Collide-a-scape

Well, I’m not gone yet. I just read this op-ed in today’s NYT by Thomas Homer-Dixon, which is related to, um, a certain controversial post.

Count Homer-Dixon among those who believe it will take a major, unequivocal climate shock to spur worldwide action on global warming. Meanwhile, he writes:

Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to do in the meantime. When a crisis does occur, the societies with response plans on the shelf will be far better off than those that are blindsided. The task for national and regional leaders, then, is to develop a set of contingency plans for possible climate shocks — what we might call, collectively, Plan Z.

Some work of this kind is under way at intelligence agencies and research institutions in the United States and Europe. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has produced one of the best studies, “Responding to Threat of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes.” But for the most part these initiatives are preliminary and uncoordinated.

We need a much more deliberate Plan Z, with detailed scenarios of plausible climate shocks; close analyses of options for emergency response by governments, corporations and nongovernmental groups; and clear specifics about what resources — financial, technological and organizational — we will need to cope with different types of crises.

Let me thus amend Eli’s 4th bullet point to read:

The Mitigation-centric blinders drives the procrastination penalties for Adaption to tragic proportions.

What does the rancorous climate change debate have in common with the rancorous debate over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan?

Nothing, really. But I’m going to make some comparisons anyway, because as readers of this blog know, I aim to break down divisions. So there was an excellent NYT op-ed several days ago by William Dalrymple, in which he wrote:

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith.

I see a similar monolith in the way climate skeptics (the deniers!) are portrayed by their opponents, and I see a similar monolith in the way mainstream climate scientists (the catastrophists!) are portrayed by their opponents. The climate debate is both shaped and poisoned by these two monolithic stereotypes.

That brings me to this thoughtful post on the mosque controversy over at Savage Minds, and this passage:

Clearly the United States would be better off if our leaders, journalists, and citizens knew a little more about Islam. But there are also some lessons here about the semiotics of racism which I would like to think offer some insights beyond the 24 hour news cycle.

Substitute climate science for Islam and hyperbole for racism. Would that constitute another analogy?

If Judith Curry, a climate researcher at Georgia Tech, ever found herself marooned on an island, where the other inhabitants included a tribe of climate skeptics led by Anthony Watts and another tribe of climate scientists led by Gavin Schmidt (whose enforcer, despite being a physicist, was Joe Romm), she’d probably end up living alone in a cave.

This is a roundabout way of mentioning the chilly reception that a new PNAS paper by Curry and one of her colleagues (PDF here), is receiving over at WUWT. Like Policy Lass, what interests me most is the harsh response, and how, as Lass observes, Curry now stands accused of drinking Kool Aid with both sides in the climate debate.

Judith, welcome to one of the seven hells in journalism, where you get to be loathed by all. (But we secretly love it!) In this fiery climate sphere, Andy Revkin reigns as lord master, where he is regularly slammed by Romm and his echo chamber at Climate Progress AND the hardcore skeptic wing.

But back to the show. One commenter at WUWT, noting the negative reaction to Judith, gives her a backhanded compliment when he writes:

I have to applaud Judith Curry on having the guts to present her paper in the boxing ring of climate blogs where the wild and ignorant rule. but also these that think unbiased and try to address problems in creative ways. I just hope she was not counting on any mercy here.

Here’s Judith’s devastating parry: I don’t want your stinkin’ mercy, I’m just lookin’ for some evidence of sentient thought.

Okay, I paraphrased.

Seriously, there are rumblings of an unfair and heavily moderated thread at WUWT over this paper (see here and here, for example), so I thought I’d provide a vehicle for the disaffected or suppressed to come on over here and express yourself. All I ask is that you be polite.

More broadly, I think it’s worth pointing out that Judith Curry occupies a peculiar space in the climate debate, where neither camp trusts her to carry water for them.

UPDATE: In fairness, I should also note that Curry’s PNAS paper is taken up in full by Willis Eschenbach over at WUWT.

