The Climate Monoliths
What does the rancorous climate change debate have in common with the rancorous debate over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan?
Nothing, really. But I’m going to make some comparisons anyway, because as readers of this blog know, I aim to break down divisions. So there was an excellent NYT op-ed several days ago by William Dalrymple, in which he wrote:
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith.
I see a similar monolith in the way climate skeptics (the deniers!) are portrayed by their opponents, and I see a similar monolith in the way mainstream climate scientists (the catastrophists!) are portrayed by their opponents. The climate debate is both shaped and poisoned by these two monolithic stereotypes.
That brings me to this thoughtful post on the mosque controversy over at Savage Minds, and this passage:
Clearly the United States would be better off if our leaders, journalists, and citizens knew a little more about Islam. But there are also some lessons here about the semiotics of racism which I would like to think offer some insights beyond the 24 hour news cycle.
Substitute climate science for Islam and hyperbole for racism. Would that constitute another analogy?
A recurring theme among the CAGW and AGW scientists is anger at being accused of fraud, conspiracy, and deception by (deniers, skeptics, non-warmists). They seem genuinely puzzled at why so many people are apparently so willing to accuse them or to speak openly of their lack of trust. A common response is to assume that the (d,s,n) is anti-science, funded by some CO2 producer, etc.
The community has been awash in propaganda like Al Gore’s film and the drumbeat from ‘some’ CAGW folks for many years that the word as we know it is ending. There have been multiple predictions of sea level rise, droughts, floods, more and stronger hurricanes, drowning polar bears, etc.
While it is unfair for the AGW and CAGW scientists to be treated as part of the group responsible for the preparation and dissemination of the propaganda, is it reasonable to expect ordinary observers to know and keep track of who actually was responsible? I am reasonably sure that the Himalayan glacier melting forecast was an intentional lie placed into the IPCC report to attempt to gain popular and government report for CO2 mitigation action. Should this tar and feather all the IPCC contributors because they were part of the effort? Obviously not, but how many contributors have looked at what was done and publicly insisted that the perpetrators accept responsibility for that (lie, error, misstatement) and further insist that the same folks remove themselves from further participation in IPCC reports? None as far as I can tell.
Trust was lost because some scientists exaggerated, overstated confidence levels, deliberately deceived, engaged in or supported propaganda efforts. Trust won’t be regained until y’all figure out how to separate those who are doing scientific research from those with a policy agenda. A policy agenda would have maybe been sort of ok if it hadn’t crossed the line so many times between science and overstated or fabricated data.
Continuing to attack the motivations of skeptics isn’t productive. Separating science from advocacy is productive. Trust won’t happen this year and maybe not next year, but is a worthwhile goal.
One thing that skews comparisons of attitude and behaviour in the climate controversies is failure to account for who holds the levers of power.
Who holds the data?
Who designs funding programs and provides the funding?
Who staffs the journals?
The corollary is then, who has influence in the media, who gets invited to present to legislatures, and so on. And the answer is clearly the consensus.
Obviously, the AGW/CAGW consensus does. So the question becomes ‘have they abused those levers of power?’ I think the answer is clearly yes.
So while there is undoubtedly a very large number of skeptics who make wild and non-scientific claims, and a smaller number of institutions that have provided money and/or a forum for other skeptics, it seems insignificant to me when compared to outright abuse of power.
And I realise that it isn’t fair to the majority of scientists who have had nothing to do with shenanigans, and it isn’t fair to mostly look past some of the antics of the skeptics.
But to me it’s comparing felonies with peccadillos. Abuse of institutional power versus making some weird statements.
Tom, I’m starting to think you’ve made this personal. Just look at the first sentence of your next to last graph.
I understand that some climate scientists have become (willingly or not) representative faces of the climate science community. But I’m sorry, seems to me that indicting that majority because of the actions/behavior of a few. I think this only perpetuates the stereotype.
It really suits both camps to caricature their opponents. But it’s not helpful to constructive debate.
<a href=”http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886” title=”Because As We All Know, The Green Party Runs the World.”>Because As We All Know, The Green Party Runs the World.</a>
Keith, I think you’ve read Tom wrong there, and I think Tom has it exactly right.
Using (or abusing) your analogy, compare and contrast isolated hate-related street crime with institutionalised racism in the halls of power. Neither are acceptable. One of them is perhaps to some extent inevitable, the other should be wholly insufferable.
Argh.. I hate not having an edit button. I hit tab, then space.. submitted!
I meant to go on to say.. in real life there are obviously appropriate mechanisms in place to address street crime. There are no mechanisms in this institution to address institutionalised failings.
Hank (4)
When I was an editor, one of the things that drove me batty was when I got story pitches that didn’t actually make a pitch, but instead would say something like this: “what do you think about this [substitute link to another news story] as an idea.”
I’d never click on the link and automatically reject the pitch (which was a no-brainer anyway.)
This is a long way of saying, can you provide a pithy overview of the articles you want us to link to? I bet readers would find that helpful in determining if they wanted to read the actual article. Thanks.
