At Saturday Salon Darren Lewin-Hill raises an interesting issue in the current climate:
Interested to hear where LP readers think responsibility should lie for effective communication on climate change, its impacts, and what should be done about it.
Darren points out that Tim Flannery reckons that climate scientists themselves should get out more and communicate to the public. But it’s not as simple as that. Remember when the East Anglia affair broke scientists reported serious threats including death threats. Margot O’Neill, for example, reported on the harrassment received by David Karoly, including
a formal complaint of academic misconduct laid against him for stating there is no serious peer reviewed science overturning the theory of global warming and for fraudulently promoting his views to get money.
Have you heard anything from David Karoly in recent months? I haven’t.
In the AFR recently columnist Peter Ruehl, who I almost never read, after making some extremely smart arse comments about Byron Bay councillors suggesting that everyone should shift to Broken Hill to be on the safe side, people being snow bound and without electricity in Washington etc etc, said this:
It hasn’t helped the climate-change freaks who have argued that it’s little old us at fault when the well-documented news got out that some scientists were exaggerating facts on warming.
Dishonesty is a fairly time-honoured trait in some lines of work, such as bank robbery, politics and roof insulation, but you don’t expect it from scientists. They may be crazy or wrong or both, but they’re not dishonest. They don’t go around telling each other, “Hey, maybe it’s better this doesn’t get out” or “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”. And as always it’s the coverup that gets you.
Ruehl says he actually doesn’t know which side is right and his main point is that in an election year there is going to be confusion in the public mind.
My point is that he is making hay out of what has unfortunately become almost a default position for many working in the media.
‘Climategate’ has been all over the MSM and the intertubes in recent times. Incredibly there is almost nothing in it as this RealClimate post explains. The Himalayan error appears in the second Working Group report which covers the impacts of climate change on society and ecosystems, as assessed by social scientists, ecologists etc, not the first, which is about the physical basis of climate science, as assessed by the climatologists. WG1 has a perfectly valid section on the melting of glaciers and ice caps.
There was a kerfuffle over how much of the Netherlands was under sea level. The Dutch Government, along with all the denialists, got into a tizz. Turns out the information came from the Dutch Government.
In both cases the ‘mistakes’ had no bearing on the validity od the AGW scientific paradigm.
Then there was the one about the Amazon being susceptible to drying out. The IPCC quoted (Rowell and Moore, 2000) as follows:
Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation .
Rowell and Moore (2000) turned out not to be a refereed paper, but a report written by two WWF activists. Johnathon Leake at TimesOnline wrote an article suggesting that the IPCC’s claims were bogus. This in spite of the fact he had been told three times that the WWF report and the IPCC description of it were completely accurate in relation to a refereed paper. One who told him was the researcher who did the original research and wrote the peer-reviewed paper which Rowell and Moore used. Tim Lambert at Deltoid calls this venal behaviour fraud. I’m not sure the term is strong enough.
The problem is that this kind of deliberate misrepresentation is becoming routine.
Johnathon Petre of The Daily Mail has joined in the fun by misreporting a BBC interview with Phil Jones (transcript here). The problem seems to be that Jones answered directly and honestly the questions he was asked, in a manner that RealClimate found scientifically OK only to find himself misquoted all over the MSM and the deniersphere.
What he should have done was answer the questions he wanted to answer, rather than the ones asked. Obviously he didn’t have the media training every politician needs these days.
Have a look at what this anti-warmist blogger did to the Jones interview.
Will Steffen recently addressed the issue of communicating science under present circumstances (go here for his slides – pdf). He seems to think we are up against something quite profound, based on greed, fear of change and other elemental emotions, and the willingness to use unscrupulous means.
But as to what to do about it all, I don’t really know. The media has a responsibility to clean up it’s own act. But if the bottom line is the main action, every media organisation should go out and hire an Andrew Bolt or Jonathon Leake.
For my part I’ll probably just carry on writing a few posts in the time available to me.
Elsewhere Climate Progress has a more than handy guide to some of the recent climate science, and has launched a project explaining basic climate science.
I think David Karoly went off to have a name change I may be wrong but it was something like Mary McKillop. This will be a much easier platform from which to discuss climate change since many climate change sceptics/deniers/oppositionists/passive-aggressives have indicated their support for her sainthood. Christoper Pearson slept soundly after the announcement and certain other commentators who have voiced their support for an Australian “saint” are joyfully celebrating.
I think we need to attempt to differentiate, if it is possible, between those who are now against the ETS for political reasons and those who genuinely are hesitant about change of any kind, some of whom are readily misled by the media.
Just to let people know, I’m going to delete any comments that don’t make what I think is a constructive contribution to the topic, or require endless scurrying around to demonstrate their manifest stupidity.
The problem with doing posts like this is that you have to go into the sewer and it’s hard not to get dirty.
But I won’t be here all the time, unfortunately.
Unfortunately the last time I heard David Karoly was when he went in to bat for climate activists, a courageous move that might have got him offside with some of his peers who otherwise agree on AGW. I hope I’m wrong as he is one of the best to argue the science. If he’s listening and reading this blog, fire up the engine I say.
It’s partly a problem of the way science is taught in schools – or, perhaps, how science was taught in schools when the primary denialist demographic was there.
Too many semi-random factoids, not enough of how those factoids were determined to be correct.
Re the IPCC using a WWF document. Bolt et al appear to be framing the debate as ‘if it comes from an activist group – it must be tainted and wrong’. However we shouldn’t accept this framing.
The reality based community in this ‘debate’ is going to need as many activists involved as possible. Scientists can always get more media training, but they will simply not have the reach to get as many conversations happening at front doors and in backyard BBQs.
The Your Rights at Work campaign is an example of a complex topic being effectively communicated as a relevant lived experience. Remember ‘WorkChoices’ was not actually around long enough to truly effect that many people. TV ads might have initially raised it in people’s minds – but it was activists who kept the conversations going.
Actually we’ve had TV advertising campaigns before to inform the public about what they need to know, in the public interest. I wonder…
Only ever part of a strategy, though.
Well, journalists in the “quality media” might at least make a start to find out what the real issues are – just saw a report on SBS News about Indonesia’s “thermal coal” export industry. It was breathlessly reporting from coal industry executives and so on, reporting on its difficulties of inadequate infrastructure, and absolutely zero mention that COAL comprises on the worst carbon emissions sources! Nor that all the massive industrial development planned on “kalimantan” (i.e. borneo) is probably displacing both people and forests, based on past form. It was a corrupt piece of industry PR reporting, from SBS, who should hang their head in shame.
Thanks for posting on the issue of communication, Brian. There’s a big question about how scientists and activists can best combat the denialists, and of the role of the media, but I’m also interested in the question of why governments aren’t publicly acknowledged to have a moral obligation to communicate the facts about climate change – especially when they appear to accept them.
Penny Wong’s speech in Adelaide is a perfect case in point. I do think it was quite strong, despite disagreeing with her on the ‘benefit’ of Copenhagen agreeing to limit warming to two degrees. Some of the Senator’s messages in the speech – addressing denialist claims, acknowledging the high probability of a human role in warming – might well fit into a broad government campaign to actually inform the public, as happens with other threats such as swine flu and bushfires.
The trouble is, of course, that the clearer their communication of the science, the more apparent it will be that the actions of state and federal governments contradict what the science demands by way of a climate solution.
At Melbourne’s Sustainable Living Festival today, Richard Denniss made the point in another useful way in his discussion of emissions trading. He asked how the government could accept the diagnosis but not the prescription. I agree. The 2020 target currently associated with the proposed ETS, for example, fails to address the problem at hand – a fact obvious to Denniss and many who inform themselves about the climate debate, but less well known among the broader public. There’s an inherent problem when the government campaign we need addresses the very climate complexity that serves the government’s own interests in taking minimal action.
Robert’s post @4 got me thinking. If ever there was a hook to hang maths and science teaching on, the environment has to be it.
In the 1950s and ’60s, advanced scientific and mathematical concepts were taught to a mass audience with reference to space, missiles and nuclear power. This generated a scientifically literate population and a critical mass of those able to deal with complex information of this kind – turns out there weren’t as many jobs in this field as first thought; so many became teachers, and many of these bitter and twisted.
Today, mathematical and scientific skills rely too heavily on bullshit like hard-boiled eggs being sucked into bottles. These disciplines cannot claim to have “intrinsic value in themselves” – leave that stuff for humanities subjects and see how far they get. We’ve had plenty of Ministers for Educaton and Science who have complained about the lack of maths/science teachers, and identified is as a major problem for the nation, but none of them have up-ended the curriculum to try and address it.
Yeah, some teachers here and there are doing bits and pieces, but it clearly isn’t enough. Don’t know how you get around the cry that “our children are being indoctrinated”, except to say that the right can’t dismiss teaching as a profession while claiming that it is important – again, back in the olden days there used to be conservative academics and now the nearest they’ve got is Keith Windschuttle, so let’s see some conservative academics.
You’re losing and you know it, Brian. There’s desperation in every breath.
Great to see another post Brian. One scientist I’d like to see more of in the public spotlight would be Professor Matthew England from the UNSW. He comes across really well (I’ve heard him speak a few times). He seems like the sort of bloke you would have a beer with and he really knows his climate science.
However, after watching the witch hunts against Michael Mann and Phil Jones I can hardly blame any scientist for not wanting to become a public figure. One problem is that becoming a public figure takes them away from their research.
We must also remember that people like Al Gore and Tim Flannery have been very successful in communicating to ordinary people the dangers of AGW and that the reaction of the denialists was really in response to this success. I remember too that their success was in spite of outright denial and underhand tactics of the Bush administration and Howard government.
The deflation in activists after Copenhagen was noticeable but I think we need to be careful viewing climate change politics as though it is subordinate to the political cycle. It has in the past driven and I am sure it will in the future drive it. It is a driving force now as every earthquake heat-wave and cold snap brings out an army of denialists claiming (often correctly) that a one of event has nothing to do with CC. This wasn’t happening a decade ago.
And of course there is that fact that it still warms.
In the 1950s and ’60s, advanced scientific and mathematical concepts were taught to a mass audience with reference to space, missiles and nuclear power. This generated a scientifically literate population
Yet it’s that generation and the one before it that are the most sceptical of AGW.
In my more depressed moments I think that if it’s in everyone’s short-term interests to keep business as usual” going, it’s in the short-term interest to create as much confusion as possible. United we stand, ra ra ra.
Can I say as someone that works in the same building as David Karoly and we sometimes share a chat over tea and a biscuit at Morning Tea that he has been away overseas for conferences/research quite a bit over the past few months. He also has been on a well earned summer break at the beach where he said he finally was able to read novels instead of scientific papers and boogie board. He is still listed as an ‘expert’ on climate change on the University of Melbourne website.
I think the issue is that unfortunately the debate has shifted on a political Conservative=skeptic – Left leaning=’climate change believer’ dynamics where the MSM can’t be bothered with the science anymore.
As Roger Jones noted on the other thread, Flannery does sometimes play fast and loose with the science. It hasn’t tripped him up in public yet, but it might.
The greenhouse effect itself is easy enough to explain. However, going from there to predictions of the relationship between CO2 and temperature is far more complex because there are a whole range of factors affecting the answer plus the complication of amplifying factors such as changes in the area of snow cover etc. So, for most of us it comes down to either being able to find some data that gives some confidence in conclusions or making a judgment about the process used to reach conclusions and the credibility of people pushing various lines.