I think Tom Yulsman has been covering climate change as long as Andy Revkin (which means several decades). So I’m digging this new radio gig he’s added to his portfolio. (Tom, in addition to being a co-director at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, is a long-time friend and colleague.) Check out the show he did this week with Peter Stott, who is head of climate monitoring and attribution at the United Kingdom’s Met Office, which Tom discusses today in a blog post, provocatively headlined

Global warming did not “cause” Russian heat or Pakistani Floods

This follows on the heels of another terrific radio piece Tom did on Jim White, the director of CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, discussed in this post.

Here’s an excerpt of today’s interview with Stott:

I think . . . some people are too easily jumping from the very clear evidence that climate is changing, and that we’ve seen systematic changes in our climate system over the last few decades, to saying that particular individual extreme weather events are therefore due to climate change and therefore will become more frequent in the future . . .

The example with the current terrible situation in Pakistan is a very good case in point. Although our understanding of the climate system does tell us, and the observations do tell us, that there have been increases in extreme rainfall events, we don’t know about the particular circumstances in Pakistan, and the particular weather situation there, whether that is the sort of thing that will become more frequent or not. And, therefore, [we don't know how to] respond to such a situation in terms of the longer-term adaptation response, for example.

Meanwhile, in a related thread at my place, it’s interesting to see the contortions of some who are talking up the greenhouse gas link to the aforementioned disasters. For example, Michael Tobis, a climate blogger who I equally applaud and admonish from time to time, seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth. Here, he says:

The tightly coupled events in Russia and Pakistan and the related events in  China are of a different order than we have seen before. Treating this as just another example of extreme weather is inadequate; it may look logically coherent but it really isn’t.

Then, further down in the thread, he writes:

It is impossible to predict what these weird events will be. The simulation models are too coarse and too conservative, and we wouldn’t know what to look for in their output anyway. You can’t really do statistical attribution on single events, and causality is pretty complicated in a tightly coupled system. So it’s hard to say much about this beyond that we should not only expect the unexpected, we should expect a great deal more of it.

The wider discussion in the media that this summer’s extreme weather has prompted must be confusing to the average person who doesn’t ordinarily pay attention to the particulars of this debate. On the one hand, we have scientists and climate bloggers like Tobis essentially saying, the events in Russia and Pakistan are not your normal, naturally occuring weather disasters.

On the other hand, we have climate scientists and Tobis essentially saying, we can’t definitively attribute AGW to these single weather events in Russia and Pakistan, but we should expect these kinds of disasters to occur much more often in the future.

I don’t know. Do those hoping to spur public engagement and political action on climate change really want to swing on that pendulum?

Climate change activists might want to pay attention to this cautionary tale out of Florida.

The failure of Everglades restoration, with its many false starts, but especially the story of the latest failed attempt to overcome entrenched economic interests, has parallels to the two train wrecks that derailed action on climate change–last December in Copenhagen and more recently in the U.S. Congress.

The contemporary politics of Everglades restoration is a tortured story of compromise that can be summed up in the classic political axiom: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (Hmm, where have climate activists heard that before?) Mainstream Florida greens operate by this maxim, which is understandable, given the multiple stake holders involved and the economic interests arrayed against them. (Hmm, where have climate activists seen this dynamic before?) At some point, however, this strategy has to be evaluated for performance. Which begs the question: Is meaningful Everglades restoration underway?

Hardly. Will it happen anytime soon? That was the hope and expectation after the state of Florida in 2008 agreed to buy huge tracts of land totaling 187,000 acres from the United States Sugar Corporation and convert it back to marshland. A year later, amid a deepening recession, the deal was scaled back to 79,000 acres, and according to this NYT investigation, the terms were not exactly favorable to the Everglades.

By this month, as the Times reports, the land purchase has shrunk to 27,000 acres, a fraction of what was promised in 2008.

You might think this would give long-time Everglades environmentalists pause. Here’s what Eric Draper from Audubon of Florida had to say:

I like this deal because it’s doable.

(Where have climate activists heard rationales like that before?)

