An interesting commentary addressing a rather odd prior commentary makes some very correct points.
Back a few months there was a poorly argued and rather confusing commenary by Ulf Büntgen (Buntgen, 2024) that started:
I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization.
In the piece, the targets of his concern were not really defined and the general point that ‘scientists should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies’ is simply untenable. It is one thing to state that scientists should beware confirmation biases (very sensible), but quite another to say that scientists must have no interest in the answer. Should a doctor working on a vaccine not want it to work? Should a conservation biologist not want the endangered species they are working with to survive? Should a climate scientist not want to keep the seas from rising? The notion that scientists don’t care about their results is bizarre.
This is of course an appeal to the ‘value-free ideal’ of science, which at one point was held up as a valid goal, but was soon recognised by philosophers to be a fallacy, though it still holds sway with some scientists and members of the general public. The comment by van Eck et al. makes this point very clearly and lays out a far more realistic guide to how climate science in particular can succeed when scientists are open about the values that guide them, and transparent about the reasons for their advocacy, or indeed, activism.
In my public talks about communication I often make the point that a scientist’s advocacy (suggesting specific actions) arises from a combination of their knowledge of the science (what is) and their values (what they consider important):
It is correct that a knowledge of “what is”, does not determine on its own what “should be” (something Hume recognised centuries ago), and so science per se does not determine policies. But advocating policies divorced from science is a recipe for inefficiency and failure.
A major problem with Büntgen’s argument (and other critiques of so-called ‘stealth advocacy’) is that since no scientist lives up to the value-free ideal, anything a scientist advocates can be dismissed by demonstrating that they do have values or preferences or, heaven forbid, a political stance. Indeed, we see this dynamic arising all the time – for instance, Patrick Brown declaring that any science that appears in Science or Nature (including his own apparently) is compromised because the editorial boards of these journals have expressed political opinions (and are explicit about their values).
There are two possible responses to this dynamic. Scientists can hide their values, and avoid expressing any opinions, or they can be transparent about them and explicit about how they motivate their advocacy. The former approach is fragile because scientists do have values and opinions, and their work will still be declared to be tainted if it’s politically uncomfortable. The latter approach is robust, because the scientist owns their advocacy and do not have to defend an indefensible ideal.
People are often enculturated to the idea that science (and by extension, scientists) are purely objective (think of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock), and that science rises above the messy business of being human. But while science as a process does manage to overcome many individual biases (through replication, repeated testing, and successful predictions), there are still strong imprints of the values of previous generations of scientists in what we study, how we study it, and who gets to study it.
When someone is confronted by a scientist’s advocacy that they disagree with, it can be tempting to criticise it, not for the values upon which it is based, but for the temerity of advocating anything at all. Such a critique avoids having to express ones own values without the need to be explicit about why they differ – which can indeed be awkward. Another approach is to attack the science directly and again not discuss the values that animate the advocacy. But let’s be clear, neither of these approaches are good faith arguments – they are merely tactical.
People and scientists who value rationality should reject them.
References
- U. Büntgen, "The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism", npj Climate Action, vol. 3, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00126-0
- C.W. van Eck, L. Messling, and K. Hayhoe, "Challenging the neutrality myth in climate science and activism", npj Climate Action, vol. 3, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00171-9
“because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies” So say Ulf in the odd commentary you write about. My first response was “who is Ulf Büntgen, and Ulf, why the comment?”
A very cursory look for science papers shows first author and geographer Ulf Büntgen on a paper in Nature Geoscience from March 2021; “Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00698-0
Since I can only look at the abstract, perhaps Ulf is upset for allowing the word “devastating” slipped into the first sentence?
“Europe’s recent summer droughts have had devastating ecological and economic consequences, but the severity and cause of these extremes remain unclear. […]
Our reconstruction demonstrates that the sequence of recent European summer droughts since 2015 ce is unprecedented in the past 2,110 years. This hydroclimatic anomaly is probably caused by anthropogenic warming and associated changes in the position of the summer jet stream.”
Maybe his confusion is based on his mention of “outcome of studies” rather than “outcome of experiments”?
A swimming instructor is constantly conducting experiments to see if they can train different people to swim. If one of their students instead begins to drown, it is right and proper for them to stop the experiment in time to save the student who is their test subject. It will not corrupt their study of teaching people to swim if they save the floundering student before the individual experiment goes farther.
Climate scientists are not purposely generating megatons of persistent greenhouse gases annually, they are simply attempting to clarify the outcomes of the natural experiment the fossil fuel age presents them. And reporting on the likely range of outcomes should not remain a “ho hum” diffidence, since, again, their experiments are not creating the rapid disruption of our climate systems you have also noted are having severe impacts on us.
1) I myself don’t criticize scientists – that’s NJ Hagens’ job. As he noted in “The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century” (p.256):
“The very nature of “expertise” in our societies these days is some scientist who knows everything there currently is to know about one incredibly narrow slice of reality. That person will often not have any idea how the world works on the important levels at which we experience it…..
This leads to a society in which there are tiny islands of rigorous science loosely woven together with what are essentially fairy stories.”
2) During the Cold War the fix for this was to assemble a large committee of experts in many major fields and have them debate a problem and possible solutions. Known as the Delphi Method. Anyone who has done one of these exercises appreciates how one can be surprised by the insights of different people and how that in turn can modify one’s opinion, spur creative ideas and lead to a group consensus superior to what anyone proposed at the beginning. Europe has done several Delphi sessions on climate change/energy transition. I haven’t found any in the adversarial USA debates. The Biden Green New Deal was inspired by the ideas of Mark Z Jacobson. While Jacobson has a lot of good ideas I think his thinking might have a flaw. Since I don’t have $10 Million in the bank I won’t say what it is.
I agree with the statement that scientists are free to express their concerns about the adverse impacts of fossil fuel use on the earth’s ecosystem. The evidence gained from observation and theory is overwhelming . Only a scientist with head in sand would disagree. Scientists are human beings and can visualise the impacts better than the average citizen. They have a right to express their concerns,even more so then non scientists.
Gavin O’Brien (F RMet S)
Might be simpler to rewrite Ulf’s thesis as:
Scientists should not have an a priori financial/status/employment interest related to their study
Scientists should strive to be agenda free, as opposed to value free
Objectivity may be an unattainable goal–but it is still a worthy goal. Ask any honest journalist.
Of course scientists have interests “related to their study,” even if they are as objective as you please. They may care whether the hypothesis they are testing is true (or false) — otherwise why study it? It’s got to be a least theoretically interesting. They probably care whether the people they are working with are actually competent. Yes, they care whether they have a job, an office, a computer, a salary. Why wouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t they?
There is corruption in science. Sometimes professional ambition plays a role; more often the source of scientific corruption is corporate profit-seeking. But corruption is self-limiting in science, because the refutation of bad science is still a path to professional success.
I fully agree that scientists should be open about expressing their value judgements. But the idea expressed in van Eck et al that “striving for value-free science is both unattainable and undesirable” is completely wrong, in my view. The statement “to reduce the risk of extreme weather and sea-level rise, we must cut our emissions of greenhouse gases” is a scientifically objective, value-free statement . It is one that a scientific society or academy can make without contradicting the value judgements of its members. By contrast the balder statement “we must therefore reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases” involves value judgements (which climate scientists have no more expertise in than anyone else I would argue). I for one believe we should reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, but I’m happy to state that I come to this conclusion from non-scientific value judgements, as well as from objective scientific facts. As a result, I do not insist that the scientific societies and academies that I belong to make such statements – indeed, I would much prefer that they do not.
Importantly, the science of climate change can and indeed should be performed in a value-free context. I, for example, try to understand the regional impacts of climate change in an objective way using climate models. Value judgements are a serious impediment to this work – for example, some in the modelling community have a tendency to sweep problems of climate model bias under the carpet perhaps because of the worry that such biases will undermine the potential political and societal impact of these modelling studies. It’s really bad science when that happens, not least because it hinders the funding of efforts to reduce these biases (the funders have no exposure to these biases because they are told how great current climate models are for informing policy etc).
Also – in my experience – trying to communicate climate science in as value-free a way as possible is a fruitful means of persuading undecided people about the seriousness of climate change. The recipient of such information won’t be inclined to dismiss what I say about the science because they think “oh well he would say that wouldn’t he” – which they might be inclined to think if I intertwined the science seamlessly with my value judgements, Personally, I think this is one of the reasons activist communication about climate change can be quite ineffective to undecided people. Rather, give people the objective facts of the matter (including estimates of uncertainty – critically important) and let them come to their own conclusions about what to do. That’s my philosophy at least. The risks associated with climate change are so large that you would have to be completely bonkers not to take them very seriously indeed (but note that’s a value-judgement laden statement!).
For what it’s worth, in my book The Primacy of Doubt, I deliberately discuss the science of climate change, and the value judgements needed to come to a view about what to do about climate change, in two completely separate chapters.
And so, striving for value-free science is both attainable and extremely desirable in my view. In this sense van Eck et al are wrong.
“The statement “to reduce the risk of extreme weather and sea-level rise, we must cut our emissions of greenhouse gases” is a scientifically objective, value-free statement . It is one that a scientific society or academy can make without contradicting the value judgements of its members.”
Reducing carbon emissions will take none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere to lower global temperatures. It does leave carbon in the ground. The consequences of “urgent” reductions will necessarily make the transition to renewables and EVs much more difficult because conventional transportation must do all of that work. That will add carbon to the atmosphere, at least until the energy transition is close to completion.
Ken said:
On another blog, a commenter said “The fact that the airborne fraction has been stable at about 0.5 for decades tells us that nature is already sequestering about half our current level of anthropogenic emissions”. I can’t ask for clarification there as the moderator ordered me to shut up, but I don’t think the 0.5 or half is permanent sequestration. It’s only a partitioning of the CO2 between the atmosphere and the ocean (or biota). Sequestering is the process of incorporating the CO2 into stable inorganic compounds or settling into the deep ocean or underground where it can’t re-emerge (as in fossil fuels … OOPS!). So the bottom-line is that wherever we think the CO2 is going, it’s actually not going anywhere for the long-haul. The CO2 molecule is in a low-energy state as it is and requires lots of energy to artificially sequester. In the case of plant biota, this is via photosynthesis and is only temporary until the plant decomposes, or is eaten and expired again as CO2.
An example of the adversary within — here is a scientist that may be pointing a hopeful, perhaps more rosy picture than is warranted. Wow, 1/2 the CO2 is being sequestered right away! Wrong.
PP: I don’t think the 0.5 or half is permanent sequestration. It’s only a partitioning of the CO2 between the atmosphere and the ocean (or biota). Sequestering is the process of incorporating the CO2 into stable inorganic compounds or settling into the deep ocean or underground where it can’t re-emerge (as in fossil fuels … OOPS!). So the bottom-line is that wherever we think the CO2 is going, it’s actually not going anywhere for the long-haul.
BPL: Please Google “carbonate-silicate cycle” for more accurate information. Even CO2 sequestered as limestone on the ocean floor is eventually retrieved through volcanism and metamorphism. There is both a short-term and a long-term climate cycle, but both are quite long on the human scale of things.
Mmm, it seems that Gavin’s commentary (and, I presume, the commentary he describes) focuses largely on the scientist, while your arguments focus largely on the science–which, however, evokes for me the question, “To what extent is the conceptual separation of scientist from science a practical project, philosophically and ethically speaking?” Color me skeptical on that, I guess.
Scientists can never be totally value free, but they can be objective
The Science itself should be value free. This is more difficult than it seems.
Good post, but as always can’t generalize and have to take each bit of scientific advocacy on a case-by-case basis. As an example, currently having a discussion with those concerned about climate change risks here:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2024/10/16/climate-risk/#comment-222571
The scientific advocacy is a claim asserted by one commenter that “At the point of net zero CO₂ emissions, atmospheric concentrations are projected to begin to fall quite quickly over the next several decades” (his bold) This seems promising, especially when the commenter backed it up from Figure 4.39 from the AR6 IPCC report: https://ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/figures/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Figure_4_39.png
This indeed does show what would be a quick and measurable drop of CO2 within a decade, which seems heartening. But there’s a missing premise for that figure, which is based on a hypothetical CO2 emissions scenario of acceleration and then sudden cessation in emissions. That premise of initial conditions is close to an impulse response function, which is not the same as an impulse response function convolved with a more gradual emissions scenario. In the actual situation this rapid drop actually doesn’t occur on reaching net zero , especially if we can only gradually drop fossil fuel emissions to zero over the next 100 years, and after having built up the carbon stores and plateauing for this long. In this case, the impulse response is mostly “baked in” and we are left with a significant fraction of the airborne CO2 nearing the level it will remain for 100s to 1000s of years. I created my own impulse response convolution plots to demonstrate the lack of a quick fall in the atmospheric CO2 concentration for a realistic emissions scenario.
I tried to convince those reading that you can’t take Fig 4.39 at face value, but they would have none of it, and was told by the moderator to close the issue. Their counter was that atmospheric CO2 concentration does fall — of course it does, but it’s so incremental as to be meaningless, with the only real remedy to resort to somewhat dubious active carbon removal schemes to make this measurable to those that expect immediate results.
The takeaway from this story is that scientific advocacy of promising outcomes (fall quite quickly!) should be held to the same level of critical thinking as those warning of dire consequences. Could have further discussion here as I don’t consider the issue closed.
There are eight billion stakeholders in need of energy and food. If emissions are to fall quickly how will they be fed?
I read a very short 1987 paper by Newell & Marcus entitled “Carbon Dioxide and People”. Norman Newell was a NAS member and Leslie Marcus a prominent statistician. Their Figure 1 is a plot of Mauna Loa CO2 against global population from 1959-1983. It has a stunning, almost perfect correlation of 0.9985. Updating their data shows that their prediction was right “on the money” and the correlation coefficient remains the same. Extrapolation of the data from 2008 to 2050 leads to a global population of 10.5 billion people and 490 ppm CO2.
As they observed almost 40 years ago, given an increasing global population it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to lower atmospheric CO2 significantly without major changes to our standard of living and disruptions to the global economies. They also observed that solar and nuclear energy sources can be useful supplements but are unlikely to replace fossil fuels in such uses as transportation.
Decrease CO2 emissions quickly. Capture billion of tons of CO2. Dire consequences?
Source: http://palaios.geoscienceworld.org/content/2/1/101
Keen said:
That’s the quandary I’m describing. Emissions falling quickly is the only way to demonstrate to the public that the atmospheric CO2 concentration will measurably drop within the time-scale of the public’s patience. That time frame may be just a few years before citizens get frustrated. The frustration will really set in if emissions only gradually fall, since the atmospheric CO2 won’t fall much at all by the time it nears net zero emissions.
So how do climate scientists frame this? If they were brutally honest, they would say that there are no good alternatives. Of course, one could defer an honest appraisal by claiming that active carbon removal would solve the problems. In that case, trade honesty for a pipe dream.
“As they observed almost 40 years ago, given an increasing global population it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to lower atmospheric CO2 significantly without major changes to our standard of living and disruptions to the global economies. They also observed that solar and nuclear energy sources can be useful supplements but are unlikely to replace fossil fuels in such uses as transportation.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. They were pretty much right despite their errors. Those still living researchers connected with the original Limits to Growth work concur with the essence of the above conundrum.
