How far can politics safely intrude into scientific debate
before it becomes abusive? And with the global warming
interest, has it already gone too far? That's the premise of
this political blog post where it is alleged there that the
top Weather Channel climate scientist wants any global
warming "deniers" stripped of their American Meteorological
Society approval credentials
if they "deny" that man causes most of the problems with
global warming.
"The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is
advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their
scientific certification if they express skepticism about
predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This
latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in
which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and
Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several
climate alarmists."..more there
ed: guess I'd fall into the camp who rejects any sort of
"hate speech" thought crime laws or actions. As regards
global warming and etc., all science always has to have
proponents and skeptics, that's the only thing that keeps it
remotely honest.
I would say that the political or economic motivated denyers
should not have much say in the science. But to remove the
ability for genuine science that has a result you dont like is not
science. It may be wrong, but silencing such voices is not
good, in my opinion.
Considering that IT IS COMPLETELY TRUE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT MAN-MADE, perhaps it is the Chicken Little alarmists who should be stripped of their credentials, NOT the ones who are actually trying to be reasonable.
Come on Bruce, enough with this left-wing crap. Stick to the tech news.
you're confused, mainstream scientists accept a large man-made contribution to global warming and climate change. The people who deny it are the oil companies and the current administration in Washington. Don't confuse junk politics with junk science.
There's even some of us right-leaning conservative types who accept global warming largely due to man, and even are into conservation and getting away from fossil fuels. Pollution and waste cost me money, after all. Blindly doing what the fossil-fuel companies want costs money too.
Something about the word "conservative" doesn't fit.
Is there a conservative or a liberal view about the infrared absorption spectrum of gaseous carbon dioxide in the tropospheric pressure and temperature range? Is there a conservative or liberal measurement of how much cloud cover will change if there's more evaporation?
Even at the policy end, where politics rules and science can only supply information, what's the conservative position? Conservatism is supposed to be skeptical of large ill-considered changes, and to emphasize harm avoidance. Faced with the idea of continuing an uncontrolled experiment in a complex system that's vital to the economy, isn't limiting greenhouse gases the conservative thing to do?
and you'd think a conservative would always be for conservation. of course, I think of the current controlling bunch in D.C. as pseudo-cons, to me the prefix "neo" would imply maybe that they're a young movement and trying to get back to real conservatism, and not old power and money grubbing oligarchy that's been around for a real long time now.
Your use of the term "junk science" is very glib, but it misses the point: who declares what is junk and what isn't? In scientific inquiry such determinations are made by consensus, not by legislation. And there are many cases of scientific inquiry which were practically laughed out of the lecture halls, only to become widely accepted decades later. Even the common wisdom is often wrong.
My point is that even if oil companies are trying to fund anti-global warming studies, that they should not be muzzled or squelched in any way. It's not a matter of who makes money here. It's a matter of scientific inquiry and free speech. We allow all sorts of disgusting and hateful speech that I seriously doubt the founding fathers of the United States ever dreamed should be allowed. Yet there are many who seek to ban speech concerning scientific inquiry. If the founding fathers were thinking of anything besides political speech, this was the very sort of speech and discourse they were trying to protect.
You are entitled not to like it. You are entitled to ignore it. However, just because the oil companies are large and evil in your mind is no cause to ban their speech. We have heard far worse from many who would seek to do us much greater and more immediate harm. Get over it.
even if oil companies are trying to fund anti-global warming studies, that they should not be muzzled or squelched in any way. It's not a matter of who makes money here. It's a matter of scientific inquiry and free speech.
Who's talking about muzzling them? The suggestion only seems to be that their professional body shouldn't recognise them. This seems to be a frequent misunderstanding - free speech principles let you say what you like. They don't give you a right to financial support from others to spread your ideas, or guarantee you a platform to speak from.
Personally, I wouldn't want to see a medical association vouch for a doctor who didn't believe that HIV caused AIDS, or a mechanics trade body give credentials to someone who denied my car needed petrol. These people are so way off the mark of accepted science, on such an important issue, that it seems only fair for their professional body to refuse to give them its support.