Well, Keith does have a point, although thanks for the defense, SimohH. I’m declaring personal bias in my comment, and I’ll repeat it here.
I don’t claim my reaction is fair. I claim it is within norms and predictable, and to a certain extent justifiable.
I think to rationalise it, I would have to look at the capacity to harm held by both sides–and again, the CAGW faction has greater capacity to cause harm.
But I won’t pretend that’s anything other than a rationalization.
Sorry, I know folks would like to have an edit button, but I’ve looked into it and evidently such a thing is not compatible with this particular comment software. Drives me crazy too.
It’s just a strategem to make your blog look like it has more comments. 😉
Keith, when you started this enterprise did you make a conscious choice to orient it towards a comments-driven blog? Do you feel like you get enough of an opportunity to get your views on the topics in front of people and placed where you want them?
Tom (11)-
Not at all. Initially, I viewed this blog as my shingle on the web, a place where I could pop off on a variety of topics that interested me and mix it up in typical blogospheric fashion.
But I soon learned that I didn’t much care to be a blog pundit (who cares what I think, anyway!) and I started using the site more as reporting vehicle, doing the kinds of Q & A’s and interviews people have now become accustomed to seeing. (Still like to take my occasional pot shot, though.)
It was only after I started doing more of that (a turning point was the week-long Judith Curry Q & A’s, which triggered these incredible reader threads), that I realized I could maybe build a diverse, salon-type community.
I quickly learned that the only way to do this was by reigning in all the nasties and eliminating the flame wars–in other words, instituting a code that demanded civility. That really seems to be key. I don’t like to edit comments (too time-consuming), so it’s taken a few months, but by and large, people seem to be respectful of one another here now. I’ve only got a handful of people on moderation (but am always willing to take someone off, after a demonstration of good behavior.)
I’m now pretty much committed to making this a reader-friendly forum. I’m still searching for a better comment software to better facilitate the threads. I’m also aware that the signal to noise ratio can become an issue with increased volume, as Zeke points out here on the previous thread. That is (increased traffic), of course, a problem that any blogger would welcome. But I do wonder how to overcome the noise problem should I be so lucky to steadily gain new readers. I’m not sure it’s in the cards, anyway.
I’m also quite ambivalent about this whole enterprise, since I don’t paid for it. For the time being, I just keep telling myself it has intangible value that can’t be measured in dollars. That rationalization has an expiration date determined (with good cause) by my wife.
Relating to what Tom and SimonH said and maybe reinforcing their view, in my opinion the groups will not come together unless the climate scientists change their behavior. Fair or not, it was the ‘climate scientist’ community that overstated confidence intervals and tried to ramp up CO2 mitigation efforts based at least in part on science that really wasn’t there.
Climbing out of that relationship hole begins when those who want to leave the aggrieved scientist community encourage the more passionate CAGW folks to stop digging the hole deeper. Stop the ad hominem attacks on people who ask questions, even if you think they are trolls or ‘anti science’ whatever that means.
I don’t think the voting American public will support any mitigation expense until and unless the scientists actually admit past mistakes and take responsibility for doing better in the future. As long as people like Anthony Watts (WUWT) can find and report on poorly situated temperature stations and station data adjustments that appear to be warmist fabrications, without any response or correction, lots of folks will refuse to trust the data and the science that depends on the data. WUWT is just an example; there are others.
Maybe it doesn’t matter to most of the scientific community who think there is legitimate science behind the C in CAGW, but my opinion is that the current approach is never going to work. It isn’t the media’s failure to report or the public’s failure to comprehend; it is the behavior of the advocates that is at fault. Absent a major effort to rebuild trust by enforcing openness, independent verification and replication, and maybe some humility, nothing will move the voters until and unless the sea level does actually rise or the palm trees actually start growing in London.
The typical journalist’s attempt at symmetry fails again.
Let me try again. There are more than two camps.
I appreciate most of Judith Curry’s efforts to engage the McIntyre camp, a very peculiar and I think unprecedented culture, and one which conceivably could make a positive contribution, much as I cringe when she habitually wheels out the offensive “climategate” word as if it had any meaning other than an a marker of cultural hostility to climate science as a culture.
I think it’s generally understood among postnormal climate scientists that this group is unique, and while not unrelated to the actual funded forces of denial, is not totally controlled by them either. How well that understanding propagates through the other eight camps is something to be discussed for each of the other eight camps.
It is nevertheless the case that the McIntyre group on the whole has a very skewed picture of the climate disruption problem and the science behind it; that merchants of doubt do encourage and support them and their skewed picture; that journalistic cowardice and/or incompetence furthers this confusion; and that their doubts infect the general population and contribute to the increasingly dangerous inertia and defeatism on these matters.
What MT calls journalistic cowardice to me seems much more like the proper journalistic tendency towards querying bastions of power finally emerging after 20 years of being a bit of a lapdog.
I’m glad he has been recognizing for some months now that a pro and con segmentation is inadequate for description, discussion and engagement, even if I think he’s overly facile in describing the McIntyre camp. I think we all have Judith to thank for that, with a h/t to our host as well.