1) Reduce population as fast as possible
2) Reduce per capita consumption especially in the wealthy first world and developed nations.
And by ‘reduce’ that means massively not on the margins. Simultaneously it must be logically acknowledged that this will not be done. Therefore all notions of remaining under 1.5 or 2C is physically impossible, and that Net Zero by 2050 or any other time frame is equally impossible as envisaged.
Personally I think a global population collapse to below 2 billion by 2100 is a distinct possibility and unavoidable already. We are past the point of no return with no imminent change in our current trajectory on the horizon.
Dharma: “Personally I think a global population collapse to below 2 billion by 2100 is a distinct possibility and unavoidable already.“
So which is it? ‘Distinct possibility’ or ‘unavoidable already’?
Dharma: “We are past the point of no return with no imminent change in our current trajectory on the horizon.”
You appear again to not understand the words you use. If a trajectory is past a point of no return than how can a change in said trajectory alter the outcome to a point prior to ‘no return’ that’s already been passed whether it is imminent or not?
D: Net Zero by 2050 or any other time frame is equally impossible
BPL: Wow, any other time frame at all! Dharma has discovered a new physical impossibility, like exceeding the speed of light, or a perpetual motion machine.
This level of ‘discourse’—playing word games, mind games, constructing childish strawmen, and engaging in trolling behaviors—is deeply troubling.
When I use the term Net Zero, as most people do in normal discourse, it’s akin to a brand name like Coca-Cola—you understand its meaning automatically in the given context.
Consider the following examples:
Net-Zero Transition Charter: Accountability Mobilization for the Private Sector
(UNFCCC): Summary of GCA for COP28
Net Zero Policy: The Australian Government’s Net Zero Plan outlines climate action.
(Australian Government): Net Zero Plan
Net Zero Coalition: A coalition striving for global carbon neutrality.
(United Nations): Net Zero Coalition
Net Zero Goals: The foundation for climate targets, e.g., the NSW Climate and Energy Action Plan.
(NSW Government): Net Zero Plan
A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan. The term Net Zero represents the ideal outcome of these programs—ensuring that emissions sources and sinks are balanced. It is a concept integrated into:
The UNFCCC program
The IPCC advisory
The Paris Agreement
National action plans to meet climate obligations
It’s not simply a scientific term invented by the IPCC. It’s a critical element of global climate policy and implementation frameworks – that means something entirely different.
And you know that. Yet, ridiculing others by engaging in word games and avoidance seems more appealing than fostering a mature, science-based dialogue. This approach isn’t constructive—it’s denialism masquerading as cleverness.
Dharma is describing the concept of the palliative narrative (or “noble lie” in the extreme). This is where the emphasis is placed on a more optimistic or universally acceptable argument (e.g., mitigating climate change), which can mobilize positive action and cooperation, rather than confronting the harsher or less palatable reality (e.g., peak oil), which could lead to fear-driven behaviors such as hoarding, or events such as the yellow jacket riots in France a few years ago.
Again, by framing the issue in terms of mitigating climate change, the narrative becomes forward-looking and solutions-oriented, encouraging collective action and innovation. In contrast, framing it as peak oil might trigger panic, resistance, or defeatism. This approach is often employed in politics or public policy to ensure engagement and maintain stability, even if the underlying motivation is more complex or dire. I remember reading someone presenting this argument on a blog comment years ago, and it has stuck with me since. Like the #NoRegrets strategy, I can’t unforget it.
Whether the majority of climate scientists engaged in communications are aware of this approach, I have no idea. Can also call it framing, specifically positive framing or optimistic framing, where the choice of narrative directs public perception and behavior in a way that aligns with desirable social outcomes.
The approach is probably working, as the Democrats are lauding both higher oil production levels under Biden, while at the same time pushing climate change mitigation strategies. But then you can read what the WSJ says:
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/they-are-basking-in-americas-oil-boomand-preparing-for-the-big-bust-2844dd76
The WSJ gives a ‘fair’ indicative forecast:
In the U.S., where the shale boom has created an oil-and-gas superpower, a key inflection point will come when the meteoric production growth of the past 15 years morphs into long-term decline.
Estimates of that happening as soon as the end of this decade are increasingly informing investments by oil giants, policy moves in Washington and trading strategies on Wall Street.
Everyone in the Oil and Gas industry know this. While some prefer to deny it hoping technology will again save the day for the US. .
I said elsewhere, and so do the references already provided, it is the USA that will be hit with rapidly falling production output of oil and gas from it’s fracking basins before any other major exporter faces the same. The Saudis, Qatar, Iran, Mexico, and Russia all know this and are acting accordingly.
Canada will also crash once it relatively smaller tar sands output passes peak in a few years. The biggest global impact on the energy markets will be from the the US losing it’s title as the #1 oil and gas producer – within years from now.
But, while Rome burns, let’s p[arty like it’s 1999? Pretending everything is fine (ie living a delusional fantasy) when in fact everything is going to rack and ruin is American’s forte.
KT, I don’t believe your correlation coefficient between human population and CO2 growth, because your numbers are too good to be true. Even the original correlation you cited required some data massaging to come in so high. I am paywalled from reading the original article. However, it is clear that the Mauna Loa data had to be smoothed (12 month average?) in order to get rid of the biannual cycle in CO2 uptake. It is beyond belief that the correlation coefficient has “remained the same” in the following 40 years, as you claim. That’s because the rate of world population growth has declined from about 1.8%/year to 0.9%/year in the past 40 years, while atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise exponentially at around 0.6%/year. Your assertion that somehow the correlation between the two has remained at the same extremely high level while the population curve began to flatten and CO2 has continued it’s not-so-merry exponential rise DOES NOT COMPUTE – literally!.
Since your correlation numbers are false, why should anyone spend time examining the rest of your conclusions?
Not difficult to get a CC=0.9985 for 2 variates that are essentially monotonically increasing (of course CO2 does annually cycle and respond to ENSO but that’s in the background). For example, 2 strictly linear series will have a CC=1.0 independent of the slopes of each.
Try it with one variate increasing exponentially with a nearly constant exponent, and the other with a strongly diminishing exponent as the second curve flattens. There will still be a strong positive correlation, but it won’t be anything like 0.9985, and the CC will be decreasing with time.
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
Thank you for your article and the references to Büntgen (1) and van Eck et al. (2).
I fully agree to you and (2) that a “neutral” science is hardly possible and that scientists can and should adhere to their values. I agree also to the opinion that adhering to values does not compromise science and that even a participation of a scientist in a sort of political activism does not necessarily need to cause a bias in his or her scientific work.
I think, however, that we should distinguish between the research made by an exemplary scientist on one hand, and his or her advice with respect to public policies on the other hand. I think that the more activistic becomes the public advice, the lower is the contribution of the own (unbiased, or at least not necessarily biased) scientific expertise therein, and the higher becomes a component in which the person, in fact, does not possess any particular expertise. The danger I see is that the respective activistic scientist may be right that his/her science is unbiased, but may not be aware of a bias in his/her public advice which necessarily goes far beyond his scientific expertise.
To be more specific, a climate scientist aware of the role of greenhouse gases in Earth atmosphere may not be biased when he or she communicates to the public that anthropogenic GHG emissions are the most likely cause of the observed global warming, nor when (s)he expresses his/her concern that continuation in present fossil fuel consumption may cause undesirable and hardly predictable environmental and economical damages. The risk of a bias increases if he/or she presents to the public some specific projections of the future development, because most of them are necessarily out of his/her direct expertise, and the risk of a bias may further increase significantly if the scientist advises how to mitigate possible risks derived from these projections, because (s)he will most likely be a complete layman with respect to the technical and economical feasibility of the proposed mitigation measures and possible risks linked thereto.
I am not sure if all activistic scientists are completely aware of the circumstance that their scientific expertise does not necessarily apply to their public advice they provide in form of support for activities that are beyond their expertise. In this sense, I think that in this case, Büntgen’s concern about possible bias might be justified.
Best regards
Tomáš
But climate science is not science if it is not testable. Climate models are not testable, and the physics of real climate are not known, much less incorporated, in models. So the analogies to the laboratory sciences (including modern medicine) are a non sequitur.
[Response: Yawn. Please at least try to say something interesting. – gavin]
Gavin probably knows this but many here do not. This Robert Bradley has periodically (for as long as I can remember) made hit-and-run comments on various blogs without the intention of interacting.. His background is chief speechwriter for Kenneth Lay and public policy analyst at ENRON, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal
So his interest is in rent-seeking via rhetoric, not science, which is exactly the opposite of the theme of the top-level post. What got us in to this predicament is listening to sloganeering by professional pundits and politicians and corporate consultants instead of actual scientists.
Like the other comment by Thomas W. Fuller elsewhere in this thread, we see a huge conflict-of-interest. Fuller said:
“Honest journalist” Thomas W. Fuller co-author of the expose-styled book “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” needs to come clean. The climate gate episode was revealed late November and his book was published January 14 — essentially over an extended holiday season. It features passages such as the following:
Again, these are the people that are causing the majority of the perception problems, not scientists
Horse crap! Climate models make predictions. The predictions can and have been validated. Please take your stupid where in will be appreciated!
That is incorrect. I have been an observer of the weather for over half a century. Weather and Climate obey the laws of physics and thermodynamics and are successfully demonstrated by the daily weather forecasts and studies in to climate change.
Yes, writers proposing that climate model physics are somehow fundamentally flawed consistently neglect the multiple replications whose salient results are shared throughout the course of each day by your friendly and enthusiastic weather presenter.
Not sure how they think those forecasts *do* get made…
RB: Climate models are not testable, and the physics of real climate are not known, much less incorporated, in models.
BPL: Three (3) incorrect statements in one sentence is pretty amazing.
1) Climate models are easily tested against observations and paleoclimate data.
2) A great deal of the physics of the climate have been known, in part, for at least three centuries, and you could make a case for ten.
3) The models consist of equations representing the physics, plus starting values (e.g. the albedo, ocean fraction, and elevation of each grid square).
The good news is that while hydro codes were computationally constrained to coarse grids in the early days of gcm’s , they now have exaflops to burn. Things looked grim in the depths of the AI winter too., but in both instances those who feared getting stuck in a rut for lack of a thousandfold increase in computational power were very pleasantly surprised when the semiconductor industry delivered a factor of a billion.
The bad news is the lack of convergence on multivariate parameter values like doubling sensitivity.
The real bad news is how much energy shifting from humans to machines is eating up. We’re lost in science fiction dreams of Mars and sentient wise robots.
When did energy become a food group?
Please tell us by which experimentally tested mechanism you came to believe that most of those shiny twinkly things in the sky are giant balls of fusing hydrogen at great distances. I’;d be especially interested in how you experimentally set up treatment and control conditions.
.Why oh why is this not in the Crankcase?
Do you actually understand what ‘testable’ means, Robert?
The idea that science should be value free is on its face absurd. Does the truth matter in science? That’s a value. Does methodological rigor matter in science? That’s a value. Should one understand the errors in the result–both systematic and random? Wow, yet another value.
And then there is the fact that science is inherently a human activity. Humans have values or they are not human. Can those values bring us into conflict with the truth. Of course. However, the very purpose of the scientific method is to allow us to reach an increasingly reasonable approximation of the truth even while continuing to hold and even espouse those values. And in many cases, the results of one’s research can influence one’s own values, driving advocation and action. That activism may be science driven, but it is not, of itself science.
I would contend that if you want to find scientists who are letting their personal “values” influence their science, one should look no further than those who claim science should be value free.
Exactly. Pot, Kettle, Black.
This is also to say teachers should not have the goal of students gaining knowledge and understanding. Silly at best and nefarious at worst.
One could say I am an activist, but I’m not a climate scientist. Does that mean I can’t repeat what climate science of worthy note are saying in their studies. Does that mean I cant understand climate science?
But one can also say Büntgen is an activist by writing this paper.
I would argue Büntgen, with this paper, is definitely acting as an activist.
I find it odd Büntgen says IPCC is overstating the science when in fact they are understanding it as they are by nature of the construct putting out the more moderate and conservative figures with higher confidence rather than saying the worst case models are most likely.
While Büntgen suggests sharing knowledge is creating confusion, he is not focused it seems on the groups that cause the most confusion, such as right wing pundits. If he had included a table showing how generally and/or specifically the accuracy represented the science in advocacy and activism by, for example those that think we are endangering our ecosystems, and those that think its no big deal or that we can’t do anything, that might actually have been useful.
As it stands Büntgen has added nothing notably important to the protocols of science or the consideration of useful activism, other than, as Büntgen says in his paper, creating “confusion among politicians, stakeholders and the wider public, but also diminishes academic credibility. Blurring boundaries between science and activism has the potential to harm movements of environmentalism and climate protection, as well as the much-needed international consent for sustainable growth and a global energy transition.”
P.S. Robert Bradely: such an old and worn out notion… There are myriad ways ‘climate science’ is testable, you just haven’t put in the work to learn how its done yet. You might want to do a bit more studying before spouting such silliness.
Scientists should be activists and activists should tell the truth.
Here is a related example right here on this forum: something perhaps similar to Paul Pukite’s narrative (?)
When I refer to “the same difficulties,” I’m drawing a parallel between how, Nigelj, (Kevin Barton Tomas) and others everywhere approach this discussion and the mindset I’ve often seen in climate science deniers. Let me break that down:
Confirmation Bias: People who are firmly set in their beliefs tend to only seek out information that confirms their views, while disregarding anything that contradicts them. For instance, climate deniers will often cherry-pick weather events or data that support their skepticism about climate change, while ignoring decades of scientific consensus. I see something similar here when critiques of renewable energy and economics are brushed aside or not even considered, simply because they don’t fit the established narrative.
Resistance to New Information: Once convinced they’re right, many people tend to shut out opposing data. Climate deniers often won’t even engage with peer-reviewed studies because it threatens their view. In this discussion, it feels like there’s a similar resistance to even listening to experts who might challenge your current stance on energy use, renewables and mitigation.
Emotional Investment in Beliefs: It can feel like a personal attack when someone challenges your deeply held views, which makes it hard to change your mind. Climate deniers often see accepting the reality of climate change as a threat to their worldview. In the same way, I think critiques of renewables and economic norms of the west or even nuanced arguments about energy policy can trigger a defensive reaction because they seem to undermine your current stance.
Oversimplification of Complex Issues: Complex issues get simplified to fit certain narratives. Climate deniers often reduce everything to “natural variation” or other simplistic ideas, missing the complexity of the climate system. Here, labeling everyone with concerns about renewables as ‘anti-renewables’ or ‘doomers’ feels like a similar kind of oversimplification that overlooks the many different nuanced perspectives that exist.
So when I say “the same difficulties,” I’m referring to this closed, rigid mindset—whether on climate science or renewables or energy or economics—that makes it hard to engage with new information or even consider other perspectives. Both climate deniers and people in this renewable energy debate tend to fall into these same patterns, rejecting evidence or experts that challenge their pre-existing views.
