This is a guest essay by Dana Nuccitelli
Last week, the Making Science Public blog published a guest post by Ben Pile, What’s behind the battle of received wisdoms?, which focused on Andrew Neil’s interview with Ed Davey on BBC Sunday Politics and my articles at The Guardian discussing the scientific errors Neil made on the show and in a subsequent BBC blog post.
Response to Professor Hulme’s Comments
Before addressing this post, I would like to respond to some comments made by Professor Mike Hulme regarding a paper I co-authored, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, which was one of the topics discussed on Sunday Politics and in Pile’s post. Professor Hulme said,
“It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?”
With all due respect to Professor Hulme, his perception of the public understanding of climate science is not reflected in the polling data. In fact, we discussed this in our paper (which is open access and free to download),
“…the perception of the US public is that the scientific community still disagrees over the fundamental cause of GW. From 1997 to 2007, public opinion polls have indicated around 60% of the US public believes there is significant disagreement among scientists about whether GW was happening (Nisbet and Myers 2007). Similarly, 57% of the US public either disagreed or were unaware that scientists agree that the earth is very likely warming due to human activity (Pew 2012).”
Polling data for the UK show a similar level of public misperceptions on climate change. For example, a 2012 Guardian/ICM poll found that only 57% of British voters accept that human-caused climate change is happening. In an April 2013 YouGov poll, 39% of the UK population agreed that “the planet is becoming warmer as a result of human activity,” and 53% agreed “the world’s climate is changing as a result of human activity.” This public misperception on human-caused climate change and the associated scientific consensus was the reason we embarked on our study. For this reason I would also respectfully disagree with Professor Hulme’s description of our paper as “irrelevant,”
“The irrelevance is because none of the most contentious policy responses to climate change are resolved *even if* we accept that 97.1% of climate scientists believe that ‘human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW’…”
Again quoting from our paper,
“An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011). Communicating the scientific consensus also increases people’s acceptance that climate change (CC) is happening (Lewandowsky et al 2012).”
Our co-author John Cook’s PhD research has similarly shown a strong correlation between public awareness of the scientific consensus and support for government climate policy across nearly the entire political spectrum. Our paper is well suited for correcting the public’s misperception that humans are not causing global warming or that there is no scientific consensus on the subject, and hence it is a relevant and useful contribution.
Ben Pile’s Guest Post and Andrew Neil’s Errors
Regarding Ben Pile’s guest post on this blog, I would first like to say that I encourage healthy scientific skepticism, and also a healthy debate about what climate policy should entail. I have no problem with Andrew Neil asking Ed Davey if the recently slowed global surface warming and/or some recent scientific papers should cause the UK government to revise its climate policy. As I detailed in my second Guardian article on the subject, I think the answer is that it clearly shouldn’t, but there is certainly no problem with the question being asked. However, as I noted, healthy skepticism and an informed climate policy discussion must accurately consider all available evidence, which Andrew Neil did not. On that subject, Ben Pile wrote,
“Dana Nuccitelli (who is not a climate scientist) compiled a list of what he thought were Neil’s mistakes.”
To be more precise, I provided evidence to illustrate why most of Neil’s climate comments were erroneous. In his post, Pile did not dispute any of my characterizations of the many errors made by Neil, and I would encourage readers here to click the links to read my articles and the evidence I provided to support my assertions. I think any open-minded reader will agree that Neil made a great many errors on the show and in his subsequent blog post.
“Skeptics” are Not Included in the 97% Consensus
Regarding our consensus paper, Ben Pile repeated claims made by Andrew Montford, Richard Betts, and Roy Spencer (Professor Hulme also made similar statements in the comments) suggesting that even climate “skeptics” would fall within our 97% consensus. As I discussed in my second article referenced by Pile, these claims display a lack of understanding of the nuance in our study.
“The “skeptic” papers [in our study] included those that rejected human-caused global warming and those that minimized the human influence. Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer’s abstracts here. Five of his papers were captured in our literature search; we categorized four as ‘no opinion’ on the cause of global warming, and one as implicitly minimizing the human influence.
Thus, contrary to his testimony, Spencer was not included in the 97 percent consensus. In fact his research was included in the fewer than 3 percent of papers that either rejected or minimized the human contribution to global warming.
Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950. The consensus on human-caused global warming is robust.”
