One such is Judith Curry of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. She adheres to the mainstream view that climate change is at present primarily caused by burning fossil fuels and that the consequences are potentially very damaging. However, she has also tried to engage with sceptics, rather than dismissing all criticism and attacking the messenger. In particular, she has been criticised by colleagues for inviting prominent sceptics such as Steve McIntyre to her Institute. She sees this as a legitimate way to engage and win the argument; critics say this gives sceptics undue credibility.

Dr Curry now has her own blog (Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com). On this, she has recently posted Reversing the direction of the positive feedback loop and a follow-up piece. The concept of positive feedback is, of course, the basis for the entire edifice of current climate policy: the IPCC, the EU’s 2020 objectives, the lot. There is little concern about serious adverse effects from higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide unless the principle of positive feedback created by increased water vapour is invoked. It is this which leads to the headline figures of average temperatures rising 6°C or more as CO2 levels rise. In this context, to use the term in relation to climate policy and politics, as Dr Curry does, is guaranteed to raise a few hackles.

For someone who thinks the mainstream view of the science is broadly right, she is remarkably open-minded and honest about the problems with the current situation. Indeed, she acts as all scientists should, but so few actually do.

Take this quote, for example:

“There has been a particularly toxic positive feedback loop between climate science and policy and politics, whose direction has arguably been reversed as result of Climategate. The scientists provided the initial impulse for this feedback loop back in the 1970′s and 1980′s.  The enviro advocacy groups quickly saw the possibilities and ran with it, with the scientists’ blessing.   The enviro advocacy groups  saw the climate change issue as an opportunity to enlist scientific support for their preferred energy policy solution.”

She then develops the argument about the nature of the IPCC and policymaking. The conclusion of the first IPCC assessment report, in 1992, was “The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. . . The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.”

Her take on this is “Nevertheless, the policy cart was put before the scientific horse, justified by the precautionary principle.  Once the UNFCCC treaty was a done deal, the IPCC and its scientific conclusions were set on a track to become a self fulfilling prophecy. . . at the heart of the IPCC is a cadre of scientists whose careers have been made by the IPCC.  These scientists have used the IPCC to jump the normal meritocracy process by which scientists achieve influence over the politics of science and policy.  Not only has this brought some relatively unknown, inexperienced  and possibly dubious people into positions of influence, but these people become vested in protecting the IPCC, which has become central to their own career and legitimizes playing power politics with their expertise. . . When I refer to the IPCC dogma, it is the religious importance that the IPCC holds for this cadre of scientists; they will tolerate no dissent, and seek to trample and discredit anyone who challenges the IPCC.”

Coming from someone who has been regarded as one of the climate change establishment, this is pretty damning stuff. Those who see themselves as the object of Dr Curry’s criticism have not been slow to respond. According to her blog, suggestions for why her behaviour has been so treacherous include:

* I been duped by big oil and/or right wing think tanks
* I have opened my mind so wide to skeptics that my brains have fallen out
* I’m in the pay of big oil or right wing think tanks
* I’m being blackmailed
* I have become either physically or mentally disabled

To accuse an honest, open-minded colleague of such things speaks of something seriously amiss in the scientific world. But for those who are committed to the cause, this kind of questioning is beyond the pale. It places researchers such as Dr Curry in league with ‘Big Oil’ which, in the narrative favoured by many activists, orchestrates or funds the campaign to call the orthodoxy into question.

For example, Donald Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science and Law,  has recently posted on the Penn State Climate Ethics site a piece entitled A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Disinformation Campaign on Climate Change. In it, he says, for example “Although it may be reasonable to be somewhat skeptical about climate change models, some corporate sponsored participants in the climate change disinformation campaign have been spreading deeply misleading distortions about the science of climate change. These untruths are not based upon reasonable skepticism but outright falsification and distortions of climate change science.”

This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon view in some circles. One of Dr Brown’s colleagues at Penn State is Michael Mann, now director of the Earth System Science Center but best known for the controversial ‘hockey stick’ graph of 20th Century temperature change. He has a New Scientist article headlined Professional climate change deniers’ crusade continues. Although focussed on the legal challenges brought by Virginia state Attorney General Cuccinelli, his final sentence reads “While professional climate change deniers continue their crusade against climate science, this year is likely to go down as either the warmest or the second warmest on record.” There seems little chance of any meeting of minds with people such as this.