And Keith, my wife’s patience wears thin periodically. Good days, bad days. But the success of Mosh’s and my book helped–something you might consider.
Michael (14):
I know there are more than two camps. My post implies as much. What I’m suggesting is that the debate is dominated by just two camps–but should be widened to other camps along the spectrum. You would obviously like that not happen.
Tom (15)–
A book is always a possibility, but it has to be the right fit. It’s highly unlikely that I would do anything climate change related.
The religious analogy is good.
The alarmists share some core beliefs with a few variations in creed and variations in what they want to do. They also want to force their beliefs on everyone else.
The skeptics are the atheists. We only have one thing in common – we don’t want the religion forced on us.
The whole thing is asymmetrical – it’s not the red team vs. the blue team. It’s the green team vs. people who don’t want to play.
This means that the green team must take more responsibility for people on their own side.
When exaggerated or untrue claims are made – the green team must discipline its own members.
This does not apply in reverse – I have no connection with other atheists and I am not responsible for what they say or do.
Jack (17):
Hmm, you conveniently ignore that the hardcore skeptic wing (think Monckton and Morano, for example) are just as culpable in perpetuating one of those monoliths.
Keith, can you explain this please I don’t get it.
I’m au fait with Monckton. What is his monolith ? What are its objectives and its means?
> dominated by just two camps
These?
“the IPCC, with all the uncertainties” and
“anything but the IPCC, no matter what the contradictions”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/contradictions.php
Jack (20):
I’m not going to try to convince you of what role Monckton and Morano play in advancing that particular monolith, since you seem to have your mind made up already. Instead, let me elaborate by pointing you to this introduction I wrote to the discussion I had with Lucia and Bart:
“But I would argue that only the two opposite ends of the climate spectrum in the blogosphere are represented in the media and the public debate. That, in my view, has contributed to an oversimplification of climate issues and helped exacerbate polarization of the public dialogue.”
Here’s another post of mine, juxtaposing Morano and Romm, that also makes my point.
If it helps, I used to be a passive believer. My tipping point was the government policy on lightbulbs. Everything on the planet going down the gurgler and the solution … change our lightbulbs.
This was so feeble that I started to investigate for myself and I found the climate stuff to be an incoherent mess.
A simple example is Al Gore’s claims about Pacific Islanders being moved to New Zealand as their island sank beneath the sea. I was living there at the time and I wondered why I never saw this on TV. Well I never saw it because it never happened.
Thanks for that , Keith.
So it’s the Pope vs. Richard Dawkins, in the media and public debate.
But there is still an asymmetry: the Pope is responsible for his priests and the priests are responsible for the Pope.
But atheists are not responsible for Dawkins nor vice versa.
And we don’t have to invent a “better religion” to explain what’s going on.
“What I’m suggesting is that the debate is dominated by just two camps”“but should be widened to other camps along the spectrum. You would obviously like that not happen. ”
I not trying to split a spectrum into a two sided debate. I am saying that this is not a spectrum! It’s more complicated than a spectrum! There are multiple issues being conflated, and the conflation is clearly to the advantage of the obfuscators and delayers. I reject the idea of a “spectrum”.
On the contrary, since I am in none of the three camps that get most of the attention (the self-proclaimed referees like yourself being the third) I certainly do want the conversation opened up.
But I also want to keep making the point that we are not just discussing preferences here, much though we should be. We are constantly dragged into discussing propositions that are either factual or otherwise, as a precursor to policy decisions that must be made urgently. (On the balance of evidence, about twenty years ago, to keep costs down.)
People keep dragging the policy discussion back to the facts of the matter insofar as the physics of the situation is concerned. They are simply wrong to do so. These are well-enough established to move on to to other questions insofar as policy is concerned, which we should be trying to do.
The problem is not just the tireless nitpicking about some of the more pedestrian aspects of the science. The problem is the concerted effort, which is easy to spot even in the present thread, to use that nitpicking to derail the policy conversation.
This doesn’t mean climate physics is bulletproof, but at this point the idea that it is grossly wrong as to the broad outlines is starting to be a very long shot. And even at 50/50, the risks are severe enough that we ought to be taking the physical consensus seriously.
I want to debate impacts, risks, strategies, as much as the next guy, but somehow people keep dragging it all back to absurdly minor trivia about lake varves and airport tarmac. Almost as if they wanted to change the subject…
Judith thinks it’s good for science that people take this unusual interest. Well, that’s fine. More hands make light work, and all. Feel free; this indeed might be a good thing for science in the end.
But insofar as this is being used to derail the policy discussion, it’s a disaster. Don’t be telling us that the stuff we are 90% or 99% sure of isn’t even plausible. Let’s at least let the policy process proceed with even a 50% discount. At this point, treating the consensus position as even 45% likely would be a huge step forward.
