Alarmism Run Amok
There’s an interesting story making its way around the science blogosphere, involving the fallout from a whopping error in a recent NGO report that was (before the error became publicly known) widely picked up by the press. Charlie Petit at Science Journalism Tracker gets to the nub of it here:
The news is that this week an NGO based in Argentina, the Universal Ecological Fund, released a report on the peril for world food production as global temperatures rise. Serious topic. The authoring org. appears to be earnest (if not diligent). It got wide pickup. However, the grave report, aside from its crop and food price worries, also declared that at current rates of emissions, CO2 in the atmosphere will reach about 490 parts per million by the year 2020 (it’s now just shy of 400). That’s pretty much wrong. What’s totally wrong is its deduction that this translates to a temperature rise of 2.4 C by 2020.
Suzanne Goldenberg at the Guardian seems to be one of the few reporters who took a more critical look at the NGO’s false assertions. Another environmental journalist–Stephen Leahy–had an advance peek at the report and tried warning the NGO of its errors, but it refused to listen.
Gavin Schmidt over at Real Climate says the whole debacle
has lessons for NGOs, the press, and the public.
But he never really elaborates on what these lessons are. He does, however, absolve the NGO from acting in bad faith:
It has to be acknowledged that people sometimes make genuine mistakes without having any desire to mislead or confuse, and that this is most likely the case here.
Hmm. Here’s another way to look at it, as reported by Charlie Petit at Science Journalism tracker:
Leahy even tried to save the report’s authors before they derailed themselves in public. Having seen the report’s advance material, he warned its author and the public relations company promoting it of the error. He tells us, “I used up (the) better part of 2 or 3 days of my time and still they went ahead with the release”¦ they think it is better to have a conversation on this than to be right.”
So what’s the lesson here?
So what’s the lesson here?
Telling stretchers or outright lies in order to bring attention to your cause, no matter how noble you think your motives are, is likely to cause damage not only to your own credibility, but to your cause as well. It continues to amaze that climate alarmists have yet recognize or internalize this. (Though I have to admit Gavin seems to have made some progress of late.)
The lessons are
– to make sure you have the required expertise to write your story, and if you don’t, get people with such expertise to advise/help you.
– if people alert you to an error, check it (or let it be checked), and then fix it, even if that means postponing a deadline or changing something for the gazzilionth time.
If these lessons are not taken to heart, what will happen is exemplified by the first comment here: The mistake will come back to haunt you.
The lesson is for the press. Their job is not that of a megaphone or an amplifier. Fact-checking is still required. And, those who lack basic common sense don’t qualify for the job. Nothing new really.
A lesson to be taken from this is those defending the “consensus” view on global warming will try to minimize any error from their side.
Brandon,
What exactly are you referring to? Bona fide scientists have pointed out the glaring error to the authors/journalists as soon as they’ve been made aware of the text. RC publicly points out the nature of the mistake and corrects it.
But I guess you want scientists to eat sand and wash their mouth with soap, do you? Or wouldn’t that be enough either?
At first, I thought this was a case where I would have to give credit where credit is due. RealClimate has made the choice to support the supposed “good intentions” of the organization, rather than make science a priority. Why is he making excuses for an organization who knowingly insisted on publishing fraudulent science?
As far as learning lessons, the IPCC learned the hard way that relying on the factual accuracy of an NGO report, is gravely damaging to one’s credibility.
But as you point out, Keith, they appear to be getting a head start on damage control. We have an NGO who knowingly published a falsehood, as it happens, in order to stick to their narrative. We ought to remember that RC is in fact a PR blog.
SciAm apparently ran this story long after the deliberately dishonest report was exposed.
Bart Verheggen, I don’t get the implied assumption in your post. Keith Kloor explained he felt the reaction to this mistake was lacking, and you don’t seem to hostile toward him. Asking me what I am referring to is fine, but the last paragraph of your post is ridiculous.
I would like to see people be up front and honest about mistakes. Not just with their existence, but with their extent. The Universal Ecological Fund was made aware of an extremely obvious error. They denied it and published the paper anyway. A number of news agencies ran with the paper’s false claims without doing the slightest shred of fact-checking.
