Bishop Hill Tom Chivers on trust
Jul 31, 2012 Climate: IPCC Tom Chivers, the Telegraph's science blogger, has written his take on the Muller paper. Coming a day after the initial furore it's somewhat more considered than many of the initial reactions, although not so considered that he has noticed all the argy-bargy going on as to just how sceptical Muller really was in the past. But that aside, there are some interesting questions raised, not least on the questions of authority and trust:
As a non-climate scientist, I have to accept certain things on authority, as I do with all expert knowledge. This is an argument from authority, but we all do it, and it's vital: if I had cancer, I'd accept the authority of the oncologist and the body of knowledge of the oncology community, rather than try to guide my own treatment with information I'd found on the internet. As Ben Goldacre said long ago in a different context: "you have only two choices: you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust".
This is quite true; we all have to rely on people we trust. I therefore see nothing particularly objectionable in this position. And Tom is clear about who he is going to trust.
I've decided who to trust, and it's mainstream scientific opinion: the Royal Society, the Royal Institution, Nasa, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, the IPCC, the national science bodies of 30 or so other countries. And that gives me a possible route out of the confirmation-bias trap: I have, in advance, outsourced my judgment to expert bodies. If several of them changed their position, I would change mine. It's far from perfect, but short of becoming a climate scientist myself, it's the only option I have; otherwise my reasonable belief that the climate is changing due to human behaviour becomes an article of faith. As it is, although it is mediated through authority, it's still, I hope, based on empirical data, on the scientific method.
You have to laugh at that list. I'm not sure if Tom noticed there has been a bit of a rumpus over the IPCC in the last few years - something to do with some emails I think. The whole point of Climategate was that it showed that the IPCC is not to be trusted - dissenting authors excluded from the report, fabricated claims that dissenting findings were statistically insignficant, that sort of thing.
Perhaps he thinks the CRU scientists were exonerated? I can only assume that if this is indeed the case, since he still trusts the IPCC and wants others to do so too. I can only assume therefore that he is also taking the integrity of the inquiries on trust rather than having actually examined any of the facts - a pity because this is a simple matter of procedure rather than an area of science requiring months of research and study. Even a relatively cursory look at what the inquiries did would demonstrate to a moderately intelligent twelve-year old that no meaningful investigation had taken place. Even as eco-friendly a writer as Roger Harrabin describes the inquiries as "inadequate", which I think is just a diplomatic way of saying "thorough floor-to-ceiling whitewash".
Then again, there were all those other problems with the IPCC report - the claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, for example, a claim that had been touted by environmentalists long before the IPCC report, had been incorporated in the final text in the face of dissenting review comments, and had then been defended to the hilt by the chairman of the IPCC himself when it was exposed as a preposterous and cynical exaggeration.
Or what about the IPCC's decision to restate an important study of climate sensitivity by Forster and Gregory, putting it on a Bayesian basis and then imposing an inappropriate uniform prior that biased the results so as to increase climate sensitivity from 1.6°C to 2.3°C per doubling of CO2?
And Tom C wants us to trust these guys?
But what about the others - the NAS, the Royal Society and so on? The thing that has to be remembered here is that the reports issued by these august bodies are not representative of the fellows. They are put together mostly by politically minded insiders and a handful of climatologists - the same people who have caused all the trouble at the IPCC. It took a rebellion of dissenting fellows at the Royal Society to get its prognostications on climate to even have the appearance of a scientific rather than a political document. And if you look at the society's post-rebellion climate statement it still carries visible signs that its authors are taking things on trust. Here's what they say on climate sensitivity:
Climate models indicate that the overall climate sensitivity (for a hypothetical doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is likely to lie in the range 2°C to 4.5°C; this range is mainly due to the difficulties in simulating the overall effect of the response of clouds to climate change mentioned earlier.
Not a word of the observational study by Forster and Gregory, the one that found that climate sensitivity was only 1.6°C, at least until the IPCC rewrote the story. I don't see this as deception - they probably just took the IPCC report on trust and were therefore probably unaware that Forster and Gregory was based on observations rather than climate models and found a lower climate sensitivity.
So the NAS, the Royal Society and all the other academies are simply conduits for the received wisdom coming from the IPCC - whom we know cannot be trusted. There is only the IPCC that assesses the climate literature from beginning to end. That is the dilemma we face: we are being invited to a game of poker by a bunch of known cardsharps.
Tom thinks we should play.
Bishop Hill
Tom Chivers has responded in the comments:
Hi Andrew.
I note you've picked up on my "I trust the IPCC" line. Funnily enough I ummed and ahhed over including the IPCC, for exactly these reasons, and in my original edit I had it as "and (yes) the IPCC", or something like that. I realise that it is hardly trusted by the sceptics.
But nonetheless, it is one of literally hundreds of major scientific bodies that assert that man-made climate change is a genuine problem; I only listed a few in the piece, but the national academies of dozens of countries, and the professional bodies of almost all relevant scientific disciplines, say the same thing.
Yes, it's an appeal to authority: as you say in the opening paragraph, that's all you can do, if you're not an expert. They may all be wrong; they may even be as corrupt as you believe the IPCC to be. But I am concerned that sceptics, such as yourself, are so sure of your own rightness that your criterion for whether or not an organisation can be trusted has become "whether or not they agree with me". What is it about, for instance, the US Geological Survey that you don't trust?
