Climate change as a matter of risk management requires different choices in communication

Rowan Sutton just published a very short article (an “idea”) in ESDD entitled “a simple proposal to improve the contribution of IPCC WG1 to the assessment and communication of climate change risks”. From a risk management point of view a focus solely on the most likely outcome is not recommended, especially when the impacts increase sharply towards one end of the scale.

Sutton:

A common measure of risk is likelihood x impact (Fig 1). It is standard practice in risk assessment to highlight both the most likely impacts and low likelihood high impact scenarios. Such scenarios merit specific attention because the associated costs can be extremely high, so decision makers need to know about them. It follows that WGI has a responsibility to assess and communicate explicitly the scientific evidence concerning potential high impact scenarios, even when the likelihood of occurrence is assessed to be small. In past reports the assessment of key parameters by WG1 has focussed overwhelmingly on likely ranges only. When information has been provided about the tails of distributions only likelihoods have been communicated using terms – following the IPCC’s uncertainty guidance (Mastrandrea et al, 2010) – such as “very unlikely” or “extremely unlikely”: a clear steer that policy makers should largely ignore such possibilities. But this is wrong. Policy makers care about risk not likelihood alone. The IPCC’s uncertainty guidance ignores impact and is symmetric with respect to high or low impact scenarios; this is inappropriate for the communication of risk (Fig 1).

Figure 1: A schematic representation of how climate change risk depends on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS).

Some will argue that the WGII report is needed to provide information on impacts. For detailed information this is certainly the case, but the general shape of the damage function for a large basket of impacts (Fig 1) is insensitive to such details, and is all that is needed to justify WGI providing a much more thorough assessment of relevant scenarios. Other critics will suggest that for WGI to identify high impact scenarios explicitly would constitute scaremongering; this concern is no doubt one reason why previous WGI reports have focused so much on the likely range. But it is misguided. Policy makers need to know about high impact scenarios and WGI has a responsibility to contribute its considerable expertise to making the appropriate assessments.

A very similar point has been made by Kerry Emanuel in his post “Tail risk vs Alarmism” on CCNF:

In assessing the event risk component of climate change, we have, I would argue, a strong professional obligation to estimate and portray the entire probability distribution to the best of our ability. This means talking not just about the most probable middle of the distribution, but also the lower probability high-end risk tail, because the outcome function is very high there.

(…)

But there are strong cultural biases running against any discussion of this kind of tail risk, at least in the realm of climate science. The legitimate fear that the public will interpret any discussion whatsoever of tail risk as a deliberate attempt to scare people into action, or to achieve some other ulterior or nefarious goal, is enough to make almost all scientists shy away from any talk of tail risk and stick to the safe high ground of the middle of the probability distribution. The accusation of “alarmism” is quite effective in making scientists skittish in conveying tail risk, and talking about the tail of the distribution is a sure recipe to be so labelled.

Hans Custers schreef een kort Nederlandstalig blog over Sutton’s artikel.

Wanted: blog readers to be interviewed as part of PhD research into climate blogging

Guest post by Giorgos Zoukas. As part of his research on climate blogging he would like to interview blog readers. Please contact him if you’d like to participate. He has interviewed me as well as some other climate scientist bloggers. BV

 

Invitation to participate in a PhD research project on climate blogging

My name is Giorgos Zoukas and I am a second-year PhD student in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS, http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/) at the University of Edinburgh (http://www.ed.ac.uk/home). This guest post is an invitation to the readers and commenters of this blog to participate in my project.

This is a self-funded PhD research project that focuses on a small selection of scientist-produced climate blogs, exploring the way these blogs connect into, and form part of, broader climate science communication. The research method involves analysis of the blogs’ content, as well as semi-structured in-depth interviewing of both bloggers and readers/commenters.

Anyone who comments on this blog, on a regular basis or occasionally, or anyone who just reads this blog without posting any comments, is invited to participate as an interviewee. The interview will focus on the person’s experience as a climate blog reader/commenter.*

The participation of readers/commenters is very important to this study, one of the main purposes of which is to increase our understanding of climate blogs as online spaces of climate science communication.

