The other day, I mentioned Clive Hamilton’s series of posts on climate change denialism at The Drum. In today’s edition, Hamilton comments:
Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.
Indeed. But there’s something of a perception lurking around here that ‘science’ is one thing and ‘politics’ another, which I think is false.
It’s certainly the case that whatever ammunition denialists use against climate science is not itself part of the ‘skepticism’ which is said to be integral to the scientific method. Rather than proposing an alternative hypothesis which would better explain the range of observations made, any line of attack is used, no matter how contradictory with others it may be. So, what we have in denialist discourse is all politics, and no science. No scientific method.
It’s important to underline this point. What denialists cannot provide is anything which can approximate to a truth statement. Methodological doubt, Cartesian style, is supposed to be a prelude to the uncovering of a truth, not a rhetorical strategy of dismissal. Climate change skepticism, contrary to the claims of some of its proponents, has absolutely nothing to do with ‘The Enlightenment’. Quite the contrary.
Their other classic move is to hold science itself to an impossible standard. Somehow the findings of climate science have to be unequivocally true. What we actually see, then, in this contre-temps is a debate over what constitutes truth. Statements made by the IPCC, for instance, are couched in terms of Bayesian probabilities, rather than ‘predictions’. It’s the same form of statement as with genetic predispositions individuals may have to particular diseases; having such a predisposition does not imply that one will necessarily develop the disease. Probability is not destiny or fate. But probabilities of 90%, as in the IPCC’s Fourth Report, are very strong indeed.
But asking science to articulate truth, if truth is understood as incontrovertible knowledge, is asking it to do something it cannot do.
Nor is the process of reaching a consensus the only method of achieving scientific truth. Statements such as that a 2 degree rise in global temperature is a ceiling beyond which catastrophic climate change will occur are artefacts of a particular process, which is not unrelated to the previous adoption of that range in EU public policy. That’s not to say that it has no merit, or isn’t ‘true’. If anything, the likelihood is that things a lot worse than envisaged will happen if temperature can be restricted to this range, for a range of reasons. The ‘consensus’, then, is likely to be more conservative than the actuality.
That’s also because the model of expert knowledge being the foundation of public policy is an out-dated one – politics and values always intervene, and must intervene, in the process of arriving at a mediation between science as truth and policy as truth effect. To the degree that scientists are being asked to do something other than what a notion of a bounded rationality would suggest, it’s best that they, and we, recognise this. The imbrication of science and values is not of itself a problem, or need not be. Here we can learn from Max Weber’s insights in Science As A Vocation.
In Hamilton’s writing, as in the work of others who are concerned about science communication in a political context, there seems to be an implicit belief that communication is a straightforward process of explaining science to a public. That is not so. And not just because some publics lack knowledge of scientific process, but also because there are different cultural and affective dispositions which inflect how the message is received.
It’s not the case that communication on climate science fails because it’s mediated through a political lens, full of noise created by denialists and politicians and the media. Or rather, it’s not wholly true, because communication is never linear, but always mediated. The challenge is not better to communicate a truth, but rather to realise that the construction of a truth is always via mediation, and that values and politics are, and must be, part of that.
To circle back to the question the post posed; Pilate asked a good question. But the answer to it is not that the truth cannot be discovered. It is to recognise that truth is a matter of persuasion, involving particular dispositions among interlocutors. Values and fact, therefore.
Excellent post Mark! One of the most thoughtful I’ve read on this topic.
I wish I could add something more substantive than praise but…
Cheers, mick!
I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s actually at stake in the underlying philosophy of the debate, and how we can go beyond a simplistic view that all that’s needed is a more patient explanation of ‘the facts’.
“dispositions which inflect how the message is received”
this a very important observation. Invisible to the presenter is the disposition of the listener. This is something well known, I suspect, to those whose primary role it is to get information across with certainty, but to those whose primary occupation is entirely different, scientist perhaps, preparing the listener to be in a receptive frame of thinking is not something that would necessarily think come to mind. It is going to be a sad slow process if the climate message must wait for a suitable climate disaster to be put across each time.
@3 – BilB, as well as that, I was also thinking of patterned variations in people’s pre-existing attitudes about climate change. There’s been some interesting work done on this by social scientists and anthropologists.
Mark, this may be of interest:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/climate-wars-give-science-bad-name/story-e6frgcjx-1225833598122
Science and environmental communication is a fast growing area, as scientists are increasingly – and in many cases unexpectedly – being cast as public intellectuals.
Thanks, Terry, that is interesting.
I see Ian Chubb’s making the same point I’m making:
I’m less confident that the suggestions that explaining the rigour of peer review would get very far, however.
Thanks, Mark. I believe a lot of the denialists are coming at this from an a priori worldview based on fideism.
“Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith [or ‘politics’] is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths”.
The scary thing about such an outlook, is that it is impervious to rational argument. As Nietzsche said, “a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism
Great post and level-headed comments – mein Gott!
I like this from Canada’s The Globe and Mail: climate change denial is “An Epic Game Of Nitpicking” http://bit.ly/atH7Sa
And I can’t part without adding: “Those least convinced of humanity’s role in climate change were aged over 50″ http://bit.ly/9Vqq4p
I wonder if climate change science is more readily accepted by people with training in the social sciences, then. Three years of undergrad Research Methods is all the statistical training I can lay claim to, and I’m quite comfortable with endless statistical jiggery-pokery by climate change scientists that results in answers expressed in probabilities. OTOH my skeptical elderly father is an engineer… who fell silent when I mentioned that greenhouse theory is based on the physical/chemical properties of the CO2 molecule. That’s Real Science, you see!
I don’t believe, however, that the assertions of the denialists on (frex) the Hamilton articles can be dignified as ‘politics’. Hamilton’s error is to believe that all the listeners are people of good(ish) will and we just need to calibrate the message to make it more attractive. Now that might be the case with my Dad, but many denialists, I’m afraid, are in the category of Pontius Pilate, who, as Bacon noted, asked the question but would not stay for an answer. Their mob-style “thought” doesn’t qualify as politics, in my book.
@9 –
I think it probably is, Chookie. I know nothing much of climatology, but I can get my head around the process and how knowledge arises from it, and what sort of status various statements about the present and the future have.
Yes, I think that’s right. It goes back to what I was saying about a fairly naive belief that a message can be communicated in a straightforward fashion.
The denialists are certainly not doing politics in the good sense of that word, but it’s essential to recognise that their motivations are political, and their arguments, not rational or scientific. Perhaps ideology would be a better term.
@7 and 8 – thanks!
Thank you very much Mark. I particularly like your formulation of the problem as one requiring “a mediation between science as truth and policy as truth effect.” We are up against it but hopefully policy heads charged with the responsibility of making policy on the basis of best available scientific knowledge might find a way of explaining what they are doing or intending based on the sort of understanding you propose.
At this point I’d throw into the mix what I’ve argued elsewhere before which is that genuine philosophical skepticism, following from Pyrrho, holds that reason has no capacity to come to any conclusions at all. Without knowing it our modern day “sceptics” are indeed really Pyrrhonists in so far as they don’t actually appear to be open to rationally valid argument. By that I mean that they simply reject the validity of rational evidence and conclusions drawn from it. Unfortunately, unlike the ancient skeptics, they fail to follow Pyrrho by suspending judgement and keeping a dignified silence. You are therefore dead on in identifying AGW scepticism as no form of genuine scientific scepticism and I would add to that they are not authentic philosophical sceptics either.
The denialists, on the other hand, are clearly the agents of existing class power. It appears that they are very capable, via their media monopolies, of orchestrating “scepticism” as a smoke screen and “sceptics” as a political mass behind which they can continue to engross themselves at the expense of others at least up until the point at which the planet cedes it’s capacity for homeostasis.
Scientists are going to have to take the lead in communicating what they know and how they know it at a very direct level. Public meetings, public lectures, consistent effort. Policy makers and political leaders must work harder. The task of environmentalists and convinced others is to find ways to illustrate the size and depth of our genuine concern instead of leaving the running to science communicators and self appointed media gurus who confound the public with alarmist nonsense and conspiracy theories.