To summarize, our study did not merely show that 97% of peer-reviewed studies taking a position on the issue agree that humans are causing global warming, although that conclusion was our main focus because of the public misperception on the subject. The 97% also excluded papers that minimized the human influence on global warming (either implicitly or explicitly stating that humans are responsible for less than 50% of the observed warming since 1950). And we also collected data on papers explicitly quantifying the human influence, among which 96% agreed that humans are the primary driver of global warming since 1950.
Job Well Done by Ed Davey
Our study should certainly not be used to suggest all climate science and policy questions are settled. Ben Pile seemed to suggest Ed Davey did so on the BBC program,
“Yet the survey was cited by Davey himself in defence of the government’s climate policies in the face of changing science.”
I would encourage readers here to go back and watch the interview. The entire discussion of the 97% consensus was limited to the first two minutes of the program. It merely involved Davey pointing out that human-caused global warming has been established in the peer-reviewed literature, and now it’s time to move on and discuss the appropriate policy to address the issue (followed by Andrew Neil making false statements about our paper). Throughout the interview Ed Davey pointed out that it’s important to retain healthy skepticism of the science, but that it’s also important to consider all the available evidence (which Andrew Neil refused to do throughout the show). In fact, Ed Davey displayed a strong understanding of the basic science. I think British citizens should be happy to have such a well informed Energy and Climate Change Secretary.
Pile’s Inaccurate Claims About Our Paper
Finally, Ben Pile made a number of factually inaccurate claims about our paper and its authors,
“Accordingly, rather than being a dispassionate study into scientific opinion, the 97% survey was a superficially academic exercise, intended to obfuscate the substance of the climate debate. Those who fell for it forget that its authors, aside from having their own — shock horror! — agendas, have no expertise in climate science, much less any interest in taking the sceptics’ arguments on.”
As noted above, the purpose of our study was to try and correct the widespread public misperception about human-caused global warming and the scientific consensus on the subject. That was our “agenda” – as it always is – to communicate what the peer-reviewed literature says to the public. Frankly Ben Pile’s comments about our “agendas” are offensive, as are his claims that we have no climate science expertise.
Aside from compiling a vast database summarizing peer-reviewed climate research, four of the co-authors on the Cook et al. (2013) consensus paper also co-authored Nuccitelli et al. (2012) – a climate paper about global heat accumulation, among our many other combined climate science publications. John Cook co-authored a climate textbook, and several of our co-authors are graduate students researching climate science at various universities. Not that our expertise should matter – Ben Pile’s comment on the subject is ad hominem – but for the record, it’s also factually inaccurate, as is much of his blog post.
Contrarianism is Not Skepticism
To summarize, contrary to the widespread public misperception on the subject, there is a consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing climate change. There is also a consensus that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. Correcting that misperception is critical in achieving public support for climate policy, and has been the goal of our discussions about our study. I hope we would all agree that a misinformed public is not in our best interest – we cannot solve a problem without first understanding it.
There are of course remaining climate uncertainties and nuances that are not addressed in our consensus paper, and it’s certainly valid to ask if they should impact our climate policy. However, the argument among “skeptics” seems to be that given remaining uncertainties, we should take a “wait and see” approach to climate change for the time being. That argument is fundamentally flawed. Uncertainty is not our friend in climate science – it simply means the problem could either be larger or smaller than we currently expect. Meanwhile our current climate policy is woefully inadequate in addressing the problem, so even in a best-case scenario we’re not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ultimately the most important thing to bear in mind is that true skepticism requires considering all available evidence. Ben Pile claimed,
“Andrew Neil, in just one show, has done more to promote an active understanding of climate science and its controversies than has been done by the Carbon Brief blog…”
I could not disagree more, precisely because (aside from the many scientific errors he made) Neil refused to consider all the evidence (unlike Pile’s example of the Carbon Brief blog, which is an excellent resource that does consider all the scientific evidence). That approach of only considering selective pieces evidence and ignoring the inconvenient data simply cannot promote an active understanding of climate science. That is not skepticism; it’s contrarianism.
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Comments
141 responses to “An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy”
Thanks, Brigitte
My point in mentioning the “study” by Richard Telford is to provide a way out of rating ABSTRACTS or self-rating PAPERS.
Good ol’ critical REVIEW.
It is more important to know that the PAPERS (no, not the ABSTRACTS) that have been categorized in (7) lack credibility. Providing a critical review of the PAPERS can’t test the validity of Cook & al’s paper, which means that tlitb1’s jibe is irrelevant. Mike Hulme’s point is also circumvented by such an endeavour as Richard Telford: he can’t disagree about opening up the debate on any paper, can’t he?
