A Climate Scientist Who Engages Skeptics

[n2doc]

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

I’ve been in touch all week with Judith Curry, a seasoned climate scientist at Georgia Tech with a particular focus on hurricanes and warming. She has no skepticism about a growing human influence on climate. But she has split with many of her peers and frequently engages a certain batch of climate skeptics (most notably Stephen McIntyre). She says she’s deeply troubled by the tribal nature of some subsets of the climate science community and what she sees as ill-advised stonewalling on releasing data and interpretations of data for review and independent analysis. Others, notably the Realclimate.org team, do not share her views.

Dr. Curry has written a fresh essay that’s essentially a message to young scientists potentially disheartened in various ways by recent events. You can read the piece below and it’s been posted on Climateprogress.org, as well. (I’ve added links to provide background where acronyms are used, etc.) Given the ongoing focus here on “ Generation E,” which clearly includes young scientists focused on climate and energy, it’s a great fit. Whether or not you agree with her, I think you’ll agree that this piece serves as a valuable conversation starter on the practices and goals of science in an age of deepening global and social complexity and also deepening political polarization.

more:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/a-climate-scientist-on-climate-skeptics/

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. It's an interesting angle, but...at what point do you just give up on the skeptics?

Take McIntyre for example. He has a BS in math and is hardly an expert on climate science. How much time do actual experts owe to him?

Take any scientific principle that has skeptics: vaccines? evolution? Germ Theory? How much time do people who actually have their degrees in biology owe to people like Bill Maher or Kirk Cameron?

[semillama]

12. you give up when they stop influencing policy, of course!

Your neighbor who doubts, there's not much you can do after a while, of course, but high-profile AGW denialists need to be addressed loudly.

[phasma ex machina]

13. "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Feynman. nt

[greennina]

2. If the public won't understand the data...

why do they feel entitled to it? They'll just jump to the wrong conclusions.

[SouthernLiberal]

3. I've met some skeptics

I don't know how to deal with them. See, these skeptics are physicists. And okay, skeptic is not the right word. They are absolutely certain that:

1) There is no climate change underway
2) If there was, there is no way it could have been caused by human activity
3) Anyone who disagrees with them is at best a candidate for village idiot

Me, I listen, and quietly wonder why they think they know anything about climate studies. The November issue of Analog magazine contains an article by a physicist 'debunking' the notion that we know anything about North American surface temperatures. These do not seem to be people that can be swayed by opening your data to their scrutiny. They are real scientists and they know you are wrong.

[Richard D]

4. Um, right . . . .

[caraher]

6. I just read Jeffrey D. Kooistra's Analog article

It's not a completely crazy piece; the concern is that there are confounding factors at many official US weather stations that can give spuriously high temperature readings, and gives a few anecdotes about apparent negligence in avoiding them. My two gripes with his piece are these:

1. He claims that a change from using whitewash to latex paint in the late '70s skewed temperatures upward, and writes approvingly of someone's effort to investigate this by purchasing 3 identical weather stations, painting one with latex, the second with whitewash and the third left unpainted. On the basis of an experiment with number of samples N=1 in each of the three groups we are to conclude that the latex-painted weather stations skew readings high? Maybe on Mythbusters... but that's pretty weak science. But hey, the lone genius behind this experiment is an experienced "broadcast meteorologist" so who am I to criticize?

2. He extrapolates from this experiment and visits by the same investigator to three of 1221 weather stations to the conclusion that the NWS climate monitoring data are hopelessly flawed. From there, it clearly follows that all the other evidence for warming must suffer from similar flaws, flaws to which scientists are systematically blinded by their political allegiances. Yeah, right.

The author lives in the birthplace of Amway and has a Dutch surname. Following parallel reasoning I think I can safely conclude that his analysis is fatally crippled by his right-wing politics.

To give an idea of what a "real scientist" Kooistra is, I cherry-pick the following from an article praising another SF author's book advancing "skepticism" of mainstream science: "I’ve always known that Darwinism is a religion because I come from a religious background so I recognize religion when I see it." A review of one of Kooistra's books says, "Kooistra is a science columnist for Analog, and delights in stirring up trouble by advocating fringe-science ideas, some of which show up here."

What are the physics bona fides of the other skeptics you refer to? The biggest name among physicists among skeptics is probably Freeman Dyson...

[SouthernLiberal]

7. At an SF Convention...

Dr. Travis S. Taylor, and a bunch of his co-workers in the audience.