Mark
I think the great problem subsuming those who accept that global warming is a threat is that for a very long time, they personally attacked those who questioned that proposition. Up until comparatively recently, it was all one way traffic in terms of invective. The term “denialist” is a relic of that. It’s echoes are obvious and one thing I will say for Hamilton is that at least he has the guts to acknowledge the association, although what he says is (to be blunt) outrageous.
In other words, climate change advocates have brought the current political climate (tried to think of another word to avoid the pun but it’s late) on themselves. It is pointless to complain about the radicals and the zealots in the doubters’ camp. There are zealots and radicals on both sides of the debate.
The other point to be made about the debate is that it is absolutely sterile for so long as the only policy alternatives are those offered by the major parties at the moment. It seems to me that there is zero chance of reducing emissions to a point which will, on the theories advanced by the proponents of AGW, avoid significant damage to the environment. In those circumstances, why are we not discussing what we do to cope? The answer of course is that it is unacceptable to either side of the debate. The proponents will see that as an effective defeat because the environment has not been “saved” and the doubters won’t admit that there is a possibility of damage.
It is also a function of the politics of the situation. Broadly speaking, there is a right/left divide between the two camps. The planned reduction of consumption and re-distribution of wealth inherent in an ETS is attractive to the left and anathema to the right. That, of course, is the great problem for any sort of climate change action. Most people are going to have to suffer a significant reduction in their amenity of life. Garnaut said as much on TV the other day. Try selling that to the Australian electorate.
The following is a fine example of why I continue to question the ethics and politics of the AGW crowd:
From The Times today:
“The Met Office secretly proposed carrying out the reassessment in December last year, soon after more than 1,000 leaked e-mails raised doubts about the integrity of some scientists at the CRU. The Times revealed on December 5 that the Department of Energy and Climate Change had stopped the Met Office from announcing the reassessment because it feared that it would be seized upon as an admission of weakness on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.”
The science is supposedly settled yet you get this sort of behaviour that is obviously politically biased from scientific institutions.
‘I think the great problem subsuming those who accept that global warming is a threat is that for a very long time, they personally attacked those who questioned that proposition.’
Do you have any specific examples of those ‘personal attacks’ to enlighten us with?
Razor’s missing link.
NickF,
Mark’s whole thrust here is to find a method with which to commnicate to the people in the function room of the Titanic, who by chance were debating whether the unsinkable Titanic could in fact sink, that the Titanic was in fact sinking despite the fact that the inclination of the deck should be a clue.
@Tim
The panel discussion hosted by Tony Jones after Martin Durkin’s documentary was a good example. Invention of the term “denialist” is another. Hamilton’s recent comments are not a new development.
Incidentally, I concede Durkin is a twit. The point is that the discussion after his documentary was shown spent very little time attacking his theory and a lot more time attacking him and his background.
The main difficulty I have had with accepting the climate change proposition is the failure (until comparatively recently) to engage on scientific issues and the resort instead to personal attacks on those who question. Given that I am not a scientist myself, it has led me to infer that they are unable to defend their arguments on a scientific basis. I concede that more recently there has been more serious challenge to arguments raised by those who question (eg the confrontation of Plimer’s arguments) but the point of my original post was to identify where the antipathy in this debate began.
@14
By all means question ethics and politics, Razor. Knock yourself out, and I know you will. I can’t help but notice however, that you left “science of the AGW crowd” off the list of the things you’re continuing to question. Must be a very good reason for that…
Gee, Razor. It sounds as though you need to read Mark’s article. Especially the part that says “Methodological doubt, Cartesian style, is supposed to be a prelude to the uncovering of a truth, not a rhetorical strategy of dismissal.”
Please explain to us how the alleged or actual ethical and political (mis)behaviour of scientific institutions has any relevance whatsoever to the physical processes that determine global climate. As far as I am aware, CO2 molecules do not alter physical properties, and glaciers do not change course in their beds, depending on the behaviour of the persons taking the measurements.
Furthermore, even if the ascriptions you cite are true, your use of them amounts to a bully yelling “These darn nerds keep moving out of the way of my punches! That makes me even madder, so it’s their fault when I hit ‘em!”
Or, could it be that you’re holding scientific truth claims to an impossibly high standard? And furthermore not expecting equally high standards of the ‘skeptical’ proponents? And furthermore not even attempting to advance any alternative hypothesis that better fits the data we are observing?
Qua Mark:
I think you’ve fairly neatly demonstrated what Mark was writing about, Razor.
BTW, the following is a fine example of why I continue to question the ethics, the politics and the “science” of the AGW deniers:
Whereas, on the other side of the debate, where people are so much more civil, belief in the reality of AGW has been dismissed as a nutty substitute for religion, misanthropists who care more about polar bears than people, gullible fools taken in by smooth talking Fat Al Gore, “warmenists”, “warmists”, scaremongers…
Was Nick Minchin engaging on the scientific issues when he dismissed AGW as a sneaky left-wing way to advance a socialist agenda? Are writers who allege a vast global scientific groupthink driven by the avaricious grant-hungry researchers engaging on the scientific issues?
Nick Ferret – evidence please. Nominate a range and history of scientists who have engaged in ad hominem arguments.
I have been involved in climate science, explaining it and defending it for two decades, some of my colleagues for longer. We have had four IPCC assessments and many special reports that investigate alternative explanations. We have had many other assessments.
There has always been opposition to anthropogenic global warming, despite it being proposed over a century ago. Opposition in the science is fine. Argument was generally fairly well managed – from 1996, I ran an information network on climate change impacts at CSIRO until spam killed it about 2002. I had many exchanges with people like the late John Daly that were always mutually respectful (I did have to ask him to stop spamming the list though – he was very insistent with his views!).
It started to get really nasty after the IPCC Second Assessment Report (1995). Personal attacks on the integrity of Ben Santer for supposedly manipulating changes that were actually a normal set of changes to make sure that the Summary for Policymakers (word for word review by policymakers) was consistent with the chapter, by making slight modifications to wording in the chapter. This usually waters down the scientific judgements.
This was around the time that opposition really began to ramp up because the science was threatening corporate self-interest. The Western Fuels Association in the US for example, promoted the work of a small group of what then were nominated as contrarians. (Contrarians are good for science as long as they stay within the limits of science – peer review etc). This is when the organised opposition really began to ramp up. And turn nasty.
On the science side, many scientists who were equivocal about the theory, and this includes IPCC authors, were being convinced that the theory was sound and the risks were real. Since then, the more confident the experts have become, the nastier the attacks and the more organised the denial. For that’s what it is – organised denial which is being practised by a significant proportion of the English-speaking media and a very dedicated crew of amateurs and professionals who are whipping up a lather of indignation in those who cannot escape their tribal views.
Calling denialism for what it is and identifying pseudoscience (e.g., Plimer, Monckton and Lomborg) for what it is, is a reasonable thing to do. If you’ve been blind to the role of science in how this debate has evolved, then that’s your problem, but don’t mistake it for the existing state of affairs.
As I’ve said before, I don’t like the phrase “the science is settled” because it isn’t and never will be. There are ongoing disputes and research projects in, for example, the precise value of climate sensitivity, balancing top-of-atmosphere energy equation, the role of aerosols, understanding and modelling cloud formation and so on.
However the questions siezed upon by the contrarian/denialist/AGW skeptic/call-em-what-you-will are not the subject of serious debate within the community. The science is not settled, but it has moved on well past these basic issues.
I disagree Martin B. Depending on what “the science” refers to and what one means by “settled” in an apt context, then it is fair enough to say the science is settled
If one is claiming “the science” that is “settled” asserts no more that there is adequate experimental proof and real world data to conclude that increases in atmospheric inventories of anthopogenically sourced CO2 and other GHGs are a driver of long term upward temperature movement on a global scale, then this claim is justified.