Stripping someone of their certification because they hold a contrary view on one aspect of the profession is itself unprofessional, coercive, and smacks of groupthink, and were I within such a trade group, I would argue strenuously against such punishments. There's a huge gap between the reality of requiring fuel for your car and determining the level for which man is responsible for climate change, and there can be healthy debate about the entire range. Clamping down on those who hold contrary views doesn't help.
And at what point does it stop being a contrary view? What if the person believes that man is responsible for only one half of the climate change? One-third? One-tenth? Where do you start stripping certifications?
I don't agree than mainstream scientists accept a large man-made contribution, because models that support that ideas have great omissions, principally, water vapor that constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases. I think that fear is a common place for americans to drive people to accept ideas.
Global Warming is a fact
Man-made global warming is not
Scientific debate is now centered over the magnitude of man-made contribution.
If you want to read more here is an article i have wrote clarifying some ideas about global warming, hope you enjoy it.
IT IS COMPLETELY TRUE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT MAN-MADE
Then why is atmospheric carbon at 100ppm over what it has been for the past 800,000 years? Why is CO2 380ppm now, instead of 280ppm, as its maximum was for all of recorded history and all the ice samples we can get our hands on until 1800?
I think mankind's influence on the climate is now obvious. However, as I wrote earlier, stripping idiots of their credentials does NOTHING to solve the problem. Plant trees instead.
Did you even read the thing? Did you? The blog guy from the senate committee was complaining that skeptics (guys who think that man made climate causes are minimal and overrated) aren't getting a fair skate and are getting discriminated against, that they are beng nailed as "deniers". Get it? It was a PRO skeptic piece and PRO free speech. Seems like from your argument you should have supported it!
The only "deniers" are those who are denying that our planet's climate is, actually, rather stable.
We're inquisitive, fact-oriented people here. Please feel free to link to geological or other evidence that the climate is stable or that it's not sensitive to CO2 (and CH4, and H2O). Data should be welcome here.
The only "deniers" are those who are denying that our planet's climate is, actually, rather stable.
Why the change then? Why are the glaciers in the Pacific Northwest melting?
Read the Wikipedia article on CO2 in our atmosphere. It will tell you how we can determine how much of a contribution mankind has been to the CO2 concentration. Here's the two biggest clues:
CO2 concentration (unlike temperature) can actually be measured directly from ice core samples, and historically - over the last 800,000 years - has fluctuated from between 180 (ice ages) and 280 ("normal" temperatures) ppmv. In the last century it has risen from approximately 280 ppmv to about 380 ppmv. Think about that. Really think about that. (I'm not trying to be trollish or condescending here. Every time I give these numbers, a new "whoa" comes to my mind, and I'm just trying to share that sense of "whoa".)
Not mentioned in the article, but you can find it elsewhere in journal articles, the C13/C12 isotope ratio of fossil fuels differs from that of other sources. Measuring this isotope ratio in our atmosphere gives independent confirmation that we are responsible for that 100 ppmv increase in CO2, to within a 2% margin of error. (I.e., we might be responsible for only 98 ppmv.)
Correlation doesn't equal causation. That's the problem with proxy measurement, you can never be certain what the relationship between the proxy and and the value you can't measure really is.
The best you can say is that the climate models that link CO2 with temperature best fits the data available. While I (and many others) find those models compelling and the best explanation for what is happening, there is always going to be a certain amount of uncertainty.
More importantly, I'm not that disturbed by the deniers - if anything they might help things as they'll be desperate to find holes in climate change theories, which would hopefully make for more rigorous science. I'm far more concerned by calls to "excommunicate" scientists who don't agree with the model - that's not science, that's dogma.
Are you saying that nobody's ever tried it? Seems to me like a relatively simple experiment. Fill one glass jar with a low-CO2 atmosphere and an instant-read digital thermometer. Fill a second class jar with a higher concentration of CO2. Hit both with a heat lamp for 12 hours on/12 hours off cycle for three days, and see if there's a difference in temperature between the jars.
I don't have the time to search the web now- but it seems to me that the debate is a waste of time at this point, and that would be a quick way to end it.
If I never see another "OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!1111 GL0BAL WARMING!!!!!!11" story on Technocrat again it'll be too soon. Please either drop the junk science and other left-wing political garbage, or at least provide newsfeeds in multiple channels so those of us who are only interested in tech news can filter it out.