Rather than condemn any of this, Gavin pooh-poohed it all away as though it was inconsequential. When Keith Kloor commented on the fact publishing material which is known to be false is attempting to mislead people, Gavin responded:
[Response: You are making the same logical error in attributing motive based on pre-existing bias than all the people who run around claiming fraud whenever some mistake is found in a dataset. I have no idea why you think that any NGO would deliberately sacrifice their credibility in such an obvious error. Inertia and lack of decision-making authority among the people who were at the sharp end seems far more likely to me. – gavin]
What I would like to see is people say things like, “This NGO published material they knew to be false. A number of news agencies failed at their duty and published the obviously incorrect material. This sort of thing is unacceptable, even if it is understandable. We need to do better.”
[…] course this is being spun as if it’s alarmist propaganda gone wrong. Even the otherwise sensible Keith seems to frame it that way. No organization that wants to be taken seriously though would knowingly […]
By the way Keith Kloor, it is somewhat hard to square away Bart Verheggen’s response to me with what you said about him in the Raise Your Hand thread:
So for those put off by RC, why not listen to Bart Verheheggen? Is he part of the evil climate cabal, too? He’s among the most mild-mannered climate scientists I know of. Almost always unfailingly civil and willing to engage in good faith with skeptics.
His immediate reaction to my comment just above was to assume bad faith and be hostile.
Brandon,
When people are “up front and honest about mistakes” that others (not they themselves) make who are in the eyes of some in the public on the same “side” of the issue, than you give them crap? Then they minimize an error from their “side”? It’s a lose-lose situation to try to appease people like you.
Andy Revkin is still telling (some) readers that Cretaceous ocean temperatures are inferred to have been 380C.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/on-responding-to-imprecise-climate-risks/
(When you copy the text, a degree sign appears in place of the zero but on some machines the degree sign appears as a zero in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Odd. And odd that the Times still hasn’t corrected this.)
Brandon, your comment 4 assumed bad faith, and while I’m pretty patient, I’m not a saint.
the lesson is that you’re talking about the story a lot more than you would be if there were no error…
not saying i agree with the strategy at all but from the pr firm’s point of view….which is better….accuracy and no profile, or inaccurate+higher profile+fodder for denialists?
I’d like to think that Bart’s suggestions would be the standard, but as in many other areas of life there are often perverse incentives at play in public communications that undercut the value of truthtelling…
Bart, neither of your latest responses make sense:
When people are “up front and honest about mistakes” that others (not they themselves) make who are in the eyes of some in the public on the same “side” of the issue, than you give them crap? Then they minimize an error from their “side”? It’s a lose-lose situation to try to appease people like you.
This is complete rubbish. You are claiming things about me with absolutely no basis. I have never attacked someone for being “up front and honest about mistakes.” In fact, I respect the people who do that a great deal.
Brandon, your comment 4 assumed bad faith, and while I’m pretty patient, I’m not a saint.
My comment did nothing of the sort. People attempting to minimize a mistake don’t inherently do it out of bad faith. There are many other reasons it can happen, and quite frankly, I don’t care about the motives.
Bart Verheggen, you’ve made up things about me. You’ve attacked me for what you’ve made up. What have I done which is so wrong?
Interesting comment at my blog by Dana:
(http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/food-gap-ngo-2-4-degrees-2020-no-way/#comment-10306 )
In a recent media article, Lindzen made basically the same mistake. He said:
“the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/
He makes the exact same two errors as the NGO ““ ignoring the negative forcings and the “˜warming in the pipeline’. Of course, as a climate scientist, Lindzen really should know better. And I’m sure he does.
Brandon, what’s your reponse? Will you set the record straight over there (in case you haven’t yet)?
Brandon,
I’ll gladly admit that I’ve reacted a bit stirred up in this thread, but I’m puzzled that you seem so unaware of how your words are perceived by others.
In 4 you wrote: “will try to minimize any error from their side.“ insinuating bad faith, whereas what I see is people being “up front and honest about mistakes” that people who you perceive to be on the same “side” (conveniently equating scientists with ngo’s) made. The latter is what you’d like to see done. How could scientists possibly steer between the rock and a hard place in this circumstance?
Gavin notes: “The press response to their study has therefore been almost totally dominated by the error at the beginning of the report, rather than the substance of their work on the impacts.
No comment on that, Keith?
This NGO published material they knew to be false.
It’s not clear that the author knew the report to be false. Leahy himself quotes her as saying “It was all based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report and had been vetted by Osvaldo Canziani, a former co-chair of the IPCC.”
If this statement is true, then the author decided to trust her science advisor rather than a journalist, which would be an understandable decision for a layperson to make. If proven untrue – if, for example, Canziani denies having approved the report, or if other evidence of dishonesty emerges – then this would be something everyone concerned with climate should denounce in the clearest terms.