If one wants to say that the longterm modelling of the consequences of this movement are adequately specified for precise adaptive policy responses to deal with regional impacts then clearly it isn’t. There continue to be substantial error bars in the modelling on both sides. Just the other day we had speculation on the frequency and intensity of tropical storms likely to make land in Australia. Nor can anyone really say with anything like certainty just how quickly snowpack and glacial mass will disappear, and thus how climate change will affect water supply dependent on ice melt in any particular time frame.
Even bigger problems arise when people say that “the science is settled” means that the debate over policy responses is settled. Blurring the lines between these two is something those who oppose policy have an interest in claiming, but it is either ignorant or disingenuous.
I fully understand that “the science is settled” is intended to mean that the basic questions are settled: is there a greenhouse effect? are humans adding GG to the atmosphere? Is the climate sensitivity such that the human contribution makes a significant difference to climate? Is the climate warming in such a manner?
I understand that there is a high degree of confidence about our answers to these questions.
However IMO, and it is only an opinion, the phrase “the science is settled” is both misleading about the actual nature of science and is in many instances rhetorically counter-productive.
Roger, I don’t think I suggested that scientists, as a class, have been engaging in ad hominem attacks. I mean rather to refer to those lay people (of whom Hamilton is an example) who have engaged in attacks. I don’t mean to excuse the invective on the other side of the debate. As I have already said, I am merely opining on how we got to the point where the debate is so heavily characterised by invective.
As for “calling denialism for what it is”, that is not the object of using the word “denial”. It is a political device to dismiss a viewpoint by associating it with something egregious. It really underlines my point in that it is another means of dismissing a viewpoint without actually demonstrating error. It is nasty and it suggests an attempt to suppress dissent. In fact, why isn’t “dissenter” a perfectly acceptable term? The answer is that “dissenter” suggests good faith and those who dissent from the proposition that AGW is a serious threat are not to be allowed the presumption of good faith.
I am not your enemy in this debate. I remain to be convinced one way or the other. I view those who engage in invective rather than reasoned debate with suspicion, and I hear very little in the public domain which persuades me one way or the other. I do agree with the observation on this thread that if there is a chance that the proponents of the theory are right, then we have to take account of it. I accept that there is a respectable body of opinion in favour of the theory and that we needs to take action. The next step is to decide what action. Do we mitigate or do we adapt? It seems to me that if we accept the dire warnings then it is unlikely that a consensus will be achieved to take sufficient action adequately to mitigate. So should we start talking about adapting? If that is dismissed out of hand, then isn’t there reason to suspect that ideology is triumphing over rationality?
And before you start banging on about vested interests defeating the climate change response, shouldn’t we take note that the constituency with the most to lose from a mitigation response are the poorest in our society? Unless we move to a model of serious redistribution of wealth (which I accept is attractive to most of the participants on this blog), the poorest in our community will suffer the most as we adjust pricing in our economy to take account of the asserted environmental cost of carbon emissions.
Oh, and I don’t think I’ve been blind to the role of science in the debate (if by that you mean the discussion of the science), I just don’t think there’s been much mention of it in public debate past “This is what the science says”.
If you mean in the MSM then yes, unfortunately scientific argumentation almost always runs second to more simple, but less credible lines of argumentation.
But there are plenty of first class climate blogs out there that for many years (and I’m not just thinking about RealClimate) having been examining the scientific arguments one way or the other. And of course the IPCC reports themeselves are all ‘public domain’.
So while I’m happy to agree that the MSM coverage of the issue has been less than adequate in general (with of course some exceptions) I disagree that there has not been good arguments presented in the public domain more broadly.
Almost all of the informed commentary I hear recognises that for the false dichotomy it is. The climate has already changed and further changes are ‘locked in’ so we have to adapt to some degree. On the other hand the climate changes projected under a BAU emissions trajectory are such that nearly everyone accepts that we need to mitigate to a signficant degree as well.
Mark – But there’s something of a perception lurking around here that ’science’ is one thing and ‘politics’ another, which I think is false.
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I’m sorry, I am quite fuzzy today courtesy of some very nice wine, but aren’t you arguing that this is so? Science is the acquisition of reliable knowledge by doubt, hypothesis and experiment. Politics usually involves the assertion of interests using rhetoric and facts are often inconvenient. The barrage of PR against AGW is a an extraordinary case of rhetoric mounted to muddy water.
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But asking science to articulate truth, if truth is understood as incontrovertible knowledge, is asking it to do something it cannot do.
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It can establish facts. I think the lack of appreciation of scientific method and its implications for knowledge is under-appreciated and not well understood generally. There’s different kinds of truth. For example: What a peiece of work is Man how noble in reason how infinite in faculty etc. Hamlet is full of truth but revelas no facts. On the other hand that we inhabit a planet that spins about a star is an established fact.
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And there’s theories. A theories is a viable hypothesis, one comensurate with the facts as known but not yet established as fact itself. This is where AGW is. Of course the rub is that if we wait until it is established as fact it might be too late to avoid disaster. It might already too late.
Apologies for the mangled text. It was very nice wine. I jus’ couldn’t stop!
Nick, there was actually a fair degree of agreement from the scientists for a very long period, when debate was conducted in journals. Nobody took any notice of them until the need for a large-scale political solution became apparent. At this point, two things happened: (a) people who hadn’t ever thought about the issue felt that they needed to look into it, and (b) the fact that the political solution was bound to be disruptive became apparent.
Now I think a lot of Aussies were quite prepared to give the scientists a go, especially given that a lot of us, from our own observation, think that something IS very, very wrong with the climate. On the other hand, climatology is a comparatively new science, it’s very complex, and it deals in statistics. There was no climatology in (eg) NSW high school science in the 1980s, so we have no familiarity with the material and many of us associate statistics with lies. It is unsurprising that some people would be suspicious of the evidence, or of the motives of the scientists.
I agree that there isn’t much scientific explanation being done for Joe Public, but that’s because Joe Public doesn’t watch Catalyst or listen to the Science Show. RealClimate and Wattsupwiththat aren’t terribly newcomer-friendly either — and these are places that are probably trying to educate people to their POV. The Dept of Climate Change website doesn’t look too bad.
I am not sure that asking “Who started it?” is going to help you much. I think you’ll find that the biffo started as soon as governments (and the large corporations concerned) realised (b). In any case, a theory (or lack of one) isn’t responsible for the bad manners of its proponents.
Different standards of proof are appropriate to different aspects of public policy. ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ in criminal justice because the consequences of a wrong decision are particularly severe. The ‘skeptics’ run the standard criminal defense procedure: zero in on the weakest prosecution witnesses to taint all other witnesses and argue that the police investigation was biased because they started with a strong view about who was guilty. But in greenhouse policy the costs of not acting when it is a problem are much higher.
Nick, get the fuck out of here, lol. This whole “woe is poor denialists, who just innocently asked some questions and got viciously spanked by the orthodoxy” is so much nonsense.
Whether you agree with him or not, all you have to do is look at the persecution James Hansen has endured to see that – contra your suggestion – it would have been infinitely easier for him to take the denialist side of the debate, and that he has paid a pretty hefty career price for not doing so.
If denialists are the victims in this situation, why are they getting millions of dollars from the private sector for peddling this nonsense – not in journals, policy documents, government departments where it counts, but papers, blogs and airport books?
“Who said it first” is both completely irrelevant to the debate about the effects and severity of climate change, and untrue. If you had read Hamilton’s first post in this series, you would have seen the abuse and threats that scientists and others have endured. I think you would be hard-pressed to find emails like that sent to denialists.
Just because you assert that, doesn’t make it so. I know that I don’t use denial as “a political device to dismiss a viewpoint by associating it with something egregious”, so your assertion is wrong.
I use “denial” to describe what I see: studied, deliberate disavowal and wilful ignorance of established facts in the scientific record, and an attempt to substitute the established facts with a tricked-up, erroneous, pseudo-scientific and shoddy monument to one’s opinions, prejudices and gut-feel. That is denialism.
The fact that other people in other contexts have used the same denialist method for ‘something egregious’ is of no relevance. I see a spade, I call it a spade. Some spades have been used to dig wells, other spades have been used to dig mass graves. They’re still spades.