I don't really want to have to implement content filters on my feed reader, but I will if I have to. Or maybe I'll just drop the feed altogether and go back to Slashdork.
Interesting on-topic point you make. Either you wish to silence science that you do not believe in, or you are provoking others to say that you should be silenced. In any case, both possibilities relate to the topic at hand, apparently people do not like "the other side" to even be able to talk, regardless of which side they are on.
By the way, if I read correctly, the story is actually about a "left-winger" trying to censor his peers, you should be glad with this story for a change.
The sky is not falling. Neither will it support human life if we ignore this problem. The solution? Use the tech we have to fix the problem. The tech we have is biotechnology, in the form of fast growing plant life.
Are there actual sources buried in there somewhere?
A quick scan of the blog entry turns up a pointer to a conference main page and pointers to other entries in the same blog. Some of the claims are extreme enough that they should have been better documented.
At this point, anybody who wants to make a case that we're not experiencing anthropogenic climate change does need to be challenged to explain how it's possible to put an additional 90 ppm of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and *not* get a warming effect. If they don't have a testable answer, they're not doing science. If they do ("iris effect", for example), it's probably being tested or has been tested already.
Withdrawing someone's credentials is a far remove from punishing them for "hate speech thought crime". It just stops them from claiming their beliefs are endorsed by a scientific body. They can talk all they want, but they shouldn't add AMS after their names.
The only "silencing" that's gone on is when the White House deleted paragraphs in reports on climate change and told NASA scientists not to make statements without prior approval.
And why link to a blog talking crap like "Intimidating scientists with calls for death trials..." instead of just directly to Heidi Cullen's blog? What she actually wrote: If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.
Not that I think one way or another on the larger issue or even that I think the reporting is accurate in this particular case. Just more responding to what I find in your post and looking for further discussion from there should you choose.
"It just stops them from claiming their beliefs are endorsed by a scientific body."
This does not seem to make sense to me. Just because I am a member of X, Y, and Z does not mean that when I speak my own opinions/thoughts, I am claiming that X, Y, and Z all endorse my beliefs.
Am I off base here?
"They can talk all they want, but they shouldn't add AMS after their names."
Does that society really only want members who agree with all the official positions?
"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement."
Honestly, that is not a fair comparison. Even so, who says tsunamis aren't caused by the weather? I am sure we could concoct a chain of events where heave rain ended up causing a tsunami.
BTW, a more fair comparison might be wanting to take away the medical credentials of a doctor who claimed smoking did not cause lung cancer. Yes? No?
This does not seem to make sense to me. Just because I am a member of X, Y, and Z does not mean that when I speak my own opinions/thoughts, I am claiming that X, Y, and Z all endorse my beliefs.
Am I off base here?
I get your point. However, what the original complaint was about was TV weather presenters who, in an effort to avoid saying anything that might be controversial (i.e. piss off advertisers) were saying the issue was still lacking data. They didn't hold opposing views due to having researched the matter. But these presenters still advertised their membership of the AMS. And that allows the "warming deniers" to cite them as being on their side and to say the scientific community is "divided".
If I were a member of the AMS I think I might ask these guys to declare their positions (either way), or get out. Just ducking the question is unprofessional. How can any climate scientist not have weighed the evidence by now?
If I were a member of the AMS I think I might ask these guys to declare their positions (either way), or get out. Just ducking the question is unprofessional.
I don't think that's fair. A TV weather person isn't a climate scientist. I can't see how you can ask people to declare such a make or break position on something that isn't really part of their day to day job. "I don't know" should be an acceptable answer.
[And that allows the "warming deniers" to cite them as being on their side and to say the scientific community is "divided".]
Perhaps this would be a better point to attack. I am sure the issue is still lacking data. It always will be. Isn't science after all theories that will always be subject to revision with the collection of new data. That said, we act on these theories which still lack data all the time. Isn't the also pretty much the point after all?
Also, as you point out, it might be better to go with a camer and ask these people to go on record with their best conclusions based on the data in hand. (Press for public declarations?)
What I found interesting on Heidi Cullen's is a quote by the type of meterologist she would like to ban. It includes the following
I don't know what generalizations can be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data. That's all I will say about this."