If you are interested in getting involved, or if you have any questions, please contact me at: G.Zoukas -at- sms.ed.ac.uk (Replace the -at- with the @ sign)

(Those who have already participated through my invitation on another climate blog do not need to contact me again.)

*The research complies with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Sciences Ethics Policy and Procedures, and an informed consent form will have to be signed by both the potential participants (interviewees) and me.

Andrew Dessler’s testimony on what we know about climate change

In his recent testimony, Andrew Dessler reviewed what he thinks “are the most important conclusions the climate scientific community has reached in over two centuries of work”. I think that’s a very good choice to focus on, as the basics of what we know is most important, “at least as to the thrust and direction of policy” (Herman Daly). This focus served as a good antidote to the other witness, Judith Curry, who emphasizes (and often exaggerates) uncertainty to the point of conflating it with ignorance.

Dessler mentioned the following “important points that we know with high confidence”:

1.  The climate is warming.

Let’s take this opportunity to show the updated figure by Cowtan and Way, extending their infilling method to the entire instrumental period (pause? which pause?):

2. Most of the recent warming is extremely likely due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by human activities.

This conclusion is based on several lines of evidence:

– Anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases

– Physics of greenhouse effect

– Observed warming roughly matches what is expected

– Important role of CO2 in paleoclimate

– No alternative explanation for recent warming

– Fingerprints of enhanced greenhouse effect (e.g. stratospheric warming cooling, which was predicted before it was observed)

Dessler:

Thus, we have a standard model of climate science that is capable of explaining just about everything. Naturally, there are some things that aren’t necessarily explained by the model, just as there’re a few heavy smokers who don’t get lung cancer. But none of these are fundamental challenges to the standard model.

He goes on to explain that the so-called “hiatius” is not a fundamental challenge to our understanding of climate, though it is “an opportunity to refine and improve our understanding of [the interaction of ocean circulation, short-term climate variability, and long-term global warming].”

What about alternative theories? Any theory that wants to compete with the standard model has to explain all of the observations that the standard model can. Is there any model that can even come close to doing that?

No.

And making successful predictions would help convince scientists that the alternative theory should be taken seriously. How many successful predictions have alternative theories made?

Zero.

3. Future warming could be large 

On this point I always emphasize that the amount of future warming depends both on a combination of factors:

– the climate forcing (i.e. our emissions and other changes to the earth’ radiation budget)

– the climate sensitivity (the climate system’s response to those forcings)

– the climate response time (how fast will the system equilibrates).

Internal (unforced) variability also plays a role, but this usually averages out over long enough timescales.

4. The impacts of this are profound.

In the climate debate, we can argue about what we know or what we don’t know. Arguing about what we don’t know can give the impression that we don’t know much, even though some impacts are virtually certain.

The virtually certain impacts include:

• increasing temperatures

• more frequent extreme heat events

• changes in the distribution of rainfall

• rising seas

• the oceans becoming more acidic

Time is not our friend in this problem.

Nor is uncertainty.

The scientific community has been working on understanding the climate system for nearly 200 years. In that time, a robust understanding of it has emerged. We know the climate is warming. We know that humans are now in the driver’s seat of the climate system. We know that, over the next century, if nothing is done to rein in emissions, temperatures will likely increase enough to profoundly change the planet. I wish this weren’t true, but it is what the science tells us.

Peter Sinclair posted a video of Andrew Dessler’s testimony. Eli Rabett posted Dessler’s testimony in full.

A key distinction in the two senate hearings was that Andrew Dessler focused on what we know, whereas Judith Curry focused on what we don’t know (though “AndThenTheresPhysics” made a good point that Curry goes far beyond that, by e.g. proclaiming confidence in certain benign outcomes (e.g. regarding sensitivity) while claiming ignorance in areas where we have a half-decent, if incomplete, understanding, e.g. regarding the hiatus). I have argued before that emphasizing (let alone exaggerating) uncertainties is not the road to increase people’s understanding of the issue, where what we do know is much more important to convey (if your goal is to increase the public understanding of scientific knowledge). Alongside that I argue that much more attention is needed to explain the nature of science, which is needed to e.g. place scientific uncertainties in a proper context.