Critical review is the main way for debates to happen, besides directly in the lichurchur. This is basically what Climate Audit and CA do, incidentally. If we paid due diligence to ALL THE PAPERS [1], we might realize that what the auditors uncover is quite underwhelming.
This would be the way to open up the debate: all it would take is for participants to act in a constructive manner, something even Richard Telford fails to do. (Yes, I’ll tell him so.) I already did elsewhere, including at Mr. Pile’s who, besides deleting my comments and breaking his promise, had the brilliant idea to reveal information about my IP.
Raising concerns is trivial. We can’t even account for the billions invested in Occupy Irak as we speak. That we’re here discussing a paper most of the commenters find unimportant should make you wonder why we are witnessing this sad comedy of menace while waiting for Godot.
Please note, Brigitte, that any topic you accepted so far in the comment thread become eo ipso fair ball. If a commenter maintains that Spencer’s personal beliefs are worth considering is accepted as a valid topic, to point out that Spencer misled Congress under oath stays within that topic. I can give you a rundown of the topics introduced so far by our contrarian crew if you wish.
My work under my name is my honour.
Due diligence,
[1] http://memegenerator.co/instance/40193619
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Wilard – “It is more important to know that the PAPERS (no, not the ABSTRACTS) that have been categorized in (7) lack credibility”
It makes no difference to people who don’t think Cook et al has any credibility — for reasons stated, even if we agree the papers in 7 are as bad as claimed.
It’s not clear from your comment HOW this new paper makes TLITB’s or Hulme’s arguments redundant. The criticisms of Cook et al stand, no matter what anyone finds in #7.
“That we’re here discussing a paper most of the commenters find unimportant…”
You mean Cook et al? It’s a very important paper. It has been cited by the president of the USA, and Ed Davey — in both cases, in ignorance. Hence my post here, about the ‘battle of received wisdoms’. Many people — across the debate — think that the attempt to redefine the consensus besets progress in the debate. Nobody’s saying it’s unimportant. After all, it either defines the consensus, or it accidentally epitomises the worst problems of the debate.
“… should make you wonder why we are witnessing this sad comedy of menace while waiting for Godot.”
All the possible interpretations of WfG make it hard to understand your point.
“Mr. Pile’s who, besides deleting my comments and breaking his promise, had the brilliant idea to reveal information about my IP.”
OK, this is simply invective. Since Brigitte sees fit to publish it, I will respond.
I warned you about trolling behaviour. You continued trolling. Therefore I deleted your comments as promised. Subsequently, I mentioned that you are from Canada — I didn’t reveal your IP address. That narrows you down to one of a possible 34.5 million people. That’s hardly a revelation. If you really wanted us to take your arguments seriously, you wouldn’t hide behind an online avatar. This debate is apparently important — the world is at stake. But you won’t put your real name to your claims.
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My cache might show otherwise.
Mr. Pile asked me to go away and I did as soon as I saw the comment, which I took time to publish on my site. So the most plausible explanation is that Mr. Pile showed remorse regarding his own speech patterns, which I listed in one of the last comments.
Readers interested in Mr. Pile’s understanding of the Precautionary Principle may consult:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.ca/2012/06/costs-of-uncertainty.html
Mr. Pile’s behaviour here, in the sad incident with me on his blog, on his Twitter feed, and recently with Wott (whom he called a “prick”), shows how well he appreciates open debates and stiffled dissidence.
We wish him the best of luck in his Climate Resistance.
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“My cache might show otherwise.”
You continued trolling. You’re still trolling.
Your posts remaining on my site were conditional on you not trolling any more. Why should I publish your comments — which were obtuse, rude, and derailing — on my site? You’re one of about three people I’ve ever deleted. If I thought you were taking the discussion seriously, I wouldn’t have deleted them. But invasions by environmentalism’s PR Police force because they’re angry that Judith Curry like something I wrote isn’t something I’m willing to indulge. Sorry.
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It would be interesting that Mr. Pile may have access to these people’s mind states, whoever they are. Nevertheless, it is irrelevant to the point I’m making, and therefore makes no difference to no one, whatever one may think of Cook & al, or not. This is conceded with Mr. Pile’s “no matter what anyone finds in #7”.
To repeat, by paying due diligence to these papers, Richard Telford reminds of an ancient way to deal with PAPERS which bypasses this futile hurly burly.