To me, that's a fairly generic, sit on the fence sort of statement. Seeing as in all my Geology lectures I was told "if in doubt, always sit on the fence" I don't see what the problem is. While it's not a ringing endorsement of Climate Change, it's not much of a denial either.
Removing a scientist's credentials for a dissenting opinion is a disastrous idea. In my mind it actually lessens the credibility of the certifying body. It essence, having an "official position" is not any different from the dogmatism of the current administration which is so repulsive to so many of the same scientists.
Also, I would like to posit myself as a counter-example to the stereotype that global warming skeptics are all corporate shills or partisan hacks. I am just a person who is curious about the issue.
I think that members of the AMS that believe in global warming and violate the average citizens carbon footprint, should forfit their AMS credentials. I know my own carbon footprint and I'm actively taking steps to lower it, does anyone know Al Gores?
I thought the Scientific Method required review and challenge. Consensus views in science only lead to the Flat Earth theory, or canals on Mars. The physical world is, or, it isn't.
If you have consensus, you do not have science. Consensus is opinion. Science is fact.
Science is about making observations, deriving hypotheses from the observations, conducting tests of those hypotheses, reviewing the test results and determining if those tests disprove those hypotheses. If the tests disprove those hypotheses, then the hypothese need to be revised based on those test results. When the hypotheses have been revised they are then subjected to more tests.
When the scientists can repeatedly test and not disprove the hypotheses, they can then consider publishing their research. The research gets peer-reviewed. When published, other scientists then have the opportunity to review the research and conduct their own tests to prove or disprove the hypotheses.
If hypotheses continue to not be disproved as they are tested by other groups of scientists, then those hypotheses can be submitted for consideration to be made a theory.
No one ever says, "In my opinion, it is a theory." Either the hypotheses pass each test, i.e., each test does not disprove the hypotheses, or they fail a test (assuming no mitigating factor disqualifying the test is found).
All you global warming alarmists should consider this. The predictions of global warming are based on numerical (statistical) computer models of the earth's climate involving many dozens to hundreds of input variables with less than 100% level of confidence in their values. Any time that variables with less that 100% confidence in their accuracy are used in a numerical model, a reputable scientist should stress the model's output with the qualifier of the level of confidence the model has, i.e., output "X" with a 90% confidence level.
James Lewis, in this essay uses a simplistic hypothetical model to demonstrate how the confidence level is calculated. In his example, he uses a model with 100 input variables considered to have a confidence level of 99% or 99/100. At first blush, we would be tempted to say that this model's output will have a high level of confidence. But, is this so?
Lewis uses another example to demonstrate probability theory. Using 1 die, you have a 1 in 6 (1/6) chance of a particular side landing face-up, with pair of dice, each having its own 1 in 6 chance, has a 1 in 36 ((1/6)^2 = 1/36) chance of each specific possible combination landing face up.
Next, he applies this to his simple model (remember that the climate models are prediction models). The calculation is (99/100)^100 = 0.366032341 or 36.6%! Therefore, the output or prediction of this simple model has only a 36.6% level of confidence! (How many of us would drive our cars if we thought we had a 63.4% chance of being involved in an accident?)
Before we leave this example consider that Lewis' simple model does not involve the confidence levels in other elements of the current climate models such as variable weightings and variable interactions. Less than 100% confidence in the values used for the variables' weightings and interactions will further reduce the confidence level in the climate models' predictions. (If you did drive at 63.4%, at what point would you not drive? 70%? 75%? 80%?)
I remember the public outrage when it was reported that the Air Force bought toilet seats for $600. Yet, no one is pointing out that the global warming alarmists are demanding that we spend billions and billions of dollars and accept significant economic hardship to most of us based on at best a 1 in 3 chance of human-induced catastrophic climate change happening. Doesn't this sound more like buying $6 million toilet seats.
...the decision to do nothing, ignore it, which for the most part is what we have been doing the last century.. Ok, say we do that, and it turns out later that we should have spent the money on drastic mitigation, say a lot more evidence comes in 20 years from now-but at that point even if we did try to spend the cash and make the effort in a fast emergency manner-it wouldn't matter, the point would be moot, it would be too late. Who's responsible then, who will "make it better"? Who wouild be able to "fix it" then, who will stand still for the public stoning? and I am only half joking there, if it gets real bad, and we do nothing, I would sure hate to be any large named public person who advocated against doing anything. I don't think at that point you could run fast enough or far away enough to stay away from the lynchmobs. Humans have this revenge gene, even if revenge accomplishes nothing, they still use it quite frequently.