The argument from people at this end of the spectrum is not only that the ‘disinformation’ campaign has reduced politicians’ willingness to act, but that ‘climategate’ played a significant role in derailing last year’s Copenhagen climate summit. More open-minded observers would say that the likelihood of a binding post-Kyoto agreement emerging were slim at best.

The question is whether the breaking of ranks within the climate change establishment is one of the first signs of the return of objectivity and a true scientific debate, or whether the wagons will be circled by the diehards and the war of attrition continued. The best hope is for the extremists of all colours to be marginalised. I’m not holding my breath just yet, but there are certainly signs of movement in the right direction.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS
Tel: +44 1223 421242

Let me preface my statement by saying that at this point,  I am pretty much immune to criticisms from my peers regarding my behavior and public outreach on this topic (I respond to any and all criticisms of my arguments that are specifically addressed to me.)   If you think that I am a big part of the cause of the problems you are facing, I suggest that you think about this more carefully.   I am doing my best to return some sanity to this situation and restore science to a higher position than the dogma of consensus.  You may not like it, and my actions may turn out to be ineffective, futile, or counterproductive in the short or long run, by whatever standards this whole episode ends up getting judged.  But this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.

Let me ask you this.  So how are things going for you lately?  A year ago, the climate establishment was on top of the world, masters of the universe.   Now we have a situation where there have been major challenges to the reputations of a number of a number of scientists, the IPCC, professional societies, and other institutions of science.  The spillover has been a loss of public trust in climate science and some have argued, even more broadly in science.  The IPCC and the UNFCCC are regarded by many as impediments to sane and politically viable energy policies.  The enviro advocacy groups are abandoning the climate change issue for more promising narratives.  In the U.S., the prospect of the Republicans winning the House of Representatives raises the specter of hearings on the integrity of climate science and reductions in federal funding for climate research.

What happened?  Did the skeptics and the oil companies and the libertarian think tanks win?  No, you lost.  All in the name of supporting policies that I don’t think many of you fully understand.  What I want is for the climate science community to shift gears and get back to doing science, and return to an environment where debate over the science is the spice of academic life.  And because of the high relevance of our field, we need to figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties.  This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.

The document was prepared by a working group chaired by Professor John Pethica, Vice President of the Royal Society and was approved by the Royal Society Council.

Download the guide here (PDF):

http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/

CRN Comment: Better, but still claims that there is a meaningful consensus when attributing natural and ‘man-made’ causes.

The Hockey Schtick: The 97% “Consensus” is only 75 Self-Selected Climatologists

It is unfortunate that the authors and/or an editor at Journal of Climate decided that Murphy & Forster 2010 (MF10) would be published without asking me or Danny Braswell to be reviewers.

Their paper is quite brief, and is obviously in the class of a “Comments on…” paper, yet it will appear as a full “Article”. But a “Comments on…” classification would then have required the Journal of Climate to give us a chance to review MF10 and to respond. So, it appears that one or more people wanted to avoid any inconvenient truths.

Thus, since it will be at least a year before a response study by us could be published – and J. Climate seems to be trying to avoid us – I must now respond here, to help avoid some of the endless questions I will have to endure once MF10 is in print.

Murphy, D.M., and P. M. Forster (2010), On the Accuracy of Deriving Climate Feedback Parameters from Correlations Between Surface Temperature and Outgoing Radiation. J. Climate, in press. [PDF currently available to AMS members].

Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell (2008), Potential biases in cloud feedback diagnosis: A simple model demonstration, J. Climate, 21, 5624-5628. PDF.