Because these are the most important questions: how bad would a given level of climate disruption be, how can we prepare for what we can no longer avoid, and how can we avoid the worst of it? And for most people, these are also the most interesting questions. And they are increasingly urgent. What’s good or bad for climate science as Judith and Gavin and Roger and I understand “climate science” is really a triviality by comparison to these other sorts of questions. What matters is that the longer we delay, the more adaptation costs we face and the more mitigation costs we face; it seems likely that there is a point where they simply become overwhelming and modern civilization as a whole ends up at risk.
So forgive me if I roll my eyes at the lake varve controversy. Whatever a varve is.
MT
I think the strategy of the skeptics is to keep talking about airport tarmac for another ~12 years or so and by then, we would have conducted another large-scale geo-policy-ologic experiment of knowingly not doing anything about all the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by the first experiment.
I am only half-joking here. We’re almost there – let’s just bump off two more COPs… We’ll have hard real-world data in our hands – 70 years of fossil fuel burning – what did it do to the climate?
The fact that we are talking incessantly about the climate rather than doing something about it should tell us something about how ‘urgent’ the climate issue is.
Shub, we are talking rather than doing because any meaningful action must be agreed to by all major nations, not because we shouldn’t have started to do something twenty years ago.
Waiting until year X to react causes little detectable change until year X+30. This is why politicians will never address it until the public demands it, and the public will never demand it until they understand it. If they don’t understand it until it is catastrophic, then there will be at least 30 years of the catastrophes getting worse and then not particularly getting better.
That’s been said a million times already. What’s new is that we can now say we are probably seeing the first signs of real catastrophe. Yet politicians are still delaying and people are still confused.
The problem(s) may be Global but the solution(s) can only be local or national. Sorry! Facts is facts. I don’t think that it helps the AGW cause to have Al Gore as a spokesman either; he has the effect of turning off half the world whenever he opens his mouth. I personally think he’s a sleeze.
The skeptics are the atheists. We only have one thing in common ““ we don’t want the religion forced on us.
So murdering thousands of innocent civilians is justified in the name of a religion? It was the US, our secular society, and the liberty it values far more than any particular religious doctrine that justified deadly hatred. The existence of such an evil culture was an unforgivable offense to God (the same one Christians and Jews worship, but doesn’t exist to atheists). Our secular culture and the country that permitted it was the target on 9/11. One other plain destroyed the Pentagon, not the National Cathedral. Islam is the only religion being imposed on us with deadly force. Are the only Americans opposed to the glaring cultural insensitivity by erecting a shine to the religion used to justify death and destruction, those with Judeo-Christian values? Which group is so motivated by religious hatred, they willingly support Islam? In order to have respect for the our dead, is belief a soul necessary? Are atheists so spiteful toward their fellow Americans, that inflicting emotional pain on Christians matters much more than your liberty or human rights?
It’s sad to realize the expression, “there are no atheists in foxholes” might be accurate after all.
I know Keith disapproves of rants, but nobody seems to be getting the absurd interpretation of history.
Ref – laursaurus Says:
August 19th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
People are only human. When dreamers dream they rarely think of life’s little limitations. In fact, I understand that I’m not the only one who thinks they can fly (in a dream).
Fanatics (religious and otherwise) tend to be their own worst enemy. People, being people, tend to get fed up, become fanatics themselves, and slaughter the other side demanding “unconditional surrender”. People are only human. What else can they be?
MT, you have me confused. You say you want to talk about science. Then you say talking about science is being used as a delaying tactic. You have said that policy doesn’t interest you. Now you say policy is the only important thing.
I appreciate a moveable feast as much as the next hungry writer, but this is… well, it is what it is.
I too have no wish to debate the science. The basics are well understood and for the more interesting and esoteric matters, we are not likely to have good answers for at least 30 years. And I think we should not wait that long. But when I come to your site and offer to construct a roadmap for mitigating technologies, I get insults.
What is it you really want?
Laursaurus (25):
Hooh boy, you’re conflating a bunch of things here. Worse than than, you seem to completely miss the point of my post.
I’d like to respond to other comments in the thread, but can’t till later tonight.
Tom, fair enough. This time you have a point.
I don’t think we should de debating the science. But somebody ought to do a better job of explaining the science, so that people’s policy suggestions will be realistic. (by realistic I mean what RPJr means when he says “unrealistic”.) I’m looking for a way to contribute to that effort, because that’s the best way I can contribute.
Regarding the energy roadmap, I take a libertarian position, just as Hansen does. Ramp up a stiff tax (or a per capita cap) on carbon, rebate it for sequestration, enforce reasonable regulations on other tech, subsidize early research in the usual ways, and let the chips fall where they may! Let the market decide.
I suspect nuclear would win on a level playing field, but we have to just let the game play out. But I don’t have a horse in the race.
No, it wasn’t in response to your post. I understood that you were playing sort of a mad libs with the names and the political debates being almost interchangeable in the way they are portrayed.
The knee-jerk Left wing American is really stretching the facts to simplistically describe this as racist hatred. BTW, we elected an American with African heritage with a decisive majority. I am very disappointed that his main concern is how the Muslim world views him, than the citizens of the country who elected him feels like betrayal.
This a group of people that treats even a cartoon is grounds execution. …..I better cut myself off before I get going again….