Anyway. You, of course, are more knowledgeable than me on this subject, and I must recognise that. But my suspicion is that the abovementioned bodies are, taken together, more knowledgeable than you, and so I (and policymakers) are more likely to place our trust in them.
Thanks for a reasonable response though, and hope all is well with you.
Best
Tom
Bishop Hill
Tom
You ask what I have against the USGS. The answer is "nothing in particular", I just don't think they carry any particular authority on the questions of the magnitude of AGW, whether it will be damaging, and what the cost will be. I assume that, like most of the learned societies, they have their own agenda that is unlikely to be aligned with the public interest.
Can I make so bold as to press you on your own views? Specifically, do you accept that the Climategate inquiries were whitewashes? And if you do, why should we trust the IPCC given that the Climategate emails contain such abundant evidence of the corruption of the IPCC process?
Best
A
Reader Comments (103)
Does a Daily Telegraph science blogger need to have any knowledge of science, or do they just blog about science?
Does a journalist need to be able to differentiate between evidence and a press release, between news and comment, between a deficit and debt, between investment and spending, between education and propaganda, between science and technology, between a grant and profit, between being famous and being a celebrity?
Apparently, if they can, they mustn't let anyone know about their alien skills!
Trygve Eklund:
Well said. Are you Norwegian? if so, I'm delighted my cousins won't be surrounded indefinitely by all those dark scientology superstitions...
Hi Andrew.
I note you've picked up on my "I trust the IPCC" line. Funnily enough I ummed and ahhed over including the IPCC, for exactly these reasons, and in my original edit I had it as "and (yes) the IPCC", or something like that. I realise that it is hardly trusted by the sceptics.
But nonetheless, it is one of literally hundreds of major scientific bodies that assert that man-made climate change is a genuine problem; I only listed a few in the piece, but the national academies of dozens of countries, and the professional bodies of almost all relevant scientific disciplines, say the same thing.
Yes, it's an appeal to authority: as you say in the opening paragraph, that's all you can do, if you're not an expert. They may all be wrong; they may even be as corrupt as you believe the IPCC to be. But I am concerned that sceptics, such as yourself, are so sure of your own rightness that your criterion for whether or not an organisation can be trusted has become "whether or not they agree with me". What is it about, for instance, the US Geological Survey that you don't trust?
Anyway. You, of course, are more knowledgeable than me on this subject, and I must recognise that. But my suspicion is that the abovementioned bodies are, taken together, more knowledgeable than you, and so I (and policymakers) are more likely to place our trust in them.
Thanks for a reasonable response though, and hope all is well with you.
Best
Tom
There's an alternative journalism model that Mr Chivers might explore, viz "Why is this bastard lying to me (and more, whats he really lying about)?" Although it originated from some lefty like Woodward or Pilger, even Lefties, like clocks, can be right once or twice a day
In fact, those of us who are sceptical - no doubt due to hormonal imbalances, a predisposition to vote for conservative organisations and a statistical tendency to eat breakfast most days of the week - would really like to see journalists taking an inquisitive, argumentative line, rather than regurgitating the press releases of authority. If they did that, it might actually allay scepticism somewhat. An easy example: allegedly the global temp has risen over the last 150 years, by a known degree of precision, and thats broadly man's handiwork and its gonna get worse, disastrous consequences ahead. But I don't believe it. From the very patchy data, the variety of methodolgies, the actual roles and capabilities of the curators and data collectors, the money, the politics, the wars etc etc I might be inclined to accept there is some evidence that the earth is probably warming somewhat (though from where comes the precision, the attribution and the consequences, I know not). So why can't people like Chivers quiz authorities on such topics, so their answers can blow clear the foggy minds of we fuddled autodidacts. It is the absence of explanation, which journalists could very well elicit, which leaves so many of us thinking we are simply being made fools of.
Good to see Tom Chivers coming on here to comment. But I despair that he thinks the IPCC is a 'major scientific body'. Similarly, that he thinks it not to be corrupt.
Mr Chivers, you really, really need to improve on your library and read more widely.
Finally, in a democracy, do you really want trillion GBP policies being formulated and pushed through by non-elected pressure groups like FOE and Greenpeace? (To put that in perspective, imagine that the country's immigration policies were defined by non-elected officials of the BNP).
Tom: when governments spend vast research funds to achieve a particular end, the only people who don't agree are those not on the gravy train. Obama has reportedly spent $70 billion trying to prove CO2 is dangerous when objective science warned the IPCC IR physics was wrong in 1993**.
We now have the NOAA run by a climate activist who has asked that scientists become activists: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/07/24/us-official-activate-your-science/
This mirrors what Sir Paul Nurse did earlier this year. This Guardian article summarise it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/05/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change
Marxists Nurse, Hansen and Lubchenco have ceased to be scientifically objective. Behind them politicians in the pay of carbon traders are paying for that partial advice. Eisenhower warned how Western Society would become totalitarian when government owns science on behalf of Corporations.
**Will Happer resigned a DoE job because he refused to lie about CO2 IR physics for Gore.
All of the organisations he names are state funded. He makes no attempt to name any single scientist anywhere in the world who supports alarmism and is not state funded - & indeed neither has anybody else, strongly suggesting that there are none.
The largest single expression of actual scientists opinion is the Oregon Petition which says not only that there is no catastrophic warming but that CO2 rise is beneficial.