Spencer, R. W., and W. D. Braswell (2010), On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2009JD013371, in press. [PDF currently available to AGU members] (accepted 12 April 2010)

Read Roy Spencer’s entire blog post: Can Climate Feedbacks be Diagnosed from Satellite Data? Comments on the Murphy & Forster (2010) Critique of Spencer & Braswell (2008)

Abstract:

The United Kingdom’s Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) are intended to provide a mechanism whereby information held by public authorities can be accessed by the public. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recently considered the disclosure of information from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and concluded that emails revealed scientists encouraged colleagues to resist disclosure and delete emails, apparently to prevent disclosure through FoI requests. The case study presented here focuses on requests under FoI legislation to obtain climate information from the Met Office, particularly relating to assessments of global warming and causal relationships with greenhouse gas emissions. Evidence suggests both the CRU and the Met Office are part of a culture where institutional climate scientists are antagonistic towards disclosure of information. This has serious implications for both the effective operation of FoI legislation and the openness and transparency of climate change assessments.

(Spoof PNAS cover by Jo Nova)

Over the past year, the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of climate change mitigation policy has been pretty much halted in its tracks, at least for the time being. There are two primary causes, both rooted in the complexities (or perhaps better seen as simplicities) of human behaviour. One is the failure of some governments to agree to disadvantage their own citizens for what is presented as the sake of future generations across the world. The other may best be described as scientific hubris.

Last December’s climate change summit in Copenhagen was an expensive waste of time and effort. Despite being billed as the meeting where agreement on a post-2012 deal had to be reached, there was not even a face-saving compromise. The only output was the non-binding Copenhagen declaration, cobbled together by a small group of countries in a back room, at a meeting gate-crashed by President Obama . The President will have few good memories about the Danish capital from his first year in office: his first visit, in September, in support of Chicago ‘s bid for the 2016 Olympics, saw Rio de Janeiro unexpectedly win the prize.

The talks failed mainly because major developing economies – particularly China and India – proved understandably reluctant to compromise their economic development without the rich countries paying the price. Mankind’s willingness to subjugate current selfish interests for the greater good in the long term was once again shown up as a naïve illusion. Just as attempting to build a perfect socialist society has, at least so far, been possible only by ruthless cliques imposing their visions violently (and all such attempts have ultimately ended as costly failures), so it is difficult to see radical global governance of energy use coming about peacefully.

Scientific hubris is another matter. There is a natural tendency for scientists to believe in their own theorising, as for any professionals. The scientific method of constantly testing hypotheses until they fail and are replaced has advanced human knowledge enormously. But all experiments are open to interpretation, and judgements are coloured by the mindset of individuals. Scientists often split into different camps which bitterly argue with each other.

In the esoteric world of theoretical physics, deep divisions over string theory or quantum gravity have little bearing on everyday life, but climate change is different. Governments, quite rightly, base their policies on what is believed to be the best scientific advice on the topic. The fount of that advice is the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up to gather the evidence for human influence and judge its seriousness. In the massive Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, the statement on attribution in the Summary for Policymakers was

“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).”

‘Likely’ and ‘very likely’ are judgements made by the report’s authors, and have no quantitative basis. But, given the careful and cautious wording of the report, they represent a pretty high degree of confidence in the main driver of climate trends in the last half century. Many years ago, that confidence strengthened further, to a consensus within the IPCC milieu that this central tenet of belief should not be questioned. Self-belief changed to hubris, as prominent spokespeople presented their views as the only truth and their solutions as the ones which had to be followed.

Leaders of the scientific establishment, the IPCC and UNEP, including Lords May and Rees of the Royal Society, Sir John Houghton of the UK Met Office, Robert Watson and Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC, Achim Steiner of the UNEP and James Hansen and Susan Solomon as lead authors have jointly been responsible for picturing those who question the IPCC view as ‘deniers’, ‘flat-Earthers’ and in the pay of ‘Big Oil’. They have given the impression that their critics are at best misguided, at worst guilty of deliberate falsification on behalf of murky business interests.

And this has been given a political twist as well. The simple categorisation of people as Left and Right is more difficult than it once was, as some may hold free market economic views while being socially liberal, while others are the reverse. But there is still an instinctive belief by left-wingers that human society is perfectible if only states can be allowed to get on with the job. This is generally deemed the ‘progressive’ approach.

Those further to the right, on the other hand, have an innate belief in the right of people to look after their own needs and not be coerced into supporting a more egalitarian society. They may not say it, but they think that Adam Smith ‘s ‘invisible hand’ tends to produce a fair outcome when individuals act selfishly.