Dharma
Look in a mirror. You and your fellow doomers are all frequently guilty of all the same things you accuse me and others of! ( Confirmation Bias, Resistance to New Information:Emotional Investment in Beliefs, Oversimplification of Complex Issues). Its all there on this website.
You complain we brush people or studies aside but provide no specific examples. You indisputably brushed Mark Jacobson aside by saying you didnt consider him an energy expert. He is at least as expert as the people you have quoted talking on energy (biologists, anthropologists)
I keep an open mind. I read articles critical of renewables including some you have posted, and I’m on record as admitting renewables might run into difficulties. But even if its proves difficult to completely replace fossil fuels, even half replacing them would be positive for the climate, and renewables have many other benefits as well. Its important to look at the big picture.
And I havent heard anyone suggest a BETTER option, including Dharma. Very ambitious, rapid “Simplification” plans are laughable and CAN be brushed aside, because they would almost certainly be too hard to impliment effectively, and could thus cause a collapse in the supply of basic goods and services needed to survive, and have a near zero chance of being adopted by more than a small minority of people.
“Here, labeling everyone with concerns about renewables as ‘anti-renewables’ or ‘doomers’ feels like a similar kind of oversimplification that overlooks the many different nuanced perspectives that exist.”
Given certain doomers on this website have posted numerous articles critical of renewables and proclaimed they wont work or cant work, what else are they but anti renewables? Apply The Duck Test.
Nigelj says
22 Oct 2024 at 8:28 PM
“Apply The Duck Test.”
Please apply that to yourself. I am not a duck. Nor do I have the intelligence of or think like a duck.
I am not a “doomer” either. That is your endlessly weak strawman fallacy. A pejorative label which I reject.
Dharma, I didn’t say you were a duck. Doomers post material critical of renewables and say renewables can’t work. Therefore they are anti renewable doomers. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck. Don’t take it literally. You are obviously smarter than a duck or the average person.
D: I am not a duck. Nor do I have the intelligence of or think like a duck.
BPL: I’m guessing English is not your first language? “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” is a common aphorism in western, English-speaking countries.
BPL: I’m guessing English is not your first language? “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” is a common aphorism in western, English-speaking countries.
D: And you’d be wrong yet again. Is it demanded here that responses extrapolate on the previous posters exact aphorism analogy or phraseology before replying in their own manner and making the point they choose to make?
Does this unsettle your expectations of others that it compels a tailored response. Yes. Seems so. This is classic controlling troll behaviour.
Barton Paul Levenson says
23 Oct 2024 at 7:13 AM
short extract applies here to several — Here’s a breakdown of the key aspects of control freak trolls on social media platforms. These arrogant uncooperative egotistical individuals often exert undue influence, create a toxic environment, and mislead others.
Constant Need for Control: Control freak trolls feel the need to dominate discussions. They position themselves as the final authority on topics, often disregarding others’ opinions, and will manipulate conversations to steer them in their preferred direction.
Refusal to Accept Denial: When others deny false claims, control freak trolls dismiss these denials outright. They refuse to acknowledge their errors, perpetuating false accusations despite clarifications.
Targeting Individuals: Control freak trolls often single out specific users for prolonged attacks. They accuse their targets of behaviors or beliefs that aren’t true, repeatedly bringing up these accusations to paint their target in a negative light.
Unwillingness to Debate Fairly: Instead of engaging in respectful, evidence-based debates, these trolls dismiss valid counterpoints. They are often unwilling to acknowledge nuance, and prefer binary, black-and-white arguments to sustain their control.
Provoking and Escalating Conflict: Control freak trolls are experts at escalating minor disagreements into full-blown conflicts. They thrive on drama and use inflammatory language to provoke emotional responses, making it difficult for the conversation to return to a rational, constructive place.
Inflexibility and Rigidity: They tend to be extremely rigid in their beliefs and intolerant of differing opinions. Instead of considering new information, they double down on their original stance, reinforcing their need for control and dominance over the conversation.
In these toxic environments, leaving can often feel like the healthiest option. But by recognizing these patterns, you’re better able to see through their tactics before making an exit. Which is the best solution of all.
end quotes.
I like to believe readers pick these things up on their own. Observations suggest this is correct.
D: Here’s a breakdown of the key aspects of control freak trolls on social media platforms.
BPL: Notice how he’s making it about me rather than the subject under discussion.
Barton Paul Levenson says
24 Oct 2024 at 10:18 AM
“Notice how he’s making it about me rather than the subject under discussion.”
The subject of whether or not English is my first language – or if I am a Duck?
D: The subject of whether or not English is my first language – or if I am a Duck?
BPL: Touche’! But all I was doing was pointing out what “quacks like a duck” etc. meant, since you seemed to be confused by it.
Not surprisingly, we have a strong response from the deniers insisting the the climate scientist should be denied the right to hold and express the opinions informed by their research.
Interstingly, a constraint the deniers don’t even think of applying to themselves, to the originator of their talking points, and the fossil-fuel lobbyists and governments depending on the exports of oil and gas, that provide and promote these talking point, and/or fund the denialists directly.
It’s like a soccer team losing badly to their opponents – demanding that, for the sake of fairness, their opponents must play with their arms tied behind their backs.
Gavin: Scientists can hide their values, and avoid expressing any opinions, or they can be transparent about them and explicit about how they motivate their advocacy.
Aldo Leopold: One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
Having had a prolonged formal ecological education myself, I offer my profound sympathies to Gavin and his fearless, principled professional climate-specialist colleagues. The culture of modern science isn’t immune from biases that are shared, but disguised or denied, by a majority of peers, with tragic consequences throughout history. Yet the moral commitment of scientists not to be fooled by any subjective bias has been justified by every life-saving advance. The explicit acknowledgement that even trained, disciplined, determined skeptics fool themselves more readily than they fool their peers, places ultimate authority in collective peer consensus. The appropriate response to Büntgen’s claim the IPCC is over-stating the science, is to ask “why do you think you know better than the overwhelming consensus of publishing climate specialists around the world?” What he should be asking is “how can policy makers recognize any other source of unbiased authority?”
Büntgen: The quality and quantity of available climate proxy records are merely too low to allow for a robust comparison of the observed annual temperature extremes in the 21st century against reconstructed long-term climate means of the Holocene and before.
He’s personally dissatisfied with the IPCC’s expression of uncertainties, which he blames on the lack of “robustness” in paleoclimate data. He’s entitled to his opinion, but that’s all it is, and it’s not shared by a consensus of his peers. How much more evidence does he need before he’ll support collective decarbonization in principle? What are his unacknowledged biases? The climate-science peer community recognizes widespread social and psychological pressures to deny and disguise the threat of global warming. Whereas IMO, the observed rate of global heat accumulation to date ought to introduce a bias in favor of rapid collective decarbonization!
Büntgen: A successful, international climate agenda, including both climate mitigation and adaptation, requires reliable reporting of detailed and trustworthy certainties and uncertainties, whereas any form of scientism and exaggeration will be counterproductive.
Well, duh. Except he has no evidence of scientism and exaggeration by the IPCC. Detailed and trustworthy uncertainties are costly to obtain, while the urgency of mitigation is growing. Policy makers will just have to do the best they can with what the specialist consensus tells them, with under-reaction the greater danger! OTOH, Büntgen has abundant evidence for the influence of denial and disguise on the policies of member nations, cynically exploited by individuals and institutions with the most to lose from decarbonization of the global economy. Does he have a suggestion for how their immense power over the global agenda can be neutralized?
“The climate-science peer community recognizes widespread social and psychological pressures to deny and disguise the threat of global warming. Whereas IMO, the observed rate of global heat accumulation to date ought to introduce a bias in favor of rapid collective decarbonization!”
It’s not the rate of “heat” that’s counts. It’s the net amount at the end. Currently, since the late 1880s it’s close to one degree C. ±0.5°C. with a precision of two decimal places….depending on which agency is used. That’s hardly a recommendation for rapid collective decarbonization…which would be devastating to global economies. with little effect on the threat of global warming.
Ken Towe
The warming rate is actually the main issue. If the warming rate is rapid it makes adaptation very difficult and costly. Extinction level events in the paleo climate record are correlated with relatively rapid periods of warming, not the peak temperatures reached millions of years ago. Anthropogenic warming is projected to cause from 2 – 5 degrees warming by the end of this century (IPCC report) and this is rapid warming by historical standards. You cannot take the approximately 1 degree C of warming over the last 100 years and assume this rate will continue. The IPCC reports predict it will accelerate for various physical reasons. Some paleo climate warming rates:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/06/global-warming-extinction-report-the-great-dying
The final temperature reached is not the main issue. Projections are that we could warm the climate by over 8 degrees C, based on the ESS (Earth System Sensitivity) but this would potentially take tens of thousands of years giving humanity time to adapt and perhaps live in areas which are still comfortable and for various reasons human population would likely be smaller by then helping with adaptation.. Of course 8 degrees C is still not a GOOD thing from a human perspective, but that is just another reaon to stop emiisions and risking going over tipping points that could lead to something like 8 degrees.
I don’t accept that decarbonisation by 2050 would be devastating or wouldn’t work. Studies show that we could get to net zero by 2050 at a cost of between 1 – 7% of of global GDP per year, depending on the study. Lets assume 4% in the middle is the most likely number. This is not “devastating”. Its a very small perentage of our incomes per year. The science says we can make a very significant difference to global warming. Costs of mitigation:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00041-w
I noticed you are repeating things you claimed previously that have already been debunked and you have provided no published peer reviwed studies or other evidence to back your claims..
“I don’t accept that decarbonisation by 2050 would be devastating or wouldn’t work.”
That’s your prerogative Nigel. But it’s not just about money. Remember that just one part-per-million of CO2 represents 7.8 gigatons, 7,800 million. The IEA in its recent report has calculated that from all sources (including bioenergy) that 7,600 million tons will need to be removed by 2050. That’s not even ONE ppm, never mind decarbonizing enough to matter…back to 350 ppm as was recommended by NASA, James Hansen,
I’ve already commented on what would happen to the eight billion people if rapid decarbonization were to take place. It’s not a good future to try and adapt to rapidly..
KT: I’ve already commented on what would happen to the eight billion people if rapid decarbonization were to take place. It’s not a good future to try and adapt to rapidly..
BPL: I must have missed that. How would switching to renewables and so on be “not a good future?”
Why would you make such a misleading statement about carbon sequestration, by comparing it directly with total atmospheric carbon concentrations?
First, the more relevant comparison is with fluxes, not the stock. IOW, how would the removed carbon affect the net flux (say, annually)?
Second–well, let’s quote here:
In other words, it’s a marginal, though still essential, element in the IEA roadmap. This is more explicit from descriptions of other aspects of the scenario earlier in the article:
Third, the IEA report didn’t find that “7,600 million tons will need to be removed by 2050,” as you claimed. Rather, it assigned or arrived at an ANNUAL value of 7.6 GT in the mix of mitigation strategies it settled on. To quote once again:
So, you cherry-picked one aspect of the report, misrepresenting it by ‘contextectomy’, and got major details wrong in the process. Not a good look.
“Ken Trowe” could easily be a denial-bot, Nigel. “His” argument is solidly within the “it won’t be bad” phylum of the taxonomy of denial. It’s equivalent to saying “so far so good” while falling from a high building, before hitting the ground. It’s another undead deceptive denialist meme that keeps reanimating despite iterative rebuttals, easily automated to respond to decarbonization advocacy whenever it appears.
That said, your rebuttal was articulate and pointed. Keep ’em coming.
Spoken like a man who hasn’t really thought about the problem. The rate of warming does matter. If the rate is sufficiently slow, organisms have a chance to adapt. Ranges for species can move. If warming is sufficiently rapid, mass extinction becomes much more likely.
Likewise, adaptation of civilizations takes time. If the changes are too rapid and too difficult to predict, mitigation will not be effective.
“Detailed and trustworthy uncertainties are costly to obtain, while the urgency of mitigation is growing. ”
Costly but vital to the credibility of any policy program or agenda.
Because a significant feedback loop connects :
“The growing urgency of mitigation ” on the one hand and ” Growing the urgency of Mitigation ”
As far as I can see, the energy propelling climate communication initiatives that aim to change popular culture, like the Covering Climate Now communication programs of The Guardian and The Nation Institute is less scientific than ideological, as are overt efforts to change public behavior by executive action, rather than lawmaking by elected representatives, as Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren candidly revealed in announcing one such White House decree in 2016:
“As President Obama noted in his Executive Order 13707, behavioral science insights can support a wide range of national priorities including … accelerating the transition to a low carbon economy.
That Executive Order, 13707, directs Federal agencies to apply behavioral science insights to their policies and programs, and it institutionalizes the Social and Behavioral Science Team..”
Executive Order 13707 led to governmental feedback from two subsequent NAS workshops
Lessons Learned From Diverse Efforts To Change Social Norms
and
Opportunities and Strategies to Promote Behavior Change
One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to make social engineering the new normal by issuing his
Blueprint for the Use of Social and Behavioral Science to Advance Evidence Based Policymaking
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Blueprint-for-the-Use-of-Social-and-Behavioral-Science-to-Advance-Evidence-Based-Policymaking.pdf
“The growing urgency of mitigation ” on the one hand and ” Growing the urgency of Mitigation ”
Excellent summation of the situation Russell. But how should the Executive Branch proceed when the Legislative Branch, via ongoing paralysis, fails repeatedly to execute its responsibilities (lawmaking)? Particularly in matters you highlight concerning climate and energy policy where time is of the essence?
Russel Seitz,
“One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to make social engineering the new normal by issuing his Blueprint for the Use of Social and Behavioral Science to Advance Evidence Based Policymaking”
Oxford dictionary: Social engineering is primarily “the use of centralized planning in an attempt to manage social change and regulate the future development and behaviour of a society.” I woulkd suggest every single law or regulation or governmnmet directive or decision in the entire history of humnanity is therefore social engineering. because it all engineers the future of society in some way. Its purely a question of whether the social engineering is appropriate, and all that needs care. It needs to be well informed for example by the social sciences and physical sciences, which is EXACTLY what Obama and Biden have done. Compare this to the Republicans whos decisions appear to be based on junk science, gut instincts, populism, profitability regardless of consequences for the environment, bigotry, religion, and going backwards to some imagined past utopia that never really existed.
Russell: As far as I can see, the energy propelling climate communication initiatives that aim to change popular culture, like the Covering Climate Now communication programs of The Guardian and The Nation Institute is less scientific than ideological, as are overt efforts to change public behavior by executive action, rather than lawmaking by elected representatives,
Russell, whether you have the patience for it or not, Ima tell you in detail why your fears are misplaced. I chose to err on the side of completeness, over strict brevity. Like always, all y’all can scroll past if tl;dr. But I took such care with the HTML 8^D!
First: Covering Climate Now is journalism, Russell. Its explicit mission is mobilizing collective action to mitigate an objective global crisis. From their About page:
As the climate crisis accelerates and the journalism landscape rapidly evolves, we invite all journalists and newsrooms worldwide — newsletters as well as newspapers, social media as well as television, independent investigative sites as well as a reader-funded non-profits — to join the Covering Climate Now community and help your fellow journalists produce exceptional work that engages audiences, holds power to account, and inspires change.
