Collide-a-scape

An extraordinary op-ed by four climate scientists, headlined “The Science Behind Climate Science,” asserts:

The urgent need to act cannot be overstated. Climate change caused by humans is already affecting our lives and livelihoods — with extreme storms, unusual floods and droughts, intense heat waves, rising seas and many changes in biological systems — as climate scientists have projected.

This is nectar to Joe Romm, “problematic” to Roger Pielke, Jr., who has written an email to one of the op-ed authors, asking:

I am unaware of research that shows either detection or attribution of human-caused changes in extreme storms or floods, much less detection or attribution of such changes “affecting lives and livelihoods”. Can you point me to the scientific basis for such claims?

This is really the nub of the big debate over climate change, not whether the science is established, but what are the detectable impacts. I think if it was incontestable that man-made climate change is causing the kind of extreme climatic changes and weather disasters that the op-ed asserts, we would have had a global treaty on carbon emissions by now. But the present-day impacts are not at all clear, though I’m open to persuasion–I really am. Which is why I’m anxious to see the reply that Roger gets.

No one should mistake my skepticism on this matter as an argument for inaction on climate change. As long-time readers of this blog know, I tend to favor decoupling climate change from the larger energy debate. I recognize that to some, this dilutes the “urgency” for action; I just happen to think you can get broader buy-in for decarbonisation with the approach laid out by the Hartwell group.

But it seems that the climate debate will continue to pivot on the contention that man-made climate catastrophe is not only inevitable–if no serious action is taken–but that, in fact, such catastrophe is already upon us. At least that’s how I interpret the Politico op-ed. [Update: A commenter says that I've mischaracterized the views of the op-ed authors with my "catastrophe" connotation, and I agree.]

If this is where the policy debate is destined to be decided, then we should vigorously engage it. To that end, I’d like to see Real Climate take up the science behind the assertions made in the Politico op-ed. RC is where controversial matters of climate science are most comprehensively aired out.

Let’s air this one out.

The previous thread on climate skeptics is a marvel in many ways, but I find myself looking for a segue into more productive territory. Fortunately, one commenter has laid out a path:

It would be nice if all sides of this discussion would recognize that there are rational reasons for skepticism as well as for the consensus view. Similarly, it is quite possible to agree with the mainstream science while rejecting any or all of the current basket of policy proposals. Or to support those proposals regardless of the science.

Could this be a framework for common ground between all the sides?

That’s the clever tagline to an excellent cover story on climate skeptics in the new issue of Skeptic magazine.

Alas, the actual article, which aims to distinguish between “Climate Skeptics” and “Climate Deniers,” is available only on newstands or by subscription. But because I’ve been trying to puzzle out the distinction myself of late, I’m going to highlight some choice excerpts from the piece.

Here’s the opener:

Among the many battlefronts in the culture wars, few have raised a specter of worry among scientists more than the great big imbroglio over Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Especially in America, positions are staked and fiercely held by parties who claim they are evidence-based while their opponents are portrayed as either conspiratorial deniers or the gullible “koolaid-drinking tools of a propaganda machine. An especially vexing aspect of this polarization is the near perfect correlation of the sides with an ancient and largely unrelated left-right political axis.

Well, I’m not sure of that perfect correlation, but I think the above overview accurately captures the popular perception. The writer, David Brin, is fair-minded in his approach. He’s sympathetic to both climate scientists and true, science-minded climate skeptics. Here’s the central question he’s trying to answer:

What discrete characteristics distinguish a rational, pro-science “climate skeptic” who has honest questions about the AGW consensus from members of a Denier Movement that portrays all members of the scientific community as either fools or conspirators?

Towards the end of his piece, Brin assumes (wrongly, I believe) that pro-science climate skeptics are fully cognizant of the associations that are being used to tar them:

The Climate Skeptic has noticed that the Denier movement is directly correlated–with almost perfect predictability–with a particular “side” in America’s calamitous, seditious and self-destructive Culture Wars. This is the same side that includes “Creation Science,” the same side that oversaw the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, based on mythological asset bubbles, “magical financial instruments”…and the same side that promised us “energy independence” then sabotaged every effort in that direction, including all of the energy-related research that might have helped us get off the oil-teat. (And that research gap is a bigger smoking gun to pay attention to than carbon credits.)

While the Denier sees this association of parallel anti-intellectual movements as a good thing, one than enhances the credibility of the Denier movement, the Skeptic has the mental courage to be embarrassed by it.

Actually, based on my own interactions with skeptics on this blog and over at Roger Pielke Jr.’s site, it seems that most pro-science skeptics could care less about this association, much less be embarrassed by it. I think this willful stance does them no good in the public sphere, where their credibility is clearly undermined by their loose association with the larger denier movement that Brin alludes to.

Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.” If they did this, I bet their voices would be heard more clearly by both climate scientists and the public.

UPDATE: In the comment thread, David Brin elaborates on what motivated him to write his story.

In the public sphere, where the various running debates on climate science and climate policy are most fiercely fought, the uncertainty factor is often downplayed or glossed over. Subsequently, it gets little attention in the media.

And that’s a shame, because in the decision-making sphere, the uncertainty factor is very much on the minds of everyone from water managers in Denver to national security planners in the Pentagon. And they have to make some hard decisions, regardless of what happens with the energy/climate bill in Congress or treaty negotiations on the international stage. That’s because for both water managers and security planners (even though they work in very different arenas), there are huge unknowns with respect to the projected localized impacts of global warming.

So I think it’s notable that Gavin Schmidt highlights this issue over at Real Climate, with a new post that draws attention to this paper, called, “Options for Improving Climate Modeling to Assist Water Utility Planning for Climate Change.” Despite the wonky title, the paper is well worth reading for anyone interested in how the uncertainty factor is being grappled with at the ground level in water management circles. It’s also notable that Gavin chose to spotlight this clever play on a famous phrase, which is taken from that paper:

Grant us…
The ability to reduce the uncertainties we can;
The willingness to work with the uncertainties we cannot;
And the scientific knowledge to know the difference.