Vinny, thanks for the dot Earth link.
I’m glad that Andy decided to raise the questions that are often asked and and as often ignored. I found the responses astonishingly lame. Especially funny is that Ray is the only one there who knows what runaway greenhouse is.
Bart,
I can think of a few cases where straight forward admission of error came back to haunt the scientist, and the ones I remember were due to initial snark so that when the scientist was found guilty of the same sin he was snarky about, there wasn’t a lot of understanding waiting around. I do recall most of the ill will being generated by the cases of defending the indefensible.
It is quite possible my memory is biased. You are perhaps thinking of some specific incidents where an immediate acknowledgement of error was made (and correction if possible) and the scientist was still clobbered ? What incidents are coloring your perception here ? I am genuinely curious about differences in perception.
Bart Verheggen, it would be nice if you would address the fact you’ve chosen to make things up about me. In the mean time:
In 4 you wrote: “will try to minimize any error from their side.“ insinuating bad faith, whereas what I see is people being “up front and honest about mistakes” that people who you perceive to be on the same “side” (conveniently equating scientists with ngo’s) made. The latter is what you’d like to see done. How could scientists possibly steer between the rock and a hard place in this circumstance?
I have absolutely no idea what you are asking here. What “rock and hard place” are you talking about? RealClimate acknowledged the scientific error in the NGO’s publication. That’s good. I just want them to put some effort into condemning the things which allow an error like this to happen (and be passed on without scrutiny by news agencies). For example, your comment on the issue (in your blog post) is one I approve of:
Their refusal to correct their mistake after it was pointed out to them is flabbergasting. How stubborn, how stupid. I hope they learnt their lesson.
You condemned what led to the error. The most condemning remark by RealClimate was to use the word “unfortunately.” You did the appropriate thing. RealClimate did not.
@ Bart (15)
The NGO made two errors: (1) misstated the CO2 level expected by 2020; (2) misstated the warming that would result from the CO2 level they stated by 2020. Lindzen made neither of these. Maybe it’s you who needs to make the record straight?
PDA, you raise a valid concern:
It’s not clear that the author knew the report to be false. Leahy himself quotes her as saying “It was all based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report and had been vetted by Osvaldo Canziani, a former co-chair of the IPCC.”
I shouldn’t have claimed the author actually knew the paper was wrong. However, as Bart Verheggen pointed out, the first guiding principle for the report was:
The analysis is based on the scientific evidence and conclusions from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
Now then, one would assume the author would have read what the IPCC had to say about temperature projections in the process of making the report. When told the numbers were so far off, the author should have looked at them (which would have led to knowing the numbers were wrong).
But I don’t know what the author did, so I was wrong to say the author knew the work was wrong. By all rights, the author should have known it was wrong. All it would have taken for the mistake to be found is the simplest of fact-checking or even just basic common sense.
The mistake could have happened (and remained) due to negligence, incompetence, denial or any number of other things. None of them are acceptable, but none are necessarily a direct lie.
David B. Benson says:
18 Jan 2011 at 9:07 PM
Dire Harvest: Climate Report Warns of Food Gap
[Response: Unfortunately, the timeline for this report is all wrong. They have made a mistake in assessing net forcing and then assumed that the instantaneous response is the same as the equilibrium response. The ‘2.4 deg C by 2020’ is nonsense, I’m afraid. The authors were notified of this error a couple of days ago but have chosen not to change anything. Not a great way to earn credibility points. – gavin]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/unforced-variations-jan-2011/comment-page-6/#comment-197986
“Hisas said she stands by her report’s findings, which have been endorsed by Nobel Prize-winning Argentine climate scientist, Osvaldo Canziani.
She said the UEF did not intend to withdraw the report.
“We are just going to go ahead with it. I don’t have a choice now,” she told The Guardian.
“The scientist I have been working with checked everything and according to him it’s not wrong.””
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110119/climate-change-study-110119/
Clearly there are failings at AAAS, at EurekAlert and at the media end. Basic fact-checking at any of these would have prevented the story from being published.
Even I would have spotted this doozer. Scientific American ran the story. Seriously, what does that say?
There’s no lesson here for me, nor any surprises. I’m already far beyond being lightly cynical. I’ve long-ago lost my faith in the critical thinkings of enviro-journalism. To all intents and purposes, this is just an old story, retold.
I’m curious about “Nobel Prize-winning Argentine climate scientist, Osvaldo Canziani.” I wonder how he feels about it.