Things are generally, of course, more nuanced than that. But there is still a wide enough gulf in people’s view of the world for considerable mutual lack of understanding. In broad terms, there seems to be a tendency among many scientists and employees of international organisations to believe that Gordon Gekko was wrong and that ‘greed’ is bad. They tend therefore to favour state and international intervention to achieve the ‘right’ goals for society and distrust those who take a more hard-headed approach to life, as is more common in the private sector.

And if disagreement with what you hold to be self-evident – that humans are altering the climate for the worse – is something you cannot understand, then it may be natural to ascribe ulterior motives to those holding such heretical views (Surely intelligent people cannot believe that; someone must be paying them to say it). Meanwhile, from the other end of the political spectrum, following the IPCC line looks like a thinly-veiled attempt to bring in world government (These people cannot be naïve enough to believe the uncertain science; they must just want to control the way we live.) Certainly the argument is no longer about science per se.

The latest twist is a paper by William Anderegg , James Prall , Jacob Harold and Stephen Schneider published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science entitled Expert Credibility in Climate Change (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/22/1003187107.full.pdf+html). This purports to show that ‘credible’ scientists with a record of publication in the area overwhelmingly support the IPCC line. The comparison is made with a list of signatories of various dissenting letters, many of whom are interested and concerned lay people rather than active climate scientists.

The fact that getting funding for work which might bring into question the central dogma on climate change would be very difficult is not mentioned. Neither is the fact that Schneider , the author of the paper, is a prominent and vocal apologist for the prevailing theory. By essentially pulling rank on critics, the Schneider et al are doing something far removed from the principles of objective science.

But such is the debate at present; a classic dialogue of the deaf. Admittedly, the various concerns which have been raised about the objectivity of the IPCC process have now led to the current review by the Inter-Academy panel, and a refreshing change of language from Pachauri and other prominent figures. But don’t think that the change of tone represents a change of heart. The two sides still don’t understand or respect each other’s positions. This vital issue will not be settled by debate but by the accumulation of irrefutable evidence which will either confirm the AGW hypothesis or finally cause a paradigm change.

The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS
Tel: +44 1223 421242

Sir Alan Rudge, a society Fellow and former member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee, is one of the leaders of the rebellion who gathered signatures on a petition sent to Lord Rees, the society president. He told The Times that the society had adopted an “unnecessarily alarmist position” on climate change.  –Ben Webster, The Times, 29 May 2010

I think the Royal Society should be more neutral and welcome credible contributions from both sceptics and alarmists alike. There is a lot of science to be done before we can be certain about climate change and before we impose upon ourselves the huge economic burden of cutting emissions.  –Sir Alan Rudge, The Times, 29 May 2010

The most prestigious group of scientists in the country was forced to act after fellows complained that doubts over man made global warming were not being communicated to the public. In particular they were unhappy that the long term effects of greenhouse gases were being oversimplified. Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, admitted that the case for man-made global warming has been exaggerated in the past.  –Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2010

Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation said it was about time the sceptics were taken more seriously. “I think it is a very significant development in that it is no longer one or two eccentrics but a wide group of fellows so it is taken more seriously – as it should be,” he said. “I think it is very wise to accept that while the basic science is solid, we have no idea what is going to happen in the future.” –Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2010

Royal Society to publish new guide to the science of climate change

UPDATES:

Curry: The Backstory

Curry: The Finale

There are some truly stunning comments from climate scientist Peter Webster, who was allowed access to CRU temperature station data despite the fact that CRU claimed it was unable to release the data as it was bound by confidentiality agreements:

While amateur climatologist McIntyre spent years begging in vain for the raw data, Webster eventually managed to convince Jones to send them to him. He is the only scientist to date who has been given access to the data. “To be honest, I’m shocked by the sloppy documentation,” Webster told SPIEGEL.

Curious Inconsistencies

Webster doesn’t believe that inconsistencies like these will invalidate the Jones curve altogether. “But we would like to know, of course, what’s behind all of these phenomena.” If a natural mechanism were at least partly to blame for the rise in temperatures, it would decrease the share of human influence in current global warming.