So why do mainstream Florida greens still cling to the illusion of progress? And why are they still championing a watered down land deal that is widely believed to have scarce ecological value to the Everglades? On his NYT post, Damian Cave provides some instructive responses:

“It’s insecurity,” said Alan Farago, the conservation chairman at Friends of the Everglades. He said that Florida’s environmentalists would take whatever they could get because they felt so defeated after so many failed attempts to save the Everglades, after seeing algae blooms on their shores, after seeing developers given carte blanche while endangered species suffered.

Here’s another:

“The environmentalists have been sitting on the floor under the table waiting for crumbs to fall on them for years,” said Sydney Bacchus, a hydro-ecologist and frequent expert witness in Everglades cases. “I don’t blame them for cheering about these lands being purchased — it’s a crumb they’ve been tossed off the table and they’re grabbing at it frantically because they haven’t even gotten crumbs for years.”

(Hmm, where have climate activists seen mainstream enviros settling for similar “crumbs”?)

Despite the River of Grass being an iconic national landscape, despite a multi-billion-dollar plan to revive it, despite the many years a broad coalition has championed its cause, the Everglades ecosystem remains at death’s door.

And greens wonder why they can’t get any traction on climate change.

This is a very interesting time for the climate science community. They are being called on to respond to the extreme weather we are seeing around the globe. Today’s NYT article, titled, “In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming,” is a must-read, if you want to see the representative views of leading climate scientists.

Here’s one notable perspective:

“If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA in New York. “If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.”

Here’s an ethical argument, boiled down, that has caused a bit of a stir:

The evidence for man-made climate change is incontrovertible. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to humanity. Our leaders thus have an ethical duty to take action that reduces greenhouse gases. Because they have not acted our leaders are being irresponsible and unethical.

I think it’s safe to say that many if not all climate change advocates would agree with this. Indeed, some prolific climate bloggers, such as Joe Romm and Michael Tobis, often frame their arguments in such moral terms.

So if we are to take Romm and Tobis at their word–that it is a huge moral failing not to act on man-made climate change, then I don’t understand why they are so reluctant to argue just as strenously for climate adaptation, especially since both believe that climate change has already arrived, wreaking death and destruction.

I’ve had a recent exchange with Tobis about this that deserves greater airing. In the thread of my previous post, there was a discussion about the nature of a disagreement between two highly regarded climate scientists, when Tobis popped in to say:

The situation on the ground has changed in the last couple of months, folks. You’d think that might have some effect on the argument.

This was Tobis’s way of saying that the discussion over technical disagreements was trivial, given the spate of weather-related disasters around the globe that he and the media are linking to greenhouse gases.

If this is the case (that the recent floods, heatwaves and fires are global warming related), I said, well, then even more the reason to start talking serously about the need for adaptation. Tobis countered with the typical zero-sum talking point, that mitigation (curbing carbon emissions) has to take precedence over adaptation, and that in any event, adaptation was largely a local matter.

This is the standard argument from climate advocates, who believe that encouraging talk about adaptation will undermine the urgency that should be paid to mitigation. Thus, the emphasis has to remain on mitigation, they argue.

But now that climate advocates such as Tobis are asserting that climate change has arrived with a vengeance, with tragic human consequences, I’m wondering: is it not irresponsible and unethical of them to play down the need for adaptation in order to keep the focus on mitigation? Why can’t they give equal attention to the importance of adaptation? Why should it be a second tier concern, when it’s so desperately needed?

The climate debate is often framed in apocalpytic terms by Romm and Tobis: the future of civilization is at stake. Well, where’s the moral outrage over the suffering of people today, and those in the near future, of which perhaps could be alleviated if adaptation were treated more prominently in the climate debate? Where’s the post by environmental ethicists decrying this blithness with which adaptation is treated by climate advocates?

UPDATE: Gavin Schmidt has won kudos from skeptics in the comments below, who appreciate his participation in the thread and his responses to their questions.

There are two high-profile protagonists in the climate science community that are increasingly squaring off: Judith Curry and Gavin Schmidt. In an interview here yesterday, Curry elaborated on her most recent testy exchange with Schmidt over at Real Climate, as well as some of her by now well-known concerns about climate science.