Error in the denialist position has been demonstrated, re-demonstrated, and shown time and time again. Error has been established for anybody who isn’t actively denialist in their orientation towards the truth claims of climate science. The fact that some people continue to propound discredited junk science is what makes them denialists.
“Dissent” is possible only in matters of opinion, politics, ethics, philosophy, etc. It is impossible in principle to “dissent” from fact. If I wish to assert that the sun did not rise this morning, that is error, not “dissent”.
Because “dissenters” have skin in the game: careers, assets and reputations that they place at risk by engaging in a deliberate, public-spirited campaign of defiance at considerable risk to their reputations and sometimes personal safety. You are debasing the term “dissenter” enormously if you attempt to apply it to armchair commentators who risk nothing, invest nothing, and who hide behind internet pseudonyms to launch email cyber-bullying campaigns against reputable scientists. That is not “dissent”. That is lynch-mob mentality.
When they start showing signs of acting in good faith, they’ll be afforded the presumption of good faith. For example, when they:
- Cease repeating previously discredited talking points.
- Cease harrassing practising scientists with abusive and threatening communications.
- Cease hacking the computer systems of taxpayer-funded institutions.
- Cease mis-stating and mis-representing that statements of climate scientists.
- Cease exaggerating the significance of minor errors that creep into a vast body of well established scientific record.
- Advance an internally coherent and empircally plausible set of scientific theories that offer a testable alternative to the basics of AGW theory.
…Then they’ll be showing signs of good faith. Until then, they’re just crank denialists who no more deserve to apply to themselves the noble labels of skeptics (Gallileo, Copernicus, Columbus) or dissenters (Mandela, Gandhi, Walesa) than do the dust bunnies under my bed.
Cease repeating previously discredited talking points.
- Cease harrassing practising scientists with abusive and threatening communications.
- Cease hacking the computer systems of taxpayer-funded institutions.
- Cease mis-stating and mis-representing that statements of climate scientists.
- Cease exaggerating the significance of minor errors that creep into a vast body of well established scientific record.
- Advance an internally coherent and empircally plausible set of scientific theories that offer a testable alternative to the basics of AGW theory.
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I’m sorry Mercurius. I don’t think you have any future in the public relations industry.
I don’t use denial as “a political device to dismiss a viewpoint by associating it with something egregious”, so your assertion is wrong.
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You don’t associate denial with something egreious you say it is something egrerious? I agree. The tabloid columnist who points out that Denver had a cold summer’s day is a liar.
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But I have encountered skepticism that is much better informed, that does wield something like facts. Like most people I can’t wrap my head around climatology and am forced to take a lot of it in good faith. I’m very passionate about conservation and’ve been of the opinion for some time that one day we’ll have to reckon with the Earth so I don’t have any ideological problem with AGW.
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However I have also encountered people who will shout anyone subjecting the finidings of the IPCC to actual skepticism or people who questihe veracity of carbon trading. The war on reason doesn’t just fought by denailists, it gets fought by some environmentalists as well. This is because it is politics, politics is war, and the first casualty of war is….
We can believe something to be true that is not, and asserting something is true does not make it so. Facts are verifiable, faith is not. Science gathers all the known facts and attempts to place it in a theory that explains the facts and gives us some predictability. There are a lot of things we don’t know and all we can really do is make decisions based on the best available evidence in front of us. There is no certainty, only probability and possibilities, so if people are going to assert truth where there is no evidence, ignore pobabilities based on evidence, deny verifiable facts and present theories that do not explain the facts – then this is not a scientific debat, this is basically wrestlemania and scientist and others behaving and speaking rationally and coherently are not going to be listened to by the others.
It is not their fault others are not playing by the rules so don’t take ownership of the problem, put it back on those who are running their own separate agendas.
Yeah well Adrien, I don’t think he is into flogging cancer sticks, dodgy burgers or share portfolios either, that is the MSMs daily bread.
Where as to your quaint pointing out the ‘enviro-untruths’ is akin to defending a gaggle of schoolyard bullies by claiming the dreadlocked kid with his insistence to be able to buy a letilburger, because it is better for you, at the tuckshop started it first. Show me one major MSM featuring environmental untruths that favors your assertion.
Science gathers all the known facts and attempts to place it in a theory that explains the facts and gives us some predictability. There are a lot of things we don’t know
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Hear hear.
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In absence of faith, and in a world of many faiths, it’s impossible to establish a universal truth the was such was done in Christendom. In such a world we must seek our universals thru science and its established facts. It’s the only thing truly universal.
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But facts are not the Truth. Because the Truth requires fiction as well. It’s an essential part of it.
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Isn’t God a fine comedian.
Nick,
I’m prepared to engage on your points in good faith (patrickg – be nice). I had already mentioned that I was okay with contrary positions within science. Here are a few paras from a paper I’m writing to make my position clear.
I think the mainstream media is the second last place to look for a sensible debate on climate change (online commentary uncritically viewed is the last place). I will bang on about vested interests deliberately undermining science because that is what is happening.
The does not mean all industry, or all coal, or all anything. There are specific efforts being made and Sourcewatch is a good place to check out some of the main players.
And I’m going to have to call you on concern trolling. The poor you suggest have the most to lose from mitigation policy, but compensation is written into the ETS, for example. And the global poor are quite clear – they want strong mitigation and compensation. Some very substantial pledges post-Copenhagen have come in from developing countries, a few unconconditional, and a few with zero carbon targets written into their plans. Conflating the poor with powerful vested interests as the set of “vested interests” to make a point is a very dishonest way to argue.
@37 -
I may not have been clear, Adrien.
What I was getting at was what I subsequently went on to discuss from para. 5 onwards. It’s a somewhat different use of the term politics. There’s a relatively trivial sense in which the research process and the articulation of findings has its own politics – established reputations, establishing reputations, manoeuvring for position, etc. That’s not to say, for a moment, that the claims that it’s all a great conspiracy to generate wealth and fame have any merit whatever. But science is made by humans working within human institutions and organisations and using human processes (eg. peer review); therefore power is at work and individuals and groups have their own power interests and positions. But, as I said, this is relatively trivial, as it’s inescapable.
What I was arguing, rather, is that the fact/value distinction, while real, is not as hard edged as sometimes claimed. That is to say; there are a range of possible responses to facts, including to do nothing. To advocate a particular response is to make a judgement of value, and thus a political judgement between alternatives. Sometimes this is clear in what is asked of scientists – for instance the example about the formulation of the 2 degree threshold I noted; that arose out of particular requests by policy makers, and the framing of the problem (acceptable/catastrophic) requires an evaluative judgement as well as an objective judgement.
That, then, is a fact which has been established through dialogue with politicians and other policy actors, and the factuality of the claim is shaped by the construction of the question (‘what degree of temperature rise would cause unacceptable damage?’). Yes, as Mercurius rightly says, there is the behaviour of climate systems, but our real interest is not benign curiosity but rather what changes in the behaviour of these systems imply for human society and well being.
Thus I want to argue against the view that science is a neutral thing and public policy and, indeed, views which shape the direction of public policy, something else again. Both are intertwined. And that goes to my point about communication as well – which is one reason why I agree with Martin that ‘the science is settled’ is a highly misleading formulation.
It’s also a counter-productive one in that it invites the sorts of niggling that ‘skepticism’ consists of. If there’s a missing footnote on p. 1399, the whole thing is a house of cards. In its implications (that there is a ‘settled’ body of fact which will not change), it is also untrue.
Oh,
and Mark – good post. This issue has becom a major research focus of mine for the moment. Once I’ve bashed what I’m writing into shape, I’ll be looking for readers to do more bashing
@38 – yes, patrickg, be nice, please.
And what Roger said in response to Nick about the choice of terms. ‘Dissenter’ has its own rhetorical overtones – courageous individual bucking the crowd, etc. I think we do have to recognise, as I said in the post, that what we mostly see in public debate is not skepticism in the philosophical and/or scientific sense but an organised campaign of denial. It’s important to recognise that by no means everyone who articulates such a position is in bad faith, however.
@40 – thanks, Roger!