Therefore what Chivers is saying is that one should, in all circumstances, take the word of the state over that of independent people, even scientists.
No, and when you understand that this is how it should read...
But I am concerned that the establishement, such as you are endorsing, are so sure of their own rightness that their criterion for whether or not sceptical scienctific views can be trusted has become "whether or not they agree with the establishement view"
... will be the day that you accept the established scientific position should not be established with either consensus or appeal to authority.
To follow on from snotrocket's comment ...
The IPCC is not a scientific body of any description. It was not set up to be a scientific body. If you care to read its own description of itself it does not carry out any research and its procedures — especially under its current chairman — are open to a wide range of justifiable criticisms.
These criticisms have been made in various places and I think it is only reasonable, Tom, to ask why you — purporting to be a journalist — appear to be unaware of them.
Have you ever bothered to read any of the literature (our host's The Hockey Stick Illusion is probably a good starting point but I could recommend a dozen other books and even more pieces of other scientific literature) that challenges the received wisdom? If not you are no different from the gullible fools who believe that because somebody wears a white coat and a serious look and says "trust me, I'm a doctor" he must be reliable. How many examples of the danger of that approach would you like, starting with Shipman and working back from there and taking in a few personal experiences on this thread along the way?
I shan't comment on that old, hoary, and increasingly boring "if you had cancer ..." analogy. I think that's been fairly well debunked on here this morning and if you genuinely thought it was still a valid analogy in the first place it only adds to the evidence that your thinking on the whole subject is a bit on the shallow side. (I'm in polite mode this morning; we've been asked to moderate our language a bit)
Now I don't totally blame you, Tom, for falling for the idea that (for example) because Muller claims to be a converted sceptic that must mean he is. (The trouble is almost every pronouncement of his for years says he never was a sceptic.) But why would you — a journalist, no less — take at face value the pronouncements of a railway engineer on the subject of climate or the claims of a failed American politician that we are going to see massive rises in sea level just before he buys a seafront condo?
Is there nothing in the whole idea that a trace gas that is essential for life and makes up 0.0004% of the earth's atmosphere is gong to result in planetary disaster if it increases to 0.0006% that sets your journalistic antennae waving? It certainly did mine.
Is there nothing in the Climategate emails (which demonstrated a willingness to corrupt the scientific process, to conceal data, to break the law with regard to Freedom of Information, to dissemble, obstruct, lie) that set your journalistic antennae waving? It certainly did mine.
Is there nothing in the outlandish claims that wind farms are the future for electricity generation in the UK when two minutes with a pocket calculator will demonstrate just how ludicrous is that claim that set your journalisic antennae waving? Or that the usual environmental activist suspects are signed up lock, stock,and barrel to this whole idea and whenever were they right about anything?
You see, it's not as if you're just another blogger that nobody cares about. You're a journalist. We expect you to put a bit of effort into establishing some facts; we expect you to look at a press release and ask the critical question: "What is in this piece of paper that the writer wants me to tell people? And more important, what is it he doesn't want me to tell them?" We don't expect you, as a journalist, to take anything or anybody on trust. Not Phil Jones, not Paul Nurse, certainly not anyone who advises government and certainly certainly not anyone whose patent conflict of interest makes him totally unsuitable for chairing "inquiries".
I'm sorry if I've poked a stick into your comfort zone, Tom, but journalists aren't supposed to have comfort zones. Your job is to be a nuisance. Even assuming the science is 100% right it's not your job to give anyone an easy ride — certainly not someone who is trying to con(vince) people that he was ever a sceptic and whose most recent attempt at a research paper has been knocked back — twice! (Did you know that?)
And if you are really doing the job properly, which is to say even-handedly, you would also be reporting at equal length and in equal depth on Anthony Watts' paper because if the work by Leroy, which has been accepted by the WMO, holds up and Watts' paper confirms it then the whole climate argument could shift. You could be the first to break some really serious news. Why not give it a try?
Speaking as a medic (retired), I would question the cancer analogy. Lord Brock's (eminent pioneer of cardiac surgery) famous dictum is "the first step in treatment is accurate anatomical localisation of the lesion". In other words before surgery, or any other treatment, one has to be certain of what it is that one is treating. Considerable advances have been made in localising lesions (CT, MRI etc) and therefore surgeons tend to know what they are going to do before they operate. Obviously, no system is infallible, but a careful assesment is made before treatment is started.
A second dictum is "do no harm". Again, this may be impossible because of the disease of a mistake.
What Chivers seems to be saying as analogy with climate is that the disease has been identified, its prognosis is certain and that the solution will do no harm.
Too intellectually lazy to dig a bit further, too scared of what he might find. {snip- unnecessary]
Articles such as the one written by Tom Chivers make my blood boil. The tone is righteous and condescending. The conclusion in the article is a case in point…
Chivers: “What evidence would it take to change your mind? Who, in short, do you trust? If you look at your own beliefs, and realise that there is nothing which could shake them, then you, as much as the hard Greens, are practicing a religion, not seeking empirical fact.”
Tom doesn’t get that skepticism is the Anti-Christ to belief and climate religion.
Chivers: “What I want to ask those sceptics who, like me, are not professional climate scientists is: what's your way out? You are as trapped by confirmation bias as I am.”