Let’s no conflate the arguments here. If by “tlitb1’s argument”, we mean
then all we saw is a proof of assertion of Mr. Pile’s argument himself, which should remind auditors of check kiting. The argument to which this empty claim, checkited by Mr. Pile in his last comment, has been refuted time and time again. Readers should start here:
This argument has nothing to do with Mike Hulme’s argument, which is that Cook & al is irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change. This is an argument insofar as this position can be traced back at least 2009 in his writings. Non nova, sed nove.
Mike Hulme claimed that Cook & al was “poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed”, without argument. Incidentally, this opinion contrasts with the one of Dan Kahan’s:
On the other hand, Mike Hulme and Dan Kahan do seem to agree that Cook & al should have little impact. Dan Kahan even claims that it provides a distraction which could exploit contrarians in starting a food fight. Paraphrasing, of course.
So let’s recap. Mike Hulme considers Cook & al “irrelevant to policy responses”. Dan Kahan considers it “distracting and counterproductive”. How about Mr. Pile? Here it is:
Of course it is, for why else would we read his piercing po-mo op-eds, which we should take in all seriousness because we know his name?
It is a pity that Mr. Pile can’t come with any constructive criticism. How does he propose we should proceed? Does he have any formal specification in mind that would be quasi-contrarian-proof? What should be the protocols and the procedures by which we’d open debates?
Is there anything substantive behind this climate resistance except raising concerns? Not that we mind raising concerns. Concerns are very important.
We thus thank Mr. Pile for all the concerns he raises.
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Willard – “It would be interesting that Mr. Pile may have access to these people’s mind states, whoever they are”
It quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are. If you don’t believe that the Cook paper isolates meaningful categories, then no amount of investigation into any of the categories could serve as a rebuttal to the criticism of the Cook paper.
We then have this tortured language:
“then all we saw is a proof of assertion of Mr. Pile’s argument himself, which should remind auditors of check kiting. The argument to which this empty claim, checkited by Mr. Pile in his last comment, has been refuted time and time again.”
Check kiting, is as far away a form of financial fraud. I’m sure Willard isn’t accusing me of that, so I’m not sure what he is trying to remind readers of. Then we have this routine, ‘this has been refuted…’ line, which is hollow, and points second hand to a further empty claim (Verheggen) — nothing more than vapid assertions — that the Cook paper is a valid measurement of the consensus.
Says Willard: “This argument has nothing to do with Mike Hulme’s argument, which is that Cook & al is irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change.”
Hulme’s claim was that ‘The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue […]. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’.’ Pressed further, Hulme added:
“… the Cook et al. study is hopelessly confused as well as being largely irrelevant to the complex questions that are raised by the idea of (human-caused) climate change. As to being confused, in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements. The irrelevance is because none of the most contentious policy responses to climate change are resolved even if we accept that 97.1% of climate scientists believe that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” (which of course is not what the study has shown). And more broadly, the sprawling scientific knowledge about climate and its changes cannot helpfully be reduced to a single consensus statement, however carefully worded.”
So Hulme offers us a demonstration of the paper’s confusion. His argument was not, per Willard’s claim, limited to saying that the paper was ‘irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change’ — though he says that too.
Hulme’s argument about the authors’ confusion about what the magnitude of agreements represents is an argument that the Cook paper’s categories are ambiguous, and chosen for their impact in the climate debate. The interchangeability of the terms used in the paper, as demonstrated by Hulme, is a revealing insight into the authors’ own confusion. It’s quite possible that they really think that the terms are synonymous. The demonstration of their bad faith, however, is revealed by their anger at being challenged, and their inability to reflect on those criticisms.
Same in Willard:
“Of course it is, for why else would we read his piercing po-mo op-eds, which we should take in all seriousness because we know his name?”
Willard is welcome to take or leave anything I write. And I rather suspect he would ignore it completely had it not been for Judith Curry’s name. After all, the only attention I have received from Willard is following my articles having been favourably referred to by Curry. The explosion of obtuse verbiage from him, on perhaps a dozen or more websites, is not an attempt to criticise my argument, but is instead an attempt to police the lukewarm end of the climate blogosphere. Environmental activists are obsessed by strategy.
“It is a pity that Mr. Pile can’t come with any constructive criticism. How does he propose we should proceed?”
Well we could start by expecting more of the Energy and Climate Change minister than him waving bits of paper with ‘97%’ scrawled on them (in crayon) at his interrogators. We could admit that the debate about the climate consists of more than simply two opposing sides, divided on one simple proposition. We could admit that the attempt to divide the debate on that basis is a strategy, rather than an attempt to form a better understanding of climate science. And we could admit that the tendency to produce catastrophic climate change stories is a political phenomenon, rather than the result of scientific investigation. And we could admit that a great deal of politics gets smuggled in under ‘science’. I say ‘we’…
“Is there anything substantive behind this climate resistance except raising concerns?”