In this context errors that have no impact on final conclusions will influence peoples perceptions. If someone has made a mistake that can be understood it creates doubt about the more important bits I am unable to understand hence all the fuss of trivial IPCC errors.
Credibility can also be affected by the language used. Skeptic speech sets off my bullshit detector but it may have a different affect on others. In this context the email scandal is attracting fuss because it also undermines credibility, particularly amongst people who are not familiar with the foibles of real scientists.
It might be easier to argue climate science to an audience who understands scientific method and who understand statistical concepts and how to lie with statistics and graphs. But it is never going to be easy.
One wonders where are the forums to work out strategies: for better communicating the science; for developing a consensus amongst “believers” on political approaches to the CC challenges; for combatting the misinformation.
It can’t be on our blogs alone, though we need to ramp up the online campaign considerably.
It’s going to take much better organisation, plus the money to buy the media time in newspapers and on TV. We can’t just leave it to GetUp. Frankly we’ve have to activate the under 40s – it’s their future. What do they do in Universities these days?
Guido @ 13, good to know David Karoly is doing fine. Give him our best if you see him.
John D @ 15, I thought this part of the RealClimate post was telling:
Some sites, for example, The Union of Concerned Scientists, have posted specific responses to the Climategate criticisms.
Sites like Skeptical Science have posted on specific issues, like the Amazon rainforests and question of recent warming in the Phil Jones interview.
There’s heaps more, but I didn’t try to round them all up.
I’ve just let Rob @ 10 through, and I want to assure you Rob, that I’m doing just fine. I’ve just about recovered from a recent operation to drain my sinuses and straighten the passages. Breathing easier now.
I don’t know where you’ve been, but I’ve been alarming people for a while now. For example, this is one of six I did back in 2008 on sea level rise, then there were heaps more scary ones.
Not just on climate science. It’s kinda what I do. The difference is that few well-informed people, none really, now tell me I’m alarmist.
Brian,
I think that the most effective defence against ignorance is more open access to knowledge. And the only thing that you could do to be more effective is have your excelent studies available in PDF format, as “the Oil Drum now does with most threads, so that we, your public, can print them out and circulate them further. I am, personally, keen to print and compile them all together in one volume.
Denialists benefit from the extreme dryness of many of the reports such as that from the IPCC. Your work is more in the “Time/Life” format and is far more effective for the pictorial (good for mental imagery) and succinct descriptions. keeping this imagery fresh in the public eye is important.
I doubt that that the denialists are having the effect that they hope to have. In the “any publicity is good publicity” field of things, it is the most credible story that benefits most from the double swing publicity. The only real battle that needs to won to deconfuse a casually interested public is “how can global warming produce wide spread snow conditions”.
I find it frustrating that the important climate change papers in major journals like Nature, Science, etc are still only available behind paywalls, and the general public has to rely on short summaries (not always accurate)in the media.
Why can’t these journals, as a public service on an issue they rightly believe to be of great public importance, provide free web access to any paper on climate change? I may be overestimating the number of people willing to read the source material, but the way the current PR war is going, it surely can only help to let people (including journalists) read and quote directly from source material in rebuttal of skeptics.
I still think we need to get back to governments, despite agreeing that activists and scientists need better communication strategies. It’s worth thinking about what the public reaction would be if, in response to the swine flu pandemic, there were no government advertisements, no hotlines, and no government-run public health websites communicating the best approach to prevention and setting out the established facts. A key difference with climate change is, of course, that it’s not people who are getting the fever, but the planet, and it’s happening over a longer timeframe. The Rudd government needs to be challenged on its lack of effective communication on climate change. The problem is, however, that clear and accurate communication would demand effective, science-based action.
i suspect that i am like the vast majority of the population in that all the scientific detail and the argy bargy that ensues from it,just go’s over my head.i make an assessment based on the credibilty of the person making the claim.so i’m suggesting that credible people should be trotted out to promote doing what any prudent person would do facing a situation of risk and that is take out some insurance.the deniers thrive on creating doubt,well this works both ways, if there is no certainty of warming taking place,there can be no certainty of it not taking place and we therefor need to take action just in case.
BilB, steve, Darren and mick, food for thought. BilB, I don’t have any tertiary science to bless myself with. My background is in education, philosophy, sociology, some psychology and management, and before that language and literature, philosophy again and a bit of history. So I have to rely on people here telling me if I’ve slipped up. My attitude to that is it’s better to be embarrassed than wrong. I’m not sure that people with genuine knowledge always pull me up. I’d really rather that they did.
So I’ll think about the pdf thing, BilB, but I’d want some means of screening the stuff to make sure it’s right. Time is a problem and the GFC was not kind to me. The bottom line is that I was heading for self-funded retirement, but those plans have been postponed by some years.
Darren, the more I think about it the more I think the government has a responsibility. Perhaps a dissemination/clearinghouse unit within the CSIRO, which, among other things, could perhaps negotiate access to the most significant of the stuff behind the paywall, by paying if necessary. Just as the TV stations have to pay for broadcast rights. Also a specially dedicated and funded unit within the science group in the ABC might be considered.
In terms of the magnitude of the threat spending a few sheckels would easily be justified.
mick, people like you and I have to rely on building up a suite of trusted sources. However, I think the broad structure of the AGW paradigm is clear and internally coherent, whereas the anti-AGW mob have no coherent paradigm. So a commonsense check shows pretty quickly whether any new stuff is threatening the paradigm, reinforcing it, elaborating it etc. So if something a bit different comes up I just note it and wait to see what people more competent than I make out of it, whether it is replicated by other studies etc.
One of the criticisms I’ve heard of Flannery is that he’ll latch onto a single study and basically put too much weight on it.
Brian,
Your productions are “discussion documents”, which produced with the standard disclaimers, are as authoratative as everything else published. Most importantly they are quality “discussion documents”, and that is just what we are needing all over right now.
The Government has to get back into this game big time and lead. When you have Penny Wwong making a credible speech in Adelaide in which she warned of dangers including sea level rise, trumped in the Australian by some leather skinned beach bum at Bondi saying he hasn’t noticed any change you know the field is being controlled by the dishonest idiots. The beach bum made P1, Wong’s speech is buried inside and most of it is made up of Ian Plimer’s ridiculous “science” If the Government doesn’t lead no-one will follow
It seems to me that part of the problem is that most people with a deep understanding of the science (e.g. academics and those who work in the field) are frankly, not the best public communicators in the world. It’s all very well for Tim Flannery to suggest that climate scientists need to get out there and argue their case, but possibly under half of these scientists (or less?) are great communicators, and among those even, there are likely going to be a few folks who either cut corners with their work or tend to lean a bit towards the hysterical.
It sounds a bit like the local climate science community should organise itself a bit better and present something more of a united front, with a leadership team that has the communication skills to go with the rigour. At the moment, any krank with a degree who comes out in the media warning of imminent tsunamis gets a big run in the media, undermines the people who have serious cred on the issue, and confuses the punters even further.
The deflation in activists after Copenhagen was noticeable but I think we need to be careful viewing climate change politics as though it is subordinate to the political cycle.
I think this is a really important point. I think the challenge for governments of any stripe is to keep climate change as “secular” as possible. I predict after Abbott’s nascent demise – if Turnbull gets back in – a huge leap forward in this discourse.
Al Gore was right from the start – AGW is an inconvenient truth. It is easy for the combination of those with vested interests and those a slave to political tribalism to spread F
UD because people naturally prefer to believe what is convenient for them to believe; wishful thinking is pervasive.
I’m actually surprised that a large majority of the population still understand what the science is telling us, given the forces pushing them towards wilful ignorance.
The Big Fella – The rise and rise of BHP in the third last chapter states how BHP has discredited AGW so they could continue mining coal.
It appears that climate change deniers have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as well as the determination to maximise their profit before the resources are gone or rationed.
If Andrew Bolt was muzzled would another AGW denier spokesperson take his place? Could we plant emails or find gorgeous scorned women to discredit him?
Good to see this in today’s Age: AUSTRALIAN green groups have called a strategy meeting to devise ways to hit back at the climate sceptics movement, amid fears they are losing the PR war. Greens take on sceptics. It’s closed to the media. Let’s hope their strategies will be open ones and not just organisation based.
My own view, which Ive put about before – is that action on carbon emissions needs to be sold as a conservative measure: conserving our lifestyles.
I think its important people understand that they only threat to our lifestyles comes from denial and inaction crowd – if they win, the way we live is ultimately screwed.
As per The Leopard: “everything must change so that everything can stay the same”
I’ve no positive solutions to offer regarding the central issue of the thread. I’m over discussing any of the science with anyone who doesn’t get it, is a self styled “sceptic” or anything other than a person who is engaged in the issue of what do we need to do and how are we going to achieve our ends. To this extnet then I’ll state that scientists have been unbelievably innocent about the political economy of AGW.
Short: when did the ruling classes ever fight clean in defending wealth, power and privilege? Right, never.
It is a war zone and the stakes are the biological conditions of existence. Time to take that on board.
Indeed, anthony. The CSIRO has at least one Nobel Prize winner beavering away.
[On second thoughts, I probably misunderstood. The third part of his duties is probably tacked on to everyone's.]
steve from brisbane@20
Nature has made their climate related articles, letters, and opinions available here http://www.nature.com/climate/index.html
Science has a few collections for free, such as Katrina related articles, including climate component http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/katrina/#climate – there may be others, I just had a quick look and am not across their navigation.
Tim Lambert at Deltoid details how they do it in the British press.
Stovepiping and plagiarism
Jonathon Leake gets his stuff from a denialist blogger, whips up an article, then another journalist at another paper lifts it and spends a few minutes rewriting it.
Then Deltoid does Leake on Africagate
As someone who works in financial communication, I think the right counter to the lazy media narrative on climate change is to frame a story around the concept of risk.
You don’t know which asset class will do best or worst, so you manage risk in your portfolio by diversifying. You carry an umbrella even though you can’t be sure it will rain.
There will always be uncertainty. That is what risk means. A range of outcomes is possible, but the worst of these under climate change science demand contingency action. This is sensible risk management and does not require an understanding of complex science.
I would also remind people about the misinformation campaign run by the tobacco industry when scientists pointed to a link between ciggies and lung cancer
Hi Brian,
).
I think Guy @ 26 sort of hits the nail in that many researchers do not communicate that well with the general public on their topic and hesitate in doing so. It doesn’t help that people think hundreds of years of work can be reduced to a 15-minute debate…
Without divulging too much most of my customer base are scientists and they are typically quite busy, and (like myself) find that the topic of our expertise is openly “yawned at” any time outside of work. Most are used to communicating that expertise at their own level (and to work-experience or undergrad students who have some sort of interest – mostly
Add in the open hostility that seems to come from even hinting that you may have seen a possible climate effect in your data and it is unsurprising that most stay silent (even if they have some very interesting results).
I think we need two things:
1) A new means of teaching science – teach the discovery, not just the theory!
2) Without starting another whole Gen-Y argument, they do have a remarkable ability with technology – I think getting younger people involved in this would also help the communication (even if the polls show it is the older crowd who do not accept some very rigorously proven data).
I sincerely hope we do sort this out – it is very disappointing to see the word scepticism associated with the rabid elements of the anti-AGW crowd.