Herman Daly said it as follows, in a quote I’ve used regularly over the past few years:

If you jump out of an airplane you need a crude parachute more than an accurate altimeter.

Arguing whether the altimeter might be off by a few inches is interesting from a scientific/technological perspective, but for the people in the plane it’s mostly a distraction.

Gavin Schmidt and Judith Curry on Science Advocacy

Gavin gave a fantastic talk at this year’s AGU conference about science advocacy (good report on it by Yale CMForum and Dot Earth). The video is available via the AGU youtube channel:

He argued that it’s best to be explicit about one’s values and clearly distinguish when one is talking values (“ought”) and when one is talking science (“is”). I entirely agree. I would add that it’s important to distinguish recommending a generic (e.g. mitigation) vs a specific (e.g. CCS) course of action, especially when the latter is not one’s area of expertise. I wrote about the public role of scientists before, which touches on many of these same issues.

Judith Curry also chimed in, complimenting Gavin but also giving some criticism, much of which is rather off-base imho.

Both Gavin and Judith refer to this statement by Thomas Stocker at the end of the (well worth watching) IPCC AR5 video:

Continued greenhouse gas emissions cause further climate change and constitute a multicentury commitment in the future.  Therefore we conclude that limiting climate change requires substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Is this a normative statement (“ought”) or a factual statement (“is”)? Gavin claimed it’s the latter, Judith claimed it’s the former. It would be advocacy if the goal was left out, as in “we should reduce GHG emissions”. But that’s not what Stocker said. Instead, what he said comes down to “if this is the goal, then that is what needs to be done to achieve it”. Curry claims that adaptation, carbon sequestration or geoengineering would also be options to limit climate change. That’s only partly true. Adaptation doesn’t actually limit climate change, as the word says it means adapting to climate change. As such it helps in the short term (and is definitely important), but in the long term adaptation without mitigation is like mopping the floor while leaving the tap running (see also the Rabett). Carbon sequestration is a viable option to reduce atmospheric concentrations, but with current technologies it can only make a minor contribution. So it could limit climate change to a very limited extent one might say. Geoengineering is a more complicated story. Basically, it exchanges one type of climate change (temperature changes) with another type (hydrological changes), so it changes climate change.

Perhaps Stocker’s statement could have been made more specific by including e.g. something like “limiting climate change to what societies are adapted or can adapt to requires substantial and sustained reductions in GHG emissions” which I think is what he meant anyway.

Curry goes on to state ” And there is a missing element in this argument that warming is ‘bad’, which is a value judgment and has nothing to do with science.”

This is a strawman argument, as it’s not a (hidden) element in Stocker’s argument as given above. Again, it would be true if the goal was omitted or left implicit (but it wasn’t). If one feels that limiting climate change is not needed (because it’s not bad) than the needed cure (reducing emissions) is not needed, obviously. That is entirely consistent with what Stocker said.

Curry further offers the following list of “examples of potential hidden values that are rather inconvenient (because) these are why the public distrusts scientists as advocates”. I offer my comment with each (in italics). It’s not at all clear that these would all go in the direction of a bias in favor of the mainstream (as Curry seems to implicitly assume); to the contrary.

• personal career advancement: Unclear in which direction this would most likely go.
• research funding: idem, though this could cause a tendency to increase the apparent magnitude of uncertainties.
• the value in terms of professional recognition (e.g. awards from professional societies) that supporting the scientific consensus can provide (recognizing the ostracism that con result from straying): No bigger reward for a scientist than to prove the scientific consensus wrong.
• media attention: This goes in the direction of providing relatively more media attention to contrarian voices, Judith Curry herself being a good example (assuming that she wasn’t as prevalent in the media before her U-turn away from mainstream science). This got confirmed in the large survey amongst climate scientists that I conducted last year (not yet published).
• influence within the scientific community: This hinges on using solid arguments, so usually provides the correct incentive.
• influence at the power tables in terms public policy: Like with media attention, extreme voices seem to have disproportionate influence. Look at the regular line-up for US senate hearings for example. If you crave media attention and political influence, being loudly contrarian is a sure way to achieve that. In the Netherlands the same tendency is apparent.
• broader political objectives that support any/all of the above: This goes more likely in the direction of downplaying rather than overplaying AGW I would argue.