How is CCN justified? For more than 200 years the international peer community of scientists who publish research on the physics of climate, has evolved its own rigorous standards for empiricism and intersubjective verification. I think you’ll agree it has fulfilled its obligation to investigate, with as little bias of any kind as feasible, the physical causes of accelerating changes in the weather, that are already inflicting expense and grief on people around the world. And you’ll agree those consequences aren’t value-free.The confidence we place in science’s findings, strongly depends on our perception of its value-neutrality. Those findings, however, are normally known only to those who seek them out. That’s self-evidently not enough to avert a global crisis: a value all but universally shared!
As you know very well, the next step for a self-governing polis is to act collectively to limit the crisis. That requires more than value-free physical, biological and behavioral science. National decarbonization further requires enough sovereign individuals to learn enough about the actual climate crisis to recognize the need for collective intervention. That’s where responsible journalism comes in: only if reliably informed of the full dimensions of the climate crisis, can we choose leaders to enact collective decisions on our behalf. Journalists must at least counter the social and psychological forces of denial!
Second: here’s where politics takes over. In my humble private value system, our political leaders should use all the knowledge and the tools of science legally available to them, to achieve the overriding public good of reducing our fossil carbon emissions to zero in as short a time as possible under the rule of law: another widely shared value. Like physical scientists, social scientists must carry out and publish their research as free of values as their discipline’s professional culture demands. “Social engineering” is what’s done with the results. It was once called simply politics. And Executive Orders are called governing. As you know, the Executive branch of our government shares power with the Legislature, with the SCOTUS having the penultimate authority, subject only to Constitutional Amendment – a difficult task, last done over 30 years ago. Still the old normal, Russell. And now our country and the world are in a crisis, confronting a new, more destructive normal every day.
Now, the science of Economics informs us that objectively poor people around the world have suffered loss of homes, livelihoods and lives far out of proportion to the fossil carbon they’ve emitted, while having far less wherewithal to recover and adapt than “coal-rolling” Westerners do: still the old normal. Recognizing and acting on that objective inequality requires Westerners to harbor prosocial values: not normal enough to decarbonize us yet. OTOH, Economics also tells us literally everyone on Earth will incur some private diseconomy due to anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Even from self-interest alone, a value normally shared by all and often expressed as ideology, everyone but carbon capitalists ought to hope CCN and Executive Order 13707 achieve their value-laden intent: merely to maintain the old normal weather while meeting America’s and the world’s growing energy demands.
Getting to the point: I suppose you could say I’m a consequentialist libertarian, when choosing between mutual coercion and global devastation. That fossil carbon is still being burned by the gigatonnes annually, demonstrates the requirement for mutual coercion to end the practice. OK, so let’s mutually agree to halt the rise of global heat content by targeted collective intervention in the otherwise-free global energy market. When that’s accomplished, we can go back to the normal bellum omnium contra omnes in a stable, albeit warmer, climate!
Lastly: recall former professional Libertarian disinformer Jerry Taylor’s mid-career epiphany, as reported to a journalist:
Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, he said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money.
As always, when evaluating arguments for or against collective decarbonization, consider the source and follow the money. And we know where the money for denialism comes from.
In case the thread gets tangled, the above addresses Mal’s response to Buntgen:
Büntgen:
A successful, international climate agenda, including both climate mitigation and adaptation, requires reliable reporting of detailed and trustworthy certainties and uncertainties, whereas any form of scientism and exaggeration will be counterproductive.”
Well, duh. Except he has no evidence of scientism and exaggeration by the IPCC. Detailed and trustworthy uncertainties are costly to obtain, while the urgency of mitigation is growing.
1) For various reasons, people seem concerned about Science being attacked from without. But it can also be attacked from within –in which people with power (grants, peer review, money etc) let what they think is Right divert them away from listening to others. But since no one is all-knowing, listening to others is part of finding the Truth.
2) Stanford’s Mark Z Jacobson has a lot of influence on the US energy transition. But I think his $10 million lawsuit against PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ) and some critics was a bad idea.
3) A summary of the events is here:
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02/15/stanford-prof-who-sued-critics-loses-appeal-against-500000-in-legal-fees/
a) In 2017 Christopher Clack and 20? Professors from several universities published a critique in PNAS of a renewable energy article Jacobson had published in 2015. Although PNAS published his rebuttal, Jacobson sued PNAS and Clack for $10 million for defamation, lost and the DC Superior Court ordered him to pay PNAS and Clack $500,000 in legal fees. (This was the same Court which had awarded Michael Mann $1 Million in his defamation suit. ) As I understand it, the Court argued that Mann’s critics had attacked his Character (dishonesty) whereas Jacobson’s critics had attacked his data/reasoning and quarrels of that nature are to be settled in Science journals, not in the Courts.
b) Jacobson appealed several times to the DC Court of Appeals, lost and was ultimately ordered to pay the $500,000.
c) More recently Jacobson got the California Labor Commission to rule that Stanford University should pay the $500,000. The Commission agreed but Stanford has appealed the order, which I understand is unusual for California employers to do.
d) The DC Court’s view of the issue is here:
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CombiningRenew/22-08-25-Stamped-Appellant-Brief.pdf
4) The LA Times noted that Jacobson’s lawsuit CHILLED scientific debate on renewable energy and critical analysis of his proposals. That hurts the nation if there are flaws in his designs but it also hurts climate advocacy if political opponents later expose those flaws in Congressional budget hearings on the Green New Deal after money has been spent. It always surprises me that people pay $millions in this country for coaching on how to hit a golf ball or play tennis but react in a hostile way if someone suggests there are errors in their plan for important matters and that the plan could be improved.
5) I have not yet had time to obtain PNAS articles and review them but I am puzzled by Jacobson’s motivations. Did he think that the scientists reading PNAS were too stupid to understand his rebuttal to the critics? Did he think that somehow Clack, 20 professors, PNAS staff, PNAS peer reviewers, the DC Superior Court , the DC Court of Appeals, and Stanford were all in a conspiracy to defame him?
6) I do not know Gavin Schmidt’s current views on this matter but my understanding is that he did not think Jacobson’s lawsuit was a good idea back in 2017:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/lawsuit-over-disputed-energy-study-sparks-twitter-war/
Hear hear!
I for one do not look upon Jacobson as an Energy expert nor a credible published researcher. Far from it.
D: I for one do not look upon Jacobson as an Energy expert nor a credible published researcher.
BPL: And your qualifications in the field are what, again?
In 1959, with 316 parts per million of CO2 in the air, the American Petroleum Institute celebrated the industry’s 100th anniversary at a Columbia University, where H-Bomb physicist Edward Teller made a startling prediction:
“Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth… It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York… and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”
Between then and 1985, the CO2 rise passed 10% , and as the world teetered on the brink of the Telller threshold, Carl Sagan took time off from his Nuclear Winter campaign to tell Congress what to do about the alarming rise in CO2:
“The idea that we should immediately stop burning fossil fuel has such severe economic consequences that no one, of course, will take it seriously. There are many other things we can do in response.”
Two decades and three IPCC reports after Sagan & Teller departed this world dry-shod, at respective CO2 concentrations 0f 362 an 382 parts per million, CO2 passed 400 ppm , causing the Southern Hemisphere’s foremost climate statesman, the Right Honorable Prime Minister of Australia , to observe:
” Coal is now an essential part of our zero carbon future.”
” Coal is now an essential part of our zero carbon future.”
Sounds like double think from George Orwells book 1984.
hi Russell, I hope you allow yourself the pleasure of checking out First Dog on the Moon from time to time. He’s scathing on the failures of Oz fakery. Here’s one, slightly on topic:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/oct/07/theres-an-election-looming-and-the-governments-messaging-is-a-shambles-its-time-to-save-albo-from-himself – for example, the second frame:
“Why don’t we do some of the stuff voters wanted us to do when they made us the government”
“Arrest that populist – put them in the van”
and fifth:
“Our polling shows young people care about climate change. We could stop opening coal mines and chopping down old growth forests.”
“Arrest that person. Take them to the Social Cohesion Reeducation Facility.”
Your art is more sophisticated, but there’s room for all kinds. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the thought provoking article. I am a lay person so I have nothing to add on how values impact on the science itself, but its completely natural for Scientists to have values and to be concerned about the implications of their science. Have studied basic psychology and sociology, and human values are at the core of individuals and societies functioning, so to expect people to somehow discard their values is just not feasible. I mean is insane.
I dont see scientists having values as a concern anyway, provided they are open about these things as Gavin mentions. What would be concerning is conflicts of interest for example owning shares in an energy company especially undisclosed conflicts of interest. Strong and very public activism might also cause some people to question a scientists credibility simply because they dont like the particular activism. It shouldn’t and its a perverse and emotive reaction, but it might, so its something that individual Scientists would need to consider. Personally I have quite a positive reaction to outspoken scientists such as M Mann or J Hansen, but not everyone might.
I see variants of this argument all the time from climate science deniers. They claim that anyone who supports the conclusions of climate science (specifically, that climate change is real, and that it is driven by anthropogenic rises in atmospheric CO2) is politically motivated, either by Marxism, or by attachment to some ideal of world government.
I agree that scientific truth and political values/actions are not unconnected, but the direction of the link is important. If the politics drives the scientific claims, that is wrong. But if the scientific facts are the basis for political actions, that is not only defensible, it is essential. Scientists are members of the community like everybody else, and have responsibilities to that community. Keeping quiet about the dire effects of unrestrained climate change amounts to what the French call ‘trahison des clercs.’ Those who speak for the fossil fuel interests do all they can to frighten scientists into silence, but that is all the more reason to have the courage not to be silenced.
Rory Allen: I see variants of this argument all the time from climate science deniers. They claim that anyone who supports the conclusions of climate science (specifically, that climate change is real, and that it is driven by anthropogenic rises in atmospheric CO2) is politically motivated, either by Marxism, or by attachment to some ideal of world government.
That’s what seems like such an obvious cognitive bias underlying so much of climate-science denialism. For someone brought up in the USA, and inculcated with the value of “Liberty”, it’s a big ask to accept that an existential threat to modern global technological society is the result of too much individual liberty. Americans (of which I’m one) are attached/i> to our freedom to socialize as much of our private marginal costs as we can get away with, for obvious economic reasons. The recognition that only collective limitation of our cherished freedom, i.e. “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”, can cap global warming short of civilization-ending levels, is antithetical to libertarian values. And even if a liberty-loving American’s private prosperity and security can easily survive targeted collective intervention to decarbonize our economy, collective action is always on a slippery slope. How much mutual coercion is too much?
We all know how politically polarized the US is now. For historical reasons, the Democratic Party is currently the party of collective action for public good in America, with the Republicans refusing to acknowledge the threat of global warming rather than diminish fossil fuel profits. I, for one, would prefer to decarbonize our economy incrementally, using all collective tools at our disposal: carbon taxes, regulations on emissions, and subsidies for renewable energy development and consumer adoption, until nobody buys fossil carbon anymore because renewable energy is cheaper. But since the Libertarian regards Liberty as a deontological entitlement, any proposal to act collectively is seen as a threat to their fundamental values. Libertarians in the Republican Party immediately imagine any incremental collective intervention to drive decarbonization leading directly to totalitarian dictatorship by the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Since the GOP’s biggest donors have Libertarian agendas, the Party leadership has adopted and enforced denialism as a policy plank. It’s not so much that targeted intervention to decarbonize the US economy would be disastrous by itself, it’s that the liberty-lover is damned if they’ll give us treasonous, consequentialist-libertarian collectivists an inch!
Cynical carbon capitalists are bound to exploit the American attitude of entitlement, spending as much as they need to on public disinformation and political extortion, in order to maintain an anti-collectivist government. So are narcissistic Republican politicians. Thus, the most effective private voluntary act against climate change a US voter can perform, is to vote Democratic. You’ll be voting for collective action to cap global warming. That doesn’t imply support for every detail of the Green New Deal, much less (gasp!) Communism!
Mal Adapted, isnt it ironic that the Democrats are at least moderately in favour of collective action such as environmental laws and carbon taxes given the democrats lean liberal and thus towards individual freedom, capitalism ,free markets etc. However Y H Harari described it well in his book Sapiens a Short History of Humankind, (or possibly one of his other books) where he notes that liberals realised that to make classic small government liberalism, and capitalism in its pure form workable, and patatable to the wider public it needed a bit of softening with environmental laws and regulations, government help for unemployed people etc,etc. I strongly support this and your version of collective action, because it seems best, and other approaches dont look feasible.
The Republicans just seem oblivious, lost, irrational, and have become almost pathalogically fearful of regulations and of government itself. Except when it suits them to do otherwise. Their double standards seem huge to the outsider looking on at American politics..
Drat! Bad italics close at “attached/i>” in my last comment. Typography interfering with persuasiveness again!
[Trying again with all formatting tags closed. Oh, for a WYSIWYG comment editor.]
Rory Allen: I see variants of this argument all the time from climate science deniers. They claim that anyone who supports the conclusions of climate science (specifically, that climate change is real, and that it is driven by anthropogenic rises in atmospheric CO2) is politically motivated, either by Marxism, or by attachment to some ideal of world government.
That’s what seems like such an obvious cognitive bias underlying so much of climate-science denialism. For someone brought up in the USA, and inculcated to value “Liberty”, it’s a big ask to accept that an existential threat to modern global technological society is the result of too much individual liberty. Americans (of which I’m one) are attached to our freedom to socialize as much of our private marginal costs as we can get away with, for obvious economic reasons. The recognition that only collective limitation of our cherished freedom, i.e. “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”, can cap global warming short of civilization-ending levels, is antithetical to libertarian values. And even if a liberty-loving American’s private prosperity and security can easily survive targeted collective intervention to decarbonize our economy, collective action is always a slippery slope. How much mutual coercion is too much?
We all know how politically polarized the US is now. For historical reasons, the Democratic Party is currently the party of collective action for public good in America, with the Republicans refusing to acknowledge the threat of global warming rather than diminish fossil fuel profits. I, for one, would prefer to decarbonize our economy incrementally, using all collective tools at our disposal: carbon taxes, regulations on emissions, and subsidies for renewable energy development and consumer adoption. But since the Libertarian regards Liberty as a deontological entitlement, any proposal to act collectively is seen as a threat to their fundamental liberty. Libertarians in the Republican Party immediately imagine any incremental collective intervention to drive decarbonization leading directly to totalitarian dictatorship by the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Since their biggest donors have Libertarian agendas, the GOP leadership has adopted, and enforced, denialism as a policy plank. It’s not so much that targeted intervention to decarbonize the US economy would be disastrous by itself, it’s that the liberty-lover is damned if they’ll give us treasonous, consequentialist-libertarian collectivists an inch!
Cynical carbon capitalists are bound to exploit the American attitude of entitlement, spending as much as they need to on public disinformation and political extortion, in order to maintain an anti-collectivist government. So are narcissistic Republican politicians. Thus, the most effective private voluntary act against climate change a US voter can perform, is to vote Democratic. You’ll be voting for collective action to cap global warming. That doesn’t imply support for every detail of the Green New Deal, much less (gasp!) Communism!