Schmidt, unsurprisingly, has a different take on his exchange with Curry. He also questions the issues Curry has seized on and the charges she has leveled broadly at the climate science community. Schmidt addressed these and other matters, such as the politicization of climate science, in an email exchange with me last night and this morning.

KK. Can you identify issues where you agree with Judith Curry and where you disagree?

GS. I have absolutely no argument with Judy on any number of a dozen issues. We both agree that climate is a fascinating subject well deserving of the attention of the brightest minds around. We both agree that Feynman is a great role model. We agree that sustainability is indeed the overriding need and this involves much more than climate change – encompassing water resources, fisheries management, traditional kinds of air pollution, habitat loss etc. Climate change is going to play an ever bigger role in those issues as the century progresses but it will never be the only problem we have to deal with. Finding win-win solutions for both climate and these other problems are obviously preferable to being forced to choose one thing over another and climate scientists can certainly play a role in finding those solutions. I also absolutely agree that we should aim to depoliticize climate science.

I go to meetings and workshops and write papers with scientists across a wide range of the sub-disciplines, and in every single case I see scientists doing exactly what Judith (and I) think they should be doing. Looking into the issues, pinning down the questions, deciding what needs to be done to make progress. I don’t see any of this supposed ‘authoritarianism’ or ‘power politics’ she thinks are infecting the field. I just don’t recognise that in the work that is actually being done. For instance, I was part of a review paper with Phil Jones on high resolution paleo-climate records (Jones et al, 2009) and that was exemplary in the care that was paid to real issues and questions in the field.

Where I think we disagree is in what drives the politicisation and rancour. In my opinion it has very little to do with anything specific related to particular scientists or papers or how people treated Steve McIntyre. Instead, it is something that has happened to many fine scientists through no fault of their own, mainly because something got traction – Ben Santer, Steve Schnieder, Mike Mann, Phil Jones, have all had horrendous and untrue things said about them mainly because it was useful for some people to do that in order to discredit science and scientists. But if it hadn’t been them, it would have been someone else, and next year it will be. When people turn reasonable questions about science into excuses for personal abuse, it poisons the debate and makes it almost impossible to resolve things in an efficient manner. How can people have a dialog with someone who thinks that every word they say is a lie? Every time people throw around terms like fraud, corruption and crime without any basis, it just makes reasonable discussion harder. This is the hallmark of political rhetoric, not science, and blaming scientists for the state of affairs is completely backwards.

KK. In making her criticisms, should Judith consider a different approach and/or a different venue? What about you? Is there anything you think you can do differently that might facilitate a more constructive dialogue?

GS. There is a big difference in expectations for mainstream scientists who comment in the blogosphere. Like it or not, there are not very many who do so (and we could discuss why that is). Given the existing polarisation and politicization, this means that any individual voice is likely going to be imbued with more significance and get more attention than it necessarily deserves. In those circumstances, people need to be well prepared, know what it is they want to say, and make sure they say it clearly. That wasn’t always evident last weekend. There are also some strategic issues – linear conversations in one spot, perhaps on quieter blogs, are almost always more satisfying than sprawling multi-blog threaded conversations with multiple people, some of whom are posting very different things in different places. Playing games should be avoided at all costs. All of this is easier to handle if you have your own space which allows you to set the agenda and the tone, so if Judy wants to do more in this medium, she should certainly think about that. It’s not hard. But she should remember that as a good scientist, expectations will be higher and that she will be held to a higher standard than some less well known bloggers. There is a greater responsibility there.

Can we do something differently? I don’t know. We can always try and be more understanding of people’s points, but it helps a lot if they are made clearly rather than obliquely. Drive-by postings are not conducive to a nuanced discussion because too much gets said in-between times. We can always improve moderation – we deleted many comments that went too far in criticising posters (including Judy) rather than their arguments, but this is always hard when there is a lot of traffic, and over-moderation gets criticised just as much. If I can offer one observation that might help, it would be this – once you start to have an online presence in a field like this, it is inevitable that people will misunderstand and misrepresent you. You will be accused of thinking things you would actually find abhorrent and acting in ways that would be anathema. But it is important to remember that this has very little to do with you. You will end up as a some kind of symbol, and while people might talk about someone with your name and your place of work, it helps to think of them as an internet doppelganger.