Finding ways to communicate effectively has been something that has had a fair bit of discussion amongst the climate scientists I know over the last few months, and particularly in the last couple of weeks. There are a lot of good ideas in this thread – keep them coming!
A lot of the media that we do do tends to be reactive (often triggered by a significant weather event). While I don’t think it’s especially productive to get into a direct slanging match with (insert latest sceptic talking point here), a useful antidote to misinformation is to get lots of information out there.
The way the media works, the best way to get that information out there without getting into a slanging match is to promote ‘new science’ when we have it. I was involved with this a few weeks back when the annual conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society was on, and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of positive press that it got (and that most of the media outlets didn’t feel the need to ‘balance’ it). I was a bit disappointed that more of the people presenting at the conference didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to promote what they were doing. It helped that my paper was on a topic which was easy to communicate (changes in the number of record high and low temperatures), but there were probably at least a dozen other papers of which the same could be said.
Something else I’ve learned is that people, even those who are otherwise hostile, are much more likely to place trust in someone they’ve seen in the flesh (or are used to hearing on the radio or TV) – it’s a lot easier to sound off about someone you’ve never met in Norwich or Pennsylvania than it is to sound off about someone who you hear regularly on the ABC or had a chat with at the local agricultural show. Bob Carter does a lot of travelling the backblocks to speak; to my knowledge no scientists have done the same in any sort of systematic manner apart from the odd one-off. There is a climate science presence of some kind at most of the major agricultural field days in Victoria (where the majority of Australian climate scientists are based), but I don’t think the same is true of the other states.
There’s a show on BBC radio right now about why people are becoming distrustful of science in general.
Blair, there is a definite need for you guys to get on the front foot as you say. You have to build some really strong dedicated science communicators into your units. Contrarian habits are predictable,and I’d like to see their moves anticipated by the science community more quickly and consistently. Unfortunately,somebody will have to second-guess insane liars on a professional basis before new work and public statements are released. I’m sure you have thought about this and groan inwardly at the tedious prospect presented,but what other way is there?
It’s clear that,despite the resources that government could potentially divert to providing technically stronger proactive media coverage,they fritter away their time and resources quite extravagantly on the daily media cycle. You have to do it yourselves,though I suppose any hint of decoupling the ‘message’ makes this difficult.
Is anyone doing work on extreme rain intensity events and hailstorms along the lines of your recent presentation on temperatures? Is there enough data in that area?
i agree with mrDenmore, as i said ealier,impressing on the general public the need for taking out some insurance will negate all the denialist blather.instead of getting suckered into interminable debates about minor issues at the margin which the general public just glances at,shrugs their shoulders and moves on,deciding it’s all too hard.i think the message needs to be simplified and personalised,such as reminding us that we don’t wait for definite proof that our house is going to burn down tomorrow before we insure it and that warming will effect every last one of us,even wealthy newspaper owners and especially our children and grand children.if this message is given loudly and often enough governments will act and the denialist will be pissing in the wind.end of sermon
In the Weekend AFR there was a reprint of an article by George Will under the heading “Data-massaging scientists having a terrible day”. It reports on two replies Phil Jones gave during his BBC interview.
First there was question B:
Jones reply:
In other words, we have had warming, but a smidgeon short of statistically significant warming at the 95% level.
Will’s reporting is not strictly wrong but in context leaves the wrong impression:
At the end of the article Will says AGW has become a religion.
Elsewhere, unfortunately, the meme has been, “Jones admitted that there had been no warming since 1995″.
Question G was:
The guts of Jones reply was:
I point out here that Jones wasn’t asked about the possibility of the MWP being as warm or warmer than today. The rest of his answer emphasises that the MWP is “most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia”, that we have scant information about the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere during this period, that the hemispheres often take different warming paths and ending with the definite statement:
Will condenses all this complexity to:
Well, he didn’t. But again elsewhere Jones’ reply has been taken to mean that he has conceded that the MWP was warmer than today and that this is significant in terms of the AGW ‘debate’.
mick @ 41, I guess my last comment @ 42 might qualify as getting suckered into the minutiae. I’d point out here that newspapers have a particular responsibilty in choosing titles for articles. Eg the AFR using the term “data-massaging scientists”
Also in their choice of images, as in the Oz using a Bondi surfer to counter sea level science.
brian i don’t mean that the points that denialist raise should be ignored they should be confronted by those that are able to but the rest of us should be using the doubt they create by saying “yes there is a possibility that you are right,but the consequences of you being wrong are too awfull to do nothing and these are the consequences…………. etc”.focus on the doubt and the consequences.get em by the balls and their minds will follow as someone once said.
Dave McRae at #34: yeah I only recently found the Nature climate change blog, and I know that you will get some full length papers for free from time to time in different journals. But I think I am right to say that most of the time, summaries of new papers will link to the abstract only, and the full text has to be paid for.
Clive Hamilton on todays ABC DRUM had a long article on cyber-bullying of scientists and journalists who argue against climate skepticism. Some of it sounds a bit harrowing and may explain some of the reluctance to speak out.
steve from brisbane @ 45,
most (all?) Australian universities have content licenses from academic publishers that give free access to users of the university libraries. If you are close to a university you should be able to walk into a library and access any on-line journal that you wish.
The availability of journal articles and scientific information is obviously very important, but there’s the matter of communicating this simply, and, importantly, of who should be communicating it.
The examples of cyber-bullying cited by Clive Hamilton strengthen the case for effective, science-based government communication, as well as joint atatements from campaign organisations and coalitions of concerned scientists. There’s no one killer message that will defuse all the denialist rubbish, but consistent, science-based and simple messages will increase public understanding about climate change – as have similar campaigns about heart disease and smoking.
Examples of two such messages might be based on Professor Will Steffen’s presentation at Melbourne’s recent Transition Decade event and data from Climate Action Tracker detailing the warming we’re likely to get from current commitments under the Copenhagen Accord:
The Copenhagen Accord agreed to keep global warming within two-degrees, but as we learn more about climate change, more climate risks are now thought likely to occur within that level of warming. Australia needs to do more than it has offered, and warming would reach very dangerous levels if other developed countries cut their emissions only to the levels we have promised.
And
Current commitments to cut carbon emissions by the countries that met in Copenhagen would see warming of at least 3 degrees by 2100, well above the stated goal of 2 degrees warming over pre-industrial levels. Even at 2 degrees of warming, the latest science is already showing an increase in the climate impacts we are likely to face. Australia must lead with stronger action based on science, not politics and polluters who want business as usual.
There are many such messages that could be backed by science, but expressed in simple language.
Perhaps we could have http://www.climatefacts.gov.au, where the evidence underlying each message could be referenced? Obviously the examples above criticise the government, but they could be easily modified to justify why the government has decided to take stronger climate action:
The Copenhagen Accord agreed to keep global warming within two degrees, but as we learn more about climate change, more climate risks are now thought likely to occur within that level of warming. Australia has strengthened its commitment under the Accord in recognition that warming would reach very dangerous levels if we failed to lead other nations to stronger emissions reductions than they have currently promised.
The government routinely monitors the media, and would be well placed to respond to false and misleading coverage. The trouble is that climate clarity would highlight the inadequacy of current government actions. Climate clarity would need to be matched by effective climate action.
Brian @43, regarding the Oz using a Bondi surfer to counter sea level science, what exactly is the Murdoch mob up to?
Are they quietly taking the mickey, by making denialist’s arguments look rediculous?
Or are they using whatever argument can be made, no matter how very weak, to push the “climate change is crap” line?
Is this to support Abbott’s election chances, after his private interview with Murdoch recently? Please tell me I am too suspicious?
I don’t really see what else or more the AGW camp can do. They have governments, bureaucracies, the UN, NGOs and almost all of the western media on their side. And yet they are still failing, and levels of scepticism are rising all around.
I have a few suggestions:
* stop shouting at people (it gets their backs up)
* stop condescending to them (ditto)
* stop saying the science is settled (anyone can see it isn’t)
And:
* make a case without abuse (‘denialism’ is an ugly term)
* figure out why the Chinese and the Indians shouldn’t be as wealthy as the Americans, Europeans and Australians, and explain that to all of them (a very hard sell)
* explain why we’re still warming although we haven’t been for 15 years (tricky)
* make it absolutely clear that a UN bureaucracy that can’t run a conference on climate change can still make the actual climate, well, change (very tricky)
* convince us that Chavez of Venezuela (tyrant), Ahmadinejad of Iran (madman) and Mugabe of Zimbabwe (tyrant and madman), who had centre stage at Copenhagen, really, really do care about climate change (very, very tricky).
Not an easy gig, but it can be done.
Powelliphanta @47: that’s all well and good, but I’m not sure that many journalists, columnists or bloggers will make the trip to the university when they want to check the detail in an original paper and to quote from it.
People here who are calling for better communicators do have a point, given that original papers are not always well written or easy to follow. But I also worry that some of the commentators know for the topic thus far have not always been careful and have provided fodder for skeptics.
Personally, I have never paid much attention to the likes of Tim Flannery or Al Gore (I’ve never read the former’s books or seen the latter’s movie) and it was by virtue of other material on the internet, sourced closer to actual climate scientists, that convinced me action to reduce CO2 was needed. There would certainly be a need for any future communicator on the topic to studiously avoid exaggeration and to admit uncertainties in the areas in which they remain. It’s not as if what is know is not bad enough on its own.
Steve @50: “People here who are calling for better communicators do have a point…”
Agreed.
However, the flip side is that communication involves a sender and a receiver. Not just a sender.
Try explaining WW2 to a lynch mob of foul-mouthed neo-Nazis? Wot? They don’t believe you? Must be your fault then, for not presenting a good case. Right???
If the receivers of climate change science arguments have stubbornly turned off their hearing aids, all the skill in the world with explaining the science and making a pursuasive case is to no avail…
Elise @ 49, it’s hard to think what the Oz thinks it’s up to. It’s pretty obviuos though that they are following an editorial policy. As you are probably aware Tim Lambert at Deltoid has been running his own war on The Australia’s war on science.
I should have mentioned that Quiggin has a thread which some of our usual commenters have obviously found.
Elsewhere joe Romm at Climate Progress did an earlier post on science communication and brings us up to date with the latest from Newsweek. The startling thing abiut that story is that the title has almost nothing to do with the article. Sub-editors going feral, I guess.
Powelliphanta
I’m not sure Steve could use the Uni library to read online journals, without being an enrolled student.
I reckon he could, Ambigulous. They don’t check your student card if you’re sitting at a terminal, after all. OTOH, you might need an account, I suppose.
Depends which uni. QUT, I think, has public access to databases in its libraries for anyone without a student or staff login. State libraries may also, I’m not sure.
Elise @ 49 – I figure their trying to go for the same tactic used in The Land and other rural newspapers – quote some highly “respected” local effectively saying it’s all a load of crap. Those who don’t bother questioning/checking will simply take it as given and anyone who writes a letter of complaint can be shouted down as not being a local/being a damn greenie/etc/etc.
Everyone just gets on with business-as-usual and Bolter can claim that level-headed people are on his side (cough!).
One thing is for certain, the environment is the ultimate arbiter. Did anyone here see the floods on Madiera? Beyond belief. As the energy builds in the tropical belt weather systems, the air that flows poleward is guaranteed to provide us with a continually increasing level of weather wow factor. The point will eventually get through.
Max Boykoff has a bit to say.