As I pointed out last week, it seems that national security experts are mouthing that same prayer. This is a good place for me to mention a recent paper that I’ve been meaning to discuss. It’s called, “Lost in Translation: Closing the Gap Between National Security Policy and Climate Science.” Here’s one passage that jumped out at me:

For the past 20 years, scientists have been content to ask simply whether most of the observed warming was caused by human activities. But is the percentage closer to 51 percent or to 99 percent? This question has not generated a great deal of discussion within the scientific community, perhaps because it is not critical to further progress in understanding the climate system. In the policy arena, however, this question is asked often and largely goes unanswered.

That brings me to one of the arguments that climate researcher Judith Curry has been making of late on this blog, which might best be summarized here:

we need to do a much better job of characterizing, assessing, and reasoning about uncertainty regarding this extremely complex system of climate science and the climate-science policy interface.

In other recent threads at this site, Judith has elaborated on where some of the key uncertainty lies and why it is necessary to engage forthrightly about it.

During some of this discussion, Judith laid out where she thinks people engaged in the climate debate line up on the uncertainty spectrum. Below is a slight modification of the categories she first mentioned here.

*****

Regarding uncertainty, my take is that there are 5 different ways of dealing with it (an adaptation of Van der Sluijs):

1. Uncertainty denier – pretend it doesn’t exist, or underestimate it or try to keep the discussion away from the topic. Uncertainty denying or the “never admit error” strategy can be motivated by a political agenda or because of fear that uncertain science will be judged as poor science by the outside world.

2. Uncertainty reducer –  ”reduce the uncertainty” mantra, of the early IPCC reports and also the US CCSP Strategic Plan. A laudable goal, but reducing uncertainty will prove to be vain in the long run: for each uncertainty that science reduces, several new ones will pop up due to unforeseen complexities. Further there is a class of uncertainties (ontic or aleatory uncertainties) that are fundamentally not reducible.

3. Uncertainty simplifier – fit complex uncertainties into nice categories.  The subjective Bayesian approach of Moss and Schneider (expert judgment) fits here, this has been the uncertainty recipe for the IPCC 3rd and 4th assessment reports, e.g. the likely, very likely stuff. Uncertainty simplifiers, while they definitely pay attention to uncertainty, they tend to be inadvertent uncertainty minimizers.

4. Uncertainty detectives –  well, all scientists should work hard to understand, represent, and reason about uncertainty (climate scientists generally don’t do a great job at this). The conflict is when political opponents seize on this uncertainty as an excuse for inaction.

5. Uncertainty assimilator – include uncertainty information in rational decision support systems and policies.

We need to get to #5.  This is not simple, since climate assessment (e.g. IPCC) is stuck in #3 right now.  My efforts to move it to #4 are being met with apparent calls to go back to #1.  We have to work our way through #4 before we get to #5.  Will #4 result in blood on the floor and more polarization?  On the contrary, it may actually enable the two sides of scientists to become less polarized, which will take some of the steam out of the political uncertainty embracers. Moving forward in the science requires #4.  #4 will also improve the policy and decision making process.

*****

If various decision-makers (such as those water managers and security experts) are grasping for a handle on the uncertainties associated with climate change, then maybe it’s only a matter of time before our fractious public debates pivot on the collaboration between (#4) uncertainty detectives and (#5) uncertainty assimilators.

But to even get to that point might require a constant invocation of that Uncertainty Prayer spotlighted at Real Climate.

With the climate change debate becoming increasingly hard-nosed and polarized, perhaps it’s time the main players in climate science reconsidered their tactics.

Right now, force meets force. This has largely deteriorated into a never-ending rhetorical battle of insults between climate scientists and skeptics. (Climate activists, taking their cue from the hostile landscape, are more transparent, with some calling for a “serious takedown” of one particular renegade scientist). I realize that caged fighting is all the rage, but I don’t think it’s going to change the dynamics of the climate change discussion.  There are, however, other martial arts that could help break this ugly standoff.

For example, should climate scientists ever want to establish a better rapport with skeptics (and the public at large) they might consider taking up Tai Chi, a popular Chinese martial art that blends “soft” and “hard” techniquies. Why? Here’s one excellent reason via Wikipedia:

The philosophy of Tai Chi Chuan is that if one uses hardness to resist violent force, then both sides are certain to be injured at least to some degree. Such injury, according to tai chi theory, is a natural consequence of meeting brute force with brute force. Instead, students are taught not to directly fight or resist an incoming force, but to meet it in softness and follow its motion while remaining in physical contact until the incoming force of attack exhausts itself or can be safely redirected, meeting yang with yin.

Please do no think I am recommending that Tai Chi be used to outwit skeptics. Rather, I am suggesting that the philosophy may serve as a useful metaphor for more productive engagement with the public (though as an off-and-on-again student of Tai Chi, I certainly recommend it for both body and mind).

I started thinking about this after paying closer attention to the comment threads at Real Climate. These guys, I believe, are well intentioned and they perform a valuable public service. Over time, they have also come to represent the public face of climate science. They have to know this. Yet the way RC interacts with a segment of its readership does not reflect well on the communication skills of some of the RC contributors.

If you are familiar with radio jock Howard Stern (who can be crude but is also often hilarious), then you might know this classic bit he has shared with listeners countless times. It’s a twenty second exchange between a young Howard and his father, who berates his son with a classic one-liner. I think some of the guys at RC, either out of impatience or frustration, or just sheer contempt, employ variations of the same putdown. It’s probably not the best way to win people over to your side of the argument.

This brings me to an op-ed by Chris Mooney in yesterday’s Washington Post, titled

If scientists want to educate the public, they should start by listening

The column likely has some scientists scratching their heads, since Mooney is the co-author of the recent book Unscientific America, in which he argues that

Americans are paying less and less attention to scientists.

So who are scientists supposed to listen to if people have already tuned them out? Maybe Chris can smooth that one out in his next op-ed. At any rate, I would argue that the Real Climate guys who are the public face of climate science in the blogosphere (where much of the nasty debate plays out) are indeed listening to the public. It’s how they’re responding that strikes me as the bigger problem.