BBC interview: global warming pause, climate sceptics, long timescales

I was interviewed by Matt McGrath from the BBC last week, as were several other Dutch climate spokespeople (including PBL’s senior scientist Arthur Petersen and skeptical science writer/journalist Marcel Crok). Short parts of these interviews have appeared on the web  and on Radio 4 (“The World Tonight”, 26-09). Below I try to provide a bit of context to my quotes.

Both pieces are centred, as is fashionable these days, on the apparent smaller rate of surface warming in the past 15 years. The web piece is entitled “Climate sceptics claim warming pause backs their view”. Of course they claim it does. What sceptics did achieve –credit where credit is due- is to put this so-called “pause” on the agenda of mainstream media, until it got so fashionable that they all feel forced to use it as an anchor for any reporting on climate. But, as Gavin Schmidt is quoted as saying:

focus on a global warming pause over the past 15 years is a “misplaced” distraction that misses the big picture. He said, “The IPCC and the issue of climate change is not about the weather next year or the next five years; it’s about the long-term climate change that we are engendering.”

See also this useful figure from Stefan Rahmstorf, underscoring the silliness of drawing all too strong conclusions from 15-year trends.

Figure showing NASA GISS global average temperatures with trendlines from 1992-2006 (light blue) and 1998-2012 (green) as well as the most recent 30-year trend in red. Naturally, starting in a very cold volcano-influenced or very warm El Nino influenced year will inflate or deflate the trend. (source: Stefan Rahmstorf)

I am quoted in the BBC piece as follows:

Bart Verheggen is an atmospheric scientist and blogger who supports the mainstream view of global warming. He said that sceptics have discouraged an open scientific debate.

“When scientists start to notice that their science is being distorted in public by these people who say they are the champions of the scientific method, that could make mainstream researchers more defensive.

“Scientists probably think twice now about writing things down. They probably think twice about how this could be twisted by contrarians.”

The discussion was about to what extent climate science isn’t open/transparent enough, as contrarians routinely claim. Matt also asked to what extent skeptics actually play a positive role in making science more open/transparent and more self-critical. I said ideally they would. People who are critical usually have a good influence that way. But many climate contrarians don’t just stop at raising partly valid criticism, but go on to distort the science. That has the opposite influence, as scientists noticing this behavior become more careful and more defensive, and(have to) think ahead how their words might get twisted by contrarians. So they may become less open and less frank, and more careful in how they chose their words.

That is the opposite of what contrarians claim they want to achieve, so it’s quite ironic (though entirely logical) that this is the more likely effect of their behavior. It shows quite a lack of self-awareness on their part that they don’t see how their actions and their behavior affect the dynamics of the public debate. For the worse, in most –though not all- cases.

There may also be some lack of self-awareness among the mainstream that they respond in a way that’s not conducive to a long-term open and frank dialogue with society. From an older comment of mine:

If the valid criticisms wouldn’t be packaged in such conspiratorial/accusative/exaggerated (c/a/e) ways, they would be welcomed much more than they currently are. The art that mainstream scientists and their defenders must learn is to take the valid parts of the criticisms and deal with/respond to them, and leave the c/a/e packaging for what it is. That is increasingly difficult because the critics and their supporters will try to keep the c/a/e in (presumably because this packaging is what is most effective at decreasing the scientists’ credibility and sowing doubt). That dynamic needs to be broken. It needs effort from both sides, as difficult and unfair as it sounds.

As I wrote in my earliest (and still rather positive) reflection on the Curry-turn:

There is a tendency of ‘circling the wagons’ within the scientific community, in response to the continuous attacks on the science. Attacks that are mostly based on smear and insinuation rather than solid arguments. (…) I think the ’us-versus-them’ feeling amongst many scientists and their supporters is understandable (as a reaction to the contrarian c/a/e attacks on the science), but counterproductive in the long run.

