are both quite prepared to accept that there is a lunatic fringe at both ends of the debate.
So, if we strip away the alarmist hype, we are left with the idea that doubling CO2 could lead to a rise in temp of about 1 degree. Everything else is based on Wild Arsed Guesses about positive feedback, for which there is no observed data or evidence.
You know that you can bamboozle me with maths, as I have admitted it, but can you bamboozle me with actual facts and stuff that the human eye can actually observe?
I ought to add that with qualifications in surveying and engineering, I have spent 5 years of my life working as an insurance loss adjuster, investigating the cause of large insurance claims around properrty damage, mainly due to subsidence, which meant I earned money out of the rise in temperatures of the 1990's, which I accept did occur
Phil D
As in: 'the best current understanding'.
Indeed. It is a testing space for ideas about how reality works.
Some do better than others in the scrap. That doesn't mean the fight was fixed.
"That doesn't mean the fight was fixed"
It doesn't mean it wasn't, either, put in the proper perspective.
Andrew
golf charley
Amicably, as ever...
This is an argument for a low climate sensitivity. Little push, nothing happens. Bigger push, you move a bit.
The problem is that this doesn't fit with the rapid jumps from ice ages to warm interglacials like this one. These are triggered by slight eccentricities in the Earth's orbit. The little push.
But still enough to enough to end an ice age. This requires that all feedbacks net positive. If not, the climate system would not be responsive to little pushes.
It would not able to warm and we would be stuck in an ice age.
BBD
About six months before Climategate I had a long chat with my sis and brother-in-law. About global warming. I was far, far removed from the issue at the time, and I began/got into the conversation based on my understanding derived from reading environmentalist tracts, about 10 years out.
I was struck by the deluge of fantastic claims that were offered. I also noted that the claims-making had taken on a distinct scientific patina. It was a completely new thing.
Both my sister and her husband have fairly strong science backgrounds - one is a doc and the other an engineering PhD. How did they so strongly believe the consensus? I think the more accurate question is: what reason did they have to disbelieve it? None. As scientists and professionals, you trust your own work everyday. Science changes in every field. Science professionals are used to emergence and destruction of various consensus ideas. That is the stuff that happens everyday in their own work.
Science professionals are used to being told "Well, this is new paradigm now", "This is accepted practice", "this is standard of care", "this is the latest", "all the old stuff is gone out the window". The culture of science also inculcates a strong sense of heirarchy and belief in handed wisdom. (Because if you go around questioning basic facts all the time, you can not make progress, 'make a living', and you will probably be broke and without a job pretty soon).
You tell a bunch of science professionals that a new consensus has emerged (via a powerpoint presentation) and a lot of old questions are being answered and settled etc etc - let me tell you - they will be the first ones to believe it completely. Science-related people are the most likely to believe that a paradigm shift has occurred. I think it is a fundamental attribute of their weltanschauung
That's likely what had happened to them. And I think, post 2007, that is what happened across the entire technologic-science driven communities around the world.
How was I different from them? Through a fortitious combination of events, I spent a long stretch of years completely isolated from the world - no TV, no newspapers, brutal hours of work, etc. When the Al Gore DVD came out, I was like: "Oh look at this loser. Couldn't win an election. Goes and makes a stupid DVD". Copenhagen (remember those days?) was a distant, distant rumble. In other words, completely insulated and distant from the post-2007 global warming mania, up until 2009.
That was all - they had imbibed by osmosis the things they had picked from magazines, and TV and the newspapers. That was all there was. They hadn't gone around examining the science, the claims, the graphs and the data and the IPCC report. Neither had I. So, right in my own case, I had a perfect case-control group.
In other words - you can be told that there is a consensus and you would believe it. The declaration of the existence of a consensus would itself aid in formation of a consensus. It is likely an emergent phenomenon. Human groups and systems do not maintain oppositional tensions and polarizations for long. Occasional synchronizations and homogenization can occur, purely as emergent phenomena.
How many people within the climatology community itself, do you think, are the same position? Not everyone has the time or the drive to examine the most fundamental assertion of the IPCC as Judith Curry did. She believed in the consensus and its conclusions.