UPDATE: I think Mooney’s essay is worth taking up in a separate post. Meanwhile, have a look at Orac’s rebuttal. BTW (and this is off-topic, but hey, it’s my blog), some of you may be interested to learn that I agree with Orac that scientists can’t and shouldn’t be building bridges to the anti-vaccine movement. That said, I happen to think that Orac and other science bloggers unfairly lump in climate skeptics with creationists and anti-vaccine activists as part of the larger “denialist” anti-science phenomena. For example, here’s Orac in that current post:

Here’s the problem with Chris’ observations. As he clearly points out, denialists, be they anti-vaccine, creationist, deniers of anthropogenic global warming, or whatever, are indeed highly motivated “consumers of science.” That’s part of the problem. They are consumers of science, but do not understand (or necessarily accept) the scientific method or how science works.

If the more serious and science-minded climate sceptics don’t want to be painted with this broad brush (and make no mistake, they are), then I think it’s up to them to distinguish themselves from the anti-science types they are so often grouped with. I know they feel they shouldn’t have to, but hey, this is the world we live in.

Does climate science have a confirmation bias problem? Or is it the bias of climate skeptics that is the problem?  I suppose how you answer that might reflect your own bias. And so, in light of recent posts that explored issues of trust and polarization, maybe it’s a good time for us to examine the bias issue.

Once again, it is an exchange between readers (one of them being Gavin Schmidt) that will take center stage, and hopefully serve as a springboard for a productive discussion on bias.

Yesterday JohnB waded into an ongoing exchange between Judith Curry and Gavin on this thread. At the end of one comment, Gavin wrote:

The solution to the existence of individual biases (which exist regardless of how many letters have been signed), are the multiple levels of review and collaborations across many people and voices.  You don’t get rid of biases by pretending they don’t exist.

To which JohnB responded:

There is a subtle problem with bias. That is that it changes our perception of when to raise warning flags due to our expectations. The Vulcan scientist is a fantasy and everybody is prey to their own biases, you me, Judith, Keith, everybody. The problem with bias is that it clouds our ability to detect bias in our own actions.

Where this is relevant. Suppose you (or anyone) were running projections to 2100 and you expect a 4 degree warming. AS in 4 degrees is around what you think the temps in 2100 will be. You know your stuff and have done this before, so you will have a rough idea of what to expect.

If the answer comes in between 3.5 and 4.5 degrees, you’d shrug and say to yourself “Round about what I expected” and move on. If the answer came in at 5 degrees, you’d whistle and think “Higher than I expected, this could get bad” and then continue.

However, if the answer came in at 3 degrees, you’d most likely think “That’s a bit low, I’d better check my figures.”

Natural bias tends to make us more liable to doubt when the answer disagrees with our preconceived ideas. You will be more likely to suspect a problem if the answer is lower than expected than when the answer is higher than expected. I think it’s called “being human”.

The problem comes in when the next person builds on your research. He assumes your findings are right. Why not, they’re peer reviewed and he also knows that Gavin knows his stuff and is likely right. But researcher number 2 has the same bias. So if his figures come out under yours, they will be immediately suspect (by him for a start) but if they come out a bit higher, well, both still fall into the error bars of the other, so they should be right.

Hence the seemingly never-ending litany of “It’s worse than we thought.” The simple fact that it’s always “worse than we thought” sets alarm bells ringing to Joe Public.

This sort of “compounding of errors” has probably been observed by most people as it happens in all walks of life. Why should Climate Science be any different? Joe Public knows it happens everywhere else, he’s seen it happen, therefore he won’t accept “Trust me I’m a scientist” as an answer. He will have trouble with “It’s been checked by my peers” because he’s seen corporate plans checked and rechecked and still fail miserably.

Joe Public knows all this, which is why he is immediately suspicious when someone says, in effect “Yes, I’m biased, but it doesn’t matter because I’m right”. He just won’t believe you.

(I will add that a researcher whose bias is towards a low climate sensitivity has exactly the same problem as described above, but in the opposite direction. He will be more likely to check his figures if the answer is above his expectations.)

*********

Responding directly to JohnB, Gavin countered:

You are imagining scenarios that match only your prejudgement of my thinking. You are in fact completely wrong. In the 1990s, the GISS climate model had a sensitivity of 4.2 deg C (or even 5 deg C in some configurations). For the new model that I contributed to for AR4 (Schmidt et al, 2006), the sensitivity was 2.7 C – and at no time ever in the development process did we act as if that was ‘problem’ to be fixed. For the vast majority of scientists (and indeed all of the ones I’ve worked with), the answer is what it is.

*********

JohnB responded again to Gavin, which you can read in entirety here. This is the first graph:

Where did I say anything was a “problem to be fixed”? I was pointing out the fact that our own biases influence our initial reaction to results. Nothing more, nothing less. Physicists have told me that this is so in their field, why would it not be true in others, including Climate Science?

After reading JohnB’s initial comment several times, it sounds to me that he is suggesting a bit more than that, which someone more well-known than him seemed to be getting at here:

Because any study where a single team plans the research, carries it out, supervises the analysis, and writes their own final report, carries a very high risk of undetected bias. That risk, for example, would automatically preclude the validity of the results of a similarly structured study that tested the efficacy of a drug. Nobody would believe it.

Now that you’ve read that quote, here’s the source and the full context. Does that bias you?

A brief word about JohnB. He is from Australia and a non-scientist. He told me via email that for the last six years he’s been

hanging out at a place called scienceforums. These guys are Particle Physicists, Astronomers, BioChemists, name a major science and there is an expert there, I mean one moderator studies Time for a living. You want to debate a topic? Fine. But you’d better be able to provide links to the actual papers and quote the relevant passages. Science debate there is hard science. You can perhaps imagine what some of our “Climate” debates were like.

In that email, JohnB also fleshed out how he became increasingly interested in climate science and the issue of confirmation bias:

I know about the bias thing because an Atomic Physicist told me about how sometimes he can throw out data because he knew it wrong by looking at the results, if it’s too far from expectation, or the wrong sign, you just know there’s something wrong with it. (We were debating tree rings BTW) But Climate Science isn’t Physics, is it? The hard and fast rules aren’t there and the error bars are far larger. Knowing it’s wrong becomes more of an opinion or educated guess so the possibility of bias effecting the results are larger.