Be very interested to see what you come up with.
Good post, Mark.
On terminology, I’m trying to use terms like “sceptic”, “denialist”, “contrarian” or even Quiggin’s “delusionist” more selectively when they fit. In general I’m tending to “the anti-AGW mob” or similar as a general term.
Mark I reread the sentence I quoted. Apologies. You follow on to delineate science from politics hence my confusion. I am fuzzy. But now I’ve had my 300th cup of coffee.
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Eric Hobsbawm expresses the spectrum of views on science viz the impossibility of objectivity which he describes as uncontroversial. But on one extreme end of the spectrum is the write-off of science as ‘just another ideology’. Now perhaps you don’t accept that this view is significant. But I disagree.
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To advocate a particular response is to make a judgement of value, and thus a political judgement between alternatives.
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Exactly. Not just values but primarily interests. All idealogues are capable of hypocrisy when their principles run contrary to their interests. Witness Wall St howling for govt hand-outs.
Brian, don’t forget “agnotologist”!
@44 – I’m not sure what you’re asking me about, Adrien. I most certainly wouldn’t dismiss science as “just another ideology”. I’d be interested in where Hobsbawm talks about this; perhaps he had in mind some of the egregious abuses of science in the Soviet Union. Certainly, there is a continuum as to how science is regarded.
@43 – thanks, Brian. I would agree that some more nuance in describing where an interlocutor appears to be coming from is highly desirable. Again, it’s an inescapable condition of satisfactory dialogue and communication.
Hamilton, FWIW, seems to me to see the world in black and white terms, and while that doesn’t invalidate what’s true in what he says, I think it’s less than helpful in persuading others to agree with him.
#42, #44
science as just another ideology came from Feyerabend. His objection IMO was based on scientism, or over-rationalism and science as imperialism (These are all undesirable, but should not reflect science as a “humble” discipline). In the end, I think his final objection is aesthetic (The last paras in his essay “Consolation for the Specialist”, 1970).
Certainly, this objection gives validity to “situational science”, the po-mo position of Rove et al. who suggests that reality is whatever we (they) want it to be.
Mark and Roger and Nick, you’re right, I apologise for my potty mouth; I should control it better.
I remain unrepentant about calling out the dodgy concern-trolling though…
I agree with you about Hamilton in general Mark, but I have been very impressed by this ABC series he’s writing. It’s lucid, clear and relatively unstrident.
I agree that a rhetoric arms race is not helpful for narrowing the gulf between public and scientific discourse. In some ways, I see parallels with the rise and fall of One Nation: lack of oxygen asphyxiated Hanson, not well-argued dismissal. In this respect, I think a calm monotone coupled with steady, regular debunking is the corrective needed.
Of course, once we start to see government action, I suspect a lot of this will die down naturally; it’s the illusion of decisions still to be made giving it legs. Also, the nascent ejection of Abbott and assorted winged monkeys for somebody like Turnbull will push this back to the fringes, where it belongs.
@48 – Thanks, Roger, haven’t ever got around to reading Feyeraband.
It is interesting to see the po/mo position migrate from left to right. Having said that, it’s something of a logical trajectory; given that some of the original po/mo stuff (eg. Lyotard) was anti-Marxist in its intent and formed a bridge for various French folks who’d been involved with the Communist party or various forms of Marxism or Trotskyism to go somewhere else. I also think the logic of extreme epistemological relativism is conservative, and dare I say? – elitist.
@49 – no probs, patrickg.
I agree that there’s a lot of value in Hamilton’s series, but I do still think it’s marred by a number of basic assumptions – including the ones about communication and the bounds between science and the social I critiqued in the post.
Nick: we should also be clear that the world’s poor have (by a large margin) the most to lose from unmitigated rapid climate change. That’s why the poorest countries were all demanding the biggest emissions cuts.
So yes, in many cases mitigation will cost the poor more than the rich. But the cost of doing nothing will be far bigger. Don’t lose sight of that.
In terms of adaptation – that was featured in the 3rd IPCC report and was a major focus in the 4th report. State and CW Governments in Australia all have adaptation programs up and running. The key is that there are limits to adaptation, especially for natural ecosystems.
Clive Hamilton has unpacked why he preferences the term “denialist” when describing particular forms of anti-AGW activism. I use it as well in full knowledge of its significance in relation to the Shoa and other genocides. Genocide denislism is a well known indicator that indeed a genocide may have taken place.
For the sake of brevity I’ve extracted a few comments from the Wikipedia entry on “genocide denialism” which I feel amply illustrate the resonances between genocide denialism and and AGW denialism:
“Genocide denial occurs when an act of genocide is met with attempts to deny the occurrence and minimize the scale or death toll. The most well-known type is Holocaust denial, but its definition can extend to any genocide that has been minimized or met with excessive skepticism.
Where there is near universal agreement that a genocide occurred, genocide denial is usually considered a form of illegitimate historical revisionism. However, in circumstances where the event in dispute is not seen to constitute genocide by the majority of scholars, the use of the term may be an ad hominem by those who argue that a genocide occurred.
The extremely serious nature of the crime of genocide, along with the terrible reputation it creates, and potential repercussions that may come against a nation as a result of committing it, ensures that whenever genocide is charged, there will be parties that attempt to avoid or divert blame.[1]”
Apply phrases in the above to current issues surrounding anti-AGW denialists: “deny the occurrence and minimize the scale of the death toll”; check. “Excessive skepticism”; check. “… whenever genocide is charged, there will be parties that attempt to avoid or divert blame”; check.
Now for the big one. Under the subhead of “Techniques used by illegitimate historical revisionists” we find the following:
“The distinction between respectable academic historians and those of illegitimate historical revisionists rests on the techniques used to write such histories. Accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. As in any academic discipline, historians’ papers are submitted to peer review. Instead of submitting their work to the challenges of peer review, illegitimate revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, using any number of techniques and logical fallacies to obtain their results.”
If that does not describe the methods of organised anti-AGW sceptics and denialists then I do not know what does. If it is still unclea the substitute the word science for history in the above paragraph and see how that works for you.
If you are wondering why genocide may be applicable at all to the industrial assault on nature then find some statistics on species loss. That’s why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_denial
Are there warmenista equivalents to Graeme Bird and Joe Cambria? I don’t recall coming across them, but that may be my bias showing.
It seems to me that the use of pure truth as a denialist tactic is really another type of strawman. Sounds convincing to non-scientists, and easy to spin in several ways. The breathtaking dishonesty of it: the same tools they decry are used for resource exploration. You can claim that computer models will never be good enough (except ore deposit models), that measurement tools have inherent biases (like sonar false positives), that the statistical analysis is flawed (damn statistics). But as Mark is alluding to, all this eventuates in an apparent relativism because climate science is “different”. But it isn’t “different”, it’s just very complex. No-one cares that we use probabilities at the electron level. It’s a similar requirement at planet scale.
Or, to coin a phrase, what’s good enough for the geologist is good enough for the climate scientist.
@anthony nolan
I first came across the term denialist as an aspect of the creation/evolution debate i.e. the denialist tactics used by the creationists against the science of biological evolution. These tactics, and the term denialism being used to describe them, date back to long before the Shoah.
It is a despicable strawman tactic from the anti-AGW crowd to create an artificially limited word association for a term that accurately describes their behaviour so that it is conflated with a genocidal ideology. Sadly, due to the general lack of education in formal critical thinking skills, particularly in the analysis of rhetoric, it’s an insidiously effective tactic for the general public.
I’m not sure what you’re asking me about, Adrien. I most certainly wouldn’t dismiss science as “just another ideology”.
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I did not mean to say that you did. There are two seperate habitti in which this point of view is prevelant. One advocated by religious fundamentalists who wish to tar science as a sort of destructive nihilism and fight an ongoing battle against Darwinian biology. The other exposed by the Sokal hoax.
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This latter’s closer to home. Again it’s a spectrum I haven’t met many people who’ll take their science as ideoogy riff so far as to deny the method its utility in establishing facts and creating technology. But unless confronted directly there’s often some very silly talk about matters which seeks to exclude facts pertinent to them because it exposes those talking to ridicule. This happens all over the place. People think aliens built the pyramids.