Brandon (4):
I don’t see Gavin (or anybody else who you might consider aligned with him) minimizing this. I think everybody on that side of the climate spectrum recognizes that something like this does more harm than good.
On that note, it’s hard for me to comprehend what Marlowe seems to be implying in #13: hey, we’re talking about this right?
Well, yeah, I guess, but not for the right reasons, and nobody’s talking about the message behind the report, as Steven in #17 notes. Speaking of which, whose fault is that, Steven? That’s the way the ball bounces. The NGO had a shot to do this right, but they overreached, for whatever reason.
Finally, for those interested in following various responses to this story, I suggest also keeping up with the threads at Bart’s and RC.
Keith Kloor, I don’t think anyone is minimizing the scientific error. Everyone seems to agree the 2020 prediction was completely wrong. My problem is with the discussion of how the error happened, and what it means. Over at RealClimate you say:
What does that tell you? Were they just being incredibly obstinate? In denial? Or just maybe”¦did they think, what the hell. We’re going with it, truth be damned?
This is largely how I feel. Now then, Gavin made a post discussing the mistake, but he didn’t even mention this issue. He said it was unfortunate the NGO did not fix the errors. That’s all. In no way is that sufficient. At the very least, he could have said it was wrong of them.
Admitting one problem while not discussing another problem effectively minimizes the latter problem.
Or just maybe”¦did they think, what the hell. We’re going with it, truth be damned?
Except for the fact that anyone thinking about it for more than about ten seconds would realize that the backlash is going to be bigger than the original story when it inevitably gets out.
Is it possible this was intentional? Sure. Of course. But where’s the up side?
Brandon,
In 4 you wrote: “A lesson to be taken from this is those defending the “consensus” view on global warming will try to minimize any error from their side.”
In 29 you wrote: “I don’t think anyone is minimizing the scientific error. “
These seem mutually inconsistent. I assumed you were talking about RC and/or me in 4, which is why I took offense, as I think it was an untrue allegation in either case (RC or me).
In 7 you wrote: “I would like to see people be up front and honest about mistakes.” Which I think both RC and I have been (even though it was not a mistake of our doing, but of others)
You now say that you find my reaction to this error fine, but RC’s not. I used stronger language (kind of contrary to the more usual situation, where I’m the tamest of the bunch), but as to the substance, RC and I both said much the same thing: This is obviously wrong.
So I don’t see your beef with RC’s reaction. I may have over-interpreted your reaction, as I think you have over-interpreted RC’s reaction. However, I apologize for my overly defensive tone last night, which was counterproductive to the conversation.
Sashka (22),
No, Dana is right: “He [Lindzen] makes the exact same two errors as the NGO ““ ignoring the negative forcings and the “˜warming in the pipeline’. Of course, as a climate scientist, Lindzen really should know better. And I’m sure he does.”
Lindzen talsk about expected warming up to now, whereas the NGO talks about expected warming in 2020, but the mistakes they make in their calculation are the same.
The projection of the NGO used CO2 equivalent concentration, and with the commonly used definition of Kyoto gases their estimate for 2020 is within the realm of the possible. See RC for details (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/getting-things-right/ )
Bart Verheggen, perhaps it would have been more clear if I had said “mistake” or “screw up.” There are three parts of this issue, and I have been referring to them as a collective. The first part is the technical error. The second part is the error getting published. The third part is news agencies accepting the error without any critical thought.
Everybody seems willing to condemn the technical error (other than maybe the NGO itself). However, most people seem to be unwilling to condemn the other two parts. In this regard, I find RealClimate’s response unacceptable. I don’t approve of your response because of harsher language; I approve of it because you flat out said the NGO was wrong to publish the error despite having the mistake pointed out to them. RealClimate didn’t. The most they said was it was unfortunate the NGO published the error anyway.
They said it was unfortunate. Not wrong. Not ridiculous. Not jaw-dropping. You found it flabbergasting, but they found it, at most, regrettable (the strongest definition of unfortunate I could find). That’s what I mean by people minimizing the error.
Brandon,
Thanks for acknowledging in 23 that
“But I don’t know what the author did, so I was wrong to say the author knew the work was wrong. By all rights, the author should have known it was wrong. All it would have taken for the mistake to be found is the simplest of fact-checking or even just basic common sense.
The mistake could have happened (and remained) due to negligence, incompetence, denial or any number of other things. None of them are acceptable, but none are necessarily a direct lie.”
I agree with what you say here.