Anyone who has examined the climate science literature, now, can honestly say: there is no possibility of there being a "consensus", at this point of time. "Consensus" about AGW/CAGW requires a groundbreaking study or group of studies to overcome the level of understanding barrier reached in the SAR. Apparently, in climate science, these are Mike's Nature paper, Jones' Nature paper, Steig's Nature paper, the IPCC's sphagetti papers, Hasnain's Himalaya paper, Nepstad's Amazon paper, the IPCC's sensitivity graph, - if we are to believe the IPCC. Obviously, none of these qualify. Some have good ideas, but most are worthless. Please do let me know if there are real eyeopeners out there that I missed. The real problem, of course, is that they are probably out there but none can see them because of all the noise and perhaps some are even being actively prevented from being published.
If this latent science community were to ever become aware of the shenanigans of the 'Team', 'SkepticalScience', 'Realclimate', or the true implications of the content of the Climategate emails - how long do you think they would sustain their own beliefs?
@Phil R
One can always count as two in climate science
Some can even count _to_ two in climate science.
Shub
Thanks for the context and explanation. I do see what you are driving at, but there is a simple problem: climate sensitivity.
It doesn't matter what shenanigans may or may not be going on. We either argue:
- no effect from CO2
- 1 - 1.5C (low climate sensitivity)
- 3C or higher (fits with glacial-interglacial transitions)
Ice ages aren't political.
If humans and our systems are very brittle and function only in a very narrow band of conditions, then isn't global warming a self correcting problem? We change those narrow conditions and eliminate ourselves. No more CO2.
I always thought the problem was that humans were so adaptive that we were out competing everything else. (At least a problem from the point of view of the environmental community.)
BBD
You made a statement :
"Scientific consensus simply means 'the best current understanding'"
and later brought up the issue of the climate sensitivity spectrum.
An interesting conjunction I think.
In reverse order it's the climate sensitivity issue that is the real issue upon which so much disagreement and speculation occurs.
Tribe A claims that this is small, while Tribe B are adamant that it is larger. Sometimes catastrophically larger.
The two tribes have gone to War over the magnitude of Climate Sensitivity (CS) and sometimes even the sign!
In general, few disagree about the existence of CS but have divisively different views as to its effects.
I believe that your original sentence could, with justification, be altered to the following while still preserving its original intent.
"Scientific consensus on CS simply means 'the best current understanding of CS'"
Given the wide range of uncertainty that CS is subject to; circa eg 0-1.2C from Tribe A and 2-10C? from the B team I would suggest that 'Scientific consensus on CS' is little more than a 'pick a number' exercise the value of which lies within one's tribal boundary.
The Science is in its infancy - any 'Scientific Consensus' on this topic is illusory and subject to emotional leanings and will remain so long past the lifespan of this paricular contributor.
Best current understanding thus becomes an irrelevance scientifically. Current consensus is a political animal or an emotional beast that attempts to change our world radically while disguised as 'best current (scientific) understanding'
As you so beautifully pointed out, it's the CS that matters. Every thing else is circumstantial.
Let those that can maintain and strengthen the dialogue started by Spencer and Dessler (sp?) and put science back on the pedestal of public opinion, untainted by politics and dollars,that it once occupied.
As WSC said "Jaw, Jaw not War, War"
Sep 22, 2011 at 10:14 PM | BBD wrote:
Sep 22, 2011 at 11:35 PM | BBD wrote:
I'm not sure who might have appointed BBD as the official arbiter of the meaning of "scientific consensus". Nonetheless ...
Mike Hulme has a somewhat different view (or at least he did circa Apr. 2010) regarding the substance (and the "presentation"):
Richard Klein has yet another view (or at least he did circa Jul. 29/11):
So, now that BBD is armed with this new information (and/or the new, improved meaning s/he has so graciously bestowed on this heretofore overwhelmingly ubiquitous - and misleading - phrase), I do hope that s/he will share with us the correspondence s/he will no doubt be sending to Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Naomi Oreskes for starters.
I fully expect that such correspondence will be along the lines of:
Dear ...
Please be advised that you should no longer be speaking of a "scientific consensus" (overwhelming or otherwise), as this is a highly misleading phrase - particularly to those with a reasonable command of the English language and/or who know how to consult a dictionary.
In the interest of greater public acceptance of that which we know to be the truth, I hope you will inform your audience that notwithstanding all uncertainties, which we mistakenly swept under the carpet in the past (and which are still still inherent in all significant aspects of climate science), the best current understanding is [etc. etc.]
Scientifically yours,
BBD
'the best current understanding'
BBD wouldn't know if it's the best understanding. How could he?