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This resistance to facts matters. For example, in response to a Melb Uni academic who was advocating eliminating campus car parks and providing free showers to encourage riding bikes, I illustrated three inconvenient facts: 1. It would precipitate a huge waste of water because people abuse what they don;t have to pay for directly; 2. Eliminating car parks would generate huge political resistance and severely inconvenience people unable to ride a bike dailt and/or too far from other modes of transport to get to work/school; 3. Would cost so much as to impede the Unversity’s capacity to stay in the black.
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Two of these facts are ‘right-wing’. I was dismissed as such and excluded from the conversation. This guy was a science teacher! I’m not pointing fingers left or right. UI’m saying there’s a fault in the ethos. That it’s ubiquitous and that it involves virtue in resistance to inconvenient facts as opposed to virtue in facing them.
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I’d be interested in where Hobsbawm talks about this; perhaps he had in mind some of the egregious abuses of science in the Soviet Union. Certainly, there is a continuum as to how science is regarded.
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Actually he was discussing ‘postmodernism’. I believe in On History someplace. I can dig it out if you’re really interested.
I’d appreciate that, Adrien, thanks.
Over at Quiggins, Roger Jones had a shot at me for using agnotologist on plausible (though finally I believe inadequate) grounds. he asserted that as agnotology was the study of the culturally-driven production of ignorance, it oought not be confused with its purveyors.
I began reflecting on an alternative term for the purveyors and I came up with agnosophists. I like the combination of “sophistry” with declaration of non-knowledge.
If the word comes into general usage, recall that I uttered it here first …
Ah, come on, Fran.
If the practioner of ignorance is an agnotologist, a worker on the chain gang is a geologist (I said a rock at Quiggin, sounds good, but wrong).
the root ology is the study of, so I said the person who studies the phenomenon is an agnotologist, but not the person who practices it. This word gives the practitioner too much gravitas. I stand by that.
Agnosophist, maybe – won’t argue with that.
I am interested in the person who deliberately works to spread or sustain ignorance. It can be done by reinforcing tribalism and by manipulating risk perception so that the response to an idea is straight through the emotional part of the brain, rather than through more dispassionate areas of analytic thought. One can be trained not to react like this, one of the most valuable lessons parents and educators can offer …
Roger Jones …
My answer at quiggin’s blog
In part …
I do agree with your broader claim about the role of quality education in predisposing resort to the rational parts of the mind to resolve problem.
Agnocian?
Someone suggested dementor but if we started using that we’d have to pay a royalty …
Actually Fran,
I’m warming to agnosophist for the applied practitioner who spreads ignorance through manipulation.
And I’ll raise you agnaut for the one who plumbs the depth of ignorance through example.
Mark Bahnisch says:
“So, what we have in denialist discourse is all politics, and no science. No scientific method.”
But that explain exactly what you do when you discount mainstream economics. Pot, kettle, black old bean.
@65 – it’s too sweeping to say that I “discount mainstream economics”. What I do not accept is that economics exists outside a context of (sometimes unstated) value judgements, or in a reified realm separate from the social and the political, which is perfectly consistent with what I argue in this post – please read all of it. There’s also a big difference between the human sciences and the natural sciences in terms of the degree to which the fact/value distinction comes into play. It’s well known that many of the assumptions in neo-classical economics have little fit with the actuality of the political economy (ie ‘assume perfect competition’). Other forms of economics, such as behavioural economics, to their credit, don’t make the same blanket assumptions about rational actors, etc.
Going back to climate science, I’d actually like to see ‘predictions’ from economists couched in terms of Bayesian probability.
@64: If agnotology is to be truly scientific there should be a unit of measure. I would suggest that the efforts of agnosophists should be measured in ruperts.
I’m not sure how it would be defined, but I can suggest a whole system:
10 tims = 1 piers.
10 piers – 1 andrew.
10 andrews = 1 rupert.
I quite like agnaut but for almost the opposite from the reason you proffer. the naut suffix derives from the Greek nautikos for balloon. Later it referred to ships (possibly a reference to floating) and for much of human history all ships stayed on the surface.
The allusion to looking at things superfically (i.e. not in depth) or balloons full of hot air is apt.
Of course there are real words like misology (hatred of learning, reasoned discussion etc and similarly misosophistry. These don’t really capture the cultural dimension though.
Watkin Tench,
I’ll bite. Where is the scientific method that has contributed to mainstream economics? For a more in-depth response, I direct you to Steve Keen’s Debunking Economics.
That’s not to say that some economics is not being done in a scientific manner, e.g., experimental behavioural economics, but I reckon Keen (and others e.g., Paul Ormerod) are on the money in their critiques.
I haven’t read Keen, but I had Ormerod as a text over a decade ago when I was doing postgrad coursework study, and his criticims were then, and still are, compelling ones.
Another possibility occurs. The word ignorati sounds appealing, but agnorati might be even better. Give the semantic force of the fragment, -rat (see the German), it is quite elegant for someone who proposes being policy deriving from intellectually nihilistic anomie.
Perhaps it is time for a new sci-fi novel — The Lore of Agnorat. Now I just have to write the book.
oops — delete “being” from the above …
#68
Fran, I was quite tickled by the thought of soaring to the depths when it popped into my head, enjoying the paradoxical a(i)llusion.
I have seen explanations on teh intertubes that do just that, and when you think they can’t go any further, they soar to even lower depths!
Zoot – I like it, substitute Bolta for Andrew. I see others clamouring to be included, devastated at losing the attention; Monckton springs to mind.
“It’s well known that many of the assumptions in neo-classical economics have little fit with the actuality of the political economy (ie ‘assume perfect competition’).”
I’ve taught economics for 15 years and I am yet to meet this strawman neo-classical economist who assumes perfect competition.
Social scientists almost invariably critique a school of economic thought that does not exist outiside their imagination. This is because they haven’t bothered to put in the hard yards needed to grasp the subject.
Twenty years ago the beef was with “economic rationalists”. It is worth digging up some of those old critiques as they are now almost universally regarded as ill-informed and worthless. The more the things change …
I suspect sociological opinionating on climate science is equally without merit (btw I do accept the mainstream view), much like my opinionating on aerodynamics.
Ok, you’re entitled to your view. It may well be fair to suggest that I should update what I know about ‘mainstream economics’. I’m happy to take that on board. But I’d still argue that the foundations of particular disciplines in terms of value judgements are able to be critiqued without necessarily having the technical expertise to evaluate the worth of particular methods proper to research work in such disciplines, which I don’t for a moment claim to have, outside the areas in which my doctoral training lay.
I don’t particularly want to get into it here, and I’d suggest that you take what I wrote in the post in terms of the arguments I’ve actually made there (which are not about the substantive findings of climate science per se) rather than dismiss them because of what you think my views on other topics might be. The perspective I’m coming from arises directly from work done in the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies and communication sciences. So that’s the intellectual context – it’s not just “opinionating”.
Fran, isn’t it ignoramus/ses? A particular persistent one would become delibgnoramus.
However, zoot is on the money, pointing towards some of the main actors in this deliberate ‘denying-delaying’ game played by the NEWSCORP Propaganda Dept. I remember how it started in the local rag here, when a lifestyle reporter started to make noises, as in daring to be ‘a contrarian to the popular believe’ as it were a popularity contest. Same weekend issue Plimer was fetured on the frontpage of the lifestyle liftout, decked out in polar gear and holding a snap frozen globe in his mits. Never mind truth, accountability, ethics anyone?
@76 – there’s a good point there, Ootz.
Some parts of the journosphere seem to have the ethos that it’s good to be ‘contrarian’ – often combined with a pose of jaded, professional cynicism.
On a personal note, when I took some economics courses as part of my Environmental Science degree the lecturers took care to point out that the perfectly competitive market model and its associated assumptions (perfect information, perfect rationality, etc.) constituted an ideal-typical model and could not be expected to be encountered in the real world.
Great post, Mark!