Reply to Mal Adapted and jgnfld,
The delusion runs deep inside America and the Imperial Core.
There wasn’t much actual science in that ‘marketing’ spin—what are you going to do next, jgnfld, write a new scientific paper on the subject that such ‘truths” are indeterminate or they lack hard data? You see observations show that cherry-picking is not considered an art form, but has become a core part of the scientific method used on forums.
Apologies, I couldn’t resist. The standard MO here is rubbing off on me. I feel ashamed and dirty.
D: The standard MO here is rubbing off on me. I feel ashamed and dirty.
BPL: Yeah, this place is having a bad effect on you. You should avoid it from now on, to protect your feelings.
No apologies necessary to me if you want to expose yourself in public..
Hint: No actual present or former trained researcher needs to read or write such a paper. It’s part of the daily education and feedback every researcher gets daily from Day 1 of grad school. But nice of you to show what you know and what you don’t know about what science actually is and how it is conducted.
Hint #2; Denialist trolls and propagandists are pretty much the greatest, most skilled, and most dishonest liars around these days. In all areas.
jgnfld, I appreciate the guidance on how science is approached in formal research contexts. There’s no doubt that a robust feedback loop is essential in research to minimize bias and cherry-picking. But framing the entire discussion as though only scientists, and particularly those who’ve been through the academic pipeline, can understand these principles comes across as dismissive. Plenty of professionals outside of academia grasp the importance of objectivity, whether they’re in engineering, law, healthcare, or another field where evidence-based reasoning is crucial. Such as Policing or Retail! Dismissing other perspectives as mere “denialism” or “propaganda” doesn’t allow for a productive exchange on the issues raised here.
The Null Hypothesis is not the Holy Grail to human problem solving, or to finding Truth.
Also, while science is absolutely based on evidence and self-correction, not everyone questioning the political dimensions of climate discourse is engaging in “denial.” Some are advocating for transparency and accountability in climate policy implementation, which can benefit from perspectives inside and outside of academia alike.
Science, after all, is intended to be accessible, guiding public understanding as well as policy decisions. That includes fostering a dialog that respects a diversity of perspectives—whether they’re fully trained researchers or concerned citizens with their own informed views. Something yourself and others here seem incapable of providing.
However, the issue here is rarely about whether the public can understand science; it’s more about whether scientists, particularly anonymous ones on public forums, are able to engage with and understand the perspectives of everyday people.
Many scientists, yourself included (anonymously), often seem more focused on asserting authority than bridging the gap in understanding. There’s a pervasive sense that the problem lies with others when, in reality, it often comes down to the scientific community’s own lack of empathy and skill in communicating complex ideas. If experts approach public discourse with condescension or self-importance, they risk alienating the very audience they hope to inform.
The very same dictatorial traits Democrats accuse Donald Trump doing. There is much more to life than statistical analysis.
D: not everyone questioning the political dimensions of climate discourse is engaging in “denial.”
BPL: Wanna bet?
D: Science, after all, is intended to be accessible, guiding public understanding as well as policy decisions. That includes fostering a dialog that respects a diversity of perspectives—whether they’re fully trained researchers or concerned citizens with their own informed views. Something yourself and others here seem incapable of providing.
BPL: There is no “diversity of perspectives” if by “diversity of perspectives” you mean we should accept deniers’ crazy theories or those put forward by doomers like yourself. Scientific findings are either right or they’re wrong. Astronomers don’t have to embrace flat Earthers in order to accommodate a diversity of perspectives.
D: Many scientists, yourself included (anonymously), often seem more focused on asserting authority than bridging the gap in understanding. There’s a pervasive sense that the problem lies with others when, in reality, it often comes down to the scientific community’s own lack of empathy and skill in communicating complex ideas. If experts approach public discourse with condescension or self-importance, they risk alienating the very audience they hope to inform.
BPL: Thanks for the concern trolling.
Re. “scientific findings are either right or they’re wrong. ”
I would state this differently, personally. Findings must be first able to be supported by some observation and measurement. Many denialists can’t even make statements that are supportable as in “the observed warming must be something else no one has ever seen, thought of, or even imagined yet” or some such. Not science.
Second, the findings must be supported by observational evidence that anyone with proper training and tools can generate for themselves independently of the original finder.
I’m sure you know all this quite intimately, I was just reacting to the way you stated.
Lastly, since another troll has not yet answered. I wonder what our troll’s treatment and control conditions for scientifically stating that those twinkly things in the night sky are great balls of fusing hydrogen at enormous distances could possibly be??? What is their null hypothesis? Simply put, the hypothetical-deductive method simply does not apply in many areas of active science. Other methods are used quite successfully. [As an off-topic aside, in the same way as climate, plate tectonics studies simply doesn’t employ many treatment versus control Earths that I’ve noticed though I quite ignorant of the details of that field.]
in Re to Barton Paul Levenson, 26 Oct 2024 at 7:50 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-826043
Dear Barton Paul,
A general truth does not cease to be true when it is spoken by someone we do not trust, I think. Therefore, although Dharma may be a troll, it does not make a sense to fight everything he/she/it posts.
I would like to add that I doubt about your sentence
“Scientific findings are either right or they’re wrong.”
Take copernician heliocentrism as an example. Was it right or wrong?
On one hand, it is basically true that planets orbit the Sun. On the other hand, Copernicus still believed that they are fixed on invisible spheres..
I do not think that knowledge building is a straightforward process.
Greetings
Tomáš
‘Values’, to my simple mind, that’s stuff you care about plus ethics. They can be good or bad, but there shouldn’t be a false equivalence between them, despite there being some political expectation that “both sides” of a political divide deserve respect if a democracy is to function. Enter the tactics, or perhaps strategy, out of necessity? What works during a system wide failure? Is there a system to deal with that?
A very thoughtful post. Of course nobody should be devoid of values in their living or their profession, although scientists quite often try to assess things without any value directing them; they often just want to find out what is happening and how much it is happening. It’s called basic research even if the scientist doing basic research has his own value system which might creep in from time to time. All perfectly proper.
I agree with your basic premise that personal values ought to be a part of scientific inquiry. The rub comes from that not being bimodal but a continuum which ranges from no value input whatsoever – not good – to near completely value driven – also not good. The criticism of climate scientists stems from the perception that their view of the science is heavily skewed to an agenda driven process based on their opinions and values.
When climate scientists use very nebulous results or ignore some of the science that doesn’t quite fit the agenda to push for extremely costly actions that follow their nebulous science, that creates a significant societal problem, bordering at times on the demise of society. When climate scientists vilify, demean, and try to silence other climate scientist with a countervailing idea, that does not seem scientific for science’s sake but more agenda driven activism. When climate scientists testify in Congress that oil executives ought to be imprisoned, that sounds more agenda driven than science driven.
Many (but certainly not all) climate scientists push hard toward the extreme instead of settling for a happier medium. That is what triggers much of the criticism of climate science, and rightly so in my opinion.
RB: When climate scientists use very nebulous results or ignore some of the science that doesn’t quite fit the agenda to push for extremely costly actions that follow their nebulous science, that creates a significant societal problem, bordering at times on the demise of society.
BPL: What “very nebulous results” are you referring to?
Re. “What “very nebulous results” are you referring to?”
Those in poster’s head?
The rise in the temp record is ANYTHING but “nebulous”.. Maybe poster is confused because the p-values are astronomical regardless of methodology used and poster knows there are nebulae out there and is simply a bit confused.
So I’ve noticed,
The risk of the Republic of Science becoming a one party state is aggravated by its already being a one newspaper subculture with a taste for semantic aggression –
Covering Climate Now ,, an intellectual subsidiary of The Guardian and The Nation, and Columbia Journalism Review – and I speak as one who has written in the first two , have signed up a regiment of media 500 outlets wide marching to the same style manual,
It’s an organization with impact enough to do credit to Rupert Murdoch , and equally mischievous and ungoverned in its effect. The result is that we are seeing a sort of Whig History of science in which an existing political asymmetry, starting in the days of Bernal ,and Haldane , continues in the academic and institutional polarization by activists today
As the environmental sciences have always afforded a charming pretext for societal intervention , it is structurally unsurprising they should be colonized by those favoring governmental growth and who view the business of regulation. as a growth industy that pays better than academe.
RS,
Re: your last paragraph, apparently inspired by the Grover Norquist style manual (albeit I admit you do have a better way with words).
I’ll just throw this out there because I honestly don’t have an answer and am curious about what people think. Would you expect an increasingly complex society to require an increasingly complex system of government?
Personally I’m not entirely convinced we’re capable creating a system that keeps up, complex or not. OTOH leaving it to the social Darwinists just seems like giving up.
You’ve got it backwards, Radge.
Norquist enrolled in Harvard in 1974 four years after I organized its Institute of Politics undergrad seminar on the coevolution of British and American conservatism. He did ,however, engage with that event’s faculty advisor, Pat Moynihan,
Ah Russell. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I got turned around.
I doesn’t look like much of Moynihan rubbed off on Norquist, however, and I’m not sure how much credit you’d want to take for the guy who said, “Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” (Don’t get me started.) Thankfully, I think you may be off the hook for his being so bent. Norquist claimed he wrote “the pledge” when he was in the 7th grade, which sounds about right.
As to why regulatory power grows over time, I think it is traceable to what I call Carlin’s Law: The average person is an idiot, and 50% are stupider than that.
As population grows–or even with a static population over time–idiots will find a way to screw up seriously enough that it merits regulation. No matter how stupid our ancestors were, there will always be someone in the current generation to say “Hold my beer.” As such regulation must grow and society must become more complex if only to stand against the assault of stupidity that is the human race.
There is an alternative. My wife has distilled moral sicience to 3 basic principles:
1) Don’t be cruel
2) Don’t be greedy
3) Don’t be stupid
As a male of the human species and hence being more prone exhibit such, I added another:
4) Don’t be pathetic.
Now, all of these principles ought to be clear to any rational adult human, but there will always be folks out there who thing throwing bullets into a camp fire is cool rather than stupid. And so the regulatory state increases without bound over time. I’d also contend those who scream most loudly about the regulatory state are precisely those who want to toss bullets into the camp fire.
Radge, it’s unfortunate that a serious discussion of your question is going to get buried in all the posturing and TLDR filling up of the bandwidth, but here goes:
It depends on my favorite metric, which is the ratio of population to resources. And how that manifests in the psychology of the population. And of course it also depends on what you mean by complexity.
If you have an abundant resource base relative to the (stable) population, it minimizes the need for hierarchical/bureaucratic structures. Russel’s (purported) vision of a free-market utopia is virtually assured, although I’m not sure if his vision coincides with mine.
However, in the real world that has developed, control of scarce resources has necessitated the advent of the original “government bureaucracy”, the military. And of course “ownership”. (If Mal sees this, he will probably bring up “tragedy of the commons”, which, for us science/math types, is properly called “tragedy of a too-small commons”.)
So, my question is, which is the more “complex society”… a fascist state, or the one where individuals compete freely to establish their personal merit/value? Chimps or bonobos?
zebra,
Thanks. I can’t blame anyone for skipping over my question; it’s kind of out there.
To your question, I admit I’m stumped. Maybe because I started opining from a technocratic point of view.
Your mention of chips v. bonobos is interesting. I think you could draw a couple of axes intersecting the axis of evolutionary biology between those two apes. You could draw one covering culture (regressive– progressive), but I’m primarily thinking of one for governance which would measure the degree of hierarchy, one end being a flattened organization, the other representing a pointy pyramid. Complexity would probably require a separate function in that scenario.
Now, you would hope, for instance, that when designing a government, you’d aim for the best fit for purpose. One small example of that, from a technocratic perspective, in the late 80s/early 90s our local government experienced some fairly intense infighting around the time it hooked up to the Internet. The issue was over whether to move away from centralized computing on a mainframe to devolve into a more distributed system of workstations and PCs spread across departments. I won’t go into all the details, but it was largely sparked by the implementation of a GIS/GPS system. Long story short, they more or less settled on a hybrid approach. On the one hand, the GIS introduced efficiencies into the organization, but it’s a more complex system. I’m not sure it reduced the size of government, but it did require people to upgrade their skill sets.
Anyway, backing up in time to ancient Anatolia (because why not?), if I understand correctly, problems started when humans began to settle down into an agrarian society and experience a boom in population. How to manage all those extra people? There was an evolution in religion. Leaders claimed devine authority, and eyes were painted on walls to remind people that they were constantly being surveilled by supernatural beings. If people didn’t behave, they would be righteously punished, if not by the gods’ proxies on earth, then in the afterlife. Kind of a bluff, but it worked well enough, I guess.
So the world is more complex now in any way you can imagine, not just in terms of globalization, populations, managing resources, etc. but in terms of technology as well. Another example; Before the Internet was opened up to the public and marketplace at large, there was a debate over how quickly that should happen and how much should be left in government control. Basically the government abdicated and the doors were flung open (avoiding the complexity of regulation), and I’m inclined to think that, as it happened, social media has ended up playing an outsized role in jeopardizing the stability of government as a result.
I’ll go a little further and say that the world’s track record with the complexities posed by climate change is one indication that maybe humans have, once and for all, hit some kind of ceiling when it comes managing problems. Just some pessimistic speculation on my part…
z,
I should add that I misspoke, when I said, “I’m not sure it reduced the size of government, but it did require people to upgrade their skill sets.”
There were additional people hired when the GIS department was created, but I couldn’t say one way or the other how that impacted the number of people in other departments.
Radge, the “axes” for bonobos and chimps is a good way to describe it. And I was trying to tie it all together with Russel’s idea that government grows due to dynamics other than concern for the people it is governing.
But, while I am in favor of a true free market, didn’t Adam Smith tell us that you must have strong government intervention for that to exist? That left to its own devices, the marketplace will devolve into it’s own hierarchically organized sovereignties, with little concern for its customers?
But taking us back to your ancient Anatolia, I would argue that the initial existence of sovereignty, manifested in a hierarchical military, was indeed for the benefit of its population, because agriculture requires control of productive land as well as protection of accumulated product… whether stored grain or livestock.
Which brings me back to where I would question Russel’s concerns. The way to reduce chimp-like behavior with its hierarchical groupings and authoritarian control… whether the Oligarchs are called Commissars or CEOs… is to reduce the necessity of controlling resources. That means a lower population.
z,
Interesting. Humans are certainly prolific and problematic propagators. Personally I tend to balk at looking at everything through the lens of economics, a bias no doubt.
That is to say, a bias on my part re: Economics, the dismal science.
Radge: if I understand correctly, problems started when humans began to settle down into an agrarian society and experience a boom in population.
I’m reviving this thread to recommend The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow, published four years ago tomorrow. The title mocks “big history” books by Diamond, Hariri, inter alia, that Graeber and Wendrow say depict human cultural evolution in the Holocene as a predestined march of progress, like orthogenesis in biological evolution. Graeber’s and Wendrow’s intent is to show that things didn’t have to turn out the way they did. Graeber, an anthropologist who died soon after the book was published, was a smart, articulate anarchist, who saw all people as actors in an ages-long political drama. I can’t way he was wrong, but the frequent, not-so-subtle insinuations that historical progressionism is Patriarchal propaganda, though true enough, were a little distracting at first. I’m glad I got past that, because the authors bring our attention to recent archaeological discoveries of diverse cultural variants that appear to deviate from the alleged orthogenetic march, but are now extinct. Lots of stuff I hadn’t seen before!
