
EPA: Pruitt will launch program to 'critique' climate science - okket
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060056858
======
gpm
In principle this sort of technique seems like something that could benefit
any sort of science, including climate science, immensely. The number of
studies with unreproducible, and likely flat out wrong results, is scarily
high. (And yes, there is certainly real critique that can happen in climate
science, not on whether or not climate change exists at this point, but on
details of certain papers, and even topics like "how realistic is the
clathrate gun hypothesis".)

Unfortunately in practice this likely ends up being the government sponsoring
the same sort of bullshit that the oil companies have been putting out for
ages, and not real critique. Red team/blue team is also a unfortunate name
given the political connotations...

~~~
vannevar
"And yes, there is certainly real critique that can happen in climate
science..."

The kind of critique that routine happens within the scientific community,
over time. Scientists are highly motivated to prove the majority wrong,
because that's how you make your career, by finding something new that
everyone else missed.

By contrast, the EPA 'critique' will be a political charade, a circus of
crackpots and shills assembled by the administration to rationalize its
predetermined policy decisions.

~~~
gpm
If that kind of critique was happening routinely we wouldn't have 50% of
scientists not being able to reproduce their own paper [0]. The sad truth is
that incentives have aligned so that sufficient critique doesn't happen, and
that showing some paper doesn't reproduce isn't going to make your career.
Government funding to encourage such critique would be great.

I don't disagree on this likely be(com)ing a political charade.

[0] [http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-
on-...](http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-
reproducibility-1.19970)

~~~
nostrademons
I think your take-away from the reproducibility crisis shouldn't be that
science is corrupt, peer review is stuffed with cronies, or scientists don't
know what they're doing, it should be that _science is really fucking hard_ :

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-
broken/#pa...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-
broken/#part1)

My old boss at Google used to run the data science program for Search - this
is basic business intelligence, not even the natural sciences. He gave an hour
and a half long presentation once on all the ways our experiments can and have
gone wrong. It included everything from browser bugs disrupting logging, to
service outages that happened in the middle of the experiment, to current
events that change the normal traffic pattern, to software bugs that trigger
failsafes that shut off the experiment but don't affect the control. By the
end of the presentation, engineers were asking "So how is it that we actually
get anything _right_?"

My brother-in-law is an actual scientist - he does cancer research, studying
gene expression within head & neck tumors. The time it takes to get one
rigorous, publishable result is measured in years. And it can be derailed by
months by something as simple as a tech mixing up lab samples.

The thing is, when people use examples of these techniques going wrong as
examples of why science is untrustworthy, they forget that _normal human
reasoning doesn 't even bother trying_. It's basically a given that most of
the stuff you "know" is false. What would be the reproducibility stats for an
everyday human belief like "vaccines cause autism" or "the economy does better
under Democratic presidents" or "vitamin C prevents colds"?

The virtue of science is in being less wrong, it's not in being right. Which,
given how often the average human is wrong, is something I'll happily take.

~~~
babyrainbow
> everyday human belief like "vaccines cause autism"..

A bit funny that you have to tell this, considering where this originated
from..

------
jjaredsimpson
The IPCC has already done the work of summarizing climate science.

The role of government is to respond to those truths with estimates of the
negative impacts and estimates of the cost of mitigation and then come to a
consensus around actions.

This is just obfuscation designed to drive a wedge between accepted science
and policymakers. Obfuscaters just want to avoid making the hard arguments
over their desires to have either zero mitigation or to actively accelerate
human caused climate change.

It's a perfectly fine position to hold that climate change is happening but
that you don't care. It's not fine to lie about it happening purposefully
create and spread lies in the public space.

Just make the argument that the money would be better spent elsewhere.

------
metalliqaz
Has anyone ever got Pruitt in front of a camera and asked him the following
question?

"Contaminants in our air and water cause X billion dollars of added health
care costs and lost productivity to Americans every year. Rising sea levels
and extreme weather patterns cause Y billion dollars of damage to real estate
and crop yields every year. What is the EPA going to do to control these
losses?"

