Controversy in Climate Science: Projections of Human Behavior and Uncertainty in Data

1. Projections of human behaviour not easily amenable to prediction (e.g. evolution of political systems). Chaotic components of complex systems. Inadequate models, incomplete or competing conceptual frameworks, lack of agreement on model structure, ambiguous system boundaries or definitions, significant processes or relationships wrongly specified or not considered. Missing, inaccurate or non-representative data, inappropriate spatial or temporal resolution, poorly known or changing model parameters. Images from IPCC report

2. Is there a controversy in the science? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "firmly" standing by findings that a rise in the use of greenhouse gases was a factor. It was responding to a row over the reliability of data from East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit. Leaked e-mail exchanges prompted claims that data had been manipulated. Last month, hundreds of messages between scientists at the unit and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents. -BBC News

3. Quote 1 “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote. Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was discussing gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature with other scientists.

4. Quote 2 “"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

5. Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents. Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

6. A scientist responds http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/febrile_nitwits_and_the_hacked.php?utm_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link

7. Main points • Emails were obtained illegally. It is probably not a coincidence it was immediately before the international meeting in Copenhagen. • Despite their illegality, all the attention has focused on the climate scientists, who didn’t do anything illegal. • There appear to only be two particularly damning emails out of the hundreds (or thousands), both of which are interpreted out of context. • There is no ambiguity in human-induced global warming, despite these emails. • Scientists are people, and everyone has faults. Climatologists, in particular, are under immense public scrutiny.

8. Scientific Integrity The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen. -R. Feynman, Cargo Cult Science

9. Scientific Integrity Despite the fact that a majority of people (including a majority of scientists) acknowledges that the “skeptics” do not have integrity (scientific or otherwise), the scientists are expected to. ‘Frankly, I found it very disappointing to read a leading climate scientist writing that he used a “trick” to “hide” a putative decline in temperatures or was keeping contradictory research from getting a proper hearing. Yes, the climate-denier community, funded by big oil, has published all sorts of bogus science for years — and the world never made a fuss. That, though, is no excuse for serious climatologists not adhering to the highest scientific standards at all times.’ - T. Friedman; December 9, 2009

10. So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. - R. Feynman, Cargo Cult Science Image source: New York Times Jim Hanson

11. N. Oreskes Is there uncertainty in scientific community about the concept of human-induced global warming? Image source: Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Sage Ross.

12. Is there a controversy in the science? N. Oreskes

13. Oreskes • What are the main points that she makes? • What is her evidence? • What is the uncertainty? • Do you trust her results?

14. N. Oreskes Who are the people who reject climate change? What is their strategy?

15. Oreskes video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio&NR=1

16. What is the strategy? The petroleum industry is following the playbook of the tobacco industry, who have perfected the method of “manufacturing uncertainty”. N. Oreskes (Fall 2007 talk at UW) From Michales & Monforton; America Journal of Public Health, 2005 Image source: Microsoft Clip Art "For almost half a century, the tobacco companies hired scientists to dispute first, that smokers were at greater risk of dying of lung cancer; second, the role of tobacco use in heart disease and other illnesses; and finally, the evidence that environmental tobacco smoke increased disease risk in nonsmokers," they wrote. "In each case, the scientific community eventually reached the consensus that tobacco smoke caused these conditions. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence and the smoking-related deaths of millions of smokers, the tobacco industry was able to wage a campaign that successfully delayed regulation and victim compensation for decades.”

17. The Tobacco Strategy • Science was uncertain • Concerns were exaggerated • Technology will solve the problem • No need for government interference

18. But in the twenty-first century the alternative to government action is not individual liberty; it is corporate power. And the role of large corporations in this story has been mostly negative, a tale of self-interested obfuscation and short-sited delay. -Weart

19. This message of scientific uncertainty has been reinforced by the public relations campaigns of certain corporations with a large stake in the issue. The most well known example is ExxonMobil, which in 2004 ran a highly visible advertising campaign on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Its carefully worded advertisements —written and formatted to look like newspaper columns and called op-ed pieces by ExxonMobil —suggested that climate science was far too uncertain to warrant action on it.

20. “Extremism of all types is a vice” “They did not make a political argument on political grounds. Rather, they disguised a political argument as a scientific one, and camoflagued a political debate as a scientific debate. And in the process, they greatly distorted the facts about climate science, they confused the American people, and they delayed political action one of the most pressing political issues of our time.” N. Oreskes Image source: Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Sage Ross.

21. Uncertainty Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it. - R. Feynman, The Uncertainty of Science

22. Human-induced greenhouse warming Beginnings of a Scientific Theory (1960) Hypothesis (1896) Hypothesis (1938) Image: Wikipedia Arrhenius Image: Wikipedia Callender Keeling Image: Wikipedia

23. Science of the future Problem based Interdisciplinary Problems of society, not problems of science (such as, How do we maintain a habitable Earth?) Emphasis on predictive power of science

24. This notion that “science” is something that belongs in a separate compartment of its own, apart from everyday life, is one that I should like to challenge. We live in a scientific age; yet we assume that knowledge is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings… This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is the reality of living, it is the what, the how, and the why in everything in our experience. -Rachel Carson, 1952