As to your 33; thanks also, that clarifies things. I’m not in full agreement here though, as I think it does come down to semantics/word choice. Gavin’s word choice is quite moderate given the level of the mistake, but his message is nevertheless clear: What were they thinking? Why weren’t they listening? Though since those questins involve mindreading, he rather refrains from answering them (or even asking them point blank). Some would say that’s to his credit; others clearly say the opposite.
I don’t get why there’s not more frustration and effort on the AGW concerned side about reeling in these kinds of errors. The take home message for me is that exaggerations such as these are a ‘strategy’- as Marlow points out @13.
In my interpretation Gavin also understands this. His quote-
“It has to be acknowledged that people sometimes make genuine mistakes without having any desire to mislead or confuse, and that this is most likely the case here.”
Gavin seems to be saying that the ‘mistake’ is a mistake in strategy- and then he points out that the intention is not to ‘mislead’ or ‘confuse’, but to ‘start a conversation’. Whether he feels it’s unfortunate that this strategy was chosen or whether it failed to work is not revealed.
The problem is, that for many people- this is exactly a case of misleading and confusing people with dubious numbers. By now, it’s a well known strategy- as Simon points out… it’s a problem of mixed perspectives and agendas. But in every single case that I’m aware of, the side making the error simply loses credibility. I can’t for the life of me understand why this kind of thing is still ongoing…
Actually, I take that back (the reading of Gavin’s quote). I’m interpreting this from the information that Keith had posted above- with the Charlie Petit quote included. It’s possible that Gavin hadn’t been aware of that.
To best explain what I think is going on here (in terms of the responses to the report from the opposite sides of the climate spectrum), let me offer the example of a famous incident in the world series between the 2000 Mets and Yankees.
During the game Roger Clemens was pitching, he went to field a broken bat hit by Mike Piazza, the Mets catcher, and instead of throwing the ball to first base, Clemens flung the broken bat in Piazza’s direction, who was running to first. (There was already some history between these two men; Clemens beaned Piazza during the regular season.)
Reaction from Mets and Yankee fans was typically partisan, and this played out in my workplace at the time. One colleague, a diehard Mets fan, insisted that Clemens was being thuggish and knew he was throwing the bat at Piazza. Another colleague, an equally diehard Yankees fan, said Clemens deserved the benefit of the doubt and that in the heat of the moment, it was possible he could have picked up the bat unwittingly, thinking it was the ball. As I recall, the argument degenerated from there, as they each argued louder and louder that the other was wrong.
Anyway, I’m not suggesting an error in a report is the same as a flung bat. But I am suggesting that people’s responses to this sort of thing seem to be shaped in part by where your position/loyalties on the matter already lie.
Keith, I get the analogy. The “cranial dyspraxia” here, though, is at the point of publish/not publish, not at the point the error was made in the paper. There is no question the player knew he was holding a bat. At question is the idiotic decision to knowingly throw a bat.
For me, the decision to push ahead with the press is only stage three. Gaff Stage One is at the AAAS, Gaff Stage Two is with EurekAlert (arguably the more forgiveable, given throughput. Arguably.) and Gaff Stage Four rests firmly with media like Scientific American. Serial Gaffage. What are the chances, eh? Why is nobody, who is using or relying on this information pipeline, seemingly not at all fazed by the blatant systemic failure of the pseudoscience filtering system?
“Why is nobody, who is using or relying on this information pipeline, seemingly not at all fazed by the blatant systemic failure of the pseudoscience filtering system?”
This is where what Gavin says becomes important and instructive, as a lot of people tend to rely on his opinion. If Gavin says this is simply a mistake (without elaborating on what the mistake actually was) people might just assume that this is a simple numbers error, and then people will defend Gavin for acknowledging the error. But what Charlie Petit has described is something more than just a simple error, and that doesn’t seem to have been acknowledged specifically by Gavin as yet, or it is very vague. Without further clarification by Gavin, this case will forever be concretised for the climate Yankees as a numbers error.
Stu,
Count me as a climate concerned atmospheric scientist whose is frustrated about this issue.
Btw, did you notice that Lindzen made an argument based on the same mistake as this NGO did? See my comment 15 in this thread. Is that also part of a strategy?
Bart, funnily enough when I read that piece, I perceived it as Lindzen writing sardonically.
Either way, I agree that there is an error in Lindzen’s piece, given your reading (or Dana’s) of the same text, but I’m unsure if the error is numerical (which I think is unlikely) or a failure to effectively communicate disparagement (a penchant of Lindzen’s, and more likely) remains unclear.