The difference, Tom, is mostly hard work. Skeptics do not use the excuse of having a busy lifestyle, or a deadline to meet but actually commit to really understanding the science and politics rather than take it on authority. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341034/title/Climate_skeptics_know_their_stuff
The skeptic world is one far removed from lazy journalism - the cut and pasting of executive summaries and the never ending pursuit of crisis to sell copy. It takes a desire to go after the truth, a commitment to challenge and the resilience to stand up to the dead headed climate zombie attacks.
We are really not like you at all Mr Chivers – we march with integrity behind us.
Aug 1, 2012 at 10:41 AM | Tom Chivers
Tom - thanks for appearing here, but your suspicion is based on faith in human nature, not science. Are you aware of the following:
Or:
I'll leave the last word to genuine scientists:
A good journalist should question everything, especially given the highly politicised context of climate science.
There are several things that I have seen in the comments that prompt me to respond.
Firstly Dung mentioning yesterday that bankers sold mortgages to no-hopers and then sold on the debt. That is true, but it is worth mentioning that this whole sorry state of affairs was caused by the Clinton administration coercing banks to sell these mortgages and the fact that Bush did nothing to stop it. Banks aren't charities, if you are carrying X billion in dodgy debt, it is an imperative to get it off of the books. This is the government interfering with the markets and not thinking about the consequences.
Secondly Cancer treatment - as a bit of an expert on this recently - I should echo what an eminent surgeon told me last year: "We don't know what causes it, we don't know where it comes from and we don't know if the treatment will work. Surgery only removes the stuff that we can find."
Tom Chivers is, alas, one of those people who if you said that God existed, he would disbelieve you. Even if I could produce the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury or St Augustine, he'd still deny it. Like many other people in this field ( Brian Cox and Singh for instance ) they are prepared to believe in such hokum and cite the appropriate authorities, because it fits their weltanschauung. Man is hurting the environment and global warming through CO2 is just such an example.
He is thus quite prepared to cease being a questioner or investigating such flimsy evidence further, whereas if I told him that peas caused cancer ( go on deny it, I bet that at least 98.5 per cent of people who have cancer have eaten peas ) he'd reject the concept immediately despite it being a statistical fact.
Tom
Theoretical question for you.
A group of climate scientists, who are not statistical experts, produce a series of papers using statistics in a novel way. Along comes a statistical expert who demonstrates that the conclusions drawn by the climate scientists have no merit because the statistics doesn't support their conclusions.
Whose authority are you going to accept? Which one will you publicise? Will we see you print headlines like "Climate Scientists Wrong"?
Tom, you state in your article that for instance "Illuminati nuts [...] can find superficially convincing evidence for their beliefs within seconds of reaching the Google home page."
Although I think that neither you nor I am nuts I know that your statement is not true or at least exaggerated exorbitantly. You may write that it is in your opinion only "superficially convincing" (and I shouldn't and don't expect that I can change such as your mind (at least on the CO2 hypothesis) with the following short remark) but there is the possibility and evidence that, for example, the Illuminati could have been the first "learned society" (world wide?) whose administration (in general Adam Weishaupt), and by association their scientific body, postulated man made climate change around 1782 (see Anrede an die neu aufzunehmenden Illuminatos dirigentes, reprinted in Richard van Dülmen: "Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten", Frommann-Holzboog 1975, pp. 166-194.).
Does anybody know any organisation that joined the climate bandwagon earlier than the "Bavarian Illuminati"? Surely, neither a yes nor a no to that question proves anything. Just saying.
In his post here today, Tom made the following worrying statement:
1. Andrew did not say that accepting authority is all you can do if you are not an expert. What he said was
He then went on to question the people Tom decided to trust.
2. Tom said " They may all be wrong; they may even be as corrupt as you believe the IPCC to be." but strangely this did not cause him to question the IPCC or others that he has decided to trust?
3. Tom is concerned that sceptics such as the Bish are so sure they are right and as someone already pointed out, he has no similar concerns about the IPCC et al. Tom does not seem to understand what a sceptic is.
I believe that a sceptic is someone who has learned from experience to question everyone who has not proven themselves to be trustworthy.
I think some people are born sceptics but others like me stumble through life for a while before we understand how many times and in how many ways we are lied to and cheated.
The answer to Tom's concern is simply that first we questioned and then we went out and investigated for ourselves just exactly what is the case for CAGW and we discovered that basically it does not exist.
It should be simple for someone like Chivers who has access to many archives, libraries etc to follow the origins of eqch organisation to which he pays homage and by doing so reach a conclusion that the only authority to which he is actually conceeding is one that has been PROVEN to be totally unreliable, UNIPCC.
His update is therefore no better than his original piece. Rubbish.
Whose authority are you going to accept? Which one will you publicise? Will we see you print headlines like "Climate Scientists Wrong"?
Aug 1, 2012 at 1:28 PM | TerryS
Or climate scientist are not statistical experts, but hey, I believe them rather than statistic experts.
Tom C would have us believe 'authority' like people in the past had to believe the Church about how the Earth went round the sun - or else.. Something about the IPCC reminds me of puritanism's hatred of prosperity and enjoyment, or do these august bodies really hate carbon dioxide?
