

How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus - DanielBMarkham
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html

======
lutorm
As a scientist, I find it depressing that people would engage in this kind of
behavior. But on the issue, I just watched this MIT "debate" about the impact
of this incident:

<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/730>

One thing I specifically remember is that one of the panel members (and member
of the IPCC) concluded that the attempt by Mann et al. to bury conflicting
studies was not successful, as some of those very papers were discussed and
cited in the IPCC reports.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I believe if you reduce the argument to one or two specific papers you can
easily see that they get out.

More distressing is the overall pattern of behavior, where editorial boards
are rigged and scientists just "give up" working in this field. No amount of
good papers getting through is going to fix that, unfortunately.

~~~
lutorm
Agreed. It's a fine line between rejecting "crackpots" and those with whom you
simply disagree.

------
robk
This is a pretty powerful article. Regardless of your thoughts on global
warming, it's rather upsetting to see scientists' careers ruined through
having opinions differing than the gatekeepers of the peer reviewing system.

~~~
KirinDave
This isn't a particularly powerful or insightful article. The entire subject
is blown out of proportion and distorted until hardly any of the actual facts
remain.

1\. Scientists ruin their careers by repeatedly attempting to discredit
theories they cannot find the evidence to discredit (or proving claims they
cannot find proof to claim). If a truly compelling set of studies discrediting
global warming trends came out, you can be sure that _many_ publications would
be _eager_ to publish it. This is how science works, and how it has worked
historically. It's a surprisingly stable environment of meritocracy. Politics
intrude, as in any human endeavor, but we'll get to that in:

2\. Differences in opinion in the peer review process are as old as science.
That is why there are multiple publications and multiple standards for
entering into those publications. The whole notion of "scientific consensus"
is built around assumptions like schisms such as this. If everyone agreed
about the exact criterion for publication we'd only have a few (perhaps
regional) scientific publications (and then we'd truly be in trouble).

3\. Science is about _consensus_ , but that implicitly accepts dissent. People
argue for awhile, a consensus is formed, and then things blow over. Seldom are
careers ruined. For an example, see Einstein's extremely controversial claims
that eventually became the next major stepping stone for physics. People
_violently_ opposed his propositions at first, and now we look at him is one
of the greatest minds in human history.

The difference here is that there are active sources of misinformation trying,
for whatever non-scientific reasons, to drum up controversy around the global
warming issue of anthropogenicity. This issue is still under active debate and
research, but unlike many other subjects in a similar status (e.g., quantum
physics) there are "deniers" who will not accept _any_ positive evidence
against their claim and will resort to any means, social or otherwise, to make
their point of view supreme.

Some might argue this is warranted because climate science is making
predictions that require us to radically restructure our industry and energy
infrastructures to the tune of massive sums of money. To be honest, I think
this complaint is shortsighted. Scientific predictions, even those in the
limbo state between "well-accepted" and "just a theory" that we are calling
"consensus", have always dictated the allocation of resources. Consider the
exorbitant cost of the LHC, which is one of the single greatest achievements
of human engineering and physics.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Science is NOT about consensus. "Scientists" have no monopoly on truth.
Science is about facts. Observation. Falsifiable, objective, and independently
reproducible theories. They either produce predictions that match reality or
they don't. It doesn't matter if the scientific establishment believes or
disbelieves in the hall effect, or special relativity, or high temperature
superconductivity. They are either real or not independent of the opinion of
the majority of scientists.

One hopes that the scientific community is sufficiently objective and
disciplined to embrace true science when they see it, but that may not be (and
has not been) the case always.