Fred Pearce writing for The Guardian: How the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies
Josh Garman in the same paper says being right is’t enough. You can be right 99% of the time and lose to an opponent who is wrong 99% of the time.
He reckons scientists need to learn from obama’s response to the Reverend Wright as compared to Kerry’s response to the Swift boat campagn. He tells a worrying tale.
Rob@50 said:
That’s just it. While one can certainly point to a degree of support in each of these vectors, the support is by no means as consistent, solid or ubiquitous as your sweeping claim implies. What is “rising” is not “scepticism” but a disinclination to accept the cultural implications of what Al Gore so aptly described as an inconvenient truth.
It’s so easy for humans, when faced with something they regard as unpleasant, to ignore it, or rationalise it away. AGW is by no means the only example of this. How many people do you know Rob who fail consistently act in their own best interests? People say: You know, I should really exercise more/give up smoking/eat less junk food or I really should improve my skills so I can get a better job. People stay in relationships where they grow progressively more resentful of their partners and obligations.
Instead though, they rationalise away the need for action, or tell themselves that it’s not that bad, or find reasons for thinking that sitting on the lounge watching TV and going through a six pack of beer instead of dealing with your issues is fine.
The implications of AGW are that we are going to have to reconsider our expectations, our responsibility for the state of the planet and our obligations to people we are unlikely to meet. Most people find this confronting and if there is a nanometer of space for being agnostic, at least some will hold onto it for dear life. There is no such space on AGW in my opinion but the latest wave of slander from the agnotological amongst us has given the angst-ridden neurotics a figleaf with which they think can hide their neurosis from public view.
This is just plain silly. We are not shouting at people, though we are increasingly intolerant of endless repetition of long debunked talking points. Those who copy and paste their “ideas” from the disinformation factories out there in webland can’t expect that those of us who follow the scientific discussion will treat them with the respect due someone who has exerciased their grey matter before posting or opening their mouths.
They don’t mind shouting at us though. And as Hamilton points out, some are accompanied by explict threats of violence. In either case though, the tone in which discussions are held ought to have nothing to do with what one makes of a scientific claim. That ought to be based on a grasp of the science. And if one can’t grasp the science, or doesn’t want to make the effort, one should defer to those who can and have.
Interestingly, after the Lambert Monckton exchanges at the Hilton, Bolt admitted that “these matters were over [his] head”, but this didn’ty stop him fromdecalring who had “won”. Clearly, for him, right wing populist culture aka Monckton was the winner.
An extravagant and extraordinary claim when the majority even of the populace do agree that the science of AGW is persuasive. And of course something like 95% of scientists in the field of climate scinece think it compelling. So your “anyone” doesn’t include most of the population and hardly anyone who is a qualified climate scientist.
Why is it an ugly term? While there probably is the occasional ratbag who ignores Godwin, the word really refers to the persistent refusal of the enemies of mitigation to join the reality-based community. You may not like it, but it is up to you to show that you have something more than rhetorical rocks and appeals to visceral populism with which to attack the science.
This is very silly. The biggest pool of people asserting that claim are amongst the enemies of mitigation. Most of us very much want the Chinese and the Indians (and others even poorer) to be as wealthy as Americans and Australians and Europeans. We just think that getting there and staying there will be impossible if they repeat our errors. Most of us accept that very significant transfers of cash and technology from the rich first world to everyone else would be part of a serious program of mitigation. The enemies of mitigation of course claim, amongst other things that one part of the conspiracy is to transfer wealth to the third world and to tear down western capitalism.
One should not expect consistency from purveyors of conspiracy theory.
Ludicrous. We would just point to the record. We have been warming and many of the hottest years of the last hundred are within that span.
It wasn’t the UN bureaucracy that “failed”. It was the lack of will on the part of governments and their key stakeholders that failed. Bureaucrats can only do what their masters tell them to do. In any event, once we have good policy, if we ever have good policy, it will make a difference. If we don’t get it soon though, the difference will be less and the harm we suffer greater.
and when all else fails, drag out your favourite bogeymen and say it’s all about them. You must have watched a different Copenhagen Conference than I did. It seems to me that the central players at Copenhagen were the Chinese and the Americans. Significant side shows included the Indians, that advocate from Tuvalu and some fellow representing the Africans who wanted especially aggressive targets. I heard not a jot from Ahmedinejad, and I think one piece of rhetoric from Chavez. Thanks for letting me know Mugabe was there. Last time I looked though, he was sharing power with the MDC and Zimbabwe’s opinion was in any case, irrelevant. They are struggling to qualify for aid at the moment.
Really Rob, of late your cries sound increasingly pro forma and plaintive.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress posts on Steven Chu’s comment on the IPCC and the “asymmetric” standard sceptics are held to:
He also posts on Michael Mann’s response to “false and misleading” claims in an error-riddled, defamatory piece by WSJ. Mann concludes:
Addendum to Fran Barlow’s excellent smackdown @61
2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade on record. The planet is still warming.
This graph from NOAA and these from Hansen et al should settle the matter, I would have thought.
Rob was told last year here and here as well as by others on the thread.
His response:
And here:
After that we decided to put him in moderation and are quite prepared to publish his comments if they make some kind of contribution to the discussion. That’s a matter of judgement of course, but I want people to know I didn’t approve the comment @ 50.
It’s too late on two fronts.
One, some bits of the planet have reached a tipping point (methane out of the permafrost, c02 absorption in the ocean) and secondly the denialist industry won a multi-front war on science based on tactics they have been refining for decades on behalf of the tobacco, oil and automotive companies.
They have won. It is over.
It seems that the current meme is that scientists somehow failed the marketing side of their bargain in telling us what was happening with the climate. The reality is our governments and media failed the scientists and we failed ourselves and the planet by continuing to use too much electricity, driving too much and bemoaning the state of the place over intercontinentally travelling coffee beans.
The right wing war on science has been a great success – pat a conservative neighbour on the back while you pack up your house to move to higher ground in a smaller town. That seems to me to be the only sane course of action left as publicly agitating for change, protests and letters to the editor have been a waste of time.
Ute Man, people like Hansen say that there is still time, barely, short of using geoengineering. Give what he knows I’d have to run with that. He also says that people do care what happens to their grandchildren and if they understood they’d act.
I think people’s positions are based more on emotional considerations, even rational scientists, than they recognise. If people change their minds about something as significant as climate change it is usually not as a result of rational thought but a life experience. They later say that this life experience led them to think about the issue in a different way. It is the emotional impact that causes the rethink. So reason follows emotion.
There is nothing to be afraid of about this and at this point we could launch into a discussion of emotional intelligence. It’s not just visceral, raw and an uncontrollable force within us, but can be educated, coached and trained to respond habitually in more prosocial and life-enhancing ways. We can use our reason to do this and monitor project. Living our lives is a project.
Bad weather doesn’t do it, as a position-changing experience, because we’ve always had bad weather, and even if the incidences are breaking on the side that supports AGW there are enough the other way for people to maintain their positions. Such things as disappearing ice and acidification of oceans are too remote and gradual. Ditto for methane.
So, again, I think it will take a Pearl Harbour type event in one of the major sites of wealth and power to shake the power elites out of their complacency and wrong-headedness. Convincing the people one by one and letting democracy do its work is necessary, but not sufficient, given the time available.
Further to @ 64, this graph from a post by Tamino is perhaps the most telling. That’s the one where he mathematically removes the short-term effects of ENSO and major volcanic eruptions. If you line that obe up with emissions trajectories and the solar intensity cycle, you start to run out of room with the “the human influence is lost in the noise” schtick.
Communicating climate science in an ideological/ethical/communications minefield
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Y’know it isn’t really. How ’bout ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.’
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Simple.
I think they started out doing that, Adrien, but it got swamped by the shrieks of two-year-old-temper-tantrum rage from the Right.
I hope you’re right Brian, but I suspect that (like a lot of climate science) the leading indicators have been and will be ignored. Perhaps there will be some massive climate related event to shock our collective consciences, but at this stage I feel it will be some total, irreversible disaster like a mass sea life extinction due to rising ocean acidity. So, while world wakes up, we start the process of starving. Geez I sound like a Jeremiah but if you make an attempt to dig through the pre-politically-filtered papers it’s enough to make you join the dirty hippies chaining themselves to coal plants.
Hmmm. Having said that, perhaps the real way forward to get the right thinking about climate change is simply to press a few of their buttons.
Cook up and attempt to pass legislation requiring Australia to accept climate change refugees (directly rather than through the prison camp system) in direct proportion to our coal exports.
[Sentence deleted here if you don't mind, Ute Man - Brian]
Well, Ute man, Hansen did a calculation on coal power stations and extinctions estimated by the end of the century.
He makes it 400 extinctions for each coal-fired power station.
Extinctions don’t take your jobs, live in ghettos and have socially destructive cultures Brian, unlike reffos. The sentence did need toning down though.
The fact that the denialists are still keeping up their disreputable tactics, e.g., constantly referring to the debunked so-called “climategate,” shows, I think, that they realize they have lost the debate and that governments are still persuaded by the science and are likely to bring in effective mitigating measures that will impact on the profits of the fossil fuel industries.
They don’t need to disprove anything to win silkworm, they just have to obfuscate long enough that the issue becomes a political and not a scientific football. So, in fact, they won.
Who knows what might have happened if the science had been couched in the more personal fears that right wing parties tend to exploit be concerned about?
It’s very hard to personalise the effects of ocean acidification on the lesser frotting booby of reef 12 (population: 75) when it’s so much easier to shrug and think the extinction of the Dodo didn’t change much. Yet, so much science reporting of climate issues boils down to “greasy be-spectacled egghead says lesser frotting booby heading for extinction as ocean acidifies”. So what?
It’s just stuff nobody outside of those greenies thinks about. But couch it in terms of what will happen to insurance prices of coastal areas when the government categorically states it will not bail out beachfront communities in the event of sea level rise. Get the useless mongrels in the NSW ALP to properly draw up an immigration/population forecast based on the pacific communities to our north who are shortly going to have to relocate or drown – do a “good news, rugby league players to double in size in next 20 years due to climate change”, “bad news, south sydney rabbitohs to be renamed south samoan headhunters”.
That’s stuff your right winger will listen to.
Ute Person
I think you’re onto something.
Some clear, popular messages.
“Burn coal? Bloody idiot!”
“Surfing at XXX [name of suburb 1 km inland], what a blast!”
“No more snow-skiing woofters, I’d like to see that.”
“Suck More Ethanol!”
silkworm @ 74, Hansen reckons that politicians who claim to have responsible policies towards climate change then allow the building of a coal-fired power station, They are either kidding themselves or lying. He’s becoming less charitable in choosing which alternative.
Ute Man, there’s no doubt the the displacement and movement of populations through sea level rise and changing agricultural productivity (we have to produce twice as much food to feed 9 billion properly) will be major factors this century.
To get the political support needed for serious climate action we need to convince voters that either:
1. The predictive models are not over stating the future impact of greenhouse emissions. AND/OR
2. The cost of dealing with the effect of greenhouse emissions is greater than the cost of doing something to reduce these emissions. AND/OR
3. The impact of action to reduce emissions on people’s lives will be small.
1. and 2. both depend on some complicated science. For almost all of us “convincing” depends on indirect factors such as our assessment of credibility of the key people on both sides of the argument. The skeptics understand this hence both sides are using arguments, slogans etc. to build up their credibility and undermine the credibility of their opponents.