"But I am concerned that sceptics, such as yourself, are so sure of your own rightness that your criterion for whether or not an organisation can be trusted has become "whether or not they agree with me" "
Some very good responses to Tom's article and post here. I really disagree with this statement. I think lots of 'sceptics' on this blog, like me, are interested in the correct science behind AGW. The whole point of the scientific method is to come to the correct answer and help minimise inherent biases that everyone has. Repeating the oft quote Royal Society yet again, 'Take Nobodies word for it'.
I guess I could be a partial authority having been a 'climate scientist/modeller'. Upon further digging when perplexed by the results from the original hockey stick, I believe (not scientific I know) that the science behind AGW falls apart very badly at a basic (A Level / undergraduate) scientific level which when explained properly even the layman should be able to understand where many of the concerns of 'sceptics' come from.
On the political side (I'm not really interested in this, though do realise it's importance) it has been pointed out that the majority of the consensus is state funded. As well as being a 'sceptical' blog this is also largely a Libertarian blog also and many people probably also have big question marks over the size of the state and the role it has in everything else. You just can't ignore the vested interests in researchers funded by the state producing work asking for more funding, it is just human nature working here. I can't see the equivalent gain for the 'sceptics' who post here. I just get the impression they really just are interested in the fundamental science (and/or politics) of the situation.
Rob Burton: 'I believe (not scientific I know) that the science behind AGW falls apart very badly at a basic (A Level / undergraduate) scientific level which when explained properly even the layman should be able to understand where many of the concerns of 'sceptics' come from.'
True and embarrassingly so. However, we also have 'climate science' teaching these elementary mistakes as if they were true. This is where post-normal science breaks down because there is no excuse for such deceitful behaviour: these people are defrauding their students.
Can I direct those worried about the cancer analogy to the Evidence Based Medicine article on wikipedia. I was surprised James Delingpole didn't beat Sir Paul Nurse over the head with it in the infamous documentary.
In short, for the last 30years or so medicine has tried to get away from the 'Authority of the Great and the Good' and base its practice on the results of blind, randomised clinical trials involving (often ) thousands of patients. Blind meaning that the doctors treating don't know whether they are prescribing the 'active' drug or a placebo and the patients also are in the dark. This hopefully eliminates the tendency for imposing authority figures to affect the results.
It can't be applied in all circumstances, but it is a crucial distinguishing feature of proper medicine from quackery. And therefore makes 'what is the evidence for this?' an important question to ask a doctor( or quack).
Tom Chivers have you ever considered why almost every reputable and relevant scientific body on the planet endorses the view that catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is a real and present danger?
They were deceived by an organisation they put their trust in - the IPCC. Hard work by skeptics have uncovered the irrefutable evidence that shows that the global warming debate was given life through faulty data and faulty statistical methods and hardly anything to do with science.
You should consider that:
The IPCC claims of being a gold star scientific organisation have been taken at face value without any scruitiny.
Significant evidence exists that activist scientists journal editors have manipulated the IPCC, scientific data, the peer review process and sought to exclude dissenting papers. They actively used a crisis hungry media to discredit sceptical science.
Nobody bothered to check the claims made by the IPCC , their carefully selected literature and the 'hockey team' scientists promoting one view of climate change.
Nobody noticed that the IPCC claims were alarmist – overplaying certainty, overstating catastrophe and underplaying the MWP.
Nobody noticed that they were a political organisation disguised as an impartial scientific body. They used false data and charts to generate momentum behind 'the cause' and were mission orientated to secure the Kyoto agreement and the momentum for global policy action.
The IPCC falsely conveyed scientific ‘consensus’ to honest, trustworthy, reputable scientific bodies and duped them all.
Once the momentum behind global warming had been achieved, the funding started rolling in. Jobs, careers, further research, pride and mortgages have all been staked on this theory being real. It would be suicide for scientific institutions or scientists based in the climate sphere to be publically sceptical.
Climate research has been unwittingly trying to fit a preconceived conclusion successfully orchestrated by a small group scientific activists. We are now wasting the precious time of our best scientists and academics and our financial resources on a 'man made' threat that never exist.
As politicians, academics and institutions are now finally coming round to the fact that they have been duped, a quiet exit from this mess will now be seen as the imperative. Climate funding and communications will gradually dry up and scientists and institutions will quietly move over to more useful studies. Hopefully this process has already begun.
So Tom Chivers, it would be good if you could do a bit of due diligence and started digging into the climate facts - you might just find a good story for your next article.
@ Mike Jackson
Spot on. We are of the age where more have realised that we need to be more discerning about who we can trust. Perhaps this because now many more are more educated, more experienced, and we have access to more information (that we have had to learn better at how to filter).
Rob Burton writes:
"I think lots of 'sceptics' on this blog, like me, are interested in the correct science behind AGW."
Yes, I am the world's strongest supporter of real climate science. Climate science cannot advance one step without creating, testing, and confirming some additional physical hypotheses. The best place to start would be creating hypotheses about cloud formation and behavior in response to changes in moisture, radiation, and other important matters. Only additional well confirmed physical hypotheses can advance climate science. Without such hypotheses, the modelers will forever spin their wheels. And by the way, computer modeling is not science. It is highly organized and a vast storehouse of knowledge but so is astrology.
The Precautionary Principle suggests that you trust no one. If you must, then trust only those who have been verified as trustworthy. If found untrustworthy, then abandon them and find others. It's just the scientific process written small and personal -- iterations approaching the truth. Our problem seems to be an emotional preference for the familiar rather than critical evaluation of the stories we are offered.