When I got interested in modern Climate Science, one of the first things I came across was Phil Jones’ immortal statement “Why should I show you my data when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” This was so far from what normal, hard scientists would say as to be not even in the same Galaxy. Pulling it in any of our forums would write you off as a crank there and then. Not willing to show the data? We’re not going to bother listening. Climate Science was not meeting the standards of proof that we ask of any poster in any of our science forums. Climate science wasn’t meeting the standard that hard, physical scientists had told me for years was the acceptable standard.

So I started reading and digging a bit deeper and frankly didn’t like what I was seeing. A climate scientist publishes a paper using a “new” statistical method. Who reviewed it? Statisticians? Nope, other Climate Scientists. But it’s in the literature and just gets cited and reused.

I was introduced to a form of scientific debate 6 years ago where it doesn’t matter who you are or what your education level was or how many letters you have after your name. Evidence matters, logic matters and proof matters, everything else is irrelevent. You can be a cowtown hick and argue with a physicist. If you’re right and can prove it, you’re right. Game over. If your theory or model doesn’t match the observations, then your theory or model is wrong. In Climate science, if your model doesn’t match the observations, the first assumption is that the obs are wrong and they get reworked until they match the model. Note the Allen and Sherwood paper in 2008. Tropospheric warming as measured by the thermometers on weather balloons didn’t match the models predictions. Do you adjust the model or decide that the airspeed of the balloon is a better proxy for temperature than the actual thermometer carried by the balloon? Your proof that airspeed is better? Because it matches the models predictions. I know which I would choose, and I know which one Climate science chose.

I’ll leave it to others to engage with JohnB on his grasp of climate science and the profession’s protocol. But I highlight his obvious efforts to educate himself about the discipline, which strike me as sincere, (perhaps he’ll want own up to any extra-science motivational biases in the thread), because I think there is a tendency to dismiss this kind of public engagment in the climate debate. The meme on skeptics seems fairly one dimensional and monolothic, as reflected in this Jeffrey Sachs op-ed.

On the other hand, Bart Verheggen acknowledges:

Undoubtedly climate skepticism comes in many shades of grey (as does climate concern). How can we distinguish between genuine skeptics and pseudo-skeptics? Undoubtedly, all self styles skeptics see themselves as genuine. I don’t really have an answer to that question.

Well, maybe the answer is to actually engage with them and their arguments. Obviously, Judith Curry is blazing that trail. But I also want to applaud Gavin Schmidt for coming over here and mixing it up with Judith, JohnB and other readers.

Now who can help shed some light on the problem of bias? Does it perhaps afflict both climate science and its critics? If so, what can be done about it?

UPDATE: In the comment thread, Judith Curry identifies what she considers to be “the big flaw” in the PNAS paper.

UPDATE: Over at Dot Earth, Eric Steig, a Real Climate contributor, said he agrees with Roger Pielke Jr. “that the ‘blacklist’ metaphor is appropriate.”

UPDATE: Real Climate officially weighs in.

There’s a new PNAS study out today called, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” that is sure to reverberate throughout the climate blogosphere. Over on the other thread, which had a relevant discussion, Judith Curry asked:

Does anyone find this a convincing analysis of credibility?

Let’s take her up and offer feedback. But do read the study first, which is freely available from that link above. (The PDF is on the right side of the abstract.) As Judith also pointed out, the data for the study can be found here.

It’ll be interesting to see mainstream media coverage and blogospheric reaction to the study. I’ll post the relevant links in an update at the bottom of the post as they come in.

UPDATE: 6/21, 11:15pm: Eli Kintisch at Science is among the first out of the box with this story earlier today. Unsurprisingly, Joe Romm lauds the results of what he calls an “important first-of-its-kind study.” (To fully appreciate how novel this “first-of-its kind” study is, you have to read the Science article.)

Meanwhile, Roger Pielke Jr. dissects the study’s methodology and adds some supplementary information on one of the authors.

UPDATE: 6/22, 7:00am: Leo Hickman in the Guardian says the study “throws some new light on the ‘expertise gap’” between climate science factions.

10:30am: Justin Gillis, writing at the NYT Green blog: “The results are pretty conclusive.” Eh, maybe not, if you listen to Eric Steig (of Real Climate), who comments at Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog:

Wow. Roger, you know I disagree with you on many things, but not on this. What the heck where they thinking? Even if the analysis had some validity — and from a first glance, I’m definitely not convinced it does — it’s not helpful, to put it mildly. I’m totally appalled.

12:30pm: On the study, Chris Mooney at his Discover blog writes, “that journalists who have given a lot of weight to climate ’skeptics’ have some ’splaining to do.”  Over at Time, Michael Lemonick writes that what constitutes a top climate researcher is “laid out in detail” in the paper.

The BBC has a story up that quotes Stanford’s William Anderegg, a lead author of the paper, on what motivated the study:

We really felt that the state of the scientific debate was so far removed from the state of the public discourse and we felt that a good quantitative, rigorous comparison of this would put to rest the notion that the scientists ‘disagree’ about global warming.

In an effort to turn this blog into a pluralistic forum, you will on occasion see spotlighted contributions from individual commenters and excerpts of exchanges between readers.

Over the weekend, the who started this ruckus post has triggered an interesting thread on, among other things, the value of citizen scientists.  Part of the discussion has keyed on how to determine if citizens are engaging with climate science sincerely or as politically/ideologically motivated actors. Another strong theme of the thread, as Judith Curry observed, is the contentious issue of “trusted sources” for citizen climate scientists.

I recognize this is a murky area to tread, which is why I thought that Jonathan Gilligan, an Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Vanderbilt University, helped shed some light with his contributions to the thread. (Gilligan is also the Associate Director of Research at the Vanderbilt Climate Change Research Network.) Below is one of his comments (slightly modified for new readers) that I thought deserved to be taken up more in full.

From Jonathan Gilligan:

I see two separate problems here: Establishing good faith and sincerity and establishing competence.

Good faith: Too many scientists have been discouraged by seeing the same people repeat the same disingenuous objections, first to the CFC-ozone connection and later to AGW, long after the objection was debunked. People are much more likely to take the time and effort to engage in a dialog if they feel the other side is willing to listen with an open mind and consider that it might be wrong (this problem runs both ways in these controversies, but it would be a mistake to set the bar for open-mindedness by mainstream scientists so high as to require that they be prepared to jettison decades of solid empirical and theoretical work on the basis of a new revelation by someone with little track record; more on this below).