The thing that is really giving the skeptics traction is the fear campaign re what effect doing something about emissions will do to peoples jobs, quality of life etc, particularly in the short term. It is difficult to counter this campaign while the center of climate action proposals is something as turgid as CPRS or untargetted carbon taxes. It is easier to defend against this fear campaign if we concentrate on:
1. Specific actions that voters can understand the implications of.
2. Actions that make sense whether the climate science is right or wrong such as reducing our dependence on oil imports.
3. The action plan for the next 5 to 10 years. The decision re what happens after then is something that can be better decided in 10 years time and any reductions in our rate of emissions give us more time to act.
John D, this becomes problematic when the actions include such things a s making oil out of coal or even tar sands, as well as most forms of biofuel.
Agree Brian. I am talking about reducing the need, not replacing.
I think they started out doing that, Adrien, but it got swamped by the shrieks of two-year-old-temper-tantrum rage from the Right.
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Well there is that. But there’s also the political mandate given to climate research that says it has to be about combating global warming. You should never, if you actually want scientific research, require that the results of such research be compatible with a political agenda. Why? Because you’ll fudge the data to make it consistent with that agenda. And then you give your opponents gaps they canm drive a truck thru. Not good science. Not good politics either.
Care to back this up with an example or two? Last time I looked climate scientists were still studying climate, not “global warming”. If it were cooling that is what they would report.
OTOH, Adrien, if you have a real and existential threat wouldn’t you want to get your best minds to work to see what should be done about it?
Zoot – Care to back this up with an example or two?
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Sure from the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee into ‘Climatgate’:
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And:
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And:
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Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
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A little like Roache commissioning research into the effectiveness of Berocca. Everyone knows it’s a marketing ploy.
The people doing the work on adaptation and mitigation (the one’s whose work is actually based upon their being warming) almost never get mentioned in the media and are seldom if at all attacked by the likes of Plimer at al.
Quoting the editor of Energy and the Environment does very little for your argument Adrien. Seriously.
Brian – Adrien, if you have a real and existential threat wouldn’t you want to get your best minds to work to see what should be done about it?
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Yes but two things. First if! We need to know the veracity of this ‘if’ unencumbered by political agency. If not then large restructuring of the economy is not justified.
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Second: If one is to fudge the research so that it is entirely consistent with a political mission inevitably facts must be supressed to paint this consistency. Inevitably also this will give opponents of doing something something solid on which to base their objections. Hence Climategate and Bolt et al can now harp on about being right and doing something gets shelved…
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See the problem?
Adrien,
Large restructuring of the economy is not required in any event. Unless, of course, emissions must be eliminated in this finacial year, rather than over 30 years. Therefore there is no need for there to be any cover up, and consequently, there is’nt.
Yes, I see the problem. It’s denialists like Adrien who are the problem. They still keep making the discredited claim that the science is fudged and they still keep pushing their ideological barrow that there is no existential threat posed by anthropogenic global warming.
Those with their heads in the sand will be the first to drown.
When I think about it some more, Adrien is kind of right to suggest that there is a conspiracy/cover up going on. But it has nothing to do with global warming, as suggested by some, it is a cover of the global financial crisis and where did all of that money go. If there was a global conspiracy with the potential to wrest global control into the hands of a few then it was to via the financial stripping of trillions of dollars from the world’s economies. If huge amounts of monies were lost from investment funds around the world then that money was funnelled somewhere. Where is it? I suspect that if you find that little treasure trove you will also find the rumour mill that is suggesting that the scientists of the world are planning a global takeover using climate change as a cover.
What a great way to make a getaway. Lay a smoke trail of blame and recrimination about something entirely unrelated, but big enough to create an argument that will last for years.
I, for one, welcome our newly enrichened egghead overlords.
It’s obvious then, Ute Man, that you know something. How did you know that these greedy overlords were egghead shaped??? Huh? How did you know?
If I told you bilb I’d have to….etc.
Adrien, silkworm is right. At 81 you said “fudge the data” and then @ 87 it became “fudge the research” as some sort of self-evident assertion that doesn’t need evidence.
Unless you can provide genuine evidence, your contribution on this thread is not welcome.
I’m sorry to read these remarks of yours Adrien. Perhaps I missed it but I’d taken you for being a little sharper than you show here.
There is no doubt about the basic science or its implications for the kinds of policy objectives we should have, Yet even if there were serious doubt, mitigation would be justified on other grounds, with the foreclosure of climate change a clear bonus.
Fran, I just caught up with the rest of “What is truth?” thread and he did OK there, and is welcome here, but not with that sort of anti-AGW stuff.
Just. Not. Interested.
For some reason here, I’m reminded of this great Neal Stephenson rave in ‘Zodiac’.
“Rebecca showed me samples of his flacks’ work: “Many environmentalists have overreacted to the presence of these compounds…” not chemicals, not toxic waste, but compounds “… but what exactly is a part per million?” This was followed by a graphic showing an eyedropper-ful of “compounds” going into a railway tank car of pure water.
“Yeah. They’re using the PATEOTS measuring system on you. A drop in a tank car. Sounds pretty minor. But you can twist it the other way: a football field has an area of, what, forty-five thousand square feet. A banana peel has an area of maybe a tenth of a square foot. So the area of the banana peel thrown on the football field is only a couple of parts per million. But if your field-goal kicker steps on the peel just as time is expiring, and you’re two points down …”
“PATEOTS?”
“Haven’t I told you about that?”
“Explain.”
“Stands for Period At The End Of This Sentence. Remember, back in high school the hygiene pamphlets would say, ‘a city the size of Dallas could get stoned on a drop of LSD no larger than the period at the end of this sentence.’ A lot easier to visualize than, say, micrograms.”
“What does that have to do with football?”
“I’m in the business of trying to explain technical things to Joe Six-pack, right? Joe may have the NFL rulebook memorized but he doesn’t understand PCBs and he doesn’t know a microgram from cunnilingus. So a microgram is about equal to one PATEOTS. A part per million is a drop in a railway tank car-that’s what the chemical companies always say, to make it sound less dangerous. If all the baby seals killed last year were laid end to end, they would span a hundred football fields. The tears shed by the mommy seals would fill a tank car. The volume of raw sewage going into the Harbor could fill a football stadium every week.”"
Adrien #81 – utter crap. Science can, and always has been about solving problems.
So, any time that science is asked by a policymaker to review a problem: drought, tuna, solar flares, asteroids – they hopelessly compromise their findings to prove a point? Did the world’s governments some and say “Science, put our whole fossil fuel-based economy in doubt, we’re a bit bored and want to redesign our industrial system.”
Ptui – I spit on your gravy.
And #84. Your quote comes from a submission to the UK Commons enquiry which is still sitting. By giving any old submission the impramatur of the UK parliament – I call you TROLL!
And quoting Sonia B-C, whose stated aim is to show that climate is driven by solar radiation (re the work of her late husband) and will do pretty much anything to discredit alternative explanations regardless of their scientific veracity, your credibility on the matter is subterranean. Her journal E&E really is a refuge for pseudoscience.
The question of whether a risk existed that was sufficient for a treaty to be fashioned was answered early in the 1990s. Since then the science has been progressing (i.e., its explanatory power is increasing).
If the latest kerfuffle over stolen emails (why is the UK enquiry not into the security of their research institutions from theft and sabotage, also?) leads to the doubt you are voicing over ‘if’, that means climate science has taken a hit of -20 years over a single theft. This theft may have been opportunistic but it has led to a semi-organised attack from a specific area of political interest aided and abetted by a large proportion of the global media (owned by individuals who share that interest) to shed doubt on just that.
Your view of politics and science is risible. What you are implying is that if a policy-maker asks a professional assessor of any sort to investigate a question, then the motives of the questioner are transferred to the assessor. Examples of where this does happen are then used to argue it always happens. This is how the media is working at the moment and for people to pick this argument up and run with it makes them culpable in the whole, sorry process of organise denial.
If you wanting to try and find a similar situation communicating to people about health issues might be useful.
How long did it take for smoking to be understood to be harmful to not only the smoker but to others?
Then how long did it take for legislatures to enact laws protecting the non smoker?
When will society accept that obesity is harmful to the individuals health?
The debate continues and is moved around the various areas of analysis and deconstructed by different schools of thought but all the while more diabetics are being diagnosed and school aged children are being set up for adulthoods of reduced mobility and increased morbidity.
These are examples of how communicating to the public what is scientifically accepted is like butting your head against a brick wall.
When health care providers do move into the public media realm their education and motives are questioned and derided often by those with undisclosed financial interests.
The knowledge of ways to lead a healthy life is available widely , the relevant health workers are mostly keen to spread the best advice yet the public still loves to partake of various self injuring activities.
Getting back to similarities to smoking and it’s link to cancer it would suggest that in about 30 years after many long and boring years of debate the general public will accept that the science of climate change is the accepted standard and anthropogenic influence is the key driver of it.
Whether this allows adequate time for strategies to mitigate or reverse this negative effect remains to be seen.
As I mentioned on another thread attacking those less educated and more suspicious by way of their different life experience isn’t going to be useful for advancing understanding. Patience ,empathy and a positive attitude to helping others understand these matters will.
Roger @ 98, well said!
Yes, thanks, Roger. Very well said.
Phil has made the link on his post, but I wanted to highlight here also Prof Quiggin’s excellent post Four lies and an empty set. In it he deals with the interview of Phil Jones by Roger Harrabin of the BBC. Harrabin asked:
Jones replied:
Quiggin discusses the difference between the technical term “statistically significant” and the common term “significant”, and then rewords the answer:
And then goes on to say:
I think he could be onto something there. Elsewhere there has been commentary that Harrabin allowed himself to be used as a tool for the forces of evil.
Quiggin has more to say. It’s a must read.
Adrien @84: “A little like Roache commissioning research into the effectiveness of Berocca. Everyone knows it’s a marketing ploy.”
Another example for you. True story. A number of oil companies working in the North Sea gave a large grant to a marine science group, to do research into the beneficial aspects of oil rigs for fishes.
Soo, Step 1 was overlooking large volumes of oily water from oil-water separation activities on the platforms, large volumes of carcinogenic drilling mud discarded on the sea floor, unusual numbers of sea life with strange deformities, toxicity reports on chemicals in use, not to mention the potential for blow-outs, uncontrolled releases and other misadventures.
Step 2 was redefining OLD oil rigs as artificial reefs and fish breeding grounds. Do fish need reefs and breeding grounds? Of course they do!!! Bob’s your uncle.
Step 3 is to argue that the oil companies really shouldn’t remove the old rusting hulks (which are a shipping hazard at the minimum), because the fish really need artificial reefs as a result of overfishing.
Aww shucks, aint that a nice, thoughtful, environmentally-sensitive idea?
BTW, don’t mention that it would otherwise cost heaps to relocate and scrap the old rigs (otherwise known as decommissioning costs, which do horrible things to cost projections on old oilfields with multiple rigs). Remember Brent Spar? It was hiding in a Norwegian fjord at the time, until the fuss blew over.
BTW also, don’t mention that fishermen would then have a potentially concentrated access to the remaining fish, if the artificial reef argument were valid. A bit like shooting ducks in a barrel…
“Can we have another grant please, to study the lesser spotted herring as well?”
“Of COURSE you can chaps…just keep those good research reports coming!”