Laursaurus (34):
Let me try again, but this time by directing your attention to the issue I was using to make my comparisons. Read the NYT op-ed I cited. Do you understand that you are treating Islam as a monolith? The point is that’s it’s not.
MT, I don’t think many libertarians are going to sign on for something that begins with the words ‘Ramp up a stiff tax…’
Maybe I’m wrong. And I would support a modest tax ($12/ton) and agree to have it reviewed against pre-determined benchmarks at regular intervals with the ability to raise or lower it. But I doubt if you’d call that stiff…
The climate debate does seem to spend far too much time discussing issues which are settled science. Co2 causes warming, the Arctic ice is dissappearing. Oh and a lot of discussion about medieval temperature – which in my mind is an issue of unsettled science, but no practical relevance to the question of what will happen in the next 100 years.
But there are some issues that are much less certain which are well worth discussing which I rarely read about. Will the frequency of hurricanes increase? Will there be more droughts, and if so where? Is the expansion of the tropics due to Co2, natural factors, or some of each? Is there a link between AGW and more frequent blocking patterns? Will changes in temperature, water availabiltiy and Co2 fertilisation result in a net increase or decrease in agricultural productivity?
Many of these issues matter a lot and seem to me to be issues of genuine uncertainty. I think that the climate debate has been cast into a mold of ‘catastrophe’ vs ‘denial’ very strongly. Perhaps I contribute in my way to this as what I consider ‘denial’ pushes some big buttons in me personally, and I do my best to oppose such. And I see the result of this debate being initially delay as the public is uncertain. However I believe public opinion is swinging, is probably more accepting of climate change then most of us in the blogosphere appreciate, and the biggest issue is probably not ‘denial’, but apathy. And a possible consequence is that once the ‘denial’ position becomes obviously absurd, the ‘catastrophe’ position will win by default, and people will clamour for something to be done, and this something may be a knee-jerk reaction will be something that would not make any sense from a cost-benefit point of view.
And of course if the public demands action on climate change, what will the government do? If the government takes action that hurts the economy, this will hurt people, and people who are hurt economically will be more likely to vote the existing government out. So the ideal solution for a democratically elected government is to convince the electorate that everything possible is being done to solve climate change, without actually doing anything that will harm individual’s economic situation.
The fact that so many governments around the world are taking some action on climate change, and that renewable energy has grown so much in past years is quite interesting to me. Either I’m overly cynically and various officials have been willing to make personal sacrifices to their re-election chances for the sake of the global good. Or the action taken to date on climate has basically no real cost to the economy at all.
p.s. by ‘denial’ I mean beliefs that can be represented by the claim ‘Co2 does not cause any warming’ and certainly excludes those who agree the basic Co2 radiative forcing is reasonable, but believe feedbacks are not positive, etc.
Indeed, many libertarians may not sign up for a stiff tax, but that is because they are still confused.
Hopefully they can be brought to understand understand that the lack of a stiff tax on carbon is actually a subsidy on carbon. That is, the costs have been externalized and are borne by everyone. Notably it is a subsidy from the poor to the rich, which ought to offend libertarians and liberals alike.
Michael Hauber, nice observations.
Most of the uncertainties you raise that really are part of climate science probably will not be answered with great confidence. We need to make policy based on the range of uncertainties that are out there now, because progress on small scale climate modeling is limited, slow, and very hard to validate. So the rough answer to the quite germane questions you ask in the second paragraph is “maybe” on all fronts. Waiting for a solid answer, though, is not the optimal plan.
Regarding the last question, though, “Will changes in temperature, water availabiltiy and Co2 fertilisation result in a net increase or decrease in agricultural productivity?”, the answer appears to be “decrease”, because there is also the increase in year-over-year variability and in severe events, which will make agriculture increasingly risky. Also regarding that question, that is not part of what I would call “climate science” at all (that is, emerging from the meteorological and oceanographic traditions). The others, though, are very much open questions. It is possible that only time will tell, and the answers to any of them may tell us that we’d have been better off not knowing.
MT: Hopefully they can be brought to understand understand that the lack of a stiff tax on carbon is actually a subsidy on carbon. That is, the costs have been externalized and are borne by everyone. Notably it is a subsidy from the poor to the rich, which ought to offend libertarians and liberals alike.
So… Not enforcing a stiff tax on a given event is now a subsidy? And, specifically, a subsidy from the poor, given to the rich? Really? Is the lack of a stiff tax on anything else (can I pick?) also a subsidy? Do I also get to pick who the winners and losers are from this hypothetical non-activity?
This is crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
I’m with Michael on the merits but I think TerryMN probably captures the mood of most…
Michael Tobis (38): “Hopefully they can be brought to understand understand that the lack of a stiff tax on carbon is actually a subsidy on carbon. That is, the costs have been externalized and are borne by everyone. Notably it is a subsidy from the poor to the rich, which ought to offend libertarians and liberals alike.”