One source of trouble is the tendency to stereotype or judge people by association: just because many people in the past have argued disingenuously about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) doesn’t mean a new interlocutor with similar opinions will do so, but it’s human nature to jump to that conclusion.

The water is poisoned badly at this point, and there is a real need for some way that sincere people in the scientific community and the general public can demonstrate their good will to one another.

The second problem is establishing competence. Scientists in certain fields regularly receive communications (often accompanied by lengthy diatribes) from sincere citizen-scientists purporting to refute special relativity, quantum complementarity, the second law of thermodynamics, and so forth. These days, proposals for carbon sequestration and clean energy are on the rise in my mailbox, including schemes to harvest unlimited free energy from magnetic monopoles or the quantum zero-point field. Sometimes it’s easy to fire off a quick email pointing out the flaw in the argument, but sometimes the correspondent has a lengthy tract with lots of mathematics and it’s not worth the hours it would take to find and explain the flaw.

Amateurs can also provide genuine insight and even advances, but when the signal to noise ratio is very low, it doesn’t pay off to sort through it all, hoping for a pony.

One thing sociologists of science have identified that separates earnest but misguided outsiders from competent practitioners is tacit knowledge—the unwritten practical good sense you pick up working side by side with a master. This is what graduate training or apprenticeships confer that simply reading books and journal papers cannot.

People who lack appropriate tacit knowledge often can’t figure out the context in which to put a single piece of research, the judgment to determine the quality of a new publication, and so forth. As Harry Collins and Robert Evans point out, “it can be shown that what is found in the literature, if read by someone with no contact with the core-groups of scientists who actually carry out the research in disputed areas, can give a false impression of the content of the science as well as the level of certainty. Many of the papers in the professional literature are never read so if one wants to gain something even approximating to a rough version of agreed scientific knowledge from published sources one has first to know what to read and what not to read; this requires social contact with the expert community.” (Collins & Evans, infra, p. 22)

A good example of this can be found in Thabo Mbeki’s attempt to do a sort of citizen-science regarding AIDS by reading and assessing primary research literature on his own. His lack of tacit knowledge led Mbeki to seize on a few papers by outlier scientists, rejecting the connection between HIV and AIDS and judging that drug-safety testing showed that AZT was a poison rather than a useful antiretroviral drug, albeit with serious side effects. This confusion underlay Mbeki’s decision not to provide AZT prophylaxis to babies born to HIV-positive mothers, a decision that cost tens of thousands of lives.

Sociologist Harry Collins has conducted extensive empirical studies of scientific expertise and the acquisition and transmission of tacit knowledge. In his slim and very readable book with Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise (U. Chicago, 2007, 160 pp.) he lays out a taxonomy of both expertise to use skills and expertise to judge others’ expertise (what Collins and Evans call “meta-expertise”).

The book is well worth reading for questions of how to figure out what makes someone an expert and different ways that people figure out how to establish someone else’s degree of expertise.

Two important things for this discussion are the observation that there are other ways to acquire the tacit knowledge necessary to understand complex technical science (Collins’s prime example is gravitational wave physics) without actually being a practicing scientist and that even within the scientific community, scientists often lack the direct expertise to judge one another’s competence, but use what the authors call “referred expertise” to judge scientists in other fields they are not themselves qualified to practice.

Collins and Evans conclude with a discussion of how all this might apply to interactions between citizens and scientists regarding politically contentious issues, such as vaccine safety, genetically modified (GM) crops, and global warming.

Collins and Evans hold out hope that members of the public can indeed acquire enough tacit knowledge through informal pathways (it would be very interesting to study how interactions on science blogs function at transmitting tacit knowledge from experts to layfolk) to understand and judge complex scientific questions, but that we should not romanticize this ability. Often (he offers the example of public rejection of mainstream scientific results on GM food safety) as a case where supporters of citizen science have judged that “the public … are well informed about scientific advance and … highly sophisticated in their thinking on the issues. … [T]he public are ahead of many scientists and policy advisors in their instinctive feeling for a need to act in a precautionary way,” when in fact the public are generally confused and misinformed about the science.

Collins and Evans contrast this to the role of the ACT-UP citizen activist group in the 1980s at making sophisticated and useful contributions to the testing of early anti-HIV therapies. The way ACT-UP overcame Robert Gallo’s initial dismissive treatment and won his attention and respect is perhaps a good positive example of how to proceed here (see also, S. Epstein, “The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS Activism and the Forging of Credibility in the Refort of Clinical Trials.” 20 Sci. Tech. Hum. Val., 408 (1995)).

One problem with establishing competence is the asymmetry between experts and layfolks. We often use three attributes to judge expertise in others when we don’t have time or expertise to go through their work in detail: credentials, experience, and track record. For judging mainstream scientists, we can use all three but for judging citizen scientists, credentials and experience are absent and it’s hard to figure out what an amateur’s track record is.

If we believe in populist democratic governance, as opposed to rule by technocratic elites, better integration of citizens and scientists will be necessary. However, doing this is very difficult, and we should not oversimplify or romanticize the ability of outsiders to understand, judge, and contribute to research at the boundaries of knowledge.

Today I received an email from Gavin Schmidt, who said he was having trouble posting a comment. (Darn this new system which I’m alternately loving and hating.)

Rather than plop Gavin’s comment into the thread, I believe what he says warrants highlighting in a stand-alone post. In particular, I hope readers take up Gavin’s main issue (reflected in the headline I chose for this post), which relates to why he thinks scientists don’t engage more in blog comment threads. Be advised: I’m not interested in readers rehashing the “Tiljander” argument in this thread. Please be polite and stay on topic.

From Gavin Schmidt:

One of the pathologies of blog comment threads is the appearance of continual demands that mainstream scientists demand retractions of published work or condemnations of specific scientists for supposed errors or other sins. Most often the issue in question has been discussed dozens of times previously and is usually based either on an irrelevancy, or was acknowledged clearly in the original or subsequent paper or is based on some misperception of the science. [See Mann et al (2008) paper.]