True story, except the “lesser spotted herring”. I spoke to one of the guys heading up the research project at the time. I can’t remember what fish he was keen on – it went in one ear and out the other. All mental efforts were temporarily diverted to stopping my jaw from gaping open in amazement. He had really convinced himself that he was performing a service to the fish. Truely amazing what rationalisation can do to a clever mind?!!
Helen, recently I heard an item on the radio about breaking records, in temperature, I think, both hot and cold. My short term memory is not quite what it used to be but I think it was running either 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 on the upside.
Couldn’t find a link, but I’d love to have one.
I think I heard that too, Brian, a couple of weeks ago?
I have a similar memory problem, but perhaps not quite as advanced. I’m finally a member of what my mum called the CRAFT club.
Brian – Unless you can provide genuine evidence, your contribution on this thread is not welcome.
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I did conflate research and data. Unwittingly. I am arguing in very good faith. To wipe me would be most disingenuous.
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Silkworm – Yes, I see the problem. It’s denialists like Adrien who are the problem. They still keep making the discredited claim that the science is fudged and they still keep pushing their ideological barrow that there is no existential threat posed by anthropogenic global warming.
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I am not a denialist. I’m actually an environmentalist. And you just don’t get it
OK Adrien, but you did make a bit of a meal of it.
We have a policy not to entertain endless anti-AGW talking points. If people want to do that they can do it on their own blogs or elsewhere.
Thread moderation isn’t my favourite pastime and doesn’t come easily to me, so no harm done.
I wonder what you’re response is to Roger, though!
We have a policy not to entertain endless anti-AGW talking points.
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So I understand. I have never entered into an AGW ‘debate’ on the negative side. And I don’t enter them at all anymore. It’s tedious and the particpants usually don’t know what they’re talking about much – including me.
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OK Adrien, but you did make a bit of a meal of it.
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I used ‘data’ when I should’ve used ‘research’. But my fundamental point was that if you allow political missions to shape scientific information you run into trouble. I stand by it. No doubt the PR apparatus dedicated to discredit or at least nuetralize the AGW hypothesis has made a mountain out of a molehill here. But look how far they’ve taken that molehill.
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It’s in the interests of the planet for those who give a damn about it to maintain as high a standard of diinterest as possible. If the lies are all on one side then that will out. But if Mr Gore and the rest insist on projecting the worst case scenarios as if they are 100% verifiable then Mr Bolt and the rest will have material to work with they mightn’t otherwise’ve had.
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There is an element of unreason on the pro-AGW side. My evidence is that I’m labelled a denialist when I’m not now and have never been any such thing. How can it be reasonable to call someone denialist if they’re merely calling attention to excessive partisanship on the part of some environmentalists? The irony is Pythonesque. I believe in fact that there’s a whole slew of deadly environmental problems besides AGW to be concerned about.
Roger – Your view of politics and science is risible.
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Would you please actually understand them before you make such declarations? I never said that science didn’t solve problems.
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What you are implying is that if a policy-maker asks a professional assessor of any sort to investigate a question, then the motives of the questioner are transferred to the assessor.
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No I’m implying no such thing. I’m saying that there is a risk of such. There are other risks. Say you’re a scientist. You have information that leads one to conclude that human civlization is threatened by human civilization. The information is complex and you believe taht you must inject a simple, unambiguous message into the culture to get the point thru.
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Fine. But in a democracy if you gloss over inconvenient facts (I am not saying this has been done) someone will point it out. Someone is also free to advocate alternative hypothesis of which solar irradiation is one.
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My view about AGW is that it is by far the best hypothesis to explain the warming phenomena and that such explanation along with knowledge of the consequences of same requires action. Moreover, I’m of the view that industrial society is damaging the ecology on many fronts and that there will be a reckoning.
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I’m also of the view that this has precipitated a circus of unreason. On one side we have the ostrich act. On the other there appears to be an almost Calvinist intolerance of any criticism whatsoever of the AGW lobby and its policy mechanisms. Here I stand in the middle of it unable to make reasoned decisions because of the massive swamp of bullshitdumped on whatever real information is buried underneath.
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In this atmosphere the denialist lobby gains ground because they are able to muster support from those repelled by the unreason of environmentalists. I am called here a denialist yet I’ve expressed no such opinion. It’s like my entitlement to ask questions is cancelled. Can you see what side people will choose in that event?
Adrian @110: “On one side we have the ostrich act…those repelled by the unreason of environmentalists”
“My view about AGW is that it is by far the best hypothesis to explain the warming phenomena…Here I stand in the middle of it unable to make reasoned decisions because of the massive swamp of bullshit dumped…”
You are all over the map there, Adrian.
Brian@108
pastime
[End blue pencil ...]
Adrien, I make no comment on your comment @ 110. At 109, I wish to point out that I didn’t call you a denialist. I said that if you are going to say that scientists are fudging, whether of data or research, then you need evidence. I’m not aware of any substantiated case of climate scientists fudging anything.
As to worst case scenarios, I saw An Inconvenient Truth twice. That’s a few years ago now, but I don’t remember unverifiable scenarios. There were two places where he was scary by omission. One was when he showed the soaring CO2 graph, which he had linked to temperature change, but didn’t explain the concept of climate sensitivity.
The second was where he pointed to Greenland and then to West Antarctica and said that if either one of those melted completely the sea level would rise 5-7 metres, or the equivalent in feet, and then pointed out what this would mean. But he didn’t say how likely this was or when it was likely to happen.
Those were a bit naughty, but there is plenty scary around which is soundly enough based. Of course, by definition such projections are not 100% verifiable.
In Hansen’s book he carefully explains why the Venus syndrome, where we lose our Goldilocks atmosphere and the seas boil dry, is a possibility:
He gives his reasons in some detail. I find that scary.
Roger Jones @ 98 – no politician worth his salt asks a question that he doesn’t know the answer to. If you are a consultant to a client you generally don’t give them a report that is going to terminate your business relationship. Elise @ 103 gives a lovely example.
Brian @113: “I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all the reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the run-away greenhouse.”
I think we can take the first two (oil and gas) as a dead CERTAINTY for being used to the max. Probably well within 1 decade for oil and 2-3 decades for gas – timeline depending on whether we ramp up gas consumption to compensate for declining oil production.
I severely doubt we will wean ourselves off these addictions before they run out, forcing us into an abrupt switch to alternative technologies. It will happen in our lifetime, for sure.
Coal is a different matter. There is more than a century of that left, at current and foreseeable rates of consumption. Do we have the species intelligence to give it up before the tipping point?
Even if the science is pretty on the money, which I do not accept give the uncertainty of computer based climate modelling, the politcal economics of any solution needs to be effectively dealt with.
Let us ignore the specific climate change economics debate and just look at the dismal science that we would rely on to guide us forward into the unknown. We (the World) is still getting over the GFC – which neither academic, private sector or government sector economists forecast (apart from a tiny few who were lone voices in the dark – some argue a stopped clock is right twice a day). Economic history is replete with examples of this type of all round failure – market and regulatory. As another example, Prof John Quiggan, the economist so highly respected by many here, was forecasting at least four or more years ago that Australia was going to be in strife because we had too much private debt. It was all going to end in tears. Hasn’t happened yet, even having been through the greatest global financial crisis since 1929. Need I point out how bad the Tresury forecasting has been on the Australian economy in the last twelve months ( and Access economics to name another highly respected group.)
So, in a nutshell, the economics is even more uncertain that the climate science.
Add on to that the domestic politics. For us we face exporting jobs and limiting economic growth plus restricting our lifestyles. Plus imposition of either straight out new taxes or massive new bureacracies and tax and transfer systems. Plus they want us to send money and technology overseas to inefficient and corrupt governments.
For the less developed countries (note the PC term for the third world – picked that up in Development Economics 301) and especially the BRIC economies, we are telling them that they can’t grow as fast as they would under an unrestricted carbon dependent economy and no you can’t have the same standard of living as us.
It is time to stop wasting effort on trying to achieve unattainable political goals and get on with life (If you want to check, I forecast the Copenhagen failure months before the conference on this blog). That means stop wasting money on ‘renewables’ until they become economically viable (e.g when the oil price actually does make prius/tesla etc cost competitive) and adapt on an as required basis.
Australia dodged a bullet when Turnbull got the boot. (I like the guy personally but his AGW obsession was misguided, politically).
Anybody here noticed the recent pullbacks on the climate science predictions about the potential increase in cyclones etc – not supported by the historical record, apparently.
Razor, it’s a while since I looked at the issue of cyclones in any detail, but when I did, my takeout was that the Caribbean basin was the only one where reliable records went back far enough to establish a pattern not perhaps explainable by natural cycles. In that case there was a three stage ramping up of activity in terms of severe cyclones. But many things have to line up for a cyclone to form. Also there is clearly a limit to how many cyclones you can have in a season in a basin.
The latest I recall is that there may be fewer strong cyclones but the cyclones we have are likely to be more intense. Here it is relevant that if the wind speed increases by 10% the destructive power increases by a third.
Predictions of that kind are tricky, but in many cases the general direction is clear. The more specific, the more difficult, as in weather forecasting. for example, we often get a prediction that there will be isolated showers in the SEQ region. Mostly they get it right, but they can’t predict whether one is going to come over my house.
Which ever way it works out, it’s not essential to proving AGW one way or the other.
I don’t want to talk about models because they are beyond my competence, but I’m more impressed with what climate scientists do than what economists do with them.
Hansen says we get our knowledge of climate from three sources – direct observation by means of the instrumental record, the paleoclimate record, and models. I understand that you can demonstrate the concept of climate sensitivity to GHGs from the first two.
” but I’m more impressed with what climate scientists do than what economists do with them”……here here to that.
I suspect that global warming is seen in the overall volume, and intensity, of tropical band storm activity. In simple terms, more heat available, more air flow. If you want to cool something down you blow harder. In this case the tropics are cooling, the poles are warming, as is the ocean mass. When you look here
http://www.oceanweather.com/data/
you can see just how much heating is going on in the tropical zone all around the globe. That is obviously not new but when more heat is retained in the air mass above those warm waters then the rate of energy transfer to the colder regions is accelerated. Storm activity is about evaporation and moisture but you do get storm like activity without the moisture, though not as severe.
“Add on to that the domestic politics. For us we face exporting jobs and limiting economic growth plus restricting our lifestyles. Plus imposition of either straight out new taxes or massive new bureacracies and tax and transfer systems. Plus they want us to send money and technology overseas to inefficient and corrupt governments”
Razor that is all just so much garbage. The reality is that changing our energy system to sustainable renewables is the most important and powerful economic boost this country can undertake. The cost is neglible and the benefits are permanent, guaranteeing Australian energy price stability forever forward. In the course of making this change unemployment will decrease to the minimum rather than increase. Global energy price instability will be the biggest threat to all countries that are not able to make the change that Australia has so easily within its grasp.
Razor
whilst we all know that modelling is only as good as the assumptions that are made, if we disregard ALL the probability weighted outcomes from the modelling (thereby including outliers) the result is inaction. Based on the probable scientific outcome inaction is not an acceptable response as it will only increase the probabilities of the bad consequences occurring.
So whilst I appreciate your concerns regarding uncertainty, the consequences of inaction in this instance are greater than the probabilty that the modelling by climatologists is incorrect.