I really want this anti-science conservative to answer the question about what
he really cares about: the wallets of people who own lots of things. His side
doesn't care about "good science" or objective truth, and they don't care
about the public's well being. They care about money above all else and I
think that's where the discussion should be focused.

~~~
joshuaheard
Critiquing a hypothesis is part of the scientific process, not "anti-science".
If the science is sound, it will withstand scrutiny.

I have followed this debate closely, and I haven't seen anyone on either side
put forth detailed policy proposals other than voluntary carbon caps. In my
opinion, advanced technology will solve this problem before any major policy
changes are needed.

~~~
orf
Unless you he scrutiny is biased and meant to discredit the science that is.
Republicans lie about scientific consensus on climate change all the time. Do
you think, it by some miracle this review is not biased, that they will
suddenly accept those findings?

Vested interests have vested interests. Reviews of publications doesn't change
that.

~~~
xamuel
Real science should even welcome biased, hostile scrutiny. Actually, that's
the best kind of scrutiny.

Read Blaise Pascal's work where he demonstrated how to create a vacuum
experimentally. At the time, everyone thought that was impossible. Pascal
calmly addresses tons of detractors (many of whom had real skin in the game).
If climatologists can't do that, then their work SHOULD be questioned.

~~~
gburt
This makes the naive assumption that the people evaluating the conversation
are rigorous logicians who are not moved by emotional appeals and bad logic
that confirms what they want to believe.

------
joshuamorton
As an interesting note, the Murray referenced in the article is the same
Robert Murray that threatened to (and then did) sue John Oliver after his
segment on coal this month [0][1].

[0]: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/22/media/john-oliver-coal-
king-...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/22/media/john-oliver-coal-king-murray-
lawsuit/index.html)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw6RsUhw1Q8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw6RsUhw1Q8)

------
kevmo
I predict that this will be the new primary source of propaganda undermining
public belief in climate science.

~~~
TearsInTheRain
If it is done by experts in good faith this will probably be a good thing to
strengthen the signal/noise ratio in climate science.

~~~
Avshalom
It will not. We've already done this
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-
of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-
change-skeptic.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

It didn't help.

~~~
rndmize
Yep. I remember conservatives crowing about how this was a study by a climate
skeptic and respected scientist and they'd be willing to accept the results.
Of course, when the results weren't what they wanted, They turned against the
whole thing.

Brings to mind Gingrich and his "Mueller is an excellent pick" tweet a few
months ago, only to completely flip his position a few weeks ago. These people
are unredeemable.

------
creaghpatr
The title is kind of misleading. From the article:

>The program will use "red team, blue team" exercises to conduct an "at-length
evaluation of U.S. climate science," the official said, referring to a concept
developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations.

~~~
theothermkn
As Senator Franken pointed out, the scientific process itself is a "red team,
blue team" exercise, and the settled result of that process, the consensus
view of climate scientists, is that human-induced climate change via carbon
emissions is happening and is a real threat.

The article title is technically correct, in that at least one of those teams
will be on the "critique" side. It is also substantially correct, germane, and
honest in implying with its scare quotes that this new effort is superfluous,
unless it is an effort to gum up the works with climate denial.

~~~
kevinavery
Great clip of Sen. Franken explaining to Rick Perry how science works:

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4674659/franken-vs-perry-
clim...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4674659/franken-vs-perry-climate-
science)

------
neves
The worst legacy of Trump will be his denying of climate change. USA is the
greatest polluter of the world. Their carbon output per capita is ten times
greater than everybody. The country always stopped every tentative to slow
climate change. Now with Trump they will accelerate it.

~~~
rayiner
We're not even in the top 10 once you take into account weather and GDP:
[http://grist.org/climate-change/some-like-it-hot-or-cold-
how...](http://grist.org/climate-change/some-like-it-hot-or-cold-how-weather-
affects-carbon-emissions).

~~~
orf
Per capita you are the highest, and historically as well. That's slowly
changing and may not be true in the future as other nations industrialize, but
you can't escape the facts.

Edit: downvotes, but no comments? Nice. Care to point out why I'm wrong?