Bart
Reading Lindzen’s essay, I think that the phrase – “which implies that we should already have seen much more warming” is not meant as a direct standalone refutation of the models. In other words, it’s the same as saying ‘one would assume’. One might assume… and this might be the point you are trying to make. Yet, further clarification into the reasoning behind continuing confidence in the models (aerosols) is given below that, followed by Lindzen’s own reasoning drawing from various sources as to why he feels this confidence is misplaced.
PS- I usually regard Lindzen as one of the clearest communicators in climate science- but I am not a fan of this essay. I think Gavin’s point (@2.26) on your thread needs addressing for instance. I would also agree with the statement made by Dana @ (23:58) that Lindzen should take more heat if actually in error.
The NGO’s method of estimating the warming is hauntingly similar to Monckton’s method of coming up with the “Monctonized-IPPC” projections.
In view of Bart Verheggen’s comment #40, I feel I should make a comment. I’ve been dragged into a discussion of his claimed mistakes by Lindzen over at his blog, and I’ll leave the discussion of there.
However, I want to say I do not believe Lindzen made either mistake Bart claims he has made. If interested, I’d advise people to look into the issue themselves (and possibly chime in over at Bart’s blog).
I’ll try to prepare a post over the weekend about the Lindzen piece. Indeed he should take some heat for his errors, esp since he should know better.
Good comment from Paul Kelly over at Bart’s place:
The 2.4C error here is not the story. The story is the NGO’s reported insistence, after the error was identified, that their science is solid. If they can’t admit the error underlying the report, what value can the report have.
Bart,
Sorry for delay – a busy day in the office.
You were right about Lindzen neglecting the negative forcing. It wasn’t clear from Keith’s quote that the meant 490 ppm of CO2 equivalent. That led me to misinterpret the context.
Still he didn’t commit their more serious error of assuming the rate of growth of order 1C per decade. With the rate of emissions being as low (compared to the accumulated volume) as it is we probably saw much of the warming resulting from the past emissions.
Keith and Paul Kelly,
I disagree. People who are involved in the publications of this sort should develop basic common sense, else they need to look for another line of work. Since I don’t follow baseball, I’ll throw an analogy in terms of cars manufacturing. Suppose a car magazine reviews a new family sedan by KIA that sells for $15K and writes that it accelerates to 60 mph in 3 seconds. Won’t you agree that the writer doesn’t know the first thing about cars?
Keith, heck! It’s the job of NGOs to push their agenda. That’s their purpose! If they can find a scientist who’ll subscribe to their assertions, as in this case, then as far as they’re concerned, great.. but the purpose of an NGO is to get THEIR message out, to lobby for their cause, and to steer policy in their direction. They should not be concerned with scientific integrity or accuracy, nor honour or veracity! An NGO that lets these inconveniences stand in their way really isn’t much of an advocacy organisation at all! Pretty bloody useless, actually. That’s just not what they’re there for.
I do a bit of fund raising for WaterAid through Rotary. If they could contort their reported number of kids dying from contaminated water to sound more like 80,000 deaths instead of 40,000 deaths then that’s what they need to do. They need money to do their work, and to ensure that they can keep doing it next year. 80,000 would generate more contributions than 40,000. But scientific integrity? Not if it gets in the way of them doing their work! Neither should they! No, there should be no expectation on the NGO to do anything but get their message across as effectively as they can.
The expectation should be on the scientists to perform gatekeeping in their field and not underwrite inaccurate advocacy reporting. It is the responsibility of journals to ensure accuracy in their pages and on their websites. It is the responsibility of news aggregates and media to fact-check, and without doubt it is HERE where the principle failings are to be found. The NGO is the one link in this chain that didn’t fail. It acted precisely according to its responsibilities and according to its purpose.
In this case, every other link in the chain EXCEPT the NGO failed. Scientist, journal and media. This is systemic failure, and it’s serious.
Wow Simon, where to start? You may be describing accurately the real world operations of NGOs, but don’t honesty, ethics, and morality have value anymore? Are meeting the objectives of a constituency the only obligation of organizations given tax-free status in the expectation that they will do good for the larger society? I take it that you think it’s OK for corporate leaders then to care solely about the bottom line. Is it OK for BP to cut corners on cementing deep water well casings to save time and costs no matter the risk as long as it’s profitable? It’s OK for investment bankers to run the entire economy into the weeds as long as they make immense profits for the shareholders? Is this what America has become – a land of impersonal amoral bureaucracies with no expectation of ethics? Besides, an NGO which behaves as this one did doesn’t serve even it’s constituency if their actions result in discredit to their movement. Wow!