The skeptic world is one far removed from lazy journalism - the cut and pasting of executive summaries and the never ending pursuit of crisis to sell copy. It takes a desire to go after the truth, a commitment to challenge and the resilience to stand up to the dead headed climate zombie attacks.
We are really not like you at all Mr Chivers – we march with integrity behind us.
Aug 1, 2012 at 1:05 PM | Chairman Al
IMHO, this is the best response thus far. Tom C should be thoroughly disgusted with himself but, of course, he isn't. He seems to believe that he is a 'good' reporter.
Tom Chivers likes appeals to authority. What better then than our Upper House, when it was still the highest court of appeal in the land.
The House of Lords Select Committee Review on the economics of climate change in 2005 was probably the only government review that took a long hard look at the IPCC process and the veracity of the scientific and economic evidence, including representations from mainstream and sceptic scientists. It is notable that all their recommendations were ignored by the Commons.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf
Some enlightening extracts
13. The Committee heard from several scientific witnesses on the theory. No one
disputes the fact of temperature rise in the last 100 years or so. No one
disputes that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and few dispute that it has
an enhanced “greenhouse effect”. What is disputed, albeit by a minority of
scientists, is the scale of this effect. In the view of Professor Richard Lindzen
of MIT, current climate models would have predicted a substantially greater
increase in the past temperature than has been observed in the past 150
years, perhaps +3oC compared to the +0.6oC we have witnessed. In his view,
this suggests that the models are biased upwards and that, while warming will
occur, it is the lower end of the IPCC spectrum that is relevant, not the
upper limits, which he regarded as “alarmist”. Our understanding of the
scientific response to this apparent anomaly is that (a) cooling effects,
including those from sulphates, have masked the expected rise in warming,
and (b) only climate models that combine natural variability and
anthropogenic forcings “fit” the past data, as outlined in paragraph 15.
14. We recognise that there is a strong majority view on climate change.
Majorities do not necessarily embody the truth, but we note that major
associations of scientists have adopted similar positions. The IPCC tends to
be the focus of the majority view which has been confirmed by the Royal
Society13, and by the US National Academy of Sciences, the American
Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Despite this, it is a concern that
the IPCC has not always sought to ensure that dissenting voices are given a
full hearing. We document these concerns later in the Report.
15. As far as the recent temperature record is concerned, as noted above, the
temperature record is not one of consistent warming. Indeed, there was a
distinct “cooling period” in the 1960s and 1970s—see Box 5. The
conventional explanation of this phenomenon is, first, that this period was
associated with substantial sulphur emissions in North America and Europe,
with sulphates having a cooling effect. As sulphur emissions came to be
controlled, the underlying upward trend in warming resumed. Second, there
was a natural variation in temperature in this cooling period due to changed
sunspot activity. The IPCC is clear that GCMs that contain only
anthropogenic temperature forcing predict more temperature change than
has been observed in the 20th century. It claims that GCMs that embody only
natural variation understate the temperature rise of the past 30 years or so.
Only when anthropogenic and natural forcings are combined is the
temperature record accurately simulated.
17. Apart from the issue of explaining the divergence between actual and
expected recent past warming, we heard doubts expressed about other
features of the accepted science. These include:
• concerns that changes in ice-core record CO2 concentrations might have
followed temperature rise rather than the other way round;
• the poor nature of the data used to compute the long run historical
record, or alleged misinterpretation of the long-run historical
temperature record;
• the GCMs fail to “reconstruct” the long term historical record;
• the view of some that the relative importance of the natural factors
affecting climate variability, e.g. variation in solar output, is underplayed
in the IPCC assessments;
• apparent divergences between land-based temperature records and
satellite-based measurements, the latter showing some cooling rather
than warming in recent years;
• the manner in which the GCMs are adjusted until they align with the
observed data;
• the uncertain role of cloud cover. Professor Lindzen argued that clouds
generate a negative feedback effect (cooling) rather than the positive
feedback effect assumed in the GCMs; and that
• the models fail to predict sudden weather events.
18. We do not propose to evaluate these doubts, nor are we qualified to do so.
We are also aware that climate scientists who adhere to the human-induced
warming hypothesis have responses to most of these sources of doubt. But
the science of climate change remains debatable. We heard from witnesses
who seemed in no doubt at all about the science, while others expressed one
or more of the above concerns. That makes it clear that the scientific
context is one of uncertainty, although as the science progresses these
uncertainties might be expected to diminish and be resolved, one way
or the other. Hence it is important that the Government continues to
take a leading role in supporting climate science, and encourages a
dispassionate evidence-based approach to debate and decision
making.
More interesting commentary on the Hockey Stick paras 20 onward
etc., etc.
para 116 worth re-reading
116. We cannot prove that Professor Reiter’s nomination was rejected because of
the likelihood that he would argue warming and malaria are not correlated in
the manner the IPCC Reports suggest. But the suspicion must be there, and
it is a suspicion that lingers precisely because the IPCC’s procedures are not
as open as they should be. It seems to us that there remains a risk that IPCC
has become a “knowledge monopoly” in some respects, unwilling to listen to
those who do not pursue the consensus line. We think Professor Reiter’s
remarks on “consensus” deserve repeating:
“Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science. Science proceeds by
observation, hypothesis and experiment. Professional scientists rarely draw
firm conclusions from a single article, but consider its contribution in the
context of other publications and their own experience, knowledge and
speculations”.