Mark @10, You know, I never thought I would see the day. It really does seem that the physical scientists really desperately NEED the help of the social sciences people.
Like never before. On a matter of vital importance for all of us. An epic struggle to preserve the future of an imperfect species?
Almost as if some almighty created a monster puzzle that would have us realise that all expertise has its role? Except that we created the problem ourselves. Bugger.
Normally the two branches of thought and study (arts and science) are almost independent silos, but this issue really must transcend that divide.
Amazing. Who wouda thunk it???
@79 – thanks, Elise.
In the UK, in particular, there has been a lot of useful cross-fertilisation between social scientists and natural scientists.
If that were to happen here too, I think it’d be great!
Interestingly Paul, this point was reiterated by Clive Spash on PM yesterday, in relation to the ETS.
In criticising an ETS-based approach (in favour of the idea of a combination of regulation and carbon taxes) Spash attacked the EMH (efficient markets hypothesis) pointing out that:
It’s ironic that for about ten minutes the Blotosphere hailed him as the victim of gagging by the global warming conspiracy forces.
Personally, although I disagree with Spash that one could not design an ETS that would work, his point is broadly correct on the schemes that are currently being touted.
Thanks to all – Mark especially, for what is an illuminating discussion.
Elise @ 79 – the hard science/social science linkage does need to extend beyond drunken discussions at the uni bar (!) and out onto a broader stage.
Forums such as this are one way.
Cheers, steveh – I think it has been a good discussion.
Mark, you asked about Hobsbawm’s article.
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It is in On History, Ch. 9 ‘Partisanship’ appropriately enough. The direct quote is:
Adrien @84, Hobsbawm seems to talk a lot a highbrow waffle, if that is a representative sample.
Elise, Hobsbawm is highbrow but it’s not waffle. He’s simply defining current attitudes to the objectivity of science. As he says, even scientists accept that true objectivity is impossible but there’s a view at the other end of the spectrum that says that science is a servant of ideology. He goes on to give the example that the heliocentric view of the universe has been argued to be an ideological assertion of the correctness of absolute monarchy.
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Prof Hobsbawm does write lengthy sentences. He’s a fine old Oxbridge Commie.
I’ve always found his writing style pretty clear; but then I am fond of long sentences!
Thanks, Adrien. I’ve got the book in question, so I’ll take a look at the chapter later.
Umm. Most philosophers of science would readily accept that science is essentially socially constructivist even within the confines of its discursive power/knowledge circuits. Donna Haraway also argued that it is gendered for which see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
But sssh. Don’t tell the denialists or they really will thin all science is a lunatic left wing plot. After all look what atheistic geology and the concept of deep time did to God.
Adrien @86, I still say it’s waffle.
Hair-splitting, and muddle-thinking.
“He goes on to give the example that the heliocentric view of the universe has been argued to be an ideological assertion of the correctness of absolute monarchy.”
A perfect example of muddle-thinking.
The data from experiments isn’t subjective. The interpretation might make it so, as we have seen by the denialist camp (or whatever they prefer to call themselves).
That kind of thinking is an intellectual blind-alley. Worse still, it feeds straight into the denialist arguments and gives them oxygen.
You’re welcome Mark.
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Most philosophers of science would readily accept that science is essentially socially constructivist even within the confines of its discursive power/knowledge circuits.
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I disagree. I don’t think science can be objective. But I think it tries and succeeds quite a bit of the time to come very close.
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After the scuttlebutt about postmodern critique of science by conservatives I find the current obtuse attitudes to AGW by same quite amusing.
Donna Haraway’s work is really great, Cacambo, but I think ‘social constructivist’ in its strong sense is a bit, well, strong. I prefer to avoid terms like that, because they’re too readily elided with relativism, which is, or ought to be, a different position.
Bhaskar’s critical realism or Latour’s actor network theory is probably a better way of looking at things in the social study of science. There’s also a fair bit of “object-oriented ontology” in contemporary continental philosophy, which is really interesting.
As much I admire Donna Haraway for lifting a veil on the objectivity of the scientific process, the trouble with the Truth in the AGW issue is not within science as such. A simple check where the relevant sandstone establishments, the various National Science Academies et all are standing on this issue, confirms they are all pointing into the same direction. Further, constructivist approaches, such as OOO, are indeed a handy form of knowledge representation, if you are at home in a constructionist world. Well the average punter is not, and to succeed in solving this problem we need universal human collaboration.
In its foundation, AGW is not an environmental problem. On the overall Earth time scale, life has sprung back in terms of diversity and complexity with renewed vigor and splendor following the seven odd cataclysmic wiping of the earths face. However, without Climate change mitigation humans will be most likely living at worst in a Mad Max or at best a Blade Runner scenario, according to Robert May, past President of The Royal Society and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology. The voice of science is clear, it tells us there is a high probability that we are on an unsustainable trajectory and it would be a very good idea to drastically reduce CO2 emissions to avoid the likely hood of any major adverse effects on our lifelyhood. If someone can not accept this, then they should not wear seat belts or take life saving medications for a start. For these measures are based on comparable scientific process and probabilities as AGW science is. This is why I would argue AGW is a human problem as opposed a to an environmental.
As such, the human threat to itself on a global level is nothing new. At least since ICBMs and multiple warheads have reared their ugly heads, we humans have the potential to wipe the face of the earth with only cockroaches remaining. However, in this case there is a fundamental difference, there are only a limited number of people with their hand on the red button and their humanity and integrity has so far prevailed. Where as in the AGW issue, literally all of us have our fingers on the trigger. This does present a rather unique situation and problem in human evolutionary terms and is at the base of most deniers cognitive obstacle of epic proportions. It is the failure to recognise, that we collectively have the potential to substantially threaten our own existence and the responsibility to avoid such rests with each individual. What is so hard to swallow about that? Shouldn’t it be common sense? This is not to say that some people, anyone in leading or very public positions, are in particular required to do justice to that position and act with integrity. For we are not just pushing the physical boundaries of the global climate, the unprecedented population growth and a host of other massive changes in recent times, are very likely soon to reveal additional fronts of human limitations within which we all, as individuals and as humanity, have to learn to live for better or for worse.
Thus I make my case for truth as in individual and public integrity and thank you Mark for giving me the opportunity to do so with this timely thread.
Cheers, Ootz.
I wholeheartedly agree, and it’s important to recognise that!
on the role of science, media and truth, I was really impressed by ABC’s Rear Vision on the MMR Scare/Fraud and how scientific research, publishing and the media converged to make a monster:
“How did the Lancet, Britain’s oldest and most respected medical journal, come to publish a fraudulent study linking the measles mumps rubella vaccination with autism? There was no scientific basis for the claim and the paper’s lead author was being paid by a personal-injury lawyer who represented several children in the study.”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2010/2822340.htm
The Guardians Dr Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science makes some neat observations on the medias culpability in the hysteria. http://www.badscience.net/2010/01/the-wakefield-mmr-verdict/
Should be compulsory listening/reading.
Mark – but then I am fond of long sentences!
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So that’s why you read Derrida!
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Derrida reminds me of a Geoffrey Robertson joke about jazz: I don’t like jazz, you keep thinking it’ll turn into a tune. And it doesn’t.
You offer a curiously circular argument.
“It’s certainly the case that whatever ammunition denialists use against climate science is not itself part of the ’skepticism’ which is said to be integral to the scientific method. “
There is an assumption that ‘climate science’ is somehow ‘settled’ at the root of this statement. Science is never settled – see the recent exciting advances in regard to evolutionary theory: most thought this ‘settled’ but lo and behold it turns ou there is still much to learn on how evolution works. So this statement is not so (see recent comments by the head of the CRU). Many sceptics requested the data from which this ‘climate science’ has drawn its conclusions, wishing to validate both it and the methodology used. This was denied. But a core value of science is to make data and methodology available so that anyone can replicate the claimed results. Your statement is not correct.
“Rather than proposing an alternative hypothesis which would better explain the range of observations made, any line of attack is used, no matter how contradictory with others it may be. So, what we have in denialist discourse is all politics, and no science. No scientific method.”