In the Radio 4 show (at ~33:50 min in; earlier in the downloadable mp3 version), I am saying a few things about the timescale of the problem and of the solution. I brought this up when the discussion was about whether we now have more time to respond to climate change. This is a vastly underappreciated point in the climate discussion:  The climate system will take much longer to cool down than it did to warm up. This is a consequence of how the carbon cycle works. In this context, I said the following:

We’re going somewhere, and if we don’t like where we’re going, we have to turn that wheel in time.  As when you’re on a giant supertanker on the ocean, you can’t say “oh, I’ll wait until I can feel the iceberg with my pinkie and then I’ll turn the wheel”. Then you’re a bit late, so you have to start doing that in time. That’s the other side of the coin. But if you keep banging the drum saying “it’s five to twelve! It’s five to twelve!” doesn’t work either. And that could be counter-effective to engage those who are a bit more skeptical.

Global warming is a problem in slow-motion, hence the “five to twelve” line is not the most useful one to get people on their feet, because if it remains five to twelve for too long, they will tune you out. That’s what happened in the aftermath of COP15 in Copenhagen for example (where the 5-to-12 line was used a lot, and not much has changed in the years since). The supertanker analogy is more appropriate I find, since that makes clear that even though the problematic situation that’s on your path isn’t in close proximity yet, it is necessary to change course, if you wish to avoid it.

Documentairy “Thin Ice” now available on the web

The documentairy “Thin Ice“, with spectacular images and interviews with a few dozen of well-known and lesser well-known climate scientists, is available for viewing tonight on their website (which features lots of other interesting content btw). At the same time, various public screenings are being organized all over the world (unfortunately not in the Netherlands, mea culpa). The free viewing via their website is probably temporary, though I don’t know for how long (my guess is a few days). The premiere has of course been timed to coincide with Earth Day.

Launching ClimateDialogue.org

Guestpost by ClimateDialogue editors Rob van Dorland, Bart Strengers and Marcel Crok

ClimateDialogue.org
Exploring different views on climate change

Goal of ClimateDialogue.org
ClimateDialogue.org offers a platform for discussions between invited climate scientists on important climate topics that have been subject to scientific and public debate. The goal of the platform is to explore the full range of views currently held by scientists by inviting experts with different views on the topic of discussion. We encourage the invited scientists to formulate their own personal scientific views; they are not asked to act as representatives for any particular group in the climate debate.

Obviously, there are many excellent blogs that facilitate discussions between climate experts, but as the climate debate is highly polarized and politicized, blog discussions between experts with opposing views are rare.

Background
The discovery, early 2010, of a number of errors in the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report on climate impacts (Working Group II), led to a review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC by the InterAcademy Council (IAC). The IAC-report triggered a debate in the Dutch Parliament about the reliability of climate science in general. Based on the IAC-recommendation that ‘the full range of views’ should be covered in the IPCC-reports, Parliament asked the Dutch government ‘to also involve climate skeptics in future studies on climate change’.

In response, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment announced a number of projects that are aimed to increase this involvement. Climate Dialogue is one of these projects.

Topics
We are starting Climate Dialogue with a discussion on the causes of the decline of the Arctic Sea Ice, and the question to what extent this decline can be explained by global warming. Also, the projected timing of the first year that the Arctic will be ice free will be discussed. With respect to the latter, in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, IPCC anticipated that (near) ice free conditions might occur by the end of this century. Since then, several studies have indicated this could be between 2030-2050, or even earlier.

We invited three experts to take part in the discussion: Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Walt Meier, research scientist at the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado; and Ron Lindsay, Senior Principal Physicist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Future topics that will be discussed  include: climate sensitivity, sea level rise, urban heat island-effects, the value of comprehensive climate models, ocean heat storage, and the warming trend over the past few decades.

Our format
Each discussion will be kicked off by a short introduction written by the editorial staff, followed by a guest blog by two or more invited scientists. The scientists will start the discussion by responding to each other’s arguments. It is not the goal of Climate Dialogue to reach a consensus, but to stimulate the discussion and to make clear what the discussants agree or disagree on and why.
To round off the discussion on a particular topic, the Climate Dialogue editor will write a summary, describing the areas of agreement and disagreement between the discussants. The participants will be asked to approve this final article, the discussion between the experts on that topic will then be closed and the editorial board will open a new discussion on a different topic.

The public (including other climate scientists) is also free to comment, but for practical reasons these comments will be shown separately.