I disagree with Simon H. A self respecting NGO would not knowingly distort things, as it would kill their credibility, which is necessary for them to carry out their advocay work. Emphasazing worst case scenario’s is a different cup of tea than making up stuff (which I don’t think os what they did, as it wouldn’t make any sense for them to do so).
As to the other parts in the chain: Scientists involved did exactly as they should have: They pointed out the error. Some journalists did the same, and there are some exampkes of good investigative journalism in this saga (Leahy; Guardian), although many other media outlets who ran the message without question. In the end, it’s the NGO who made a stupid mistake and they were too stubborn/stupid to correct it when pointed out to them.
I echo what Bart says.
Simon, quite frankly, I’m amazed at your gross caricature of the supposed typical NGO. Your whole comment is beyond cynical. This case is evidence of “systemic failure” on the part of the press, science journals, and scientists? How you make that leap is incomprehensible to me.
It’s also the flip side of hyperbolic alarmism expressed by skeptics: omg, the whole enterprise of science and journalism is failing!
Funnily enough, I agree with all of the comments from Simon @ 49 down to Bart @51. It’s an argument over real world vs idealised world. But I’d agree with Simon that in communications from NGO’s, emotionalism is perhaps more important than getting your facts totally straight, and unfortunately I’d agree with him that the typical NGO also understands this. Didn’t Bart also agree with this in theory when he said that Lindzen, being the scientist, has more responsibilty in writing accurately, than the NGO? In an ideal world, you’d accept the figures provided by NGO’s as being arrived at through best scientific practice, but in the real world, it would be naive to do so. I don’t look to any NGO for an accurate scientific assessment on things- do you?
Keith, I made no leap at all! I followed the chain! The piece turned up many times in the press – even on the “Scientific American” website! That’s systemic failure, Keith.
Systemic failures are not deliberate, but they are also not inevitable. This case is proof positive that the wrong message can get out to the public and that there are insufficient safeguards in place to prevent it happening. Given the blasé attitude and finger-pointing at the NGO, rather than at the subsequent links in the gate-keeping chain, assures me that nothing will change and the same thing can and will happen again and again. More shirking of responsibility, less trust.
A few seem to have missed it, so I’ll reiterate that I didn’t suggest NGOs should be saying 80,000 deaths instead of 40,000 deaths, I said “to sound more like 80,000 deaths instead of 40,000″. It’s not lying, it’s just basic marketing! This is emphasising worst-case scenarios, which Bart says he is fine with, and underplaying or minimising emphasis on “could potentially”, “up to” or “as much as”.
Stu,
Lindzen, being an award winning atmospheric scientist, can be expected to know better. Stupidity or ignorance is not something he can believably use as an excuse.
David44, yes. I am describing the world in reality rather than the rosey, glowing world of theoretical behaviour that some seem to choose to live in. But you’re conflating the engineering activities of a multi-nat and a policy-lobbying NGO with regard to BP’s deep water drilling activities.
There is no confusion in the real world between these, and BP should get what is coming to them, as should their complicit subcontractors. Corruption not withstanding, of course. But again, in reality, corruption is rife and spans every level of government, and every political hue, so justice can, sadly, never be assured.
Has America become “a land of impersonal amoral bureaucracies with no expectation of ethics?” Well, it’s a good question David, and it deserves exploration. I can’t answer it, of course, but I suspect that the answer may differ depending on which tier of society/government you examine. The word “privilege” literally means “private law”, and I suspect that the way things are today are that way because they’ve always been that way, and always will be that way. Evolutionary societies tend to be that way, with revolutions merely temporary respites and excursions into other forms of injustice. France today, again, has a tier of “the privileged few” in its society.
Simon,
“is a different cup of tea than” is not the same as “is fine with”.
Fair enough, Bart, that was my misreading of the implications of your paragraph. For thoroughness, same paragraph, can you clarify whether knowingly going ahead with releasing something you know to be erroneous is worse, better, or the same as making things up?
Simon,
How do you know they knew? The Guardian piece quotes the author as saying that she trusted her own “expert”, and presumably was thoroughly confused about who was right, and felt unable to stop the train which had already been set in motion (eg the report was already posted on the internet). Very bad judgement for sure (I’ve said “stupid” multiple times before), but it’s not clear (to me at least) whether they knowingly went ahead with something they knew to be wrong.
Bart, you ask “How do you know they knew?”
Huh!?