G&W do not, however, manage to discredit Guns, Germs and Steel or Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, because AFAICT those books do not say history had to lead to Western, Patriarchal hegemony, nor that the current state of global realpolitik is assured into the future; things have merely turned out that way for now. Diamond and Hariri both trace contingent sequences of events, on various scales, that preceded the present moment, without implying any teleology. IMO this resembles SJ Gould’s treatment, in Wonderful Life, of contingency in Darwinian evolution: each bifurcation in the genetic tree of life was not predictable a priori, yet was wholly dependent on every event before it. The Dawn of Everything shows us some of the multiple might-have-beens in our species’ cultural evolution. It’s complementary to the Diamond and Hariri books, not contradictory. Those two authors treat all other potential outcomes of history as counterfactual, but not doomed at the outset, merely unsustained: that is, no deity wills it. OTOH G&W, discussing the role of charismatic tribal Big Men in the evolution of sovereignty over the Neolithic, point out that events in human history may indeed be precipitated by the will of identifiable individuals. Again, fascinating stuff.
@Mal Adapted
1) I myself think geography plays a major role –something cited by Diamond and expanded upon a lot by Ian Morris in his book “Why The West Rules –For Now”
2) Kyle Harper adds a lot to debate re the Fall of The Roman Empire in the west with his book
“The fate of Rome: Climate, disease, and the end of an empire”. Rome’s population was more densely concentrated into urban areas — which made it much more vulnerable to smallpox and Ebola? pandemics brought in by trade. Spread of pandemic was accelerated by Rome’s superior transportation network (roads, Med Sea transport). (A lesson the US learned with the Covid Pandemic and the high death rate in New York City in 2020)
All of which left Rome vulnerable when climate change drove massive hordes of Goths, Huns, etc against her borders.
Russell Seitz
“As the environmental sciences have always afforded a charming pretext for societal intervention , it is structurally unsurprising they should be colonized by those favoring governmental growth and who view the business of regulation. as a growth industy that pays better than academe.”
This is fair comment, however I would suggest its not necessarily an entirely bad thing. Small government / laissez faire capitalism, all stripped back to just basic property and criminal law has a bad history of fixing environmental problems. The unregulated private sector has a bad history of fixing environmental problems. The underlying reason is the tragedy of the commonse problem. The so called regulatory state when strong enough has been successful with fixing many environmental issues eg; reducing acid rain, helping fix the ozone hole problem, forcing car manufacturerts to minimise pollutants, airline safety, etc,etc.
Of course over regulation can be a problem. Liberal economics favours small governmnent and minimal regulation especially related to employment, occupational licencing, wages, prices and finance, because competition solves most problems in that area, but liberal economics recognises that more extensive government regulation has a place around issues of health, safety and the environment. Because competitive free markets or voluntary self regulation, are not effective at ensuring good outcomes in those areas. This seems to me to be a sensible, practical compromise approach, if we work hard to ensure we neither underegulate or over regulate on specific environmental issues etcetera.. Its a bit hard to see a better alternative, but maybe you have one?
NIgel: “ Small government / laissez faire capitalism, all stripped back to just basic property and criminal law has a bad history of fixing environmental problems. The unregulated private sector has a bad history of fixing environmental problems. The underlying reason is the tragedy of the commons problem
that and the fact that in the laissez faire capitalism things like stable, livable ,climate, biodiversity, functioning ecosystems, equality of chances, democracy, our children having a future – are all “externalities” – “priceless” i.e. both in the theory and practice of the laissez faire capitalism – WORTHLESS.
Hence the feeble attempts of governments to put a price on pollution, thus by making its reduction relevant to the net profit – using the efficiencies of the market economy to achieve pollution reductions at the lowest costs/economic disruption.
But ANY reduction in profits is too much for the capitalist oligarchs, so they use their lobbyists and the politicians they own by funding their electoral campaigns to scuttle any pricing of the pollution, to continue racking up more profits, and accumulating more power in their hands.
And After us, Deluge!
RS: As the environmental sciences have always afforded a charming pretext for societal intervention , it is structurally unsurprising they should be colonized by those favoring governmental growth and who view the business of regulation. as a growth industy that pays better than academe.
BPL: You forgot to add, “And those scientists are getting rich off research grants that uphold the narrative,” and “greens are watermelons–green on the outside but red on the inside.” Not to mention, “Global warming is a hoax meant to introduce World Socialism.”
BPL: You forgot to add, “And those scientists are getting rich off research grants that uphold the narrative,” and “greens are watermelons–green on the outside but red on the inside.” Not to mention, “Global warming is a hoax meant to introduce World Socialism.”
D: You’re speaking of Tomas then.
BPL has forgotten to explain why on Earth I would
1.Contradict my first point about administration being more lucrative than academic research ( Provosts do earn more than Professors)
2. Quote a Telegraph hack better known for coining the expression “Climategate”, when I started lampooning Delingpole ages ago for giving
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/08/heartland-watermelons-flee-vegan.html
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-year-in-review-delingpoles-annus.html
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2013/06/keeping-up-with-orwells.html
These posts speak for themselves:, but BPL really should read The Climate Wars colophon as it makes the blog’s intentions fairly plain:
BPL’s last cliche’ seems a risky one as the loudest voice for global climate action is undeniably that of UN Secretary General Guterres, President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005.
RS: BPL’s last cliche’ seems a risky one as the loudest voice for global climate action is undeniably that of UN Secretary General Guterres, President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005.
BPL: Greens are reds! Greens are reds! Greens are reds!
I hope BPL is not suffering from deuteranopia : Guterres is a Carnation Revolution.grad.
BPL: Russell Seitz is a rare breed, an true conservative who loathes dishonesty. He doesn’t have much of a home with the modern return of predatory racism and misogyny to the official R party. He’s worth a good listen.
So Büntgen’s idea seems to be that it’s OK for the doctor to diagnose your cancer, since that is ascertaining a “value-free” empirical fact, but illegitimate for the doctor to recommend doing anything about it since such “activism” would reflect “values”, ie. valuing life over death.
Doctors have relevant scientific expertise, but their primary job is curing and treating disease. That’s what makes them doctors. It’s misleading, though not exactly false, to describe them as scientists even if they happen to be engaged in medical research.. Medicine is a practice informed by science, but there is a difference.
But I agree that Butgen’s view of science in general (if there is such thing) is absurdly naive.
Well said Gavin .Science should be value-free? Mengele would agree. I suspect if his house were on fire and his child within he would discard his fashionable disinterest in a hot second and become an activist.
We are human beings, not machines. And guess what? The house is on fire. But this is a house fire that we can’t escape, or replace. That leaves us no other choice then then to save the house, and every irreplaceable thing in it. There’s no plan(et) B.
I guess I should equivocate and mention the obvious, as others here have. Of course it goes without saying that in advocating a position, imgoso, a scientist should never stretch the truth. People have to be able to trust what they say.
Yet on issues that have such dire planet-shaking consequences I for one would not trust statements of someone who is utterly stoic and indifferent. Acts like he or she couldn’t care less one way or another. Let alone the humanity. Everyone has an opinion. To pretend that we don’t because we are somehow above all that is childishly dishonest and to lie as well. Just advocate when it’s necessary what the facts show.
Some are more accountable than others in advocating for what they should know given their own research or accumulated knowledge. For example, faculty and scientists working at Canadian public universities and organizations like NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) can often be considered public servants in a broad sense, as they receive government funding and may perform duties aligned with public interests. However, the term “public servant” often has a more specific legal definition, varying by country and institution.
In Canada, public university faculty are typically not classified as public servants under government employment law. They are generally seen as employees of the university itself, which operates with public funding but is often semi-autonomous. That said, they are accountable to ethical and institutional standards expected from publicly funded educators and researchers.
At NASA, scientists and employees, including those at NASA-GISS, are often considered U.S. federal employees and thus public servants, as they work directly for a federal agency funded by taxpayer money. This role typically comes with specific federal employee obligations, including ethical standards and public accountability.
While they share similar public accountability due to funding sources, the specific designation as a “public servant” depends on the country’s employment and institutional structure. In one sense it is generally accepted that a public servant should be dedicated to serving the public. Especially when their tertiary education was public funded.
Of course this is a controversial topic where opinions are wide ranging.
Your knowledge of how the academic system functions in Canada is a tad limited it appears to me having been a prof there for 3.5 decades as well as serving on various fed/prov bureaucratic boards..
Your knowledge of how a majority government under the parliamentary system can affect science is also pretty limited. Here is a list of the Harper government’s policies directly aimed at controlling and suppressing research into areas donors (read resource companies here) didn’t want to requiring every govt employed scientist to get approval from HIS office before speaking on their own findings EVEN AT SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES. He sent 20 yr old interns along to make sure of this. One researcher who had the cover article on an issue of Science was blocked from speaking about it in public–again, including scientific conferences–as the govt didn’t like the message. This is well documented. Here is one comprehensive listing https://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment
This, apparently, is an example of the “honest, societal input” into science research you apparently crave.
Thank you for sharing your extraneous perspective jgnfld. I understand that your personal experiences provide a firsthand anecdotal look at the complexities surrounding government influence on scientific research in Canada. The policies you mentioned under the Harper government certainly highlight some of the constraints faced by researchers in federally controlled environments.
This serves as a relevant example of the tension between scientific autonomy and government interests, particularly in fields where research findings may challenge influential stakeholders. Albeit unconnected to what I was addressing above.
It seems there may be some misunderstanding about my comment. I wasn’t advocating for government oversight or “societal input” in scientific research, as you incorrectly imply. My point was simply to highlight the roles and responsibilities of publicly funded researchers and the distinctions between “public servant” definitions across institutions. That their role is serve the public not lord it over them as an undemocratic illegitimate power.
In my comment, I aimed to underscore the ethical and professional responsibilities that come with public funding, as well as the nuanced distinctions around “public servant” roles across institutions like NASA-GISS or public universities in Canada as examples of many. These positions bring certain expectations for accountability, though they operate under different legal definitions and structural frameworks. Such distinctions are, admittedly, often complex and contentious.
Acknowledging these dynamics is vital, as is recognizing that varying levels of government oversight can either support or inhibit the dissemination of science in the public interest. Thank you for the link; it looks like a valuable resource for understanding more about your unrelated but serious concerns of government control of scientists.
Am I imagining it, or are we getting more trolls recently?
Not imaging it. New articles always bring out the trolls. I guess its their big day out in the sun to spew inflammatory nonsense. Then they retreat back to their troll caves.
BPL: “Am I imagining it, or are we getting more trolls recently?
Yeah – in the 3 weeks from materializing on RC, (as “Darma” then “Darmah”, to settle on “Dharma”), it posted around 100 posts (16 in the current 1-week old thread only), continuing the work of “Reality Check”, “Ned Kelly”, “Sabine”, “Complicius”, “cj”, “Escobar”, and whatever other handles.
Looks like some AI Doomer project (with new versions denoted with new handles), or a troll farm account, here one troll, once identified as such, hands over the account to the next one.
A bit like Trypanosoma that keep changing the proteins on their surface so the hosts immune system can no longer recognize them.
Dharma says: Very funny. Because it is so conspiratorially unhinged. Such is the power of imagination let loose upon the world.
Darmah: “it is so conspiratorially unhinged”
Are you saying on record that, other than not being sure whether your name is “Darma”, “Darmah” or “Dharma” – you have NEVER posted on this website under any other handle?
Values that get in the way of getting to the best results ARE something to be aware of and control for. That said, most of the time when I was researching things, I didn’t have a personal stake IN the SPECIFIC results. My personal stake was in professionally PRODUCING the best results I could. I found that any time I actually cared about the results themselves, I needed to be especially careful or get more additional eyes than normal. This is what Feynman was talking about that denial types simply don’t understand. They think practicing researchers are some sort of influences or some such and are unaware of biases affecting results.
Of course, the influencer attitude has always been there. It may even be getting more and more out of hand Some say so, but I’m really not sure considering some of the things I saw in my career. Cheaters often can do well for a long time even (I’m reminded of the Chandra incident in nutrition research which happened at an institution I worked in, or Cyril Burt who controlled large swaths of Brithish psychology and educational practice for decades over there). But the nice thing about science is even the most successful scammers and politically-minded cheats able to amass lots of personal power within a particular research community still fail over time. There are simply too many other egos with too many other competing interests and this is what makes the scientific method fundamentally better than most any other method for establishing best explanations.
Non-scientists simply do not understand this plus they think waayyy too much in the short term. Even Stalin couldn’t keep a political lie about genetics going politically. Reality eventually intervened. Some places these days are already coming to understand that their reality and politics may not be matching well in some science areas like climate.
jgnfld says
23 Oct 2024 at 10:44 AM
“But the nice thing about science is even the most successful scammers and politically-minded cheats able to amass lots of personal power within a particular research community still fail over time. ”
And it is because of this I still have some hope left the truth will out eventually and some comeuppance will be delivered in spades with reputations ruined. Will it be too late? Yes I think it will be because it is already too late to turn this ship around.
Don’t know about “the truth”, but then no scientist does which just goes to show you have no real understanding of science in the first place….you seem much more focused on marketing, debate ungrounded in actual evidence, and propaganda. Based on the evidence you provide here, anyway. Science provides best current explanations, not “truths” in the sense you are using the term. A scientific truth IS the best current explanation.
That the majority of those twinkly things you see in the sky at night are giant balls of fusing hydrogen at great distances is a scientific “truth”. But it could be wrong. I have heard science denying xtians say that God placed those sources in the sky at night to test nonbelievers, even. They could be right. But I don’t think that “comeuppance” is any more likely than the one you seem to be hoping for.
Jgnfld, your response seems unnecessarily dismissive of those with different professional backgrounds or perspectives. The assumption that only a scientist can grasp concepts like bias, evidence, or scientific methodology feels as exclusionary as it is inaccurate. People from various fields—from engineering to planning to the humanities—engage with evidence and biases in rigorous ways.
Your analogy might be better understood if we used an example closer to home: city planning or architecture. Just as a builder respects the input of the public on how to design functional spaces for communities, scientists can similarly benefit from diverse perspectives on how their findings resonate with wider societal contexts. Science, ideally, isn’t an isolated domain for a select few; it informs and is informed by society, which includes people from all walks of life.
While I recognize that science doesn’t necessarily deal in ‘absolute truths’ but in “best explanations,” there’s also a point at which scientific consensus becomes actionable—like in public health or climate policy. Expressing a hope for honesty and integrity in these areas, especially given how influential they are, isn’t a lack of understanding; it’s a perspective grounded in respect for scientific impact. Comeuppance or not, I believe integrity matters to everyone, including scientists.
D: I believe integrity matters to everyone, including scientists.
BPL: Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do.
Barton Paul Levenson says
26 Oct 2024 at 7:51 AM
DHARMA: “I believe integrity matters to everyone, including scientists.”
