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)
Mike Fowle
I know the Bish runs a tight ship on BH but I would like to explain my own personal viewpoint.
The world is far too concerned with being politically correct, with not offending people, with "the party line" rather than the truth and not rocking the boat. Basically the world is overflowing with Bullshit.
More people need to start saying it like it is/telling the truth/standing up against the tide of rubbish which is drowning us all.
I think there is little chance that Tom has been offended by anything written here because I do not think he will have read it, please prove me wrong Mr Chivers.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 4:32 PM | Dung
"I think there is little chance that Tom has been offended by anything written here because I do not think he will have read it, please prove me wrong Mr Chivers."
Oh, I'm quite sure Mr Chivers will be reading these posts, Dung, that's about as much 'investigative' journalism as some of these guys do these days, simply not up to the likes of Booker or Gilligan.
Some of us, not being 'climate scientists' or journalists, tend not to be so interested in theories or 'conspiracy theories', so rather than the modelled or reported world we prefer to look at the REAL world.
And what do we see -
As per Climate Change Act (Scotland)
• a comprehensive approach to carbon in rural land use
They're using a planning tool called SPACE "to quantitatively assess the greenhouse gas emissions that are likely to arise as a result of spatial planning policy from a national to local level in Scotland."
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/03/3294/9
ie pushing people towards the cities very much in line with Agenda 21 guidelines
• almost complete decarbonisation of road transport by 2050, with significant progress by 2030, through wholesale adoption of electric cars and vans
http://mobile.transportscotland.gov.uk/news/Electric-vehicles-scheme-second-phase
Not only are electric cars hugely expensive and inefficient
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8674273/Electric-car-owners-may-face-19000-battery-charge.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/13/shocker-dirty-electric-cars/
but imagine a repetition of this with electric cars
"Some travellers were stuck in their vehicles for more than 15 hours as Scotland bore the brunt of the weather."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11936621
Also in line with Agenda 21 Transportation guidelines.
But don't expect to see any of this reported by 'journalists' - they simply prefer to sit back, draw their pay cheque and report the govt. press releases!
Marion
That Agenda 21 stuff in Scotland is seriously scary!