KK. There is this perception of Real Climate as intolerant of dissenting opinions. Do you see any value in allowing occasional guests posts from climate scientists who have been critical of any tenets of mainstream climate science? If so, who would you consider as good candidates?

GS. It’s a convenient argument for some people to claim we don’t tolerate dissent. They don’t even need to try to engage. But it doesn’t stack up if you actually read any of the threads – lot’s of people disagree with us on many issues. Where we draw the line is with comments that turn methodological issues into personal ones, misrepresent us or insist that we or scientific colleagues are frauds, or that just bring up tired old contrarian talking points over and again. We don’t apologise for that, and I think are threads are more focused for it. If people don’t like it they don’t need to read. One issue is that RC is seen as the voice of the mainstream, and so that becomes a draw for all sorts of people. It’s a bit of a misperception – we don’t consult with anyone else before posting and we do not claim to speak for anyone other than us. Our main purpose is to talk about what real scientists are talking about and thinking, giving context to what people are talking about. I generally don’t find that the critics have much to add to that, but I suppose it could happen. None of them have ever suggested any such post. One possibility might be to support people like Roy Spencer when he takes on (as he did last week) people that erroneously insist that the greenhouse effect does not exist.

KK: I want to return to something you said at the outset, that you “absolutely agree that we should aim to depoliticize climate science.” How would you propose to do that? And I’m assuming you think that all sides–including members of the climate science community–should work towards this. How would you go about depoliticizing climate science?

GS: Well, let’s be clear about what we are talking about. We can’t make the political decisions about what to do about climate change (how to mitigate, how to adapt) go away. And we have to remember that the overwhelming majority of scientists working in this field are just trying to do their jobs as best they can, following where the data and understanding are leading them. I don’t see any politicisation in how the community does science and gets grants. So what I am referring to the fact that a few very select issues in the science have become political flash points. Studies in those fields have become lightning rods for very partisan and unpleasant campaigns, and Senators, Congressmen, lawyers and Attorneys-General have piled on to make political hay out of it, without any regard for the underlying issues. Really, no one is making policy decisions based on 15th Century tree rings!

One of the more worrying trends over the last few years has been the extent to which the rejection of climate science has become more party political in the US. I think this is very worrying – whereas 5 years ago you had Sherwood Bohlert (the Republican head of the House Science Committee), John McCain and Olympia Snowe in the Senate talking sensibly about the issue, this is something that is happening less often today. This has a number of causes which climate scientists can’t do much about, but it certainly fuels some of the rancor.

I think we can do a much better job in one or two key areas. First, we need to continue to stress that climate change is a multi-faceted problem – it doesn’t just involve CO2, but also CH4, ozone, black carbon and other aerosols. It isn’t caused by a single activity – cars and planes yes, but also power stations, deforestation, and agriculture. But with that complexity, and the inevitable intertwining of policies that affect climate with those that effect energy, public health and water resources, come opportunities. This is where I think the climate science community has not played its full role.

Take the ‘forcings’ diagram in the summary for policymakers in IPCC AR4 (Fig SPM 2). This shows the estimated contributions to the 1750-2000 radiative forcing from different constituents in the atmosphere. There is a lot of good science in there, but why do we think it is useful for policy makers? The decisions they make affect many of those constituents at once – sometimes with a net effect on climate that might be opposite to what was originally thought, and climate scientists have basically left it to the policy makers to work it out for themselves. So I think the second thing we should do is to provide more policy-specific science. We should be quantifying the consequences – not only for climate, but also for smog, congestion, public health etc. What impact would moving to plug-in hybrids have? You need to work out how the electricity is produced, but it turns out that reductions in ozone and black carbon make a big contribution to reducing climate forcing on top of the efficiency savings.

These co-benefits can bring along sometimes unexpected allies which often cross party lines – for instance, Inhofe has sponsored legislation to reduce black carbon effects.

Basically, though it sounds paradoxical, by getting more involved with policies, the climate science community can have less to do with politics. That doesn’t mean we should stop talking about CO2 – that would be irresponsible, but continuing to be clearer about the complexities can help get the conversations out of the rut.