Nonetheless, these demands are being used as some kind of litmus test for the kind of scientist one can respect and they clearly resonate with people who don’t know anything about the subject. However, for those that do, it serves only to signal that there is no reason to engage since the first explanation should have dealt with the issue. How many times do you need to correct someone’s misperception of a point of science? If they were sincerely looking for truth, the answer would be once. If instead they are trying to find issues with which they can bash scientists for another reason, the answer is apparently infinite. No scientists have time for that, and this kind of continual low-level insinuation is simply too tiresome to deal with.

Climate bloggers belong to one of the more politically relevant subcultures in the blogosphere. It’s hard to quantify to what degree they influence the public discourse on climate science and policy. Suffice to say: they matter.

But I would argue that only the two opposite ends of the climate spectrum in the blogosphere are represented in the media and the public debate. That, in my view, has contributed to an oversimplification of climate issues and helped exacerbate polarization of the public dialogue. As a journalist who sometimes reports on climate change, I bear my share of responsibility.

But one of the benefits of having my own blog is that I can do my (small) part to rectify this blind spot. So in the last year, as I’ve dived deeper into the climate blogosphere, I have discovered a rich array of thoughtful voices and perspectives that are located across the climate spectrum. They deserve greater appreciation and exposure.

So last week, I reached out to two climate bloggers I have come to admire for their nuanced views and the way they conduct themselves. They occupy a nebulous middle ground in the spectrum, and while their blogs defy simple labels, I would have to say that their peers in the climate blogosphere probably place them on opposite sides of the climate debate, based on where they think their sympathies lie.

My objective here was to push back against such one-dimensional categorization (including my own), which is often reflected in the impolite comment threads of any blogs that delve into climate science or climate policy. I figure that if there is common ground to be established in the climate debate, perhaps two climate bloggers who are known for their civility and who, perception-wise, are considered to be on opposite sides, can help pave the way.

Bart Verheggen is a Holland-based atmospheric scientist, who is unfailingly polite and often quite insightful. In addition to his own blog, Bart is a frequent commenter at many climate blogs, where he often raises the level of debate.

Chicago-based Lucia Liljegren is a mechanical engineer who has worked at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (on projects related to remediation and storage of radioactive nuclear waste) and as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Iowa State University. Judith Curry, a climate researcher at Georgia Tech, calls Lucia “probably the least controversial person in the climate blogosphere, because of her cheerfulness and sense of humor, honesty, and open mindedness.”

Several days ago, I chatted with both Lucia and Bart via Skype. After editing the transcribed hour long conversation, I asked both of them to look over my edit of the transcript and make any necessary clarifications. They made minimal changes. Below is part one of the exchange.

Keith: Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick has a new poll out this week, which he says reaffirms that a “large majority of Americans” believe that man-made global warming is happening, and that something should be done about it. Taking note, Roger Pielke Jr. wrote:

As I have said for many years…the battle for public opinion on climate change has been won by those who argue that there is a profound human influence on climate and action is warranted. This has been the message of opinion polls for as long as 20 years.

Yet in the climate blogosphere, there continues to be this highly charged battle between two sides, the skeptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and those who belong to that “large majority.” So why is there this endless warring if the battle for public opinion has been won?

Bart: I think the [climate] blogosphere is dominated by the extremes of either side, of those who very much downplay the [climate change] problem and those who are very much convinced of the problem and indeed in some circumstances overplay the problem.

Lucia: Definitely in terms of composition, you get both of those groups.  My blog gets people who do think that there is either so little warming as to not matter at all, or that the warming we have is all natural. I don’t think they’re a majority on my blog, but there are some. And I know there are other blogs (such as wattsupwiththat) where there’s a lot of people who either think there is no warming or admit that there’s warming in the record but don’t believe it’s caused by people.

I think people on both ends just want to talk more.

Bart: Do you think so? I have the feeling that a lot of people on both ends are actually quite content talking to their own, because they each consider the other side—or at least the more extreme ones on either side—they feel that the more extreme ones on the other side are lunatics.

Keith: In a recent post, Andrew Freedman wrote that, “climategate”

helped foster the notion that climate science is controlled by a tight-knit cabal of experts determined to rig the science to suit their best interests.

Lucia, do you believe that?

Lucia: All of climate science, certainly not. The emails do show some people trying to control certain publications, and exerting a lot of influence in some of those discussions back and forth. There are many, many climate scientists doing research without regard to any sort of notion of what the right answer is. But I think there is some tendency for what Judy Curry called tribalism, and attempts to block certain types of information…maybe not block it, but at least make it very low visibility. So it can never be all of climate science, it just wouldn’t even happen. But things can happen that sort of make things lean in one way or the other and that’s kind of the way I see things. What do you think Bart?

Bart: I would express myself maybe slightly differently, but I don’t have a big issue with what you’re saying. I do think, indeed that climategate spread “the notion that climate science is controlled by a tight-knit cabal” who rig the science in a preconceived direction far and wide. And I do think that that notion is a very implausible conspiracy theory, which Lucia alluded to, and for which there is no evidence at all, neither in the emails or anywhere else.

That said, I do know there is a certain degree of defensiveness from the part of climate scientists and their supporters toward people who have criticism. (Just to also note: I have never been in any high profile climate research, and I have not been involved with the IPCC; I’m just on the sidelines here.) And that degree of defensiveness, that is what I agree with in Judith Curry’s analysis and I also feel kind of the same with what Lucia is saying here. To what extent that goes further into blocking other views, or diminishing their visibility on purpose, that’s something that I’m not so sure of and I would actually tend to think not. But to be honest, I don’t really know.

I do think that the defensive attitudes are basically the response of scientists being attacked by so many people. And a big portion of those people who have criticism—not everyone, I’d like to add—but a big portion of them do so with a totally incoherent set of arguments, like “oh, there’s no warming,” or “there’s a little warming and it’s good, and by the way, it’s due to the sun…”

Lucia: Well, you have to be a little bit careful when you put those all together, because there’s many different people.

Bart: Yes, true.

Lucia: Bart’s accusation is that one person individually holds many incoherent views all at the same time, and while there may be a few people out there like that, more often its one person has theory A, one person has theory B, one has theory C.