Andrew
BBD:
If you have a moment, would you mind taking a look at my question to you over in the discussions page?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/1603550
Cheers.
"No. Scientific consensus simply means 'the best current understanding'. "
No it doesn't. Consensus is the safe harbour of the meek and the unadventurous and those averse to risk.
Consensus is a safe haven. That's all it is...
@SSAT... re light speed... you beat me to it, but you made the point succinctly.
If you haven't already seen it, the von Storch and Bray 2008 survey is quite useful in understanding the consensus:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/CliSci2008.pdf
Questions 20-22 suggest that the majority did think that most warming is anthropogenic and that there is a serious threat, but a significant minority disagreed. Questions 9-10 suggest that a majority also agree that climate science has become heavily politicized in recent times.
I think it is fair to say that the consensus in climate science is not the same kind of thing as the consensus regarding quantum mechanics.
Consensus is a word which is listed dictionaries. It means agreement or group solidarity, not understanding. It's odd that anyone would try to deny that.
There seems to be a debate over terminology here.
I would have thought it is obvious that the “best current understanding” or the consensus if exactly what the IPCC is for. We all know the debates about its flaws, but even so, many sceptics have found areas to cite in the IPCC that hold to less alarmist conclusions and point to its subtext that shows projections are within the bounds of human adaptability. In fact it is clear the assumptions of the IPCC depend on the economic projections that say, uniformly across the board, the world will be significantly richer than today in a hundred years.
So the IPCC is the toothpaste nozzle that the “best current understanding” gets forced out of. No matter how flawed the on-going debate about who controls that nozzle, you can say that is fair enough.
Of course every scientist who angles for a paper to get included in the next IPCC report doesn’t say “My findings are far less alarmist and should go into the report”. No, they consistently, and always, say that the “IPCC has underestimated such and such, and my findings should go in the next report” and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. It gets so obvious that every scientist jockeying for attention depends on further alarmism, and defeatist attitudes to human adaptability, that it is becomes clearly risible even to the layman, and the public begin to discount the scientists credibility.
I think it is only a matter of time before this detached discounting transforms into a general feeling of despising the whole field and its practitioners as self-aggrandising ninnies.
I have been thinking for some time that 'climate' change isn't just about science, nor just about politics.
There is one additional aspect which we've not been looking at, which has not been talked about, but which bears a full discussion.
This is the underlying world view - and I do not mean the green, socialist one exclusively.
This world view assumes not just that we humans can influence and correct Nature to a degree previously unknown - but that the exact time we've been living in, in the present generation, must be preserved at all cost. This present time span is not just 'normal', it is 'perfect' - and any aberration must be avoided.
It speaks of an attitude of elitism on the one hand - and rejects unconsciously the billion-year-long history of change and adaptation.
To me, this looks as if scientists and politicians and AGW believers have decided that evolution must stop now.
RoyFOMR
May I largely repeat what I said to golf charley? Which was that a low climate sensitivity is directly at odds with past climate behaviour:
Under a low climate sensitivity, T is unresponsive to changes in forcing. Little push, nothing happens. Bigger push, it gets a bit warmer.
The problem is that this doesn't fit with the rapid jumps from ice ages to warm interglacials like this one. These are triggered by slight eccentricities in the Earth's orbit. The little push.
But still enough to enough to end an ice age. This requires that the net of all feedbacks is quite strongly positive. If not, the climate system would not be responsive to little pushes.
It would not able to warm and we would be stuck in an ice age.
That's why those arguing for a low CS (and I was one, for years, remember) are on a hiding to nothing.
There's nothing some people here won't turn into a morass of obfuscation is there?
Let's have a round-up of definitions of 'scientific consensus'. I'll start with the easiest one to p*** all over because it's from Wikipedia. Others can find potentially more reliable sources. And link to them. Personal opinion is out until we get this sorted.
From Wikipedia:
I disagree. The ice ages are a poor match for orbital dynamics.
According to the forcing associated with orbital dynamics, 100kyr should be the weakest forcing. But it has a greater magnitude than the 40kyr or 20kyr forcings.
This is inconsistent with the orbital forcing theory. But Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics predict 100kyr spectral power is greater than 40kyr or 20kyr. So I would argue that HK dynamics are a better match for the ice ages than orbital forcing.
HK dynamics also explain rather effectively why the relationships are inconsistent for different periods.