~~~
maxxxxx
I agree. Per capita is the only fair measure when comparing countries,.
Although it's scary to think about china and India catching up on that
measure...

------
kem
I'm speechless, but also habituating to that feeling.

It's as if we reincarnated oil barons from the early 1900s and appointed them
all to lead the government without telling them it was 2017.

~~~
KirinDave
Imperialism is timeless.

The weirdest part of it all is how these folks are now on the sharp end of
capitalism. They're rapidly being dismantled at a more local level by on-site
generation, which simply needs less global infrastructure to meet demand.

So now we have these folks with massive empires largely based on the promise
of future capital, with heavily leveraged current holdings. They have
incentive to act against efficiency and the market to preserve the investments
they made. In any other scenario folks would probably say that they "deserve
to lose".

~~~
teslabox
> The weirdest part of it all is how these folks are now on the sharp end of
> capitalism. They're rapidly being dismantled at a more local level by on-
> site generation, which simply needs less global infrastructure to meet
> demand.

I wish the climate change alarmists could realize that 90% of what they're
freaking out about is a non-problem. It'd just take a small amount of focused
investment (cogeneration and AC time-shifting tech, etc) to make the energy
industry obsolete.

~~~
KirinDave
I think it's a very big problem for my descendants. This is something I am
sensitive to as my parents and grandparents have left America in such a
terrible state for me to inherit, and now resist any attempts to yield power.

The energy industry is fighting against both economics and ecology to maintain
dominance. It does so for lots of reasons. It has no right to exist.

------
maxxxxx
If they did the same for their health care proposals, tax cuts, increase in
defense spending and other stuff I would be totally onboard.

------
nostrademons
This effort is ultimately kind of laughable. Coal is going to collapse not
because any global warming regulations, but because it is no longer cost
competitive with natural gas, solar, or wind. And many jurisdictions have
committed to upholding the Paris Accords with state & local laws. [1]

It's a dying industry that will die out for the normal reasons - economic
forces - regardless of what the federal government does.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance)

~~~
gpm
It will still "benefit" plenty of other industries, such as oil, natural gas,
etc

------
rdiddly
Anybody notice what the coal guy said?

 _" Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It's a pseudonym for 'no
coal,'" Murray said while waiting for a ride outside DOE headquarters. "It is
neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just
cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, 'Look what
I did for coal,' knowing all the time that it doesn't help coal at all."_

So "clean coal" is BS just like I thought? Is this guy trying to shoot himself
and Trump in the foot or what?

------
francisofascii
Sometimes I think too much focus is being put on climate change as the reason
to reduce fossil fuel consumption, while all the other good reasons get less
attention. The US economy has a dangerous dependence on finite resources. Its
cheap availability and consumption has devastated country sides, caused
pollution, wars, economic instability, disconnected societies, obesity, the
list goes on.

------
guelo
I honestly don't think this is going to be politically solvable without
violence. If it comes down to civil war the evil billionaires will have more
money for weapons. My prediction for the next couple centuries is an
increasingly ruthless dictatorship controlled by a billionaire class trying to
prevent revolt while civilization slowly collapses.

------
Karunamon
Kind of an open question here. I am not a climatologist and neither are most
people. Climate science is subtle and easy to misinterpret (and hence, spin)
on the mater of anthropogenic climate change, or ACC.

To the average person, myself included, the arguments made by both "sides"
(ACC exists, ACC does not exist) are equally convincing. That is, both seem
logical and well-argued at the superficial level we can understand without
training.

To the average person, myself included, both "sides" have a profit motive in
fudging the numbers. (If ACC exists, the energy industry will fight because it
ultimately harms their profits. If ACC doesn't exist, the academic lobby will
fight for their prestige and grants)

Both sides are, ultimately, dirty, due to politicization if nothing else.