Bart: You are very right, and the criticism comes in many shades of gray. That’s absolutely correct. And I think that the climate scientific establishment and their supporters should indeed examine their sometimes overly defensive attitudes. To immediately ascribe any criticism to like, “oh, you’re a stupid skeptic or a denier,” or whatnot, well some of the criticism might actually have merit. (Even though on the internet, I think it’s a minority.)

Keith: Lucia, I know you see yourself in the middle of the climate spectrum. What blogs are closer to the far end of the skeptic spectrum?

Lucia: Obviously Anthony Watts runs posts that highlight the notion there are big gaps in the case for Anthropogenic global warming. And they’ll mostly be against the idea it’s anthropogenic. So that one is definitely more skeptical of warming than mine would be.

Keith: What blogger is on the far end of the AGW spectrum.

Lucia: I’d say Joe Romm. I would put him on the strongest AGW, advocacy/activist end of the spectrum. I do find his long, stream of consciousness screeds difficult to read.

Keith: Bart, how would you define the spectrum?

Bart: I have a different view of the spectrum than Lucia has. I remember Michal Tobis on his blog had a good characterization of the spectrum. I would say that mainstream science is in the ‘middle’, which in the blogosphere is represented by sites like Real Climate, and other scientists like James Annan, William Connolley, Michael Tobis, Robert Grumbine, SkepticalScience and others.  That’s what I would characterize as the middle ground. Because it’s really a fairly good representation of what you also read in the literature.

The IPCC position is kind of the middle ground there. And then you have people who critique it with varying levels of intensity and with varying levels of evidence based, as Lucia is doing. And you have more paranoia-based ones, such as Marc Morano. That’s someone who I would put on the lunatic fringe on the skeptic side. And there’s definitely a broad range in between—including both paranoid and (more or less) valid criticisms. Of course, there is also a critique that the IPCC position is too conservative, which I discussed on my blog.

Then you have someone like Steve McIntyre, who sometimes has valid criticisms, but he packages it in such a way, that it goes against all my… [searching for the right words]

Keith: Is it his tone?

Bart: It’s the hidden insinuations and accusations that he’s always putting down there. And the way he slams the climate scientists and put motives there…I don’t like it at all. It takes away from some things he might have a valid point in. Now I’m not actually interested at all in the hockey stick debate. So I’m not following things [at Climate Audit] in detail, but he might actually have some points there. I’m not saying he doesn’t.

And then you have on the other side [of the spectrum], you have…yeah Joe Romm, goes sometimes…he’s a tricky case to characterize. I don’t like his style of communication. I think he’s a little bit too strong with language. By and large, though, he doesn’t stray far away from the science. He doesn’t often say things that are wrong. He does, however, put out a one-sided view. If you say, he emphasizes worst cases and de-emphasizes others, yes, that is something he does sometimes.

On the lunatic fringe of the alarmist side—and I don’t like that word, alarmist, at all—there are people who claim that the world is going to end in 20 years and humanity will go extinct if we don’t put down 100,000 windmills tomorrow. For me, they would be the equivalent of Marc Morano. Joe Romm doesn’t come even close to being such an equivalent.

Keith: Lucia, what about Bart’s contention that Steve McIntyre undermines his legitimate criticism with his insinuations or the way he goes about communicating them?

Lucia: Well, I’m not sure Steve does that. I can understand why Bart thinks it’s that way. It’s difficult to judge it without looking at some of the history. It’s not at all clear to me what the cause and effect of that is. It’s not clear to me because I didn’t start reading Climate Audit when the first hockey stick wars all started. But there’s a point of view out there that when Steve was presenting these things in the tone that Bart would think is the more appropriate one, he was still getting shot down and treated badly and was on the receiving end of the snide remarks and a lot of other things. So I don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg.

Bart: I don’t know either. I haven’t followed that from the start either. I have my suspicions, but I don’t really know, I haven’t checked it out.

Keith: Bart, on your blog you once wrote:

The more relevant discussion for society is about how to deal with climate change (rather than about Siberian tree rings or other scientific details). How do we act in the face of uncertainty, but with real risks of problematic consequences?

What do you make of that Lucia?

Lucia: Actually, Bart and I interact most often at Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog. That’s the kind of topic that Roger often brings up.  I don’t even bring them up, because I don’t have as many ideas as to what we can actually get through in the political process.

But it’s absolutely true that the real questions are, what sorts of actions are we going to take? I tend to take the view that, people need to talk about actions we can take that would be beneficial whether or not someone believes climate change is happening and whether or not it was caused by humans. Because sometimes the whole debate about that discussion gets in the way of some issues that have to do with energy sources we need to access that we can resolve without learning whether or not climate change is true. Or at least you can get some line of agreement. You’ll never get 100 percent.

Keith: Along those lines, there’s a new paper out from Roger and other scholars–known as the the Hartwell Paper–that argues we should decouple climate change from energy policy. And then we can move on from this war over climate science, which I’m sure both of you would agree is, to a large degree, a proxy war over policy. Should we do that, should we just get past the climate science war and stop pretending what the real fight is about?

Bart: Not entirely. First of all,  I don’t think we should decouple the climate change issue from energy policy, but I do agree that we should stop pretending what the real fight is about, which is: How to respond to climate change?

Secondly, If we leave the question totally aside of whether there is climate change and whether it was caused by humans, and only do what we would otherwise also do because of declining fossil fuel reserves and other concerns (geopolitical, environmental, health), I think in a way, then, we would be giving in to the people that don’t believe there is such a thing as anthropogenic global warming.

I think on the other hand, the more rational approach—how I see it—would be to take the broad scientific view of the [climate change] problem, with associated uncertainties and risks, and out of that view, then say, well, given what we know of the uncertainties and risks, what is the prudent action to do. I sometimes characterize this situation at my blog, as if it’s bad, it’s really bad, and if it’s good, it’s still pretty bad. In other words, our current actions are actually still too little in a way, even if climate change is less of a problem than we think it is, even if climate sensitivity is 1.5 or 2 degrees rather than 3 degrees per doubling of CO2, which is deemed the most likely value. Of course, things could also turn out worse than expected.