You’re not concerned by climate change?
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“Check kiting, is as far away a form of financial fraud.”
WMTB
“Check kiting, is as far as I can tell, a form of financial fraud”.
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[…] blog that focused on the exchanges between Ed Davey, Andrew Neil, and myself (to which Professor Pearce gave me the opportunity to respond). The author of that post completely ignored the many scientific errors made by Neil and his […]
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[…] blog that focused on the exchanges between Ed Davey, Andrew Neil, and myself (to which Professor Pearce gave me the opportunity to respond). The author of that post completely ignored the many scientific errors made by Neil and his […]
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Mr. Pile’s comment ends up with:
Mr. Pile’s comment starts with
Mr. Pile should make up his mind, whatever it may contain.
Not that it matters much.
The sentence that follows is interesting for two reasons:
First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing. Kahan claims that the paper has merits, but will not achieve what it seeks to do; Hulme claims that the paper has little merit and argues that it will not be is “largely irrelevant”.
Both claims should be distinguished. In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms. In fact, even Dan Kahan realized that providing constructive criticisms might be more coherent with his overall position.
Second, the sentence underlined acts like a preterition. Preteritions are quite useful. For instance, readers might not be interested in any of those questions:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/nov/06/ukip-climate-environment-researcher-questions
Therefore, we won’t raise them. But people who know Barry Woods may expect he will phone UKIP to settle that matter. Only Barry knows the impact of his phone call to express his concerns.
We sure thank Barry for his concerns.
Just like he is using Cook & al as a proxy for his climate résistance, Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.
Check-kiting has currency in the auditing sciences. It denotes a situation S when A endorses B who endorses A in return. Such S has been seen in the Deming Dossier:
Readers can witness how in his monography our beloved Bishop almost turned purple when retelling that story.
Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him. Not that this matters much, as it quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are.
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Mr. Pile’s comment ends up with:
Mr. Pile’s comment starts with
Mr. Pile should make up his mind, whatever it may contain.
Not that it matters much.
The sentence that follows is interesting for two reasons:
First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing. Kahan claims that the paper has merits, but will not achieve what it seeks to do; Hulme claims that the paper has little merit and argues that it will not be is “largely irrelevant”.
Both claims should be distinguished. In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms. In fact, even Dan Kahan realized that providing constructive criticisms might be more coherent with his overall position.
Second, the sentence underlined acts like a preterition. Preteritions are quite useful. For instance, readers might not be interested in any of those questions:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/nov/06/ukip-climate-environment-researcher-questions
Therefore, we won’t raise them. But people who know Barry Woods may expect he will phone UKIP to settle that matter. Only Barry knows the impact of his phone call to express his concerns.
We sure thank Barry for his concerns.
Just like he is using Cook & al as a proxy for his climate résistance, Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.
Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him. Not that this matters much, as it quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are.
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Willard — “First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing.”
Nobody has argued otherwise.
Yet it is as though critics of Cook et al were arguing that there is only one, universal problem with the paper. In fact, a number of critics, from across the spread of opinion, were arguing in each case that there a a number of problems with Cook et al.
“In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms.”
This might be true. But the Cook paper is not just a paper. It was also a PR exercise that caught the attention of Obama and Davey. It became part of the broader conversation. Thus it reveals something about the broader conversation. It was, as has been revealed, a strategic response to a need to re-iterate the consensus.
And in turn, that it has faced criticism from all corners of the climate debate has produced a great deal of anger from the authors and their colleagues, revealing yet more about the character of the political environmentalism that has dominated the debate about the climate, but which is now fighting a rearguard action — not against the sceptics, but against its own erstwhile savants.
The self deception is like performance art…
“Therefore, we won’t raise them.”
But, oh! In the act of not raising the questions, Willard raises the questions… Could he possibly be so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn’t know he doesn’t raise them precisely in order to raise them? Don’t be fooled — Willard knows he’s making a cheap shot. But it’s a salvo delivered, nonetheless in complete ignorance. It’s the same spirit in which the article linked to was written in… A scoop, in which the investigative reporter reports his investigation precisely to such a degree that the reader doesn’t realise the reporter investigated nothing, and found nothing. It’s not unlike watching someone put their actual head up their actual backside…. impressive, until we realise that the only purpose this contortion serves — apart from the spectacle itself, of course — is to report what the acrobat ate for breakfast.
“Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.”
Well, I thank the anonymous Canadian, with an avatar of a character from a cartoon, for the opportunity that he or she has given me. But the point is obvious. Any proposition that divides two perspectives (or a range of perspectives into two) will turn each of the perspectives into an opportunity to ‘wave their arms’. ‘It takes two to Tango’, as they say. Though in Willard’s case — and with the Cook et al army in general — his arm-waving looks more like drowning in shallow water. A lot of splashing, and very little progress towards the shore.
“Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him.”
Willard is wrong. The categories make perfect sense to me, and I understand them completely.
My argument was that Cook et al, and Tom C, and Willard… Don’t understand the categories.
The ambiguity and internal incoherence of the paper and its categories are not an obstacle to understanding them: they are an attempt to frame the climate debate. They are its authors own prejudices. They represent what the authors want the debate to be about. But not even climate scientists agree.
So much for the consensus, then.
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Check-kiting has currency in the auditing sciences. It denotes a situation S when A endorses B who endorses A in return. Such S has been seen in the Deming Dossier:
Readers can witness that in his monography, our beloved Bishop almost turned purple when retelling that story.
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Willard — “Check-kiting has currency in the auditing sciences. It denotes a situation S when A endorses B who endorses A in return. Such S has been seen in the Deming Dossier:”
It is such a shame that this stellar insight has not been used to examine the role of the putative scientific consensus on climate change.
Oh, wait…
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We thank Mr. Pile for his general concerns, and particularly for introducing an indefinite number of critics in the debate. Let’s introduce some more. Everyone should be welcome to debate.
A number of Revolutionary Communist Party members should see that Dan Kahan’s position and Mike Hulme’s position disagree about the quality of Cook & al.
A number of Frank Furedi worshippers should see that Mike Hulme’s argument against the quality of Cook & al rests on a comparing two sentences in the text that are imperfect paraphrases of one another.
A number of Foucaldians would point out that if we’d apply this criteria, we’d have to reject (Hulme, 2009) as utterly confused, as it purports to make a “genealogy” of climate change, whence Pr. Hulme is mostly doing an archeology.
A number of Living Marxism subscribers should recognize that the title of Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.
A number of Serbia genocide deniers should realize that Dana does invoke empirical arguments to support the motivation of his paper and that these arguments can’t be dismissed by appealing to something that Dana did not do.
A number of Sense About Science‘s talking heads should see that Kahan’s argument rests on a false dilemma: nothing prevents the use of his suggestions in parallel to using the 97% project as (e.g.) a single-serving site.
A number of Spike! editorialists could accept Dan Kahan’s point about communicating in a way to reach the contrarian audience, which he portrays as “fearless white hierarchical individualist males”, is orthogonal and not opposite to Dana’s efforts.
An indefinite number of Trotskysts among the Genetic Interest Group, the Progress Educational Trust, the Science Media Centre, and Pro-Choice Forum should be thankful to George Monbiot, whose article connected all the actants of our sentences:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2
Readers interested in communication strategies should consult the RCP/LM Watch website. There’s an interesting story involving University of Derby Education expert Professor Dennis Hayes, Dr Vanessa Pupavac from the University of Nottingham and a third organiser Ciaran Guilfoyle, involved in the IoI’s Culture Wars and Battle of Ideas.
We wish to thank Mr. Pile and Barry Woods for making this kind of comment possible.
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Sorry, this went into the spam filter by mistake. I didn’t see this until Warren alerted me.
Brigitte
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“Dan Kahan’s position and Mike Hulme’s position disagree about the quality of Cook & al.”
It is of no consequence.
” Mike Hulme’s argument against the quality of Cook & al rests on a comparing two sentences in the text that are imperfect paraphrases of one another.”
The statement from Hulme not provided by Willard is:
“As to being confused, in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements.”
Willard says the two sentences are imperfectly synonymous. Hulme says they are ‘two entirely different judgements’. Willard hasn’t offered any meaningful argument that demonstrates any functional equivalence between the two statements that might counter Hulme.
As I and others have pointed out, there are many other problems with dissimilar terms used interchangeably and inconsistency between objects in the Cook paper. Willard has not offered any argument that counters these criticisms.
“if we’d apply this criteria, we’d have to reject (Hulme, 2009) as utterly confused, as it purports to make a “genealogy” of climate change, whence Pr. Hulme is mostly doing an archeology.”
Which criteria? Willard needs also to explain why the genealogy/archaeology problem is fatal for Hulme. It sounds specious, to say the least.