Consensus should follow science but consensus _cannot_ create science.

~~~
KirinDave
> Science is NOT about consensus.

The entire scientific method is built around consensus. As science is a
process subject to continual refinement. Almost all propositions put forth by
science are ultimately incompletely, inaccurate in some cases, or limited to
specific situations we can test.

So, the scientific process (and the method itself) rigorously challenge all
propositions. Some simply fall apart under the weight of their own
inconsistency, which is what happens when results can not be replicated. But
those which can be replicated _achieve consensus_ until a more accurate
proposition can be made.

Thusly, Newtonian physics was supplemented and updated by Relativity. Wave-
particle duality gradually replaced competing theories. Et cetera. These are
_consensus_ opinions. They are _not_ facts. They're the closest models we can
get based off our observations. The core of the scientific method is that
things are given a continuous opportunity to be _falsified_.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
So science is like some big dinner party where really smart people decide what
best model substitutes for reality?

I always thought it was more like a dinner party where really smart people
were usually wrong and engaged in petty groupthink, and the guy who was able
to show they were wrong (by reproducible experiment) eventually changed their
minds (after quite a bit of trouble, and sometimes by having to wait until
they retired or died)

Have you heard of the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolution", probably
one of the top ten books on science in the last hundred years? Wasn't the
entire point of that book that the way science is sold to kids, ie, a linear
process where one good idea comes out and naturally replaces another, was a
complete fable? In reality science gets "stuck" in various paradigms and it
takes quite a bit of pushing to get them to change.

I've been observing your comments, and I wonder how you make these two things
fit together.

~~~
KirinDave
> I always thought it was more like a dinner party where really smart people
> were usually wrong and engaged in petty groupthink, and the guy who was able
> to show they were wrong (by reproducible experiment) eventually changed
> their minds (after quite a bit of trouble, and sometimes by having to wait
> until they retired or died)

I think this is the thing I said. Ideally the change is purely a matter of
data being presented and reproduced, but human politics inevitably creep in.
But either way, saying "Science is not about consensus!" is at best a
misunderstanding and in some cases it's actually a tactic for climate change
denialists.

But I'm not sure how my comments require me to reconcile the information you
mentioned from "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" with my viewpoint?
Could you explain, please?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Perhaps we are violently agreeing? ;)

Here's the thing. There are two concepts here that people mix up quite a bit:
the scientific method and the politics of science.

The scientific method is about 1) Abduction. Collecting data and finding
patterns. 2) Deduction. Forming the patterns into possible rules, and 3)
Induction. Showing through reproducible experimentation that the rules work
(or not) and then extrapolating that to the universe at large.

There's not much argument on the scientific method. A lot of philosophers
point out it's many problems (induction, for one, is a thorny one. And there's
the problem of instrumentation) but in general the scientific method is the
light that lets our species see in the darkness. The reason you get into an
airplane and trust it is because these three processes have been followed. The
reason medicine is fundamentally different than, say, physics, is that in some
cases strong correlation between data and induction is all you have -- there
is no hypothesis holding it all together (or a very weak one). Different
sciences and different subjects have various levels of maturity in all three
of these areas. It's important to understand that when talking what the status
of those sciences are.

The politics of science is all about consensus, funding, peer reviews, press
coverage, political causes, etc. The actual practice of science, because it is
full of people and not demi-gods or robots, has a lot of politics built into
it.

The interesting questions for any discussion of science are 1) what is the
maturity of the science in all 3 of these areas, and 2) are we talking about
the scientific method? Or the politics of science? (either one may be
important, but you have to know which you're discussing)

Over the years schoolkids are taught some sort of propaganda that mixes all of
this into one big pot and stirs in a little hero worship. (I think the hero
worship is well-placed. Scientists are some of my greatest heroes). Scientists
are these really smart guys who move from one great idea to the next as new
information comes out, and science is the process of being the most
"enlightened" by being up-to-date on whatever the current consensus is.

But a funny thing happened on the way to nirvana -- Thomas Kuhn started
looking at how the work of science gets done. And he found this huge gap
between the legend of how science gets done and how it actually gets done.
There's really too much there for me to do justice in this format, but as an
exaggeration suffice it to say that scientists have turned out to be as human
as the rest of us, and consensus is probably very much a lagging indicator of
where the actual science is leading. Lagging by perhaps as much as decades.

So when you say "consensus is what separates science from philosophy" or that
"science is all about consensus" I find I must interpret that as "the politics
of science" for it to make sense to me. But then when you start using that
consensus in some sort of functional context just like the real work of
science, it doesn't fit any more.

It's probably me. I'm just confused.

------
hugh_
I was thinking about this the other day: what _is_ the best scientific
statement we can make, at present, about anthropogenic global warming?

On one hand, we have theory. There's reasonably good theoretical reasons to
expect that increasing carbon dioxide should increase global temperatures.
However, every good scientist knows not to trust theory too much until it's
been verified by experiment, especially when the system in question is so
complex.