The project organization consists of an editorial staff of three people and an advisory board of seven people, all of whom are based in the Netherlands. The editorial staff is concerned with the day-to-day operation of researching topics, finding participants for the discussion and moderating the discussions between the experts. The main task of the advisory board is to guard the neutrality of the platform and to advise the editorial staff about its activities

Editorial Staff
Project leader is Rob van Dorland of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). Van Dorland is a senior scientist and climate advisor in the Climate Services section and is often operating at the interface between science and society.

The second member is Bart Strengers. He is a climate policy analyst and modeler in the IMAGE-project at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and has been involved in the discussion with climate skeptics for many years.

The third member is Marcel Crok, an investigative science writer, who published a critical book (in Dutch) about the climate debate.

Questions
We welcome comments on this blog and are happy to answer any questions regarding this project. You can send an email to info [at] climatedialogue [dot] org.

Postscript (Bart V):

(Disclaimer: I am involved in this initiative as a member of the advisory board)

I think ClimateDialogue is a unique project in both its organization (people with wildly different views are involved) and in its aim: Facilitating a public discussion between scientists with strongly differing opinions.

Discussion topics are chosen to be relevant and interesting to the general public as well as receiving scientific attention. Discussants are chosen to reflect different stances in the spectrum of scientific opinion, explicitly including ‘sceptical’ voices. Naturally, the ensuing discussion is not necessarily representative of the full spectrum of scientific discussion (painting it as such would likely lead to a ‘false balance’).

The idea is that the discussion can alleviate the polarization between ‘sceptics’ and ‘mainstreamers’ and provide some clarity in background of the (dis)agreements. Moreover, having scientists discuss their scientific disagreements in a public setting can go a long way to increase the public trust in science, which has suffered from the (imho incorrect) impression of being closed-minded. All in all, I think that ClimateDialogue provides a valuable service to both the public and the scientific debate. That doesn’t mean that it’s free of risks, but these are more in the framing and the perception than in the discussions itself. Naturally, the participation of good scientists is a necessary condition to make this experiment a success. Don’t hesitate to contact the editors (or me) if you fit the bill and are not afraid of a public debate!

Dilemmas in science communication

Slightly different version has been posted and discussed at Planet3

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting on science communication and the increasing public distrust of science. Climate was not the major theme, though it did come up as an example (not least because I was an invited speaker, as a blogging scientist / scientific blogger).

Cees van Woerkum: Modern vs traditional communication

The first speaker was professor in communication science, Cees van Woerkum. I attended his lectures 19 years ago. He explained how the old model, of a sender and a receiver of communication, was no longer valid (if it ever was). Modern communication is characterized by a much more active role of the audience in selecting what information to take in. Also, the message is not inert, but rather gets meaning in an active and social process.

Drawing on examples from biotechnology, carbon capture and storage, and vaccination he argued that scientists should take the concerns of citizens seriously. Laughing at somebody for calling biotechnology “unnatural” is not going to take their worries away or change their mind. Calling fears of side effects from vaccinations “dangerous nonsense” doesn’t quite work either, especially not if those concerns have already been anchored to a certain extent through social construction. If a scientist calls the chance of CO2 leakage from a storage facility vanishingly small, the response is “so it’s not impossible?!” A potential way out according to van Woerkum is to ask what’s behind their concerns: What do you mean by unnatural?” Then you can at least start to have a conversation.

Jona Lendering: A different field of scientific inquiry facing large scale disinformation

This was followed by a presentation by author and historian Jona Lendering. Although the topic of his talk was something entirely different (about ancientPersia) the similarities with the climate debate were striking. He explained how this field of academic enquiry (about the origin of Western civilization) was being “attacked by anti-scientific tendencies” (aiming to glorify one culture’s role). The scientific establishment hardly participated in the public debate on the internet. As a consequence, the anti-scientific views got more traction and mainstream science failed in (what should be) one its core missions: Informing the public. He repeatedly stated the mechanism: “Bad information drives out good information”. He also mentioned the “intense hate” with which the “attack-machines” approach science. It was as if I was listening to Kevin Trenberth; the dynamic between a skeptical-cynical part of the audience and mainstream science was just too similar.