We are concerned that there may be political interference in the
nomination of scientists whose credentials should rest solely with
their scientific qualifications for the tasks involved.
Tom .nice of you to drop by. Please consider the possibility that your impression of who we are and what we think might be too simplistic and therefore mistaken. Please ask your climate scientists to tell you what evidence they have that what they say threatens us is taking place and to what degree. No models or proxies, no certainty about temperature trends, proper evidence. The ones who drive by here have had no success in producing any real measurements of the GH effects of CO2 in the actual atmosphere. That is, changes in radiation in the fingerprint wavebands sufficient to cause CAGW. Actual changes. How hard can it be to find them?
Aug 1, 2012 at 7:07 PM | Theo Goodwin
As you say we need hypotheses of physical processes and then we need to test them. Currently the data we have doesn't fit the CAGW hypothesis at all. Also as people such as yourself and rhoda keep pointing out we aren't creating any experiments that would properly test the hypothesis.
There are so many experiments that could easily be done if anyone wanted to leave their computer desk. ie to test tree rings as thermometers find a region where we have trees which should be suitable together with a nearby temperature record. The tree ring guy can look at the thermometer record (and other things like precipitation if it exists) and predict the tree ring widths for the record. Then we core/chop down the tree and see if he was right. If he can get a few of those right then I would then have respect for the treemometers which I don't currently have.
Tom Chivers said:
Yes, it's an appeal to authority: as you say in the opening paragraph, that's all you can do, if you're not an expert. They may all be wrong; they may even be as corrupt as you believe the IPCC to be. But I am concerned that sceptics, such as yourself, are so sure of your own rightness that your criterion for whether or not an organisation can be trusted has become "whether or not they agree with me". What is it about, for instance, the US Geological Survey that you don't trust?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chivers is slipping and sliding here. For a start, he is setting up a strawman of people who disagree with CAGW, as though it is a monolith. A brief cruise through the more prominent blogs (as you would expect a moderately competent journalist to do) would reveal that there are many, hotly disputed, theories about how climate works in the 'sceptic' camp.
By contrast, the believers coast comfortably along on the premise that a tiny trace component of the atmosphere drives the bus. Although, it has been entertaining to watch the catfight between Mann and Muller this week.
As for his spurious example of the US Geological Survey - I trust that if they produce a map - their original role - it is probably accurate. But, many of the organisations that have endorsed CAGW have stepped way out of their area of expertise, or have elevated a small section of their membership to serve the Cause. I don't know what the breakup of membership of the Royal Society is, but I guarantee that hardly any of the work that precipitated their members' elevation had anything to do with what is called 'climate science' (apart from a few recent, and deplorable, episodes).
How is Tom adding any value to the public discussion? He has suspended his critical faculties, says the science is too hard for him to understand, and takes safety in numbers.
As a journalist, he is not fit to polish the Bish's, or several other bloggers', boots.
The discussion about medical advise reminds me of the saying "If you are not your own doctor by the time you are 40 you will never be well"
oakwood @ Aug 1, 2012 at 7:38 AM
Why? What counts is ability, and results, not credentials. What do the following three people have in common(hint: it isn't "middle name") Dell, Gates and Wozniak? Yup, not a single earned degree amongst them, but boy, the results.
Better to attack Chivers on his substance, which is terrible, or form, which, for a professional writer is worse(at least(I gave up counting) four gross grammatical errors in the short quotes).
Chairman Al @ Aug 1, 2012 at 1:05 PM
Strip-bark bristlecone fossils in the Permian?
Did I change it enough or am I still a plagiarist?
Mods please feel free to delete if this is horsing around too much. No offence will be taken.
One very sad fact is that the only time Tom visited our blog was in order to respond to the opening post by the Bish. I do not think he has read anything else. Had he read the long continuous attack on his integrity then surely he would have wanted to defend himself.
This has been an unusual comments section, it has had pretty much nothing to do with science and everything to do with principles and integrity.
I find that quite reassuring.
Chivers leads off with a false analogy, comparing AGW science to oncology, a field with well over a hundred years of study and millions of successful cures. AGW 'science' is relatively new and has zero cures, assuming that such is needed.
Chivers follows up with a false dichotomy: "you have only two choices: you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust".
There are many, many alternatives between these two positions. Even a tiny bit of non-math study exploded much Warmist cant: the 'consensus,' 'An Inconvenient Truth,' etc. and so forth. A little more, and the meme began to fall apart in bigger ways: What can we say about 'scientists' who refuse the information necessary to replicate their results? Or who resort to sabotaging the publication efforts of other scientists? Or who cherry pick not only data, but statistical methods? Or who alter the historic temperature records? Why is the Warmist first response almost always an ad hominem? I could go on for some time, but everyone here has seen the signs for themselves.
Returning to Chivers's analogy, should I turn myself over to someone standing on the back of a wagon, holding up a bottle of "Dr. Paunchinello's Magick Elixir," and claiming he has the cure for cancer? No, it would be all too clear without having "expert knowledge" that Dr. Paunchinello is a snake-oil salesman, a fraud, and a charlatan. All the signs are there, and all the signs point to AGW as something similar.
Goldacre's statement misses a crucial point: "you have only two choices: you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust" AS LONG AS THEY APPEAR TRUSTWORTHY.
Because the Authority has to regain its authority every single time.