On the other hand, we have experiment. Unfortunately, we only have a sample
size of one, and we don't have a control group. We tried increasing the CO2
emissions, and found that sure enough, the temperature did wind up increasing.
But given there's only one planet in the sample and no planets in the control
group, we certainly can't eliminate the possibility that there's no causal
link. If we forget that we're looking at global temperature vs CO2
concentration and pretend we're looking at a high school kid's science project
about whether playing music to plants makes them grow faster, we'd have to say
that the experiment lends some support to the hypothesis but is hardly
conclusive.

So what can we reasonably conclude? I think the fairest thing we can say is
that it's more likely than not that increasing CO2 emissions causes an
increase in global temperatures. Anyone who claims the science is "settled"
though, the way it's settled for heliocentrism, evolution or relativity, is
not much of a scientist.

(I am also, despite years of Year 9 science projects, still unsure whether
playing music to plants makes them grow faster.)

~~~
lionhearted
> I was thinking about this the other day: what _is_ the best scientific
> statement we can make, at present, about anthropogenic global warming?

Here's what it seems like:

1\. The Earth is warming at a slow rate, but at least some of this is natural
as temperatures were historically considerably higher, then considerably lower
than now.

2\. We're still well within the bounds of normal, habitable historical
temperatures.

3\. Warming definitely occurs at local levels with deforesting, mining, and
urbanization. This can decrease condensation and make areas less habitable to
life. This can be stabilized to a large extent by planting trees, restoring
soil quality, and so on.

4\. Carbon dioxide currently makes up 0.3% of the greenhouse gases including
water vapor, and about 5% of the non-water vapor greenhouse gases. Carbon
dioxide increases are lagging temperature increases - suggesting that CO2 is
not the biggest culprit of global warming.

5\. That said, fossil fuels will gradually be replaced - the two current
biggest hurdles are battery quality and political/public fears about nuclear
power. Nuclear has gotten incredibly more stable and safe, and the advent of
thorium reactors is exciting. Innovations in batteries and transitions to next
generation nuclear will reduce fossil fuels a lot.

6\. Much of green technology isn't so green - in many areas, turbines and
solar panels take enough energy to create that they won't "pay back" their
energy cost within 50 years, at which point we'll likely be able to produce
energy much cheaper anyways. Some areas are very well suited for green energy
- deserts with solar, very windy areas with turbines, hydroelectric on rivers,
but they're brute forcing some very Earth-unfriendly alternative energy into
areas it's not well suited for. Much of what's called green is marketing.

Personal judgment call based on everything I've seen? Money into R&D for
hydrogen power, better batteries, fusion, and safer next-gen nuclear probably
goes a lot further towards cleaning up the Earth than the current proposed
solutions. Fossil fuels seem like they're going to largely be obsolete within
100-150 years or sooner, and rumors of the Earth's imminent demise appear to
be greatly exaggerated.

~~~
lutorm
As you say, much of your points are personal judgments. I do want to respond
to some that aren't:

"2. We're still well within the bounds of normal, habitable historical
temperatures."

This is a severe oversimplification, IMHO. Human society is sensitive not just
to whether the Earth is overall habitable, but to impacts to the significant
"sunk costs" we have in the locations of population centers. It's not much
comfort to the people of California if the Earth remains habitable _on
average_ when the Sierra snowmelt disappears and the state faces a drought of
unprecedented proportions.

"4. Carbon dioxide currently makes up 0.3% of the greenhouse gases including
water vapor, and about 5% of the non-water vapor greenhouse gases. Carbon
dioxide increases are lagging temperature increases - suggesting that CO2 is
not the biggest culprit of global warming."

Where do you get that CO2 is 0.3% of greenhouse gases? It's true that water
vapor is the largest contributor to the greenhouse effect, but CO2 is next. It
accounts for 50% of the non-water greenhouse gases and for _way_ more than
0.3% of the total greenhouse effect. Besides, counting water is a little
spurious because the water content of the atmosphere is set _by_ the
temperature. Thus, if temperature goes up, water content goes up. So saying
that CO2 doesn't matter because water vapor is much more important is wrong,
it's precisely the opposite. CO2 matters _more_ because its effect is
amplified by water. (Barring controversies about cloud covers.)