Me: Dilemmas in science communication

I talked about the dynamics of blog discussions and about the dilemmas that one encounters in trying to communicate scientific insights to a broad audience, mainly in the sphere of understandability vs completeness:

I mentioned that imho mainstream media suffers from too much emphasis on news (as opposed to robust knowledge) and on mere facts (to the detriment of explaining the scientific process of getting to understand those facts). In the blogosphere I see too much emphasis on details (to the detriment of the big picture) and on uncertainties (to the detriment of robust knowledge).

The last one on the list I actually added based on the dilemma that van Woerkum alerted the audience to: As a scientist (or science journalist), you can no longer easily claim “listen to me, I’ll tell you how it is”. You have to take the concerns of citizens seriously.

But what to do if those concerns are not openly expressed, but rather disguised in scientific sounding (but incorrect or sometimes even plain silly) arguments? “Climate change is due to the sun” or “Iranis the origin of Western civilization” or “vaccination causes autism”? The underlying reason for skepticism often remains hidden. As a scientist, you’re sucked into a quasi-scientific argument. How else can you react, than by saying: “no, that’s not the way it is. It’s this and this way, for such and such reasons”? But such a reaction is being characterized by skeptics ((mis-)using van Woerkum’s words) as “unjustified superiority of science”. Is explaining how science sees it a hopeless strategy?

In line with van Woerkum I think it’s important to focus on the underlying reasons for distrusting science. We should really discuss why we disagree so strongly about climate change (e.g. due to differences in worldviews and in risk perception). Keith Kloor cites Scott Denning (who spent a lot of time talking with contrarians, e.g. at two consecutive Heartland meetings):

Almost everyone that dismisses climate change as a problem does it for ideological or political reasons, not for scientific reasons.

Of course, there are also other potential reasons, but this one is surely a biggie.

Discussions about hockeysticks and feedbacks are all very interesting, but they are not the crux of why there is a such a heated and politicized debate about climate change. We don’t have a similar public debate about the mating behavior of fruitflies after all.

 

To publish BS or not, that’s the question

Richard Tol levied a strong accusation at Judith Curry for highlighting two seriously flawed papers (via twitter):

Its wrong, but with @JudithCurry lending her authority it becomes disinformation

Judith defended herself in a post where she tries to shift the blame to the mainstream scientists:

 Here is a quiz for you.  How many of these disinformation tactics [a list containing a mix of logical fallacies and avoidance tactics] are used by:

• JC (moi)
• Public spokespersons for the IPCC
• Joe Romm
• Marc Morano

If that’s not a dog-whistle I don’t know what is. 

Keith has a nice rundown of the discussion, and the ensuing thread over there contains many good comments. He’s got a knack for hosting interesting discussions.

Richard has since laid out his argument as to what’s wrong with the papers in a guest post over at CE.  Basically they’re methodologically flawed:

Using “detrended” fluctuation analysis to study “trends” was a dead giveaway that something is not quite right with these papers.

Tol goes on to write: 

7. There is a substantial body of climate research that is credible — even if it reaches opposite conclusions — but there are also papers (left, right, and center) that are just flawed.
8. If flawed papers reach a certain prominence, they should be debunked. Prominent but flawed research does damage as it misinforms people about climate change. Publicly criticizing such research hardens the existing polarization.
9. If flawed papers linger in obscurity, they should be ignored. The papers are wrong but do no damage. Lifting a flawed paper out of obscurity only to debunk it, is no good to anybody.

Curry takes especially issue with the last statement:

Yours isn’t a statement about science, but about playing politics with science, and reinforces the gatekeeping mentality in climate science that was embarassingly revealed by the CRU emails. (…)

Of course scientists don’t want the public to be misinformed about the science! So If I’m concerned about public understanding of science, I’m automatically “playing politics with science”? Then I sure hope every scientist is.

Judith rightly says that “Of course there are flawed papers that get published.” But why shining the spotlight on them? What’s gained by doing so?

It’s true that these discussions don’t occur about science without policy relevance. Research on the mating behavior of fruit flies won’t result in argument whether a flawed paper should be promoted in the public sphere or not.