BARTON: Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do.
—
Barton, obvious to everyone, you have completely mischaracterized my point. I didn’t suggest that scientists lack integrity, nor did I claim to have more of it than others. My comment was about the universal importance of integrity across fields, including science, and a hope that scientists maintain it amid the pressures that can sometimes bias findings.
Interpreting this as an accusation against scientists is a clear intentional distortion on your part, again. Scientists are essential for reliable information, especially on matters like climate policy, which impact everyone.
Hoping for or calling for continued transparency and honesty isn’t criticism; it’s a reasonable mature rational perspective based on the respect I hold for science’s role in society. Barton, this kind of selective misrepresentation shows a consistent intentional pattern of distorting my comments.
Your constant disinformation & ad hominem tactics reveals a clear bias in how you ‘troll’ the forum and attempt to control people here.
Readers please see the Dharma comment here, which explains this tactic:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-825849
Re. “Just as a builder respects the input of the public on how to design functional spaces for communities, scientists can similarly benefit from diverse perspectives on how their findings resonate with wider societal contexts. ”
Your analogy is utterly ridiculous. A builder is trying to create a vision and present it. A scientist is trying to look at Nature and figure out what the hell is going on out there. It is also utterly impossible for “society” to inform science about something which both scientists and the rest of society know nothing about. But at least scientists have worked out many methods that can help find better explanations.
Propagandists on the other hand have worked out methods for controlling society to their advantage.
Science–particularly Big Science–is relatively powerless against that if it is happens to prevail. For example the repubs in Congress in the US have repeatedly tried to torpedo things like weather/climate satellites. In Canada, the Harper conservatives successfully destroyed many science and environmental research libraries and very much tried to destroy even more. I witnessed one of them being dumped in the landfill personally. THAT’s the “diversity of perspectives” you appear to so want. Sorry. that’s one sort of diversity we can do without at it is based on power grabs and very little else.
BPL: “ Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do. ”
Ubiquitous D: “ Barton, obvious to everyone, you have completely mischaracterized my point
If it is “ obvious to everyone then … why would you need several paragraphs to explain to everyone what …. is so obvious to everyone?
The Occam’s razor suggest that you chose this declaration to soften the skepticism of the reader toward your narrative – nobody likes to think themselves so stupid that they didn’t get what has been … “obvious to everyone”.
D:, proving the BPL’s “mischaracterization obvious to anyone: ”
I didn’t suggest that scientists lack integrity, nor did I claim to have more of it than others.
Let’s test this declaration against your actual words:
D. Oct 25: ” Expressing a hope for honesty and integrity in [ health and climate change] is a perspective grounded in respect for scientific impact. I believe integrity matters to everyone, including scientists.
See? If the scientists had integrity and/or valued it – why would you need to lecture them about the importance of having it? And why would you preface it with “I believe” which in a discussion is typically used to set oneself apart from others who think otherwise –
There is no reason to declare: “I believe that” if the other side agrees with you.
DON’T HAVE this integrity and/or don’t think having integrity matters, because if they had it – you wouldn’t NEED to lecture them about why they should have it.
And by the very fact of lecturing others on the importance of having integrity – IMPLIES to the reader that you have it – otherwise you wouldn’t lecture others on something you don’t have and/or don’t value. Enter: BPL’s summary of you:
BPL: ” Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do”
P.S. What did they say about people who refer to themselves in the third person ,,, ? ;-)
(Dharma: Readers please see the Dharma comment here )
[Please delete/ignore the previous, incomplete, post]
– BPL: “ Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do. ”
– Ubiquitous D: “ Barton, obvious to everyone, you have completely mischaracterized my point
If it is “ obvious to everyone … why would you need several paragraphs to explain to everyone what …. is so obvious to everyone?
The Occam’s razor suggest that you chose this declaration to soften the skepticism of the reader toward your narrative – nobody likes to think themselves so stupid that they didn’t get what has been … “obvious to everyone”.
– D:, proving the BPL’s “mischaracterization obvious to anyone: ”
I didn’t suggest that scientists lack integrity, nor did I claim to have more of it than others.
Let’s test this declaration against your actual words:
D. Oct 25: ” Expressing a hope for honesty and integrity in [ health and climate change sciences] is a perspective grounded in respect for scientific impact. I believe integrity matters to everyone, including scientists.
See? HAD the scientists have integrity and/or valued it – why would you lecture them about the importance of having it? And why would you preface it with “I believe“, which in a discussion is typically used to set oneself apart from opponents who think otherwise? There is no reason to declare: “I believe that on issues everybody agrees on. Hence you imply that scientists don’t have honesty/integrity and/or do not value it.
And by the very fact of lecturing others on the importance of being honest/having integrity – IMPLIES to the reader that you must have it – otherwise you wouldn’t lecture others on something you don’t have?
Hence BPL’s SUMMARY of your take home message:
BPL: ” Shorter Dharma: Scientists don’t have integrity like I do”
P.S. What did they say about people who refer to themselves in the third person ,,, ? ;-)
(Dharma: “ Readers please see the Dharma comment here “)
I Find Gavin reluctant to engage with the problem of political “instrumentalization ” Buntgen identifies .
Buntgen says he has :”No problem with scholars taking public positions on climate issues, I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicise climate and environmental change. Without self-critique and a diversity of viewpoints, scientists will ultimately harm the credibility of their research and possibly cause a wider public, political and economic backlash.”
Having, like many RC participants, seen activism in action over decades Steve Schneider correctly subtitled his Climate Wars memoire Science as a Contact Sport. . It encompasses everything from steamy Senate hearings staged by Jim Hansen, Al Gore, and Bill Moyers to monster rallies and oil patch senators tossing snowballs in the long Climate Winter following the crack-up of the 2016 Clinton campaign.
It saw the political bandwidth of science shrink as the political polarization of institutions increased at the expense of diversity— it’s hard to communicate what has happened to the social anthropology of science when pollsters report single party anthropology and communications departments are the new political norm.
We should not forget that science and activism differ in that activists aim to convince rather than inform.. It is disturbing to see public television and the BBC embrace and weaponize selective citation, lest audience get any “wrong political ideas,” as “misinformation” was called before scientific candor was cancelled lest it preserve what Gavin styles
” strong imprints of the values of previous generations of scientists in what we study, how we study it, and who gets to study it..”
in Re to Russell Seitz, 24 Oct 2024 at 9:33 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-825959
Dear Russell,
Thank you for your dissent opinion. It appears that you share the concerns expressed by Dr. Palmer, 19 Oct 2024 at 5:08 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-825582
that scientists should be cautious when transforming their limited knowledge into a public advice, am I right?
I like the idea that scientists should primarily strive to inform the public, as correctly as they can, because I believe that it is the most efficient way how to prevent biased, mislead public discourse.
In this respect, I would like to repeat my questions of 7 Oct 2024 at 5:51 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/09/phantastic-job/#comment-825171
with a plea if you could explain your post of 2 OCT 2024 AT 4:38 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/09/phantastic-job/#comment-825047
Best regards
Tomáš
I have nothing to add to the RC exchange
Overall, Seitz appears to be cautioning against a climate science approach that sacrifices objectivity for advocacy. He suggests that such an approach risks eroding public trust and credibility if it lacks balance and self-critique. I think he’s far too late. It’s already happened.
Being mindful that President Obama was the world’s greatest advocate for fossil fuel exploitation in the USA where it set new all time records for the production and exports of Oil and Gas. The hypocrisy and lies continue unabated. Excuse the pun.
This seems on topic:
In “The Freedom in Truth,” Jem Bendell discusses the launch of the Cayendo Juntos initiative, emphasizing the importance of collective action and truth in addressing societal challenges. He reflects on how shared understanding and connection can foster resilience against crises and promote community empowerment. Bendell advocates for open dialogue, authenticity, and collaboration as essential components for a more just and sustainable future. The article highlights the role of truth in navigating complex issues and encourages readers to embrace vulnerability in their journeys.
For more details, you can read the full article here
https://jembendell.com/2024/10/21/the-freedom-in-truth-launching-cayendo-juntos/
Beyond hilarious that the person who repeatedly announces that some are beneath and unworthy of engagement then turns to promote “open dialogue, authenticity, and collaboration.”
And it is curious that CJ abruptly disappears last week of September. Within a day or two following CJ’s last comment Complicxxx appears and says they know CJ (John Pollack saw that comment also) and picks things up. Complicxxx stops posting early in October and within a day or two Dharma appears to carry forth.
Supporters of open dialogue, authenticity, and collaboration?
In re to David, 27 OCT 2024 AT 9:47 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-826136
Hallo David,
They all are very happy about any exchange, unless you start questioning the ideology they try to spread.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš, yes I find that curious as well. And nary a description is offered of how climate/energy policy progress in their country, the name of which is never disclosed.
Let us remember that Marc Morano was Senator Inhofe’s official voice at the GW Bush EPA. [you can look him up; imnsho a despicable and dishonest advocate.
There is only one party which tries to be open minded, and it’s a handicap, like bringing a casserole to the ‘fight’.
Susan Anderson said: “There is only one party which tries to be open minded, and it’s a handicap, like bringing a casserole to the ‘fight’.”
My take is there are two approaches to discussion, debates, electioneering, advocacy, and interviews. The first is honest, facts based, reliant on evidence and rational argument. It is open minded, and uses reasonably unemotive language and and civility. The second relies on dishonesty, logical fallacies, appeals to emotion, bigotry, scapegoating, sophistry, insults, ad hominems, cherry picking, deflections, PR spin and slick sounding nonsense. Occasionally there is even be a fact or two to make things look credible.
The sad thing is the second style of debate can be very effective according to experts in such things. However I suspect it only sometimes wins, or only wins over the already converted. In at least some cases the clean facts based honest form of debate seems like it wins. It won for Biden against Trump despite the fact that Biden is not a great public speaker at the best of times. Biden won that election. And if scientists use dirty debating tactics they might win a few debates, if the audience is the right sort of audience, but it could seriously damage the credibility of the science in a wider sense so they loose the big debate.
Some people are persuaded by the dishonest form of debate but it seems that many people see it for what it really is and dont let themselves be emotionally manipulated. I suspect the honest form of debate has more wins in the longer term than the dishonest form, or we would see everyone using the dishonest form and human society would be complete chaos.
But I would say if you bring an honest form of debate to the table, it needs to be very well articulated to win against the lies, and you cant win a debate by boring people to death. You have to firmly rebut lies and inject at least a little bit of emotion and humour and pointed comments while avoiding getting down in the gutter..
Nigelj: “Some people are persuaded by the dishonest form of debate but it seems that many people see it for what it really is and dont let themselves be emotionally manipulated.”
I’m afraid I am skeptical to that assertion. In the UK, critical thinking skills amongst the population are dreadful and people can be easily emotionally manipulated by the media and politicians through catchy, but objectively nonsense, soundbites that stimulate fluffy feelings. I put forward Brexit as evidence, which was voted for because of gross misinformation about the EU and the misguided notion of sovereignty, largely due to elderly people, who as long as they get their pension every month, don’t need to worry about things like unemployment and economic stagnation so don’t have to take the consequences.
Adam Lea, yes I concede you are right the dishonest form of debate can be very effective. Brexit is a good example. Ive seen similar things in New Zealand. For example there was a campaign to legalise cannabis use (with age restrictions etc,etc) and this failed in part due to dishonest debating tacts of the opposing group, and the utter lack of critical thinking skills in the public.
I think the point im making is dishonest debate wins some battles but doesnt always win the war. For example my understanding is most people are now opposed to Brexit and think it was wrong. They seem to have have woken up to the lies and manipulation and exaggerations. Although its its come a bit late in the day, and it will probably be a long time before the UK rejoins the EU if ever. But with other issues people do eventually see they were conned and as a result policies do get changed.
I still think the best way to counter dishonest debating tactics is probably to stick to facts based logical rebuttals. But as I said they need to be very skillfully done and strong and concise. Sadly that is often lacking.
If I — a non-scientist — discover a ticking bomb, I’d have an obligation to alert those nearby to move away. A lab coat in my closet wouldn’t absolve me of the responsibility to alert others. “Science” is just a way of checking your work. If you discover something that’s harmful, just because you uncovered it in a methodical way, you still have the ordinary obligations that everyone else has.
Or you might say a fiduciary responsibility; as in the CDC, or the weather service warning of hurricanes, or geologists requiring a license where they are in service to the public. (Imagine not commenting on a volcano that was about to erupt.) OTOH, when it comes to climate, warnings hardly have the same systemic status or gravitas.
Face it, the red alerts have been sounding for decades with only mixed results .
Oh, and don’t dis Mr. Spock, he had plenty of values and managed to express them without losing is head… p0n farr excepted, of course.
Thank you, Mr., Davis. You’ve supplied the words I’ve been groping for!
Being mindful that President Obama was the world’s greatest advocate for fossil fuel exploitation in the USA
Yet more ridiculously hyperbolic, fact-free rhetoric. Do you think you’re the first to make such claims? Do you think the rest of us haven’t heard them before? Do you think government by popular sovereignty is guaranteed to solve every problem? Do you think if it can’t solve every problem, it must be abandoned? Who are you trying to convince? Don’t you realize we’re way ahead of you? “Politics is the art of the possible.” You didn’t read that here first!
Mal Adapted @ 26 Oct 2024 at 7:16 PM
Being first is not important to me. Being accurate is. I use no hyperbole. My comments are never “fact free.”
Dharma said: “Being mindful that President Obama was the world’s greatest advocate for fossil fuel exploitation in the USA”
Evidence = 29 Nov 2018 Houston Texas Rice University Quote: “American energy production, it went up every year I was President. And like America is suddenly the biggest Oil producer – that was me people. I was the Oil industries best friend!”
‘That Was Me, People’: Obama Takes Credit for Oil Production Boom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDfHH8zAIUU
Need more? There is a litany of failures recorded about Obama:
2010 President Barack Obama announced plans to expand offshore oil and gas exploration in the United States https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJ16zTcXDs
2012 State of the Union address President Obama: Oil production not enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9pJvnhuuOs
2016 OBAMA ON ECONOMY: OIL GAS AND ELECTRICITY JOBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2KubkI4QEI
Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil
“He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks – just as he hired himself out to do.”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil
During the financial crash Obama sided with the bankers, not people losing their homes – making Trump’s victory possible
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/16/how-barack-obama-paved-way-donald-trump-racism
[ Biden makes Trump possible again]
Climate?
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/image/president27sclimateactionplan.pdf
One of these guys helped run op a national debt of $20 trillion – and it wasn’t Donald Trump
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2017/01/drilling_down_on_a_crazy_government_trumo_cant_be.html
The mega high emissions Oil sands pipelines from Canada running through sovereign Native American reservations.
Make America Great Again – Vote 1 Democratic Party down the ticket!
In 8 years Obama added less to the national debt than Trump did in 4 years. Obama inherited a financial crisis, which Bush addressed with an annual addition of 1,4 trillion dollars. None of Obama’s annual additions were that high. In other words, the policy for dealing with the 2008 financial crisis was set during President W’s term. In his first three years in control of spending Obama added 3.7 trillion dollars to address the crisis; in his last 5 years he added 2.8 trillion (6.5 trillion in total). Trump addd 8.6 trillion, and Biden’s estimate for 4 years is 6.0 trillion, or 2.6 trillion less.