Lucia: But the question is, what if there is a way to make decisions where we reduce the amount of reliance on carbon types of fuel without necessarily resolving the issue of climate change. The issue of climate change can still continue to be discussed. But if we’re trying to decide whether we’re gonna encourage nuclear power, whether we’re going to encourage alternate energy methods, there are other good reasons that have to do that, which have to do with energy security, peak oil and other types of reasons. Is it necessary that we must have everybody on board, agreeing with the IPCC’s view of climate change?

Bart: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t discuss climate science anymore. If people who are so inclined, like you and I, who want to discuss those kinds of details, then sure, go ahead.

But the thing is, right now, a lot of the discussion that is purportedly about climate science, is actually much more about the different ideas people have on how to respond to an issue like this: those who want to do something about the problem, and those who don’t want to do something. That’s what the disagreement is really about, I think. In a way, the debate about climate proxies is just a proxy for the debate on how to respond to the [climate change] issue.

But I think you’re right. There’s a lot of other reasons to reduce our reliance on carbon-based fuels. But a lot of those reasons don’t have the same urgency, because fossil fuel reserves are declining slowly…and if it’s just about fossil fuels, then people will say, “we can do a bit more innovation of new technology, and that’s really it, there’s no reason to put solar panels anywhere.” I think climate change is still an important factor besides the other factors that make decarbonization a very important issue.

Keith: Well, we should talk about this, because that sense of urgency is something that is hotly debated across the climate spectrum. Here’s the thing: there seems to be wide agreement by scientists that the worst of potential consequences won’t be felt until later in this century, decades down the road. So if the average person looks out his window and doesn’t see any urgency, and he doesn’t feel personally affected by climate change, it seems a little problematic to have a policy debate on climate change hinge on the urgency argument.

Lucia: As a practical matter, if you’re going to persuade people about the urgency of climate change, that is problematic. When you have a democracy and you have to get people to make collective decisions, the fact that on a day to day basis, especially when you live in, say, Illinois or Minnesota, it’s hard to look out there and say, gosh, this looks urgent. Without doing extensive reading, it makes that a very hard sell.

So some of the other things would be easier sells to get things changed. People don’t like to see their energy prices going up. The notion that you could have more sustained progress and keep your energy bills down by trying to invest in alternative energy might be more attractive to some people. Of course, you’re still going to have arguments about whether or not it’s true. But urgency is a hard sell.

Keith: Leaving aside the practical hurdles that makes climate change a hard sell, what about the case for scientific urgency, which Bart was alluding to? I think what he was saying is that all these other reasons for decarbonization are important but they don’t come with that same sense of urgency as anthropogenic global warming. Do you agree with that Lucia?

Lucia: [A long pause] You see, on a blog I can just like, not answer that. I’m finding myself…I mean, I know the urgency argument is a very hard sell. There’s certainly the case, that if there is uncertainty, and the reality of AGW falls on the high side, combined with an uncertainty on the high side is correct, and heat capacity– the planet is big and responds slowly – then, if things are worse than we think, then there’s definitely a huge urgency and we would need to be doing stuff.

But the problem is that you have the urgency argument coupled with the uncertainty argument. [Note: In a follow-up email exchange, Lucia wrote: "I was thinking about the counter argument of what if the truth is on the low side of the uncertainty spread-- well, what then?"]  I think we need to do something now, and I would really like to see us going towards more nuclear options and I like alternative energy, if we can get people to put them in [KK: Lucia is referring to NIMBYISM.]  As I said, I usually avoid blogging about this, because there’s a lot of hard questions that I just don’t have very good answers for.

Bart: I don’t have real answers to that either. But I think it’s true what you say, that the urgency is a very hard sell, because it’s kind of counterintuitive to the nature of the problem. [Global warming] is pretty much a problem in slow motion. In that sense, the word urgency is very counterintitutive. And I don’t actually know if those other reasons for decarbonization, like energy independence, declining fossil fuel reserves, safety, health… I say they’re not very urgent but I don’t claim to know very much about any of those other aspects. So I’m not actually so sure about that part of my statement.

But the reason why I think climate science tells us climate change is more urgent than it seems at first sight is exactly those time scales you allude to. In order to change the energy system, that takes a tremendous amount of time. David Keith made an argument along these lines in some presentations.

There’s a big inertia in the energy system, there’s also a big inertia in the carbon cycle. If you reduce your emissions, it takes a long time for the concentration to actually go down, because it’s a long lifetime for Co2. The climate system has a lot of inertia as well: It takes time for the temperature to respond to a change in concentration.

So you have a large amount of inertia in the energy system, in the carbon cycle and in the climate system, which means if you start taking actions, it’s decades into the future until they start taking effect.

If you combine that inertia in those different systems, with uncertainty of the precise effect, and with some knowledge that it could go pretty wrong with a business as usual scenario, then you have to take proactive steps, and that’s where the urgency comes from.

In my view, it’s similar to a chainsmoker who gets told by a physician, “hey, you should really be careful, you should stop smoking if you care about your heath.” And the person says, “hey I can still bike to the town and I feel fine and my grandmother lived until she was 96 and died in a car accident.”

You can postpone dealing with smoking until you’re in the intensive care unit. But that’s a little late. That’s the line of argument in which I see the urgency of climate global warming.

Lucia: But whenever you have uncertainties in that chain of ifs, that’s where it’s extremely difficult to assess how urgent is it. It’s certainly urgent enough that we should be doing something. What exactly we should be doing, I’m not sure. I’m puzzled to figure out what would actually work.

**Postscript**

On Monday, I’ll post the second and final part of our conversation, which features an exchange on why the blogosphere is not conducive to nuanced debate on climate change.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out Lucia’s comment thread. Lots of good comments there, plus a visit from Steve McIntyre (Comment#45729), who slyly moves the pea under the thimble:

I’m puzzled as to Bart’s apparent antipathy for Climate Audit. I try to write accurately and to correct errors if they are brought to my attention. If I’ve made errors in any posts, I’d appreciate it if Bart would identify them for me so that I can make an appropriate correction.

In response, Bart lifted the pea (Comment#45749):

My issues with your writing is not in alleged errors you do or don’t make, but rather in how you package your message. It often reads as the noble detective trying to unravel some massive fraud, insinuating all kinds of things, mostly subtle (but apparently very clear to your followers nevertheless), sometimes less subtle (“try not to puke”).