CO2 is also the greenhouse gas that has the longest lifetime in the
atmosphere. The others (methane, etc) break down a lot quicker.

~~~
lionhearted
> It's not much comfort to the people of California if the Earth remains
> habitable on average when the Sierra snowmelt disappears and the state faces
> a drought of unprecedented proportions.

It's a really long discussion, but our ability to locally adapt to climate
change is actually quite good and improving regularly. Temperatures are rising
really, really slowly - you can get the 2-3 degrees per 100 years back by
planting trees and irrigating. Desalination has come along incredibly fast
too. I can go into greater detail if you have specific questions, I know a
fair bit about this stuff.

> Where do you get that CO2 is 0.3% of greenhouse gases?

"Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a chemical compound composed of two
oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at
standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this
state. CO2 is a trace gas being only 0.038% of the atmosphere."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide>

I think a lot of people forget that CO2 is naturally occurring and necessary
for life.

Also of note:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_effec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_effects_in_Earth.27s_atmosphere)

Wikipedia has CO2 accounting for between 9% and 26% of the greenhouse effect,
the citation was from the American Meteorological Society.

------
rmason
What we are seeing is the politicization of science. Free and open debate in
the scientific community has been choked off by the true believers.

Data not showing what you want, then change it. Allegiance to the cause trumps
the search for the truth and we are all losers in this debate.

------
antidaily
Should I overlook the fact this guy is employed by The Cato Institute, which
is funded by big oil?

~~~
dpatru
No, but also don't miss the fact that most of those on the other side are
funded by big government. Neither side is neutral.

~~~
bballant
Fair enough, but the security and welfare of citizens is the primary interest
of big government (o.k. secondary, but aligned with the primary interest of
getting re-elected), whereas big oil has no interest other than making loot.
With respect to climate change, big oil loot comes at the expense of our
planet (and our security, and lives our troops in the middle east, and our
health, and our economy).

~~~
zaphar
Employment is not a valid criteria by which to validate a scientific paper.
It's a red-herring, when the actual paper and data is available to validate.
Employment has 0 bearing on it's validity. The point of the article and other
like it is that papers and careers were being blacklisted not on the validity
of the science conducted but on the personal opinions of a group more
interested in their own ideas than in open discourse.

------
sunshinegroopie
Consensus != truth

------
chubbard
Why is this occurring now? If this type of behavior was going on then it
sounds like there were a number of scientists that could have spoken out about
this long ago? Especially when the "hockey stick" paper came out if it was
questionable. Why did it take a mysterious "hacker" to reveal this bias? If
all the scientists at the CRU are being unfairly treated why didn't Sallie
Baliunas pull a Zed Shaw when she left science?

The timing just makes all of this very suspect. Had this occurred six months
prior I might be less skeptical, but at this point I don't know who to
believe.

Until someone figures this crap out I'll be in my hummer doing donuts in the
parking lot.

~~~
teilo
It didn't take a mysterious "hacker" to reveal this bias. It has been known
for a long time.

I heard about the "smoothing over" of the MWP and the weighted bias used to
produce the hockey stick many months ago. A significant number of
climatologists have been vocalizing these concerns in varying degrees for some
time. No one would listen to them.

The only reason YOU are hearing about it now is that once light was shed on
the CRU shennanigans, it lent legitimacy (whether or not it is deserved) to
said climatologists, and the opportunity to voice their concerns to a larger
listening audience.

~~~
chubbard
But as cited in the article Mr. Mann tried to put Climate Research "out of
business" as it's put after a 2002 paper didn't agree with him. If YOU heard
about the smoothing over of MWP data only months ago doesn't make it very
current. The paper was from 1999. It's not like this stuff just happened
within the last year.

If these small enclave of scientist felt CRU was being railroaded why did it
take 10 years for them to get a larger audience? They couldn't come up with
some way to expose this problem? He's sending these emails around. I'm sure
plenty of them were CC'ed on one or two of them. "as stonewalling and
requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." Those emails could have
been sent along to any paper and they would have been published. There are
plenty of journals that could have published this research, and would have
been happy to do so if they were compelling.

Why did someone choose to expose this through the shady hacker route?

At least Patrick Michaels went to WSJ when he wrote his article.