UPDATE: As with many of her previous appearances at this site, Judith Curry is an active participant in the comment thread below.

Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, has a knack for setting off tremors in the climate blogosphere. There was a lot of rumbling last week after Curry got into a rather contentious exchange with Gavin Schmidt and readers at Real Climate. Other notables, such as Joe Romm and William Connolley jumped into the fray. All this was precipitated by a review of Andrew Montford’s book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, posted at Real Climate. As Roger Pielke Jr. observed, these debates  over the hockey stick controversy “can be arcane, technical and simply impenetrable due to years upon years of perceived slights, a practice of in-group shorthand and a chorus of followers on either side cheering on the spectacle.”

Last week’s ritual bloodletting of Curry in blogland was remarkable for how unrestrained it was. I am struck by the phenomena of this respected climate scientist who is being met with increasingly derisive scorn from prominent members of her own community and from many climate advocates. I’m curious as to what drives her to keep engaging in what appears to be a very lonely battle.

Earlier today, we had an email exchange, in which I pressed Curry to explain what is driving her to keep banging away on certain issues and themes.

KK: Why do you feel the need to revisit the hockey stick debate? It’s not central to our understanding of climate science, nor does it factor into the policy debate. The general public is surely not paying attention to it anymore. So why do you feel so compelled to defend this particular book by Andrew Montford?

JC: I am not so much defending this book as recommending that people read it. Climate scientists can learn a lot from Montford’s book.  Not in terms of who is “right” or “correct” in terms of the science (that is still being debated), but how to avoid unnecessary conflict in the climate debate.  While the hockey stick is not of any particular scientific importance, Montford’s book explains why the hockeystick became a big deal, owing to the IPCC’s choice to make the hockey stick a visual icon for the IPCC in its marketing of the IPCC.  Therefore, in the public’s mind, challenges to the hockeystick metaphorically became challenges to the entire global warming argument.  And the Climategate emails, while not illuminating any actual scientific misconduct, provided a view into the underbelly of how the consensus was actually built: upon human judgment that was influenced by petty rivalries, a sense of self importance, a political agenda, and the brutal dismissal and even sabotage of competing viewpoints.  Not a pretty picture.The fundamental mistake made by the climate researchers involved in the hockey stick debate was to mistake McIntyre et al. as merchants of doubt (a la Oreskes and Collins), when instead they were motivated over a concern for public accountability of the research.   The response of the climate researchers to McIntyre and McKittrick, by attacking their qualifications and motives rather than trying to work with them or at least understand what they were trying to say, backfired big time and arguably culminated in Climategate.

KK: I’m still trying to understand what gave rise to this latest round of Curry bashing?

JC: My hypothesis is that the level of vitriol in the climate blogs reflects the last gasp of those who thought they could influence national and international energy policy through the power politics of climate science expertise. The politics of expertise is about how scientific information is used in the policy making process, including how diverging viewpoints are interpreted and how science is weighed relative to values and politics in the policy debate.  The problem comes in when the “power” politics of expertise are played.  Signals of the “power” play include: hiding uncertainties and never admitting a mistake; developing a consensus with a high level of confidence; demanding that the consensus receive extreme deference relative to other view points; insisting that that science demands a particular policy; discrediting scientists holding other view points by dismissing them as cranks, trivializing their credentials and say that they are not qualified to hold an opinion; and attacking the motives of anyone that challenges the consensus. Sound familiar?  In the case of climate change, the authoritarianism of “science tells us we should . . . ”  could not withstand the public perception of scientists engaging with pressure groups, lack of transparency that meant people were unable to evaluate the information themselves, and then the climategate affair that raised questions about the integrity of the scientists.