“Add on to that the domestic politics. For us we face exporting jobs and limiting economic growth plus restricting our lifestyles. Plus imposition of either straight out new taxes or massive new bureacracies and tax and transfer systems. Plus they want us to send money and technology overseas to inefficient and corrupt governments”
As with BilB I have to disagree with this statement. Whilst the ETS did get bastardized (and ironically the Greens’ plan would actually be better at this stage) it DID factor against “carbon leakage” through ensuring that imports were charged for the carbon emitted in production before coming on shore, and our exports trreated the same.
The ETS is NOT A TAX (bigtoe), it is a market based system in which the market puts a price on a commodity. Think of it as if the cost of steel has doubled. I work with businesses to address some of the financial impacts of emissions trading schemes, and they do not want to raise prices more than they have to, and many are viewing this as an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage through improving efficiencies and reducing production costs (already some good things start to happen!). Under this system the bureacracies would be limited to audits and system management (which are ALL already in place) as the bulk of the compliance cost would fall on industries. An ETS would ENCOURAGE the development of technologies (and therefore business) in this country as people develop products designed to reduce emissions in the australian context at least cost.
This compares very favourably to the direct action policies of the coalition where the bureacracy would increase significantly in response to the imposts associated with running programs, increased taxes to pay for measures (which have been costed as significantly higher than an ETS), and has already chosen the technological outcomes, therefore will not foster technology development in this country. There is NO provision against carbon leakage in the coalition plan, therefore the probability of jobs leakage and export reduction under that scenario is greater.
Razor @ 116
“Anybody here noticed the recent pullbacks on the climate science predictions about the potential increase in cyclones etc – not supported by the historical record, apparently.”
Well, not specifically, but perhaps this may enlighten you a bit ?
Looks liked you’ve been “sucked in” to me
Here is an interesting piece:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/greenpeace-admits-bbc-got-it-wrong-about-arctic-sea-ice-melting-20090820
Elise – You are all over the map there, Adrian.
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I am? Why exactly?
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Brian – I wish to point out that I didn’t call you a denialist.
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I didn’t say you did. Just that I’ve been called that. What obtains here is a Manichean zero sum game. You’re either for us or against us. If, as I do, you believe the AGW is a a valid theory and necessitates action but harbour criticisms about the pro-AGW lobby’s thinking and agency then, instead of such criticism being assimilated and assessed in the spirit of an open society you’re besmirched as ‘evil’. It’s not right old bean. Not accusing you.
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I said that if you are going to say that scientists are fudging, whether of data or research, then you need evidence.
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There are a variety of scenarios being passed off as 100% truth when they aren’t any such thing. But the insistence that glaciers will disappear in a little while when they actually won’t is?
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I don’t remember unverifiable scenarios
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You say that but then go on to say point out Gore little bit of naughtiness. He presents a scenario where Florida is underwater. Others have denied this is possible. What Gore has done, for maximum impact is present the worst case scenarios in an over-simplified manner.
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The hockey stick’s a good example. Gore’s hockey stick resembles a hockey stick. The denialists chart of the same data presents two bumps. This is a classic case of data being misrepresented by political agents for the convenience of their case. Neither side seems to want to admit that the data is 100% reliable because we don’t have the means to obtain information with such a degree of reliability. We don’t know.
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I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.
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A classic case of what I mean. Venus is a nightmare illustration of what coud happen here. It was used by such as Carl Sagan to illustrate the possible consequences of unchecked industrialisation before th AGW brou ha ha. But it is by no means dead dertain. We don’t know that for sure. There are differences between Venus and Earth. For example Venus is a lot closer to the Sun.
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Again my point is not to refutre the AGW theory which I don’t. But to call for a little more sobriety in the discourse. Eschatology only aids the opposition.
Sorry – “Neither side seems to want to admit that the data is 100% reliable”, should read: “Neither side seems to want to admit that the data is not 100% reliable.”
Hey, Razor,
Have a go at pointing out the waste of effort and the jobs exporting aspect to this project
http://www.gizmag.com/enerken-edmonton-waste-to-biofuels/14393/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=5f66cfb5a8-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
Pterosaur @ 121 – your link to deltoid is discussing climate modelling – not observation.
From the World Meterological Office via Wattsupwiththat:
“”. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.”
The latest WMO statement should indicate definitively (and once again) that it is scientifically untenable to associate trends (i.e., in the past) in hurricane activity or damage to anthropogenic causes”
Bilb @ 119 – “The cost is neglible ”
Balderdash. Renewable energy sources (wind,solar,wave) are siginificantly more expensive than coal or gas fired because you need to always have a base load csapacity to back them up which has to be priced in. Current renewable potential base load sources such as geothermal or heat storag/pumps are not economic.
This argument that the ETS is not a Tax is no differnet to saying that PAYG income tax is not a tax fore those who get welfare benefits back equal or greater. I don’t have the figures handy but I think about 40% of tax-payers are either equal or net gainers in our tax and transfer system. The ETS proposes to do the same – low income earners will supposedly get more back and high income earners will not be fully compensated – net cost = tax.
Razor 127
I think, Razor, that you are underinformed on this. Whereas wind is more expensive than coal power at present, CSP is cost effective against coal when compared equally for full base load performance, even at todays rates. Apart from that the full potential of photovoltaic has not been commercially available, but soon will be. This will make it possible for private dwellings to be energy flow exporters even after charging electric vehicles with systems that pay for themselves in less than 5 years. From all of the information that I am seeing the future is really exciting. The implications of this for the electricity generation industry are highly significant, and will mean that all of the infrastucture for the current population will be replaced with just 70% of the renewables capacity previously envisaged. Just think about that, your household with no electricity bill and no fuel bill for your local and medium range daily commute. That is every bit as good as a tax reduction.
Wind does need a flexible baseload to back it up, true, wave less so, but the only baseload system that can efficiently provide that is CSP with its heat storage system providing the ability to dynamically manage the energy output.
Razor,
from the link I provided:
The new study conlcudes:
“Thus, considering available observational studies, and after accounting for potential errors arising from past changes in observing capabilities, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone frequency have exceeded the variability expected through natural causes.”
(My emphasis)
Razor @114 “No politician worth his salt asks a question that he doesn’t know the answer to. If you are a consultant to a client you generally don’t give them a report that is going to terminate your business relationship.”
Valid point and should be the fulcrum in this discussion. However, in my experience the relationship may not entirely be terminated, but placed in an endless holding pattern to keep you out of the loop. Before my health got the worse of me, I was participating in research in relation to a major local conservation issue. The overall project was funded by a conglomerate of Government agencies as well as business groups. Just to formulate the research question for my minor part involved extensive haggling/consultations and contortions on my part. Frustrated in the process and out of interest, I started to look at the efficacy of scientific input into political processes. Whence I came across some research which suggested there is a high probability that political decision makers are more likely to base their decisions on their ‘political gut instinct’ rather than the information provided by scientists commissioned. Sorry, I don’t have that research at hand anymore, from memory it was local and state government politicians in relation to urban planning. Thus, no matter how you communicate science to the decision makers, they will only take the action which they seem to be able to politically justify. The art of Sir Humphrey Appleby rules over any amount of science of AGW.
Bilb if CSP (I had to look that up – I didn’t think a Commonwealth Service Pension would be the answer) is economically viable then goodo – get on with it. Can’t see them being too useful in the middle of a European winter, mind you. And I am all in favour of going Nuclear including building bombs.
Ootz – amazing isn’t it – politcians make political decisions. Even the Greens.
pterosaur – if that isn’t a back down from “there are going to be more and stronger tropical storms because of global warming” to a position of “we can’t detect it but our models say it should happen” then I’m driving forward when I back out of my garage (in my 5.7 ltr V8).
Bilb @ 124 – OK, let me add a clarification – we will export jobs in industries that rely on carbon intensive power.
And if it is economically viable to do that sort of recycling then get into it, but it shouldn’t be done if it is not cost competitive without subsidisation.
Actually Razor, the European winter is a very good example of the use of CSP. If your google Desertec Europe CSP you will see the cunning plan that is under way. This plan places CSP plants across the top of the African continent and cables the electricity to Europe across the straits of Gibraltar and from Libya to Italy into the European grid. Most effective in the northern winter as Africa is in its summer. Neat huh. In the process it provides income stability for a range of African states which will serve to provide something of economically driven and illegal emmigration barrier for Europe. That is a win, win, win, win, solution.
Adrian @123, you ask why I said you were all over the map.
I am probably wasting my time writing this, but take a gander at just some of your own words:
“My view about AGW is that it is by far the best hypothesis to explain the warming phenomena…”
“Here I stand in the middle of it unable to make reasoned decisions because of the massive swamp of bullshit dumped…”
Now, EITHER you think it is the best hypothesis by far (thought bubble #1),
OR you have no bloody clue and are unable to make reasoned decisions (thought bubble #2),
OR you think it is a massive pile of bullshit (thought bubble #3).
If you seriously want to hold all these positions at once, then you are indeed all over the map.
Elise – Okay. See your point. I thing AGW is a problem. I’m not sure how much of a problem due to the dissembling and hysterical shitfights. How much of a problem has an impact on how much time we have, what can be done about it and how to go about it.
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I also find that I’m often castigated for suggesting that solutions like the Carbon Producers Rorting Scam are no such thing.
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Am I clear?
Adrian @138, I suspect that you will find, if you look really carefully, that most of the “hysteria” is coming from those who do not want to hear that AGW is a problem.
If you look up the literature on change management, you will find that people facing major change will go through a series of responses. I don’t remember it exactly, but it goes roughly like this:
First comes Denial – “It is NOT happening, I tell you; don’t be silly.”
Next is Bargaining – “It won’t happen (much) to us, and anyway we aren’t causing the problem (well, maybe just a tiny bit).”
Next is Anger – “Will you SHUT UP telling me that there is a problem; now GO AWAY.”
Next is Blaming – “You are LYING, you are making this whole damn thing worse, and anyway the others are the ones causing the problem.”
Next is Helplessness – “It’s too damn late anyway, and we will just have to accept it.”
Finally there is Acceptance, that there is a problem which needs to be addressed. But not before a good deal of kicking and screaming…
Adrian, have a good hard look at the source of the hysteria, anger and rage that you are sensing.
Hey Elise, I have no problem accepting the reality of global warming.
Adrian @140, I don’t mean you, Adrian. I am referring to your repeated remarks about “hysteria”.
Who exactly is hysterical, and why?
Actually Elise Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief run:
Denial
Anger (this includes blaming)
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Really though nobody who want the problem fixed wants acceptance or depression. Bargaining is what we want … because unlike a death, there are solutions.
Fran @142, that was stages of grief, Fran.
However, I suspect the change management guys just “borrowed it” and adapted it a bit.
Have a look at what happens to people who think they are about to be “let go”, “downsized”, “outsourced”, “reengineered”, etc.
Denial first, then Bargaining (in hopes to avoid the problem), then Anger and Blaming, then they fall into Depression, then Acceptance that they are unemployed and getting on with finding another job.
“Really though nobody who want the problem fixed wants acceptance or depression. Bargaining is what we want … because unlike a death, there are solutions.”
Actually, I disagree Fran. Bargaining is what Abbott and Co are wanting to do – a minimalist action which they vainly hope will stave off having to do anything more major.
Depression (“it’s all hopeless, and nothing can be done”) is something you hear from devoted greenies who do not accept any technical solutions. For most people this is just a stage, which they eventually pass through when they can see a way forward.