Both sides, ultimately, cannot be simultaneously correct.

And so I ask: Who should be trusted, why, and how, given the limited number of
hours in the day available to people who aren't directly involved in
climatology as their day job?

For bonus points, do any of the answers to those questions not boil down to
the genetic or appeal to authority fallacies?

(The snark below in response to a legitimate, good-faith question is leading
me to believe this topic cannot be discussed among reasonable people)

~~~
rwoodley
Neither we nor our politicians should adjudicate scientific results and pick
and choose what makes sense to us. We are not qualified. Scientists have a
process as well as peer review which determines valid vs invalid results.

I subscribe to 'Science' magazine which is one of the most respected
publications among scientists (along with 'Nature' magazine). The consensus
among scientists is settled: ACC is real. ACC deniers do not get published in
respected science magazines because their peers do not respect their results.

Scientific results should be settled by the peer group of scientists, not by
politicians or the general public (see vaccine conspiracies for example).

~~~
voice_of_reason
How is consensus settled, when there are renowned scientists out there who
object the CAGW hypothesis? Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry,
Freeman Dyson - are they all bought and paid for by oil industry?

~~~
Bud
Freeman Dyson is not a climate scientist at all and never has been. Roy
Spencer isn't a "renowned scientist"; he's a paid oil-industry shill. Lindzen
used to be a scientist; now he's retired and gets paid to be a Cato Institute
shill. Judith Curry also used to be a scientist and quit her academic job;
presumably being a shill pays WAY better.

So, basically, yes, they are all bought and paid for, or, they simply have no
credentials or knowledge of the field in question.

~~~
voice_of_reason
Dyson is a renowned physicist interested in climate science. I believe that
his physics/math skills and general intelligence allow him to be quite
competent in climate issues.

Lindzen retired only in 2013. I don't see how this makes his opinion about
CAGW less valuable, especially given the fact that he was skeptical about CAGW
hypothesis for a long time.

"Judith Curry also used to be a scientist and quit her academic job;
presumably being a shill pays WAY better." \- where's the proof that she is a
"shill"?

Roy Spencer is a renowned scientist in my book: "Roy Warren Spencer is a
meteorologist, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave
Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. He has served as senior
scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center."

Again, where is the proof that he is oil industry's shill?

~~~
mturmon
To my knowledge, Freeman Dyson has no peer reviewed research contributions in
the climate literature. That should be the price of entry, otherwise there is
nothing of substance to critique.

------
notadoc
Can they launch a program to critique thermodynamics, gravity, planetary
motion, and evolution too?

~~~
oh_sigh
Do you really see those things as having equivalent sureness of proof as
climate change? I grok the things you listed quite well, and I've been
following climate science as a hobbyist for years, and by comparison climate
science is a mess compared to thermodynamics and even evolution. And I say
this as a person who fully believes that anthropogenic climate change is
happening.

------
dboreham
Didn't the oil industry already try this tactic for the past few decades?

~~~
tdb7893
I think Al Franken referenced some time where some Koch brothers funded
institution already did this. That's also ignoring the fact that this is
already how science works for the most part

~~~
chrisbennet
In the video, Al Franken pointed out that the Koch brothers had funded a "red
team" of climate skeptics - and the skeptics (or at least one of them) became
believers and stated as much. Oh snap!

~~~
Brakenshire
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Tempera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Temperature)

------
rdiddly
"A lie ain't a side of the story. It's just a lie." \-- The Wire

------
sova
Now, look over here! And not at Cancer study controversies!

~~~
notadoc
Maybe they could launch a program to 'critique' cancer? Is cancer actually
bad? Does anything actually cause it? Is it even real? Let's hear both sides
of this debate.

------
spinchange
Talk about wasteful, frivolous, and counterproductive government... This is
the politicization of settled science and at cross purposes with the agency's
mission, but what else is new in 45's America?