Bart, we know that the error was pointed out to them. We know that there was an opportunity to withdraw the release pending corrections, if necessary, and we know that the decision to proceed with the release was made, regardless. I have no sympathy for idiots. Who chooses to suffer fools gladly? (Apart from Keith, of course 😉 )
All of this is a diversion from my point anyway. My issue, as I have made perfectly clear, is far less with the “ends-justify-the-means” NGO pushing its agenda regardless of the veracity of the message – which the sequence of events demonstrates to be the case – and more with the systemic failure of the gatekeeping mechanism.
Mostly, however, my issue at this point is the attitude towards failures in the system and the “ack! That was a bit unfortunate. Moving on…” that pervades. It’s a system that clearly self-harms through neglect.
Bart @55
“Lindzen, being an award winning atmospheric scientist, can be expected to know better. Stupidity or ignorance is not something he can believably use as an excuse.”
I believe we both agreed on that already. One needs to be consistent here- and I’ve always insisted that climate scientists and their institutions be held to higher standards than is usually given, from their supporters atleast.
If you have a problem with Lindzen’s essay here, I wonder how you feel about Kevin Trenberth’s recent ‘rant’ (as I don’t consider it anything more than that), his use of inflamatory language against critics and obviously made up numbers on the rigourousness of IPCC processess…
“Moreover, the extensive review process, which is a hundred times more rigorous than that for any individual paper”
100 times? Please…
With the IPCC being promoted as the golden standard to which all other information on climate science is judged, you must have stood with the critics when the bogus 2035 Himalayan Date was revealed? And you must have felt the frustration that critics felt when it was revealed through an FOI request that the Canadian Government had sat on a report for two years detailing the shocking quality of it’s weather data? And you must feel frustrated and dismayed, that apparently Phil Jones has learned nothing from climategate- that the call to openness and replicability which was the stated conclusion of every enquiry, with everybody agreeing that climate scientists should archive their data, has not come to pass…
http://climateaudit.org/2011/01/06/more-data-refusal-nothing-changes/
Yes… I believe these people should know better. And we should expect more from them. I have not read much of your writings, and I understand you are regarded as a very reasonable guy. I just hope you are holding consensus climate scientists to the same standard you demand of skeptical ones.
Stu,
If you’re interested in my views on some of those matters, you could search my blog. E.g.
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/glaciers-are-retreating-but-wont-be-gone-in-2035/
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/climategate-lessons-learned/
Re Trenbert’s latest, I’ haven’t read it, but observed that most animosity is towards his use of the term “denier”. Even though I chose not to use the term myself, I don’t feel compelled to chastise him for doing so.
@62 Bart Verheggen wrote:
Re Trenbert’s latest, I’ haven’t read it, but observed that most animosity is towards his use of the term “denier”. Even though I chose not to use the term myself, I don’t feel compelled to chastise him for doing so.
I’m not sure I would describe the reaction to Trenberth’s latest venture into the realm of “revisionist scholarship” (or his earlier episode of apparent affliction by false memory syndrome) as “animosity”. “Incredulity” that he has failed to learn any lessons from the events to which he purports to respond in his paper would be a more accurate depiction of the majority of reactions I’ve seen.
Nor was the reaction to his continued unsavoury labelling of opponents as “deniers” the major source of the incredulity. Rather it was Trenberth’s absurd assertion that the null hypothesis should be reversed.
IOW, Trenberth was suggesting that climate scientists engage in the time-honoured “debating” tactic of the real deniers: ‘my claim, prove me wrong’. YMMV, but I’m inclined to think that the irony inherent in his choosing to propose such a strategy probably escaped his notice.
Hi Bart- thanks for the links.
On the Trenberth essay- I won’t go into it here (Hilary raises some points above), maybe you’ll read it at some point and have your own ideas about it. Just on ‘deniers’ though… to me, this is the kind of language that I expect to see tossed around in climate blogs, but coming from an IPCC lead author, it’s hardly befitting (or is it?)
My problem with ‘deniers’ in Trenberth’s piece and elsewhere, is not really about the supposed holocaust connections, but the way the word is used as shorthand in categorically dismissing any and all outside criticism of mainstream climate science.
Trenberth’s rant is like a gift from on high for sceptics. It’s a highly respected climate scientist (among climate scientists at least), a key participant in the IPCC with a litany of alarmist quotes to his name, exposing his most bizarre anti-scientific and extraordinarily vitriolic side. It’s as if he developed tourette syndrome in the middle of his composition. It’s epic muppetry. It’s wonderful.