If the “absence of a stiff tax on carbon” is a “subsidy” (Orwell help us), then who exactly is being subsidized? The sale of coal and oil is not the primary cause of added atmospheric CO2, it is the consumption of those fossil fuels. If such a tax is enacted, it will be passed on to purchasers/consumers, making it in reality a consumption tax. And of course, like every other consumption tax, it will affect the poor so many claim to care so much about more than any others.
The Hansen (and Tobis?) answer to this is to give government checks, Orwellian “dividends,” to those same consumers. So we will tax the people to take away their pretend subsidy, and then use the proceeds to subsidize their energy purchases? Libertarians are confused? Some people may be cracker jack scientists, but I wouldn’t let them run a newspaper stand in the real world.
Now none of this matters if you are a tenured professor or government funded scientist, yet. Governments will be the last to be scaled back. But for those of you claiming to care about “the people,” how about just a little more thought on the issue of the real consequences of what you advocate. You know, the effect on the ones already settled with trillions of dollars of debt and 9+ percent unemployment (grossly understated by the way) for the foreseeable future….
If you can’t do that, how about just leaving the English language alone for starters. A tax is not an investment, a transfer payment is not a dividend, and the absence of a tax is sure as hell not a subsidy. You think scientists are losing credibility now, keep on trying to redefine the English language this way. But please, keep up the class warfare rhetoric. It’s makes the real motives behind certain advocacy so much more obvious, especially to those pesky voters.
MT makes a good point about externalities, and then dives into the weeds with some economic wackiness.
CO2 is in fact an excellent of an externality and should be regulated as such, the atmosphere is pretty much as “commons” as it gets. The real rub here is the assigning a cost to a ton of CO2. I see no objective way to do this. Depending on direct measurable effects it could be anywhere from pennies to dollars. My real worry is that the assignment of this price point is going to be subject to black magic and politics with little to no objective assessment possible.
So whats the plan to protect this from political capture by rent seekers ? I see a subjective value assigned to a commodity enforced through political power with lots of cash changing hands. Nope, no way anything could go wrong here !
Also that word subsidies: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy
How about a main stream CAGW newspaper monolith..
I would appear to be totally blocked from commenting at all on their blog.. (CiF – Guardian)
An article which Bob Ward (Grantham Climate change institute ) attacks, Andrew Montford’s ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ (aka – Bishop Hill).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/19/climate-sceptics-mislead-public?msg=a&showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Judith Curry recommended that Gavin read this book, to more understand sceptics. Why did the Guardian give Bob Ward this froum anyway?
I merely tried to say in the Guardian comments section:
Let Andrew respond, (he is blocked as well) and put a link to his website, response..
Yet the Guardian, monolithic pillar of the CAGW alarmism, will not allow any of my comments.. (or others, yet….)
I expect that of various blogs, but serious MSM newspapers usually have more intelectual honesty..
I like Fred Pearce (Guardian) after meeting him at the Guardian’s climategate debabte, he came across well (and hos book – The Climate files). I wonder if he is aware (as a respected environmental journalist) of their ‘dishonest’ moderation.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/19/glaring-inaccuracies-and-misrepresentations.html?currentPage=2#comments
The response to Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr. and Ferdinand Engelbeen points to a pernicious problem on your side of this issue Keith. The attempt to escape from reality and those, including, you, Tom Fuller and (s)he whose name must not be mentioned, are holding that door open so that we all can drop through it over the cliff Wily Coyote like are the real problem.
Michael and I both recognize that there are real choices to be made, and that we might not agree with those choices, but whether there is a substantial greenhouse effect and whether increasing CO2 has been caused by burning fossil fuel, and many other things are not in that category. Thinking that climate sensitivity is substantially below 2K is one of those things. Why don’t you write about the tactics that have brought a substantial number of people to believe things that are simply wrong?
The response of the CAGW community to Climategate was much more monolithic than I anticipated. I expected that most climate scientists would be outraged by the behavior of the Climategate culprits but, for the most part, they weren’t and still aren’t.
The CAGW scientists don’t seem to understand how deeply Climategate (and the non response by climate scientists) wounded the reputation of climate science. They also don’t seem to understand the current political reality of getting a climate bill passed. It was a disaster for CAGW activists that the overwhelmingly Democratic senate and house could not pass a climate bill. If not now, when will a climate bill ever be passed? Certainly the number of Democrat senators and representatives will be reduced significantly in the next election.
CAGW activists should focus on improving their arguments to stop the erosion of public support. Arguing from authority isn’t working. Saying that the science is settled, claiming that you thoroughly understand the global climate system just isn’t believable to many. The last IPCC report was quite clear that many of the factors in climate are poorly understood (effect of clouds, cloud formation, biological impact (especially on cloud formation), solar impact on cloud formation, etc). Hansen’s predictions on ocean heat content have been way off for several years. It is going to take many years before climate science will be able to successfully model earth’s incredibly complex climate system.
Climate scientists need to realize that the post normal science approach (i.e. political activist scientists) trades off the credibility of their science for the political objective they are trying to accomplish. It is a race, do you succeed in limiting CO2 before you destroy the credibility of climate science? So far this approach is failing, i.e. climate science credibility is trending down and there is not going to be a climate bill in the foreseeable future. It is time for a new approach.