“…the title of Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.”
The problem for Dana, however, is that he isn’t well informed, as has been established by criticism of the Cook paper, which challenges both the paper itself, and Dana’s understanding of it. The Cook paper obfuscates the scientific claims, by reducing them to a meaningless maxim — or even truism — “climate change is happening”.
“Dana does invoke empirical arguments to support the motivation of his paper and that these arguments can’t be dismissed by appealing to something that Dana did not do.”
We are left wondering how an ’empirical argument’ supports a ‘motivation of his paper’, what those ’empirical arguments’ are, and which arguments were dismissed ‘by appealing to something that Dana did not to’, but which he was apparently accused of. Again, a hollow criticism, that reflects Willard’s inability to express his ideas, much less discuss them.
“Kahan’s argument rests on a false dilemma: nothing prevents the use of his suggestions in parallel to using the 97% project as (e.g.) a single-serving site.”
It is of no consequence. However, Kahan’s argument is:
“there’s good reason to believe that the self-righteous and contemptuous tone with which the “scientific consensus” point is typically advanced (“assault on reason,” “the debate is over” etc.) deepens polarization. That’s because “scientific consensus,” when used as a rhetorical bludgeon, predictably excites reciprocally contemptuous and recriminatory responses by those who are being beaten about the head and neck with it.”
If that leaves room for a parallel project, we can make a paraphrase of Willard’s claim, thus:
“Just because it’s a really stupid idea, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it”.
“Dan Kahan’s point about communicating in a way to reach the contrarian audience, which he portrays as “fearless white hierarchical individualist males”, is orthogonal and not opposite to Dana’s efforts.”
Dana’s efforts are intended to polarise the debate, as was demonstrated above and elsewhere, to present a misleading view of the debate as divided on a meaningless proposition, equivalent to “climate change is happening”, whereas disagreements in the climate debate are typically divided on matters of degree and consequence. Thus Cook’s paper is intended as a strategy, rather than to shed light on the substance of debate, and has the consequence, paradoxical to his aims of informing the public, of obfuscating matters of the debate’s substance. Hence my post on this site, which define some of the problems of a ‘battle of received wisdoms’ that follow asserting a ‘consensus without an object’.
What remains of Willards infantile and ad-hominem trolling is that I stand accused of being a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, I worship Frank Furedi, I am a Foucaldian, I subscribe to Living Marxism, I deny Serbian genocide, I have something to do with or am related in some way to Sense About Science, and I am a Spiked editorialist.
It’s true that I write for Spiked. I am introduced as a writer for Spiked on the previous post on this blog. You can read my articles at Spiked here http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/author/Ben%20Pile
However, I am not now and never have been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which as far as I am aware, folded in the mid-1990s, nearly 20 years ago.
I am not now, and never have been a subscriber to Living Marxism magazine, or its later version “LM”, which also folded about fifteen years ago. The two or three copies I did buy — and I was very young when I did buy them — were bought because I was outraged that anybody could deny the reality of climate change, which is what several LM authors had been accused of doing.
I have never been involved in the Sense About Science project, except to go to one event in Oxford in 2007, which featured speakers drawn largely from the Hadley Centre and Met Office, and was advertised thus:
“On Saturday 17th March 2007, leading weather and climate scientists launched our guide to weather and climate predictions for the public at St John’s College, Oxford. The presenters gave a fascinated audience a whirlwind ride through the complex world of numerical models, including recent techniques for combining predictions and making probabilistic forecasts, and helped them to make sense of the IPCC assessments of the impact of CO2 on the climate.” – http://www.senseaboutscience.org/news.php/26/weather-and-climate#sthash.ADPpJh7c.dpuf
I met Prof. Myles Allen there — is he a denier? If there were any climate deniers there at all, much less sceptics, they would have been most disappointed by the presentations.
As far as I am able to tell, the arguments that have earned LM magazine to have been charged with ‘Serbian genocide denial’ consist of no more than pointing out that the moralisation of the war by the Western press led to the internationalisation and escalation and brutality of the conflict, which was already muddy and consisted of no such simple categories as goodies and baddies, oppressors and victims, and that the tendency to moralise provided western governments with a pretext for self-serving interventions. Far from ‘denying’ atrocities, then, LM magazine upset the sensibilities of the seemingly liberal ‘humanitarian interventionists’, who it held culpable for deepening them.