Romm quickly honed in on the view that it was far more important to discredit me than Montford or McIntyre. Romm is “America’s fiercest” practitioner of the power politics of climate expertise, making brutal attacks on scientists and others that diverge from climate orthodoxy.  My comments rankle so much with Romm because I used to be in the stable of experts that he cited.  My putting the spotlight on uncertainties and too much confidence, plus listening to other view points and posting on rival blogs, and now calling people out on the power politics of science issue, has to be mighty uncomfortable for Romm.  Romm didn’t just stop with his “Shootout at the RC corral” post.  Now he has dredged up an interview I gave a few months ago to a Brazilian reporter.  I wrote out my replies to the questions of the Brazilian reporter.  My answers were then translated into Spanish.  Which were then translated back to English.  Has anyone ever played the game of telephone?

KK: I question if there is really this breach of trust between the climate science community and the general public. Again, the average person is probably not paying much attention to these fractious debates between skeptics and a subset of the climate science community. I mean, every profession gets dinged by its share of controversies. The foundation for anthropogenic global warming rests on numerous solid pillars, which you agree with. So how is that a batch of intemperate emails and a decade-old scientific controversy over the hockey stick can rock this foundation, which is what you seem to be arguing?

JC: Evidence that the tide has changed include: doubt that was evidenced particularly by European policy makers at the climate negotiations at Copenhagen, defeat of a seven-year effort in the U.S. Senate to pass a climate bill centered on cap-and-trade, increasing prominence of skeptics in the news media, and the formation of an Interacademy Independent Review of the IPCC.  Concerns about uncertainty and politicization in climate science are now at the forefront of national and international policy. There is an increasing backlash from scientists and engineers from other fields, who think that climate science is lacking credibility because of the politicization of the subject and the high confidence levels in the IPCC report.  While these scientists and engineers are not experts in climate science, they understand the process and required rigor and the many mistakes that need to be made and false paths that get followed.

Further, they have been actively involved in managing science and scientists and in assessing scientists. They will not be convinced that a “likely” level of confidence (66-89% level of certainty) is believable for a relatively new subject, where the methods are new and contested, experts in statistics have judged the methods to be erroneous and/or inadequate, and there is substantial disagreement in the field and challenges from other scientists. The significance of the hockey stick debate is the highlighting of shoddy science and efforts to squash opposing viewpoints, something that doesn’t play well with other scientists. Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu made this statement in an interview with the Financial Times:

First, the main findings of IPCC over the years, have they been seriously cast in doubt? No. I think that if one research group didn’t understand some tree ring data and they chose to admit part of that data. In all honesty they should have thrown out the whole data set.

But you don’t need to be a Nobel laureate to understand this. I have gotten many many emails from scientists and engineers from academia, government labs and the private sector. As an example, here is an excerpt from an email I received yesterday: “My skepticism regarding AGW has been rooted in the fact that, as an engineer/manager working in defense contracts [General Dynamics], I would have been fired, fined (heavily) and may have gotten jail time for employing the methodology that [named climate scientists] have used.”

KK: Are you suggesting that the methodology of certain climate scientists rises to the level of a crime? Also, I have to ask you to defend this assertion that the failures of Copenhagen and the Senate climate bill are somehow tied to rising skepticism of climate change by policymakers. I don’t see the evidence for that, though I realize that climate skeptics make for convenient scapegoats by advocates such as Joe Romm.

JC: I am not suggesting that at all.  Scientists make mistakes all the time, that is actually how science progresses, provided that the mistakes are acknowledged and learned from.  If you want to understand the palpable impact of Climategate on European (particularly Dutch) politics, read this paper.

Skepticism has been rather unfortunately defined to be anyone who diverges from IPCC orthodoxy, not only in terms of the science, but in terms of accepting the policies that science “tells us” we must have.  The revolt is more in the sense of breaking this linear link between science and policy (see also this post by Pielke Jr.).

KK: The majority of comments at both Real Climate and Climate Progress were quite disparaging of you, which in my mind, speaks more to their readerships, since I have no way of knowing how the respective blog hosts chose to moderate the comments. After experiencing this latest blogospheric hazing, you have to wonder, what’s the point? Are any of your colleagues advising you to move on to a more constructive venue, and if so, what would that be?

