... for the other side (via Maxine via Dave):
... Judith Curry and Michael Mann speak out. (This is very much worth reading, by the way. )
... We climate scientists are not ecofanatics.
In the first piece, Mann observes that "there’s the largest disconnect that has ever existed between the confidence that we have scientifically and where the public is, at least in the United States." Judging by the preponderance of comments appended to the second piece objecting to its point, the "disconnect" does not seem confined to the U.S.
Apart from the fact that I think talk of "a dangerous mood of scepticism" is itself worrisome, some perspective may be gleaned from a look at this 1995 interview Sir John gave to the Sunday Telegraph. (BTW, please note: We link, you decide.)
Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteMann discredits himself answering the next question after the one you quoted:
What is the worst-case scenario? Are we talking about the risk of our demise as a species?
That’s what scares me, yeah. Now it appears that the antiscience side is in a much better position from a public relations point of view than the scientific community is.
He has everyone who disagrees with him on the "antiscience" side and everyone who agrees with him in "the scientific community."
So should I simply agree with anything he says, because I love science, and he's in with this science in-crowd?
Then in the next answer he gives, he says this:
And needless to say, I'm not getting a lot of science done right now. Half my job involves defending myself against attacks.
I should think he would have to defend himself, the way he misuses categories.
Yours,
Rus
Rus,
ReplyDeleteToo bad the ad hominem attack on the ineptness of the scientist doesn't refute the wealth of data the scientist is discussing. That's the whole nature of the "anti-science" attack though: since it can't really discredit the data, it tries to discredit the data-gatherers.
All too familiar a trope, and apparently all too easily bought into.
I'm not sure, Art, that the data is there: Three of the four data sources have been found to collude. So far, only the Japanese site has not been involved. I don'; think this is an ad hominem attack on anybody. I think there is serious reason to think that Michael Mann is a fraud.I also think, as does the UK's Institute of Physics, that the prima facie evidence does not reflect well on these people. to put it mildly. I'm all for taking care of the environment. I'm not in favor of ceding a great deal of power to the state under the pretext of taking care of the environment. Or health care. Or finance. Surely you see that all the great supposed problems have the same solution - surrendering our freedom to "experts"?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it depend, therefore, on who one regards as "experts"? This group of discredited experts, or that group of non-credited experts? The issue is not about government interference but of government policy. Who is going to take care of the environment, then?
ReplyDeleteI'm all for grass roots movements that do their best to make positive changes; I'm all for non-governmental organizations like the Sierra Club, etc., who do a lot to educate the general public about these issues.
But who is going to stop multinational industries from continuing to ignore the damage they do to the environment in pursuit of their short-term profits? Who is going to regulate industry but the government? Who else has the power to make it happen? (This is a separate issue, of course, from the government being made ineffectual by being bought by lobbyists and those very industries that need to be regulated? Or perhaps it's NOT a separate issue, after all.)
I'm all for grass roots activism, and I'm all for finding solutions that everybody can put into practice.
As for the data: If you're referring to the current mess surrounding that one group of experts who were shown to be fudging their data, keep in mind that that group of experts constitutes far less than ten percent of the accumulated decades of data, studies, and interpretations, that have been done on the subject of climate change.
There have been in fact several decades of data-sets. going back in some instances to the 1930s, that have been showing that human activities DO have an effect on the environment, and probably on climate change. There are well-established and quite legitimate studies that have shown that, for example, the ozone hole over Antarctica really IS the fault of human action; and so forth. Data sets that have been peer-reviewed and monitored continuously since the 1960s or earlier.
So, don't make the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I quite agree that this current round of mistakes are terrible, and I quite agree that one must choose which experts to believe. I've been studying the science of this issue, which has been quietly going on since I first started reading science in the 1960s, and the consensus has been there for quite some time. What's different now is that people are trying to affirm or deny it purely so they can affect policy. Or then again, maybe that's not new, either. But the virulence of the attack on the data itself IS new—and we must ask ourselves whence it is driven. It's not driven by objectivity, that's for certain, but by people with special interests who don't want to hear anything that contradicts their beliefs.
But the multinationals, so-called, are already involved on both sides. British Petroleum is a major funder of, yes, CRU of East Anglia U. Richard Lindzen and William H. Gray are not uncredited people in this field. Indeed, their credentials are more impressive than Michael Mann's. My objection to the AGW business is that it is (a) not possible at present to accurately predict what the climate is going to be 100 years from now and (b) history provides convincing evidence that warming would not be a bad thing and that (c) history is in many cases about adapting to environmental change. The notion that we can control the environment is precisely the sort of hubris AGW advocates routinely rail against, a contadiction on their part that is another prima facie indicator that what they really are aiming at is aggrandizing power.
ReplyDeleteI should add that I know that Art, Rus and I all are in agreement regarding the husbanding of the environment. Bear in mind I watched the woods that were a major factor in my growing up wiped out in a single afternoon do that a sewer line could be installed. I have no home to go to again.
ReplyDeleteHi Art,
ReplyDeleteI was specifically countering Mann. He says nothing in the article that is worthwhile and puts down anyone who disagrees with him.
We can also look at the reports from the Himalayan issue, what was touted as the number one glacial problem in the world going into Copenhagen. Here's an article written to create alarm from Time published in December just before the conference: COP15: Climate-Change Conference. There is a section in that article called "The Search for Science." Here is the last paragraph from that section:
There is, unsurprisingly, active scientific disagreement about the impact of climate change on the glaciers. An Indian-government-backed report published in October claimed that many Indian glaciers are stable or that the rate of retreat has slowed in recent years, despite clear warming. Critics pointed out that the report was not peer-reviewed in a scientific journal and had major data gaps. But the lack of clarity makes it that much more difficult for policymakers to craft the right response. "The Himalayan data just isn't there," says Richard Armstrong, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who is skeptical that the glaciers are receding rapidly. "These glaciers are at a very high altitude, and what precipitation they get tends to fall as snow, which can add to their mass. There's a tendency to oversimplify."
There was a search for science, where there is none. A month later, we had this article from The Times: UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning. Here are two paragraphs:
The 2007 report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize, said that the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. It caused shock in Asia, where about two billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers for their fresh water supplies during the dry seasons.
It emerged last week that the prediction was based not on a consensus among climate change experts but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999. That scientist, Syed Hasnain, has now told The Times that he never made such a specific forecast in his interview with the New Scientist magazine.
This leads up to now, when Pachauri is being pressured to resign: Rajendra Pachauri must be sacked for the UN to rescue its credibility on climate change.
What's anti-science? This is part of the rigor, what the world is discovering as it takes an important second look--quite the scientific thing to do.
Yours,
Rus