Just like going out and trying to buy your insurance after the house burns down. It won't save the house and you won't get the insurance anyway and even if you did they still wouldn't pay you anything back. It's a lose/lose to even contemplate that, waste of time.
With the 600 buck toilet seat, oh well, they print the money up out of thin air anyway. In the grand scheme of things, chump change, and most likely what they said in Independence Day is true enough, it went into blackbudgets and for some pork.meh, typical, hang nail against a slit jugular.
But global climate change? I don't think hoomannz have really faced this with the intellectual and scientific awareness that we have now, before. We haven't even had the ability to even contemplate much except the last 50 years or so, with any sort of reasonableness. No data, not much anyway,and no way to use the data.
With the entire climate, how much do you want to bet on a binary deal like that? Still tolerable/OMG this sucks! That's all we have to look at right now.
Statistically, you are not likely to have a house fire. Realistically, the mortgage company doesn't care a bit about your interpretation of reality and will make dang sure you carry fire insurance at your cost to cover their spread until you get it paid off-and running the numbers is their business and they are sometimes pretty good at it. What you can do as a homeowner though is even better, you can make dang sure your wiring is really top notch, even better than code, make sure you don't have leaky gas lines, keep the squirrels with their insatiable teeth out of the attic, keep the cig lighter away from soused uncle looie, and so on. common sense stuff above and beyond the minimum "who cares?" level.
I know grocery stores exist-but I still have a garden. I have on/off well water-but I have also lived where the pump went out, and also where the city water came out brown mud, so I keep stored clean water in tanks and a bore pipe bucket, "just in case". Added expense? Sure. Tangible insurance. Just today I sent off some corn samples to be analysed. They are very mildly moldy. Not bad, most guys would feed it, but for 30 bucks and a couple tons of corn I am not going to risk serious -completely serious folding money worth- of beefers, ain't worth it to me. I could chance it, but it just ain't worth it to me. I'll burn the corn in the stove or something if it is even close to marginal.
The point is, we can probably afford to be wrong on the man made causes even if we start to do things pretty different now, (expensive, but doable, as is getting the fire insurance we probably won't need), and we will get some positive good science and engineering out of it, and cleaning the air is a good idea anyway, same as cleaning the water, but we can't afford to be "right* in the negative and think that man made causes have nuthin to do with nuthin as regards large scale climate change, if it happens. No "do-overs" possible. The combined total efforts of every single human who might have thought "no big deal" wouldn't change a thing then. You could clone bill gates 100 times and that cash wouldn't do it.
So, the two choices we have are A-do nothing, or B-do at least a few common sense things that will help tangentially/sideways anyway. There is no C option, which I admit makes this entire deal pretty sucky all around, but that's how it is. I know "we don't know", but the consequences of guesstimating wrong towards the "no big deal" side are too dire.
For me, to make it easier, I prefer to just emphasize the "tangential/side issues" where, IMO, things will get improved immensely for day to day living, and by doing those things if we help mitigate the big kahuna globally, if it turns out it was 100% actually needed, swell, that's just gravy then. Cool Beans.
Win/win, more useful tech developed, more good jobs, more energy security, cleaner air (urban air is freekin' chunky styled, this is not debateable at all, you can *see* the dang stuff-that can't be good and should be fixed yesterday), and so on.
Strip "Man-Made" Global Warming Skeptics of Credentials?
How far can politics safely intrude into scientific debate before it becomes abusive? And with the global warming interest, has it already gone too far? That's the premise of this political blog post where it is alleged there that the top Weather Channel climate scientist wants any global warming "deniers" stripped of their American Meteorological Society approval credentials if they "deny" that man causes most of the problems with global warming.
"The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists."..more there
ed: guess I'd fall into the camp who rejects any sort of "hate speech" thought crime laws or actions. As regards global warming and etc., all science always has to have proponents and skeptics, that's the only thing that keeps it remotely honest.