Foucault? Really? I’m not sure where this is from. Perhaps Willard is just trying to extend the ‘deniers are anti-science’ claim. However, Willard will note, per Sokal and Bricmont, that the postmodernists were not as much accused of being ‘anti-science’ as they were accused of misappropriating scientific terminology. Willard might want to take a fresh look at Cook et al after reading Trangressing the Boundaries…
Anyone interested in where Willard is getting his muck-raking from may want to read my rebuttal to the idea that ‘links’ between individuals and organisations are sufficient to dismiss inconvenient arguments at http://www.climate-resistance.org/2010/06/inner-spin-outer-chaos.html .
“We could make more of an issue about the connections between Monbiot, Lucas, Goldsmith, and Spinprofiles’ connections to and sympathies with the British establishment, ie, hypocrisy. But our point here is more to try to explain why Spinprofiles perspective is unwittingly spinning. Lucas, Monbiot, Spinwatch, the UK’s new, green political establishment, are a network, the associations of which consist in each member’s disorientation.
[…]
“The Spinners see a problem in the mere fact of association – it implies something underhand and malign – but fail to see themselves as associated. It is as if, in order to compensate for their failures, they now seek the real estate above the petty affairs of mere humans: people who find themselves associated by virtue of shared perspectives or interests must obviously have only been brought together on a dangerous myth, because there can be no objective basis for their coming together. Only the spinners are brought together by truth.
“This inability to identify or reflect on their own perspective is nothing new. It’s the same symptom of any of the alienated 9-11 truther, or NWO conspiracy theorists. The world exists as a huge mass of connections, and the connections can be read off to imply that Queen Elizabeth II is related to George W Bush, and so both are implicated in something or other, thereby proving that both belong to some extra-terrestrial race of lizard-Jews. But what is being expressed in such views is not as much a perspective on the world, as these individuals’ inability to understand it.”
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REF – “Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.”
It seems there are those that are interested in accurate science and those that are interested in messaging science for policy and persuading the public. Is it to be called a concern troll, to request accuracy in science. Whilst comment is robust at Guardian, it seems at Skeptical Science being off message is not allowed.
IE my comments (and even readers disagreeing with me!) on the topic were deleted, despite least one reader agreeing I had a point:
Is a request for accuracy, quoting Professor Richard Betts from a BBC article so bad, so off message to SkS’s followers that it must be deleted… reproduced below, screenshot prior to Skeptical Science moderation here:
My SkS Comment (missing, )
So I was not ‘nit picking’ with respect to dangerous ref comment 1?
I can understand that John might have been a bit overwhelmed with the media attention (ie the interview I quoted) that the Obama acount tweeted, and in the moment missed the ‘dangerous’ misrepresentation in the tweet linking the word to his paper, which it clearly does (despite protests to the contrary earlier), if we look at the tweet, as the url embedded links to Reuters and quotes from Dana and John about the paper.
Barack Obama
@BarackObama Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://OFA.BO/gJsdF
Of course those interviews are out there now, very hard to correct misinformation when its out there (ref Lewadowsky and Cook’s paper on this subject) But like with Richard Betts tweet, perhaps good judgement, even now to make the effort, maybe a tweet, to say, the ‘dangerous’ is not a finding of our paper, please follow link for what the paper does say, – and of course in that url you could link to other work that does support dangerous
Pedantic or accuracy? I’ll side with absolute accuracy when dealing with any media (like Prof Richard Betts)
Richard explained the problems with the media in a BBC article, when he describes the journalist is it global warming ring around.
Richard Betts:
“The question is: do climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on “our side” against the climate sceptics?
It’s easy to blame the media and I don’t intend to make generalisations here, but I have quite literally had journalists phone me up during an unusually warm spell of weather and ask “is this a result of global warming?”
When I say “no, not really, it is just weather”, they’ve thanked me very much and then phoned somebody else, and kept trying until they got someone to say yes it was”. – Richard Betts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8451756.stm
Thus, by his insistence on accuracy and correcting the media, which he has done on a number of occasions, Richard has built trust in the sceptic community. My earlier comment (15) offered a way forward, starting with what we can agree on
http://www.skepticalscience.com/making-science-work-ben-pile-rebuttal.html#96792
Prof Richard Betts correcting the Guardian:
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/20494695
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/14877411
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/14883185
Richard speaking about Bishop Hill and talking about Dr Tamsin Edwards
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/14883950
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Has everyone read Dana’s ‘concern troll’ Guardian article… commenting on Warren and Tamsin.
link and my response:
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/25672676
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Dear all,
Comments on this blog post are now closed. Thanks for all your contributions!
Brigitte and Warren
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