Otherwise it's just a sell-out of the brain, sheepishly sticking eg to the opinion of the Royal Society no matter how stupid that opinion might become in the future.
If I had a penny for every occasion I read a person state that they didn't understand the science behind global-warming, but still felt competent to tell me which scientists were correct about global-warming, then I would probably have at least £23.77
I don't regard my scientific qualifications as exceptional, but any MSM environment-journo who wants to show-me-theirs-if-I-show-them-mine is welcome to ask. The point of higher degrees in science is that you are being trained to be capable of finding out for yourself.
So thanks, Tom, but no thanks.
Every supposedly authoritative scientific institution on the planet accepted Mick E Mann's Sensational Hokey Schtick™ on faith without making any attempt to replicate it, despite its status as perhaps the most high-profile, groundbreaking result in the history of paleoclimatology, overturning decades of received wisdom.
They could have used their authority to wrangle data from the Mickster far more easily than Steve Mc, but they didn't bother. Crunching the numbers to check the sums would have taken an afternoon for such Nietzschean supermen, but they didn't bother.
On the subject of climatology, the authority of anyone who accepted the Hockeystick on faith is ipso facto proven to be utterly worthless. Thanks Mike!
I am more qualified than Tom Chivers so he can listen to me?
Aug 2, 2012 at 3:19 AM | shub
I thought Chaucer was supposed to be part of a sceptics evidence for the MWP
Quotes from John Daly's site.
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote -
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu ungendred is the flour;"
- from The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, 1386
"Our years are turned upside down;
our summers are no summers;
our harvests are no harvests!"
- John King, an Elizabethan preacher,1595
Tom writea (above)
If this is decisive, then why do GREAT scientists like Freeman Dyson or even James Lovelock disagree? Because they honestly assess the contrary evidence, as I do, in the simplest, most direct areas of the science and find it unconvincing. And I must insist that honest journalists must do likewise.
What counts as decisive, simple evidence? Falsifying evidence, as per Karl Popper?
The super-accurate and truly global satellites temperature evidence of +1.4 (and falling) per century contradicts the climate sensitivity claims of the IPCC; likewise, the prediction of the tropospheric "hotspot" that cannot be found. How about the prediction failure of diurnal temperature narrowing as CO2 levels rise, as shown last year by Watts, et al, when ground level US temperature station quality is controlled? (Granted, this surprising finding needs repeated confirmation from other high-quality data sets such as Australia, New Zealand, the UK.)
But repeated prediction failure counts against any hypothesis if an observer is honest.
And is there really that stark unanimity of "experts" Tom claims? Not really.
Most, certainly all the august scientific bodies I've examined reach their "scientific" conclusions on this issue via political means. That is, an elite, self-selected politically influential group votes, not the specialists in the issue nor the general membership. In other words, they motivated to serve political paymasters, not science and an honest assessment of evidence.
Furthermore, there are a number of important scientific bodies that do dissent from AGW orthodoxy, the US it is the American Petroleum Geologists, and in the world, it is the World Congress of Geology. By nation (whether National Academy or Geologist or Geoscientist bodies, I've lost track), Italy, Russia, India, and Japan stand out by their dissent.
Are these bodies to be summarily dismissed, if "science" comes down to counting head so experts (which it most certainly cannot, if Popper is to have his due)? Just ask Galileo.
It's always worth looking at the prose style and the way in which words are used (there is room here for 'verbody' as a useful word; somebody should invent it!) in any piece like this.
equals It also usually means "I'm getting paid by the word."It doesn't take a lot of experience to pick up the vibes.
As a classic example:-
Chivers' piece also contains evidence in almost every line that he does not understand the subject he's writing about. The fact that he is a Mediaevalist only makes it worse. If there is one thing that you need to get a good degree in that subject it's the ability to get your head down and research!
Some of these responses seem unduly personal and intemperate. You don't persuade by insults.
Mike Fowle
If by "unduly personal" you mean comments to or about Tom himself then I dont think you have a leg to stand on.
This man is getting paid to make comments about a subject he does not understand, when he puts his foot in his own mouth then he should expect others to attempt to force the other foot in as well.
The worst I saw was Mike Jackson saying he was talking shite, I think the words were very apt.
Dung,
I'm just giving you my impression, not an argument. When I see "a**ehole" "weapons grade fool" and other comments that have been snipped because they are over the top, the response seems to me over heated. Such comments would be better directed at the real culprits, not someone who seems to be making a genuine effort to communicate his point of view.
Mike Fowle
If I thought he was genuinely trying to communicate his point of view I would be a lot more sympathetic. This was overblown boilerplate of which I have read several millions of words in my life and sent straight to the spike.
This was "what is going to give me a bit of publicity today? I am at 27, a lowly assistant comments editor at the DT and nobody answers my emails" sort of stuff. Editors' wastebaskets are full of it.
I've seen dozens like him in my life and a lot turn out to be very good journalists once somebody's pricked their ego and they've learnt that genius is 99% perspiration.
As I said in my original comment, there is a story which could just possibly have made his name and he's missed it because he can't see beyond following the bien-pensant in-crowd. He "believes" global warming because the "experts" have told him to. Which means he still believes unquestioningly what "experts" tell him.
Until he changes that attitude he may make some sort living as a reporter or even as an "assistant comments editor" (whatever the hell that is) but he will never make a journalist.