The differences are that 1) such research is not present in the public sphere, because the public isn’t interested, and 2) even though flawed papers exist in any field, the more its conclusions clash with ideologies, the more attempts will be made to reach opposite conclusions and thus the more deeply flawed/biased papers will be published. It’s not a coincidence that there’s no fruitflies-version of EIKE or Heartland. 

Curry:

Most people don’t come to climate etc. to reinforce their prejudices (there are far too many echo chambers where this is much more satisfyingly accomplished). They come here to learn something by considering the various arguments.

The general tone of comments at CE makes me strongly doubt this last statement.

Tol:

@Anteros
I would agree with you [no harm done by highlighting flawed studies] if climate blogs were exclusively read by well-intentioned, well-informed, and intelligent people.

Richard further shows his mastery in the tweet-universe with one-liners such as

I argue for self-censorship. It is what separates adults from children.

Over at CaS, Roger Pielke Jr makes the point that wrong or bad articles can be a useful teaching tool. And indeed they can. But as Stoat rightly says,

within a managed class structure with someone guiding the discussion, it is fine to discuss flawed texts, for the reason given: it encourages critical thinking. That wasn’t what Curry was doing.

Tol:

Curry took two papers that almost nobody had read, and put them in the limelight.
The papers say 2+2=5.
There are a lot of people who would like to believe that. It is not true.
So now there is yet another dogfight about whether the answer is 3, 4, or 5. We can do without that.
There are plenty of real issues to argue over.

Jonathan Gilligan, consistently thoughtful, writes:

Pielke has said that he views blogs as more like the kind of discussions people conduct over beers at the neighborhood bar, and from that perspective Richard’s criticism makes no more sense than telling the crowd at the pub to leave sports commentary to the experts. 

Tol makes some valid points here, but Pielke is more persuasive. People will read these blogs or not as they choose, and when a blog repeatedly calls attention to crap, its credibility and its audience will adjust to reflect this. Climate Etc. is not The Wall Street Journal, so the greater danger in Curry’s gushing over crap is to Curry’s reputation, not to the public understanding of science.

I have also compared blogs to bar-discussions (quoting Bob Grumbine), but that comparison is about the presence (or lack) of quality control. As Tol rightly says, 

With academics blogging and tweeting, and journalists, and prime ministers, and institutes, departments, agencies and companies, I don’t think there is a one-rule-fits-all.

At CE, thousands of people are listening. Judith’s opinion and her writings make their way to the general public and politicians via mainstream media and Senate hearings as well. By the scale of those who are engaged in the conversation, that is orders of magnitude different from a discussion in a bar. That also means that the risk is twofold: Both to Curry’s reputation (her problem) and to the public understanding of science (everyone’s problem, even though Curry tries to belittle that).

Whereas Tol argued based on methodological flaws, Fred Moolten explains why the papers’ conclusions are unsupportable on physical grounds and I made a similar argument:

Conservation of energy precludes the climate to wonder off too far in any direction without being “forced” to by changing boundary conditions. Unless of course the energy is merely being redistributed within the system. Which it isn’t, since all other compartments of the climate system are gaining energy.

The paper’s conclusion that the observed warming is “predominantly a natural 100-year fluctuation” is at odds with conservation of energy.

All very reminiscent of the random walk saga and the Harry Potter theory of climate.

Scott Denning’s smashing presentation at Heartland climate conference ICCC6

Listen to Scott Denning’s sharp and to-the-point presentation, which he gave at Heartland’s climate conference, here. It’s worth the full 16 minutes of it. He rocks. Alternatively, read this little recap:

Denning attended the Heartland conference for the second year in a row and it seems like he’s outdone himself by giving an even better and sharper presentation than last years (which was excellent as well).

He emphasized some very important things:

– The big picture is what matters; details do not (at least in terms of policy relevance; for science nerds of course it’s different)

– Part of that big picture is that, whatever the sensitivity, a 400% increase in CO2 is going to make a big difference to the climate, because of the simple fact that adding heat warms things up.

– He offered a big challenge to the (strongly contrarian and libertarian) audience: Propose and advocate for effective solutions, otherwise others will. Policy will be enacted anyway. His challenge got particularly strong when he said “do you want Greenpeace to dictate the policy? (…) Are you cowards?”