Again, a very peculiar view. What of the alternative hypotheses of cosmic rays and cloud formation, variations in the water cycle (it being the principal greenhouse gas), solar motion theory, to name a few? There are may alternative hypotheses. SO your comment about sceptic discourse being all politics is invalidated by these facts.
“It’s important to underline this point. What denialists cannot provide is anything which can approximate to a truth statement. Methodological doubt, Cartesian style, is supposed to be a prelude to the uncovering of a truth, not a rhetorical strategy of dismissal. Climate change scepticism, contrary to the claims of some of its proponents, has absolutely nothing to do with ‘The Enlightenment’. Quite the contrary.”
Here you vary sharply from scientific method. If the AGW hypothesisers raise this hypothesis, as they have, then they have to present all available evidence supporting it, which they have. An hypothesis is disproved, irrespective of the amount of evidence supporting it, by one contrary fact. As this hypothesis claims that human caused CO2 levels will cause global warming, leading to unnatural climate change, and as we know that there have been global glaciations when atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher than now. Therefore, the hypothesis is disproved.
Next hypothesis please – they are a dime a dozen, as you know.
“Their other classic move is to hold science itself to an impossible standard. Somehow the findings of climate science have to be unequivocally true.”
Who has said this, please? Or is this your political interpretation of the position of your opponents? If the former, publish who said this and when: such a person is a quite foolish, of course.
“What we actually see, then, in this contre-temps is a debate over what constitutes truth. “
How is this assertion linked to your discussion above? What we are seeing from both sides of the debate is equal amounts of distortion, and squabbling over facts. Little more.
“But probabilities of 90%, as in the IPCC’s Fourth Report, are very strong indeed.”
Not necessarily (discuss this with a statistician), and subject to rigorous validation of the data and methodology on which they were based. If the data was tampered with (and it has been accepted by CRU and IPCC that the data they used was indeed tampered with to increase its support for the global warming hypothesis) what value is the asserted probability? If the methodology was flawed (and the readme files in the data released from CRU demonstrate in spades that is was gravely flawed in dozens of respects) then again, of what value of the asserted probability?
If the asserted probability is therefore of no value, is it sensible to base policy on it?
Mr Hamilton’s articles are quite poorly written and based on what appears to be conspiracy theory. I have found them of negligible value.
IT
Elise – That kind of thinking is an intellectual blind-alley. Worse still, it feeds straight into the denialist arguments and gives them oxygen.
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Yes exactly!
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But it is not Eric Hobsbawm’s thesis, it’s his example of a particular kind of thesis commonplace in the studies of science by the humanities. Hobsbawm is over 90 years old, he doesn’t buy into it.
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The conflation of absolute monarchy with heliocentricism is the same kind of error in Alan Sokal’s hoax exposed in Social Text magazine. In this he’s s’posedly arguing that there’s a significant link between quantum physics and post-structuralist inspired discourse. The thing is there is a resemblance, there is no other evidence for meaningful synchronicity.
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Such resemblances and their apparent truths are the business of artists and story-tellers to invoke. A scientist understands these to be the vicissitudes of an animal inclined to impose patterns on things it sees and thus attempts to disregard it in furtherance of objectivity.
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I recommend Hobsbawm. He’s excellent, a model for honest historians everywhere. Try The Age of Extremes, his history of the 20th century. A lifelong Marxist-Leninist. He tells the truth about Communism and integrates his participation in it in perfect proportion. All in a precise and disinterested voice.
Mark @94 quoted Ootz as follows:
I think the boundary asserted is a misunderstanding. We humans are not separate from “the environment”, but part of it. It authors us just as we author it. We are as a species, a consequence of it. That’s why environmental change challenges us. When the quality, temporality and quantity of ecosystem services to humans changes we respond, often reconfiguring the system in ways that again alter the micro (and as AGW shows) the macro environment.
Of course, as this implies, there is no such thing as an environmental problem that is not also a human problem.
Wrong!
Integer tone said in part …
As is usual for your kind, you are cherrypicking. Your response was to this:
Rather than proposing an alternative hypothesis which would better explain the range of observations made, any line of attack is used, no matter how contradictory with others it may be.
You stopped at “alternative hypothesis” because it suited your answer. As those of us who follow these matters know, the factors above to which you allude simply don’t provide good correspondence with the existing shape of the anomaly.
You either know this and are simply trolling, or are ignorant and doing Dunning-Kruger for us. Either way, I’m not going any further with this rather old-fashioned dance.
That’s a noble view of science but neither is it true in the general nor is the claim at all accurate in relation to this specific instance. What you crucially miss is the role of ceteris paribus.
CO2 levels have not been higher than today at any time during the most recent Pliocene Ice Age. And in Ice Ages prior to the Pliocene the Earth had a substantially different tectonic arrangement, producing different ocean circulation currents and different land-cryosphere interactions. In the earliest ICe Ages, the solar output was also considerably lower.
No-one claims that greenhouse gases are the only influence on climate and so your proposition is a straw argument. However the natural greenhouse effect is undisputed as is a significant role of CO2 in paleoclimate (which is not to say that there aren’t plenty of details still to work out).
Ootz @93: Great post!
Your comment “human threat to itself” was exactly my thoughts also. The Earth will continue to exist, as it has done after previous extinction events for living critters. Other life forms will emerge, even if we wipe ourselves out.
The problem is not so much saving the planet for its own sake, but saving it for ourselves. How selfish can we be?!!
“This is why I would argue AGW is a human problem as opposed a to an environmental.”
Here you have identified the core of the problem, really.
Science can give us the data and the trends. We already have volumes of the stuff, and more coming all the time.
What we do with it is a problem of social “interpretation models”, human organisational abilities/failures, cognitive dissonance, etc.
I think the psychologists would tell us something along the lines: you can’t solve a problem until you first recognise it, acknowledge it, and then “own” it. Then you need to implement a program of change and stay the course.
The truely massive amount of resistance, which Clive Hamilton is documenting, shows that humanity as a whole still has a problem with the first part. As for implementing a program of change (i.e. political and legislative challenges), so far nowheresville…
That is why I suggested @79 “It really does seem that the physical scientists really desperately NEED the help of the social sciences people.”
I didn’t mean that we should promptly lose ourselves in the philosophy of science. I meant rather that the social sciences have a huge potential role here in making sure that humanity acts effectively on the information at hand, before it is too late.
Otherwise we will just be another extinction event like the dinosaurs, except this time by our own hands.
What we do with it is a problem of social “interpretation models”, human organisational abilities/failures, cognitive dissonance, etc.
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I think the cognitive failure of people in general to comprehend this issue is puzzling when there’s such a perfectly clear message:
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When the quality, temporality and quantity of ecosystem services to humans changes we respond, often reconfiguring the system in ways that again alter the micro (and as AGW shows) the macro environment.
Fran @ 99, on the statement:
Lovelock’s Gaia concept, when proposed, was initially hard to grasp but now seems trite. Living things don’t just live within an inanimate environment, but the animate and the inanimate interact with and act on each other. But within the whole it is still legitimate to conceptualise a difference between animate and inanimate.
Similarly it is surely legitimate to have a concept of humanity. This brings with it a bifurcation between “us” and “not us”. I’m ignoring for a moment the notion that bugs, bacteria, that live and have their being within us, are us too.
So if you want to think of the whole ecosphere as one you can still examine what a part of the whole is doing to the rest. To the extent that bodies like the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London have been pondering whether we have in fact passed from the Holocene Epoch to the Anthropocene. The answer (pdf) seems to be, well, yes, and so it shall be deemed if people in the field find the distinction useful. I haven’t checked to see what the International Commission on Stratigraphy make of it, but it wouldn’t surprise if they dragged the chain a bit.
Mark knew what the London folk had said, because it was up front in an article he sent me (post coming up, I hope) and he has told me so.
We own the problem of climate change, it’s not coming upon us from ‘natural’ changes in the environment.
But we are not in control, and the effects are quite definitely coming upon us.
The truth is in there somewhere. I’m going to bed.