JC: Well, first I have to comment on the moderation of RC and CP on this.  They chose comments that consisted of personal attacks, while rejecting many comments that were supportive of my viewpoints or asked challenging questions.  The reason that I know what comments were rejected because many of these people subsequently posted on climateaudit or emailed me.  In one instance, a comment was rejected by CP from someone who had previously made a guest post at RC.  So this reflects not only on their readership, but reflects specific choices made by the moderators at RC and CP, that I personally interpret as an attempt to discredit me.

The point is this. I have gotten hundreds of emails from practicing scientists and engineers in a range of different fields and holding positions in academia, government, and the private sector.  I have also had discussions with a number of climate researchers who are concerned about the politicization of the field and the overconfidence in the IPCC.   They are encouraging me to continue standing up for the scientific method and against the politicization of science.  I’m sure that there are some of my colleagues that don’t like it or wonder what the point is, but they are not talking to me about it.  I am getting feedback from scientists that like what I’m doing.

In terms of something more productive to do, I would encourage climate scientists to reflect on how to dig out from the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. Time to listen to some new ideas and some new experts. This time, I suggest listening to a plurality of viewpoints, and for scientists to make sure their data and methods are transparent to the public. And stop trying to simplify all this into a straight climate change science drives global energy policy strategy, which was misguided and naïve, to say the least.  The real problem is sustainability, which is a complex confluence of ecosystems, food, water, energy, population growth, finite natural resources, and the desire for economic development.  Sustainability is a value that nearly everyone can share.  The fundamental spatial unit of sustainability is the region, which makes it easier for people to identify their common concerns and secure their common interests.  Yes, there are global elements to all this in terms of climate change and finite natural resources, and the realization that regional instabilities can have global consequences.  It’s not a simple problem, and there is no silver bullet, but there are millions of little solutions that can all add up.  Climate change needs to be considered as but a single element in the context of all these issues.  And independently of the broader sustainability issues, we need rational energy policies that account not only for environmental issues, but also economic and national security issues.

Once you start thinking about sustainability and the broader issues of energy policy as the main challenges, and not climate change, then the overwhelming barrier of politics and economics becomes less monolithic.  And more importantly, climate science can get back to being science rather than being about politics.  My citations of Feynmann on the RC thread were to remind people of the difference.  Climate science is a fascinating and important scientific problem.  Lets step back and figure out how to do a better job so that our field can regain the respect of the Nobel laureates in physics, scientists and engineers from other fields, and credibility of the public. Most importantly we need to stop playing the power politics of climate science by saying “Here is what science says we must do” and start saying “Here is our best understanding, and here is where our uncertainties are . . .”

One of the most civil and smartest voices in the climate blogosphere belongs to a blog commenter named Paul Kelly. I don’t know who he is. But I’ve always enjoyed reading his contributions to threads, which I’ve mostly seen at Stoat’s or Bart Verheggen’s place. And it is at one of Bart’s recent threads that I’m shamelessly poaching some of Kelly’s comments to highlight in this post.

Kelly, after experiencing yet another long, occasionally nasty back-and-forth with participants from both sides finding no common ground, says to Bart:

This thread is, for me, another illustration of how insistence that climate be the antecedent of action postpones any action.

On his motivations and where he stands:

I’m taking action to spur energy transformation. My reasons are economic and environmental. These reasons and the actions based on them are not affected in any way by climate science or climate concerns.

I do not dispute climate science nor diminish its concerns. I think it is beyond doubt, however, that climate is an impossibly poor basis for policy or the measurement of its success.

Why energy? A lot of us boomers grew up with the promise of 21st century energy transformation. It’s rather exciting that the technology is finally here.

Finally, at the end of the thread, here is Kelly advising one well-known climate commenter (emphasis added):

I’m afraid you’re going to wait a very long time for coordinated worldwide action to decarbonize the global economy. Piecemeal is the reality. That’s not a bad thing. There is no grand globally constructed action for replacing carbon fuels, but it will happen through the aggregate of millions of individual actions.

You hope for some unknown critical mass of people to see the risk you see. After more than twenty years of published science, IPCC and COP, who is yet to be persuaded? The climate concerned are at a crossroads. They must decide if it is more important reach a goal by acceding to others who share their desire for energy transformation but not their climate concerns; or, to win a debate over who’s reason is better.