Every President since Reagan put the country on a credit card has added substantially to the national debt, which was 1 trillion when Carter left office, except Clinton, who actually reduced it by 63 billion.
As for Obama taking credit for the oil boom, Romney and the oil industry ran hard against Obama. For reasons to do with black crude. As we all said at the time in the oil biz, Obama was taking credit for all the great work President W did in laying the foundation for the fracking boom.
JCH says (falsely) : “As we all said at the time in the oil biz, Obama was taking credit for all the great work President W did in laying the foundation for the fracking boom.”
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but denial is not a river in Egypt. If the initial reference above Obama was taking credit for his own presidential acts, not those of GW Bush or anyone else:
For your edification and possible memory problems: I’ll summarize the key points:-
During President Obama’s two terms, several policies and decisions facilitated significant growth in U.S. oil and gas production. Here are some key actions and factors that contributed to this expansion:
1. Support for Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) and Horizontal Drilling
Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques, which began gaining traction in the early 2000s, were largely supported during Obama’s presidency. The Obama administration did not impose strict federal regulations on fracking, leaving much of the regulatory power to individual states. This allowed the technique to expand rapidly across regions like Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania, where shale plays like the Bakken and Marcellus saw major development.
2. Expansion of Offshore Drilling
In 2010, Obama initially announced plans to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and parts of Alaska. Although the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to a temporary moratorium, the administration resumed issuing drilling permits and later allowed increased offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil production surged.
By the end of his term, Obama had implemented some offshore drilling restrictions in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, but overall, offshore production increased significantly under his tenure.
3. Streamlined Permitting Processes
The Obama administration worked to streamline federal permitting for oil and gas projects, which allowed companies to expedite new projects on federal lands. In response to pressure from the industry and Congress, the Department of the Interior made efforts to reduce backlogs and processing times for drilling applications on public lands.
4. Increased Access to Federal Lands for Drilling
Although Obama promoted renewable energy, he also allowed significant oil and gas extraction on federal lands, with production on these lands seeing an increase over the first years of his administration. While he ultimately imposed restrictions in sensitive areas, including some parts of the Arctic, production on federal lands contributed substantially to overall U.S. output.
5. Lifting of the Crude Oil Export Ban
In 2015, Obama signed a bipartisan spending bill that ended the 40-year-old ban on U.S. crude oil exports. The lifting of this ban was a landmark decision, allowing U.S. oil producers to access international markets and further driving domestic oil production. The change led to a significant increase in exports, which in turn supported the growth and resilience of the industry.
6. Increased Methane Regulations without Production Limits
The Obama administration’s methane regulations under the EPA aimed to reduce emissions from oil and gas production, especially in terms of leaks and venting. However, these regulations were structured to allow continued expansion of production while addressing specific environmental impacts. This approach allowed production to grow without imposing strict limits on the amount of oil and gas extracted.
7. Overall “All of the Above” Energy Policy
Obama’s “All of the Above” energy strategy emphasized developing renewable energy sources, but it also promoted the growth of domestic oil and gas to reduce dependence on foreign imports. This policy provided substantial political and economic support to fossil fuel industries while simultaneously promoting the expansion of cleaner energy sources.
Outcomes of Obama’s Policies on U.S. Oil and Gas Production
As a result of these actions, U.S. crude oil production nearly doubled during Obama’s presidency, from about 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to nearly 9.5 million barrels per day by 2015. Natural gas production also saw significant growth, making the U.S. one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of both oil and natural gas by the end of his terms.
JCH, thank you for your comment and perspective. I concur you’re correct that actions taken by the George “Dubya” Bush administration in combination with passage/enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 allowed easier use of the technological advancements that were being made in horizontal drilling and fracking. This lead in no small part to the subsequent U.S. fracking boom.
I also remember people in the biz at the time chuckling about some of Obama’s comments.
Out today from the European Greens (suggesting your appeal to vote for Jill Stein is as previously diagnosed by others here):
.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/european-greens-ask-jill-stein-to-stand-down-and-endorse-kamala-harris
.
Sabine Hossenfelder, of course and per usual, supports her own popular platform by lighting into those with skills sharing what they know to the benefit of the public. She’s still ignoring the vast body of knowledge and expertise which has gone into climate science since the mid-1800s. She also claims the IPCC is radical, which would be funny if she were dumb, but she’s smart enough to figure out that it is (a) not a research organization but a compiler and evaluator of the state of knowledge and (b) by its nature, conservative, since it requires consensus with parties who have interests which conflict with a full exposure of the state we’re in.
She’s not terrible, but she, like so many lacks a sense of proportion (while claiming the opposite), and eager to discount the vast body of knowledge being accumulated. She also attacks people who collect examples of extreme weather. I find this shockingly ignorant. People like those at ClimateCentral and Masters and Henson are providing real world evidence to people who need to connect what is happening in their world to warnings from scientists, rather than discounting both as exaggerated.
I was very grateful to have the resource of the article above which is short and to the point to interrupt the flow of distortion when I found her work cited elsewhere and realized I had this excellent material to hand.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with the organizations she promotes as ‘alternatives’ (which they are not, they are a small part of possible solutions).
Thank you for this clarification! It is indeed needed in the current development, where clear threats to democracy and freedom are being spread very fast from the highest places.
“Media reporters like CNN’s Brian Stelter and Sewell Chan, the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, turned to the concept of “anticipatory obedience” this week as a way of understanding the current motivations of America’s newspaper billionaires (to speak of “motivations” among the likes of Bezos, Musk, Thiel etc. is wild exaggeration. As inspector Barnaby remarks about such figures: “They are vultures. They never change, they just change trees”. My remark, KJ).
In a phone interview on Friday, Snyder himself, a history professor at Yale University, said that the media reporters were right: “It is indeed anticipatory obedience” (again this is exaggeration. Here is no reflection, only profitability calculations as by Göring, Thyssen etc. KJ)
The arguments by Soon-Shiong, and Bezos’s publisher, that refusing to endorse a presidential candidate would make the newspapers appear more “independent’ was nonsense, Snyder said.
“Oligarchs, the very wealthy people, want to tell us that they’re just ‘staying out of politics’. But of course, when you stay out of politics in a way that harms democracy, what you are really doing is saying, we, the really wealthy people, are going to be fine in the new post-democratic order,” he said.
“What they are saying is: after democracy dies in darkness, they’ll be the ones who will be moving happily about in the shadows”. Precisely!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/26/anticipatory-obedience-newspapers-endorsement-refusal
1) I myself am surprised at how academicians have remained such objective philosopher kings even though they have to periodically ask Congress to fund $billions in research grants and $1.5 Trillion in educational loans run up by their unemployed former students.
2) Evidently we don’t have any Ivy Leaguers here. Else someone would be frantically noting you can’t run up a huge endowment fund — and get those nice US News ratings — by criticizing billionaires. Or even billionaires’ pets.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oracle-ceo-cancels-115m-harvard-gift/
3) I admit I can’t understand the profound reasoning behind urging millions of Americans to buy electric cars — and thereby giving Elon Musk $500 billion more in wealth — when Elon will just dump another $75 million into getting Trump elected. Heck, maybe $500 million. It’s chump change when Elon has a 100,000 Greens working for him as unpaid salesmen.
Evidently you are wrong, and your link is 18 years old.
Re RS “your link is 18 years old ”
Just trying to be tactful:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/fundraising/2024/10/21/harvards-billion-dollar-disappointment
Snyder aligns with a different oligarchical group. And he as a deeply compromised ideological (paid) shill would not know what being truthful and objective or unbiased felt like.
Or what decency and high human values actually entails. That’s my opinion about Snyder’s research work and his output.
“Thank you for this clarification! It is indeed needed in the current development, where clear threats to democracy and freedom are being spread very fast from the highest places.”
Is it true that there have been calls from present and former university officials to obliterate the Republican Party?
If only.
Barton Paul Levenson and others too
25 Oct 2024 at 6:51 AM
When someone is being insincere or manipulative in a discussion, it undermines the credibility of their points, often leading others to disengage or reject their arguments outright. Disingenuous tactics—like deflecting, using strawman arguments, or refusing to engage with facts—don’t just weaken the overall discussion but also prevent any productive outcome, pushing people further apart rather than encouraging understanding or resolution.
A comment to. Dharma, 28 OCT 2024 AT 11:20 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-826192
Of course, Timothy Snyder is a paid shill defending American colonialism and imperialism, whereas honest men like Vladimir Putin or UN Secretary General Guterres strive to build new fair multipolar world order.
Greetings to Ned Kelly.
Gavin’s article evoked this exchange by observing :
Just so. But to what “value free ideal” does Gavin refer?
Having signed Nature‘s full disclosure rules, I have a duty to disclose an interest in this question ,
One that arises from having responded to Jim Hansen’s Senate debut in a 1990 policy journal article that while commending his science— and his candor, still recalls the long history of authoritarian abuse of science in the service of policy, and concludes that :
Gavin: “Should a climate scientist not want to keep the seas from rising?”
Also, arguments over whether or not IPCC is radical or conservative.
1) A heavily-cited article about conservatism in science, generally, and especially in IPCC in face of uncertainty of Sea Level Rise is
Brysse, Keynyn, Naomi Oreskes, Jessica O’Reilly, and Michael Oppenheimer. 2012. Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama? Global Environmental Change 23:327-337.
OR
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378012001215 (Paywall)
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=aacc65932710676091ad1b48cf066d3ed9d2d17d (free copy)
2) Then there’s a very useful recent article by 17 SLR experts:
Kopp, Robert E., Michael Oppenheimer, Jessica L. O’Reilly, et al. 2023. Communicating future sea-level rise uncertainty and ambiguity to assessment users. Nature Climate Change 13:648-660.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01691-8
OR
https://d197for5662m48.cloudfront.net/documents/publicationstatus/104764/preprint_pdf/f41376948700b3b635b803410bee2041.pdf preprint, free
“Abstract Projections of future sea-level change are characterized by both quantifiable uncertainty and by ambiguity. Both types of uncertainty are relevant to users of sea-level projections, particularly those making long-term investment and planning decisions with multigenerational consequences. Communicating information about both types is thus a central challenge faced by scientists who generate sea-level projections to support decision-making. Diverse approaches to communicating uncertainty in future sealevel projections have been taken over the last several decades, but the literature evaluating these approaches is limited and not systematic. Here, we review how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has approached uncertainty in sealevel projections in past assessment cycles and how this information has been interpreted by national and subnational assessments, as well as alternative approaches used by recent US subnational assessments. The evidence reviewed here generally supports the explicit approach to communicating both types of uncertainty adopted by the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).”
I like this as a retrospective of the ways science evolves, especially when dealing with serious, difficult types of uncertainty … where the end users really care as it affects major decisions. Steve Schneider often said “Uncertainty is not our friend.”
31 May 2021 From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainability/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.679019/full
Today – In this Climate Chat episode, we speak with Aaron Thierry about how climate scientists can play a bigger role in driving action on climate change by becoming more involved in climate activism.
Dr. Aaron Thierry has background as an ecological scientist, science communicator and environmental campaigner. Having received his original PhD in ecology from the University of Sheffield, he went on to a position as a postdoc on a project researching climate feedbacks in the Arctic. Aaron subsequently left academia to focus his efforts on environmental activism and become a youth campaign coach working for a leading UK environmental charity. However, he has returned to his studies to commence a new PhD at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences looking at scientific-activism.
Here are some of Aaron’s most recent papers on scientific activism: see more info box
video interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFHd83PBS_w
I have followed him on twitter for a few years see ::
Dr. Aaron Thierry
@ThierryAaron
11 Jan 2022
Social science has a huge amount to teach us about the causes, impacts of & solutions to the climate crisis, yet is often badly neglected.
Here’s a shorthighlighting some key papers I’ve recently benefit from reading – what papers would you add?
https://xcancel.com/ThierryAaron/status/1480937620179980292
Dr. Aaron Thierry
@ThierryAaron
29 Aug 2022
I’m thrilled to announce @StuartBCapstick @EmilyCoxSussex @Berglund_oscar @Steviedubyu, @JKSteinberger & my new paper in @NatureClimate on why scientists should consider participating in civil disobedience to promote climate action.
Here’s a short1/15 https://xcancel.com/ThierryAaron/status/1564276454904430596
Paper – 29 August 2022
Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01461-y
“I think many in the established climate community would prefer to see me retire gracefully.”
But even if I were to do exactly what they want—retire and stay silent—the reality of our current situation would remain. The establishment has tied itself in knots, and soon enough, reality is going to catch up with it.
Q. What is the real role of climate scientists in society?
A: To shout fire when we see fire and call bullshit when we smell bullshit. If the politician talks rubbish, we should say so. If industries leaders talk rubbish, we should say so. Because the public rely on us to use our independence and expertise to do so. The public can’t do that. It is our job, we are paid for by society to have the honest speaking to power.
For some academics, speaking out has been difficult because their colleagues either won’t support them or stay silent. I’ve seen this repeatedly over the years, where colleagues who speak up about issues they know about are ridiculed or reprimanded by senior people. They’re told, “You shouldn’t have spoken against what the minister said.”
But why not? If the minister is talking rubbish, we should say so. If industries talk rubbish, we should say so. The public relies on us to use our independence and expertise to speak honestly. The public can’t do this themselves, and consultants certainly won’t. It’s our job; society pays us to have the courage to speak truth to power. “Brave science” is a good way to describe this. It’s not enough to just do science in our little rooms, close the door, and write papers that three people will read. We need to engage with the people who actually fund us—the public.
And it’s not about dumbing things down. I really dislike the idea that we have to “dumb down” our work. If that’s the case, it’s because we don’t understand the subject well enough ourselves. We should be able to communicate our findings clearly and in a language that everyone can understand.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgOyn_kTjw
Kevin isn’t saying that every single scientist needs to speak out or that it’s every single scientist’s job to do so. What he’s saying (not in response to your imaginary question) is that scientific colleagues should encourage those who speak out. Senior colleagues could still frown up juniors who try to become some kind of climateball megaphones without any kind of media preparation. Their interventions *will* have adverse consequences, first and foremost toward themselves.
You forgot to answer that question:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-826420
Fascinating misinterpretation of what Kevin said and what he means by it. The above is not the only time he has had something to say on this issue. I’ll take Prof. Kevin Anderson at his word. I find him quite inspiring (brings hope that things might change for the better) for a very long time. Millions agree with him and support him, as I do.
> The above is not the only time he has had something to say on this issue
It should be easy to quote him. He still has a blog. I know Kevin’s work, you’re just using him to coerce people into doing more free work for you.
And you still haven’t answered that question:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/science-is-not-value-free/#comment-826420
But what ARE your values?
A) reduce CO2 as much as possible
B) save as many animal species as possible
C) save as many humans as possible
The resulting policies are not the same.
I think this should set an example for climate scientists — how about a “Bulletin of the Climate Scientists”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_of_the_Atomic_Scientists