There are solutions, totally agree with you here.
However, we need to reach Acceptance of the situation, in the same way that someone who has lost their job reaches acceptance that they no longer work for the old firm. It does not mean acceptance that nothing can be done. At least not in my readings on change management. It means that you finally accept that you will have to deal with the problem.
Elise@143 said:
That’s one form of bargaining of course, but devising responses to the problem that can plausibly mitigate the damage is also “bargaining”.
One does hear that from greenies sometimes — the scale of the problem and the apathy from government can be very wearing — but I hear that line a lot more often from the advocates of doing nothing, from whom it makes a lot more sense. Accepting that we’ve screwed the pooch so we just have to cop our lumps and manage as best we can — “humans are very adaptable” in Abbott-speak — is a goodway of sidestepping the scince. Indeed one could say the science was too optimistic and run that line. “it’s all much too late — humans will never agree” — was pretty much the anti-mitigation troll Iain Hall’s line here a while back.
Fran @144: “That’s one form of bargaining of course, but devising responses to the problem that can plausibly mitigate the damage is also “bargaining”.”
In that case, either you are proposing stopping part-way through the change management sequence, or you are proposing a whole new schema.
From memory, K-Rs 5 stages do not have to be in that order nor do all 5 stages have to be occurring at all. One can cut through, with appropriate help or natural predisposition, straight to acceptance and moving on.
Who exactly is hysterical, and why?
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I am. I just took the brown acid and then an announcement came over the loudspeakers saying: Whatever you do don’t drop the brown acid. Apparently it’s seven and a half hours of John Howard lectures on how to bring up teenage girls.
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Actually Razor@ 134. A while ago I got to know a Geomorphologist reasonably well at the local Uni. He made a substantive case that Cyclone frequency does not increase with AGW. However there is high probability of increased frequency of super typhoon or cyclone. He also has a very public shit fight with the local council for allowing development to occur in areas that he deems flooding or landslide prone, where as the Councils contracted Engineer gave it the all clear (suprise?). I know on whom I put my money and based on that information, I actually moved onto higher ground and made sure the house will be protected from main direction of destructive force of cyclones.
I agree with you, models as with all abstract ‘official wisdom’, only make limited sense. In the end, you have to rely on your own wits and get intelligence of reliable sources from the ground and most importantly act on it. The biggest potential for communicating what science is telling us, is for each concerned individual to act accordingly and consistently. From my understanding, nothing enhances communication more than the communicator acting consistently and accordingly to what the point of the communication is. Thus, I would like to know what personal action scientist and activists in the AGW field have taken.
Ootz, the problem with a lot of engineers is that they tend to make simplifying assumptions (like, eg, the world won’t change), which means they can miss things.
Ootz @148: “From my understanding, nothing enhances communication more than the communicator acting consistently and accordingly to what the point of the communication is. Thus, I would like to know what personal action scientist and activists in the AGW field have taken.”
Yes. Good point.
And you would be one of those investors who would be suitably alarmed by a CEO and Board who predicted great things for the company in the year ahead at their AGM, while selling large chunks of company stock that they held personally.
Do they walk their talk?
Perfectly sensible concept.
But don’t poitn out the carbon burnt flying to Bali or Copenhagen – or the houses and cars of the acolytes. They are off limits because they “offset”, supposedly.
Razor the amount of carbon burnt by people attending meetings like Bali and Copenhagen does distress me, but I haven’t posted on the issue yet. Some day I might, but it needs to be more than two lines and I don’t have any interesting information or ideas beyond the obvious.
It is responsible for scientist to try to work out what the future pattern of cyclones will be. As I said, the observational record back in time isn’t long enough, apart from perhaps the Caribbean, to establish trends. That leaves you with theory and models. From the new paper (via the link pterosaur @ 121):
That’s the best they can offer at the moment. Nothing is certain, but you’d be a fool to ignore it.
When I looked into this a few years ago, I was impressed with the work of Webster and Holland. In this study they found a 30 year trend towards more and stronger cyclones, but say 30 years is not enough.
The same authors did an interesting study on the North Atlantic (Caribbean) basin, where there were reasonably reliable shipping records going back to the beginning of last century. The link is broken, but there is a report here.
Interesting, but it’s only one study and not beyond criticism.
Here’s something else to ponder.
Fran @ 112, thanks. I didn’t type anything until I was 57, and since a heart operation at 60 I have a propensity to hit the key next door. Not joking. A triple bypass can do that to you.
Not what happened this time, but actual typing takes up more of my brain capacity than most, and I can’t get beyond having to watch the keyboard.
Brian @152, re the carbon burnt by flying to meetings at Copenhagen etc, you might not be concerned. However, it is my observation the average punter is concerned and deniers have pointed out several perceived inconsistencies by AGW proponents. The emphasis is on perceived, rather than actual inconsistencies. To paraphrase Elise, those who insist that we take action on AGW need to appear to walk the talk, lead the way, showing us how it could be done. Rather than seeing it as a problem, I suggest, to look at it as an opportunity. Science not only has the capacity to show us where we are going wrong, but also how we can contribute as individuals to change, as opposed to structural and social changes. Do not underestimate the power of individual action, they are the low hanging fruits as well as cognitive bridges to perceive the possibilities of larger changes.
Brian @153. My sympathies, as I too have chronic health problems, which result in some quirky cognitive problems particular too when writing as well as severe tiredness. Thus, apologies for my often mangled writing and at times snarly comments.
The hoary old “how much Co2 was emitted by [fill in the name of some person associated with advocacy for mitigation]” is really just irrelevant ad hominem. It also sets up a classic tu quoque response — these are people who spend every other day whining about being assailed for their dissent and demanding civil discourse. These are people who boast of burning extra CO2 on Earth Day of say CO2 is good for us and who fear that these people will be successful in securing policies to mitigate Co2.
The answer is of course, not very much CO2 at all. Would the planes have not flown to Copenhagen if they had done it by video conference? Hardly, in most cases and in any event. if they had their way, a suitable price on emissions would be imposed and a cap to which they and everyone else would be subject would arise, and of course one would not need further conferences on this scale.
Now personally I’d have preferred things to be done via video conference, but this really is a red herring — one of the few species that is not threatened by the current climate anomaly.
Fran @155: “…a red herring — one of the few species that is not threatened by the current climate anomaly.”
Good one!
Hey Fran, always good with words and quick on shooting down an idea along the tried and proven old black and white, left-right, right-wrong, true-false etc.
Have another look what the topic of this thread is. Let me remind you with Brians lead in:
“Darren points out that Tim Flannery reckons that climate scientists themselves should get out more and communicate to the public. But it’s not as simple as that. Remember when the East Anglia affair broke scientists reported serious threats including death threats.”
Well it is really simple. Have an other look what I wrote at @154. If science wants to win the PR war, as opposed to the ideological war, then they need to shift the debate sideways. Don’t beat people to death with ‘we are all rooned unless we…….’. How about ‘Look, because of the dire situation this is what I am doing and this is what you can do’. As I said I believe personal action allows for larger political and structural changes to occur.
I recon if Tim would do a feature in an appropriate glossy showing what he personally is prepared to do, he would gain much more credit for what he is saying and I can’t really see how that could be turned around into a threat.
AFAIK people can relate better to practical hands on stuff than theory.
Here is another “complete waste of human effort” for Razor to consider, from The Oil Drum:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6264 Industrial solar thermal
I did check up on Tim Flannery’s biography on the net. He does not have a personal website. Could anyone tell me if he is on facebook, as I don’t have an account.
I have a lot of respect for Tim, don’t get me wrong. In fact going through his bio, I heard of him as early as when he was at South Australian Museum and found him fascinating. I share his interest in fossils. Although I have never read any of his books entirely I am familiar with most of his work and generally on the same wave length. When Howard made him Australian of the year I thought it was a good choice. However I can’t find any information what he personally does to reduce his carbon footprint or any other personal details in that respect. I do understand privacy is an issue, though other ‘celebrities’ find ways to manage a balance with the privacy-publicity issue. A scientist with the charisma, background and high public standing as Tim is well positioned to communicate the relevant message on a more personal level and dare I say lead. The great unwashed mass can relate better to the urgency of this complex matter expressed on a personal level than to the cabals from the ivory tower. For Tim to say some thing like ‘Look, because of the dire situation this is what I am doing and this is what you can do’ would work a treat.
Ootz, I think Al Gore has done what you suggest @ 159, but it doesn’t stop the screeches of, “Oh, he produces as much CO2 as a small African country” (a lie), and “Al Gore is fat!!!!111!!eleven!!” (Which may be true but is irrelevant).
You can’t win with these fuckers, because they’re quite happy to tell ten more lies while you’re debunking the first one.
David, don’t you think I realise that. My argument is, you can’t communicate science with psychopaths. Just as well the majority of the population are not psychopaths. Of the remaining ‘normal’ lot, only a small amount are scientist, or that way inclined, and the overwhelming majority them you don’t need to convince about the science of AGW. That leaves us with still the biggest part of the population. Then take all the rusted on, short sighted, self absorbed BAU proponents, No communication of science will move them in a hurry. So this leaves us with probably still way more than half the population which are capable and willing to change for to avoid the risks associated with our carbon emissions. But these kind of folks you don’t beat them around their heads with ‘science. Give them some thing they can relate to and that is more solution orientated and on a scale they can comprehend. As Martin Luther once said:
“And even if the world ends tomorrow, I will still plant an apple tree today.”
By my assessment we have got 5 to 10 years to change, and there is still a very high probability that I personally will have to cope with some shit associated with AGW at an age where I would preferred to take it easier, so I have a personal stake in this too. I came to the conclusion that I’d rather do something more tangible then feeding the ideological war/trolls. For a while I did engage in it, even here on LP, it gave me a sense of where these characters are coming from. I used to confront acquaintances and friends re AGW only to gain some Socratic unpopularity. Now I found I have more influence by being seen to act consistent with my believes. ‘If the mountain does not come to Mohamed, then Mohamed goes to to the mountain’ kind of thing. My friends and acquaintances now start seeing that the small personal steps that I take re AGW
make sense and are steps that anybody can do. More so by seeing practical applied hands on solutions they inadvertently accept the reality of AGW threat.
Well I just wish people like Tim F would ‘communicate’ the equivalent rather then just with more of the same science. As there is no political leadership we need other public and charismatic figures to lead in the ways that we can change despite the lack of political guts. Otherwise we all still will whining on LP, or the equivalent, about the political inaction in a decade. Waiting like some cargo cult for the goods to arrive. Well the time has arrived to take the horse from the back and put in front of the cart.
Ootz, om balance I think I’d welcome more from Flannery, because he’s a good communicator. I have heard that he charges for speaking gigs, unlike Carter. Bear in mind also that he’s not always completely reliable on the science.
On Bush Telegraph yesterday Michael Cathcart spoke to Andy Pitman and David Karoly about the perils of communicating climate science.
Well into the interview Cathcart asserts that there are two sides to the debate with genuine scientists disagreeing with AGW. Pitman said, Well actually, no, whereupon Cathcart offered Plimer. Pitman let him down rather gently, I thought.
The program does offer genuine climate science from time to time to its rural following. Last year they even had David Spratt on the show, who may well be perceived as an alarmist. He didn’t hold back.
On Wednesday they are going to talk to Will Steffen about what’s coming up in climate science and policy in relation to the bush.