Maybe an interesting topic is how should climate scientists who practice traditional science deal with political activist climate scientists who practice post normal science?
Silly rabbit… what do you call people who see conspiracy behind every door when none exists? You’re in the wrong cartoon talking about Wiley Coyote…
Perhaps some of us believe that the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2 might be ‘substantially’ (1.5) below 2K is because the IPCC holds it open as a possibility, and because the science holding out for much higher sensitivities is nowhere near as robust as people like you want to pretend.
I don’t think I have ever seen Keith Kloor write that the greenhouse effect is not real or not substantial, and I know that I never have. Nor that burning fossil fuels somehow would not contribute it. Where do you find this stuff?
As for tactics that lead people into error, at what point will you begin to examine the tactics of your side, which turned away a generation of people who had enthusiastically supported every environmental initiative brought before them until you tried to bully, hector, whine and bamboozle them with phony imagery and imaginary icons?
Does it not occur to you that it is your side that has fumbled every opportunity and given away the game?
The truth would have worked, had you tried it.
Your tricks are for kids.
Andrew Montford’s response to Bob Ward is rather weak…
Ward;
“He claims that a paper by Shaopeng Huang and co-authors on proxy temperature reconstructions from borehole measurements “never appeared in print” after being rejected by the journal Nature in 1997 because it showed that the medieval warm period had higher temperatures than today.
However Montford strangely neglects to tell the reader that the rejected paper was revised and published in the same year by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, […]
Furthermore, Montford neglects to mention a later acknowledgement by Huang and his co-authors that their 1997 work had excluded readings from the upper 100 metres of boreholes, and so provided “virtually no information about the 20th century“. They noted in a paper in 2008 that when all of the borehole data are considered, the global average temperature today is shown to be higher than during the medieval warm period.”
Montford;
“Huang’s treatment was certainly very odd given that one of the reviewers had told Nature that it was one of the most important papers that they would see that year. So when Bob takes me to task for not mentioning Huang’s subsequent publication in another journal, my response is “so what?”.”
… so what?!
Remembered that JC was pumping this book as “a history”.
Ward;
“Montford quotes selectively from some of the hacked email messages, hinting strongly at a conspiracy to “get rid of” Hans von Storch as editor of the journal Climate Research because it published a paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas which concluded that “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.”
Montford notes that von Storch resigned his journal post in 2003 and asks: “Did the Hockey Team act on their plans? At the moment we cannot say for certain, although it certainly appears that they planned to do so.”
Yet, nowhere does Montford find space for von Storch’s own explanation, published on the web, that he had resigned “to make public that the publication of the Soon & Baliunas article was an error” because it suffered from “severe methodological flaws”.”
Montford;
“I don’t present von Storch’s resignation as evidence of bullying: the questions of what von Storch thought about the paper and why he resigned are entirely independent of the question of whether inappropriate approaches were made to the journal by senior climatologists. In other words, it is entirely possible that the journal was threatened and HvS didn’t like the paper. I simply don’t consider possible links between the the resignation and any possible bullying.”
So Montford mentions that; a high profile ‘skeptic’ paper is published, it riles some climate scientists up, they consider pressuring the journal, some wanted to have von Storch removed as editor, von Storch subsequently resigned… and Montford thinks that von Storch’s reason for resigning would not be of any interest to his readers.
.. is this a “history”… or a partisan account?
On balance, I think Ward’s case against Montford is weak. Montford makes easy mince of Ward’s hatchet job.
Montford;
“Huang’s treatment was certainly very odd given that one of the reviewers had told Nature that it was one of the most important papers that they would see that year.”
the “one of the reviewers” was David Deming… who is an a denialist (sorry!) disconnected from reality…
“As the years pass and data accumulate, it is becoming evident that global warming is a fraud. Climate change is natural and ongoing, but the Earth has not warmed significantly over the last thirty years. […]
As I write, satellite data show that the mean global temperature is the same that it was in 1979. Since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen more than a hundred meters. But for the last three years, there has been no rise in sea level.”
So Demming said…
“I told the Nature editors that the article would surely be one of the most important papers they published that year. But it never appeared in print.”
… and the other two reviewers and the editor disagreed, in a journal which attracts high impact submissions, with a rejection rate of 91.5%… and based on this Montford thinks the rejection was “odd”… and evidence of a bias against ‘skeptic’ papers… with a sample size of one! (i.e. how often do ‘skeptic’ papers get rejected from Nature vs. ‘consensus’ or ‘alarmist’ papers?… and what’s the difference in quality between the submissions?)
… this isn’t science… it isn’t history… it’s PR… if you can’t distinguish PR from the former… you’re in trouble…
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I’m a tad late to this party and, reading the comments, wonder how it wandered away from the stated topic. Nevertheless….
The analogy between Islam and climate change is an interesting one; parallels apt. On one side of both issues, I see the truth-seeking, skeptical, climate crowd alongside the cacophonous world-at-large attempting to parse and understand Islam. There’s cloudy confusion that dances around both issues, but no ideology. (There may be some racism in this crowd vis a vis Muslims and there may be some committed “deniers-no-matter-what,” but, mostly, these are two motley groups, sans agenda, eager to understand.)
On the other side, there is the Koran and Saharia Law, as well as Michael Mann’s hockey stick and the IPCC reports: carved-in-stone truths. The importance and validity of the hockey stick and the Koran are, for the believers, non-negotiable. There is no debate; there is only acquiesence to “the truth.” When truth is”known,” nothing beyond converting (or killing) infidels is possible.
(I once had a series of conversations with a distant cousin grieved because, not saved in the blood of Christ, I was going to hell. …and he liked me! But, what about all the people who have never heard of Jesus Christ… are they going to hell, too? I asked. Try as I might, there was no ground upon which we could frame a conversation. Hell, I’m happy he’s happy, and saved. I just wish he didn’t have to feel so bad about my fate, that I could get him to lighten up.)
Just as Gavin Schmidt doesn’t get teary-eyed about Feynman’s reverence for truth and science, so Iman Rauf doesn’t get worked up about stopping Hamas. Gavin’s raison d’etre is defense of the hockey stick; Rauf’s is the spread of Islam. If truth-in-science is a casualty in the climate debates, sobeit. If the death of innocents is a by-product of the spread of Islam, well….
When I was a child I wanted my father to come home from war. I imagined “war” as two long lines of men shooting at each other. I had a fantasy that, if I snuck “over there,” I could walk between the lines shouting, “Stop, stop!” And, no one would shoot at a little girl, and I would fix the world, and my daddy would come home. Keith Kloor seems to harbor a bit of that mindset.
I admire Keith. This ain’t easy for him, as “The Brushback” indicates. But, yes, this will continue to be hard. He’s got a crowd of eager kids with their hands waving in the air, excitedly, on one side. On the other there is an uncompromising commitment to a defined “truth,” an understanding about which no slack may, ever, be allowed. Hard to guide that, I suspect. “¦.smile.
To continue the Islam/climate science analogy, I am drawn to ponder the parallels between Judith Curry and Ayann Hirsi Ali. (But, there’s a fatwa out for Hirsi Ali…. smile…. and this is much too long, already.)
“¦……Lady in Red
Tom Fuller,
“Perhaps some of us believe that the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2 might be ‘substantially’ (1.5) below 2K is because the IPCC holds it open as a possibility,”
Does “I believe that X might be Y” mean…
a) I believe that ‘X is Y’ is possible
b) I believe that ‘X is Y‘ is more likely than ‘X is not Y’
c) something else
?
possibly: by chance; “perhaps she will call tomorrow”; “we may possibly run into them at the concert”; “it may peradventure be thought that there never was such a time”
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
When I was a child I wanted my father to come home from war. I imagined “war” as two long lines of men shooting at each other. I had a fantasy that, if I snuck “over there,” I could walk between the lines shouting, “Stop, stop!” And, no one would shoot at a little girl, and I would fix the world, and my daddy would come home.
That’s very touching, Lady!
That’s the way I thought as a little girl. But my experience is not as poignant.
Since it’s the weekend, I’ll share mine, off-topic as it may be. Back in the Dark Ages of my childhood, there was no cable TV, much less a channel devoted to children’s entertainment. Cartoons only aired once a week on Saturday morning, before the huge selection of 3 channels switched to covering sports at noon. I felt very sorry for the cat in Tom&Jerry, so much that it continued to haunt me during the week. I believed that on Saturday when the cartoon was on, I could persuade Tom to leap out of the TV and I would rescue him. So after waiting for what seemed like months at the time, it was a disappointing experience in reality. Now-a-days, kids understand the difference between cartoons and reality before they can talk. I was only 4, but still….pretty funny!
When the mini-series, Holocaust aired, I was in junior high. Realizing we have a lot of German ancestry, albeit they immigrated before WWI, it was deeply disturbing to me. I imagined going back in time, so I would be able to save all the victims I possibly could because they wouldn’t suspect or even arrest a little German girl.
To this day, I can’t watch a movie set in the Holocaust.
Back to the climate monoliths.
Lazar,
d) ? I don’t know. The difference between me and so many others participating in this debate is that I am willing to say I don’t know.
(Please spare me the follow-on conversation about ‘not knowing is not an excuse for inaction. I know.)
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/papers-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates/
… UPDATE (June 16, 2010): Huybers (2010) added.
… “…[IPCC] indicates a 95% confidence interval of 2.1°”“5.5°C, but this reflects compensation between model feedbacks. … If the compensation between feedbacks is removed, the 95% confidence interval for climate sensitivity expands to 1.9°”“8.0°C.”
Mr. Roberts, I expect to see a lot of back and forth between papers over the next 30 years. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are papers out there giving different figures, some lower and some higher.
When it stops being ‘flavor of the month’ perhaps it can be discussed sensibly. As for making decisions, I look to the IPCC as far as WG1 goes.