[caraher]

8. There does seem to be a certain breed of physicist you're dealing with...

I've known some people the biographical info I just read on Taylor reminds me of... there's seems to be a strong Libertarian streak among SF-reading engineering-oriented physicists, and the notion that there might be global-scale problems solved by anyone other than lone geniuses clashes hard with their worldviews. They tend to idolize Heinlein and are not, as a group, big on the notion of complex problems.

The physicist's conceit (which I say as a physicist) is that the tools of physics are completely universal and can be brought to bear fruitfully on any problem once distilled to its essentials. That works so well in so many cases that a certain hubris may set in, and there can develop a tendency to overgeneralize and subscribe to simple, universal theories in areas of thought that are not as clear-cut as physics and engineering can be (e.g. economics, politics). The problem is that you must simplify as much as possible *and no more*, and too often that last part gets swept aside.

They're very smart in their own way, but tend to be blind to certain things.

[ElQueso]

16. Let's not cloud the issue with the truth!

This response is typical of people who try to refute real scientific evidence.

You say that Kooistra drew the conclusions he did from one guy visiting 3 of the 1221 weather stations to conclude that the weather stations are hopelessly flawed.

Read it again, dude. AFTER Watts (the meteorologist that you so quickly blow off) visited three sites himself, he organized a group called the Surface Stations Project who reviewed 70% (a huge number, scientifically valid) of the 1221 stations and found they found that 89% of the stations were not set up in accordance with the USHCN own standards. In many cases the temperature stations were set up close to heat sources for crying out loud!

Also, the thing about white-washed paint versus latex enamel. I wonder if you really understand how science is done? Watts (and again, not Kooistra) bought three stations to test. One he left plain wood (as a control), the other he white-washed (meticulously re-creating the formula of whitewash as it was used earlier in the century) and the other he used latex paint, which is the current standard. There was .3 maximum to .8 minimum emperature differences between the whitewashed and the latex versions. That's actual science dude!

How do you explain that NO MODEL ever created by climate change advocate "scientists" has EVER made an accurate prediction of temperature changes? Science says "make a prediction, test it, and if the tests confirm the prediction, it's possible that the theory closely models reality." Climate change scientists have never managed to make a theory that is verifiable.

But let's not let the facts get in the way of the truth, please!

As Kooistra aptly states at the end of his Analog article:

"What’s really ironic is that, if someone claims to see a flying saucer, which hurts no one and costs nothing, debunkers come out in force. But let a former vice-president claim environmental apocalypse is upon us, and suddenly we’re appropriating billions and changing our lifestyles."

[caraher]

17. Enjoy your stay

It's true that I missed the part on surfacestations.org project. Mea culpa. I'm certain their work is top-notch, bias-free science pursued by seekers of truth and not activists seeking solely to "disprove" the scientific consensus, just as I'm certain I need a lecture touting Mythbusters-level research as "actual science." :sarcasm:

More to the point, their work has not been entirely ignored. Let's forget all the other evidence for a warming trend other than US surface weather stations and accept the work of surfacestations.org as the last word on which reporting stations are giving valid readings. NOAA constructed two graphs, one using only the 70 stations rated as "best" or "good" by surfacestations.org and one using the full network (see page 3). You'll note the lack of a discernible difference between these. I'm sure there are stations that read high for reasons of poor siting, but there are also stations that read low for similar reasons (e.g. sites that are excessively shaded; note that a poor rating is not in principle not a sign of a bias that would create a spurious warming trend!). And this quick check suggests these errors largely cancel out. So I believe the take-away message is that it's getting a bit warm in here -- even if you accept the surfacestations.org analysis.

But for a debut post you want to issue a challenge full of scare quotes and an unsupported (probably unsupportable) categorical assertion about climate models? Is it pizza time yet?

[TZ]

18. You do realize

That there is a lot of peripheral evidence for climate change that doesn't reside in the physics and weather community right?
As a biologist/ecologist there is OODLES of scientific evidence in terms of where certain birds/mammals are found to where they no longer live. Lets not also forget epidemiological data which shows TROPICAL DISEASES becoming endemic in different places than the tropics...Which shows that climate IS changing.
Most of the climate change skeptics I've found have blinders on..and focus on the area of science where the data isn't the strongest. What they miss in their zeal to prove climate change is a hoax is the hundreds if not thousands of other types of data which are pretty conclusive about what is happening around the globe. Hell I was convinced about climate change in 1990 by evidence presented by a CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST/ecologist.
In other words, you are missing the forest for the trees.

[kestrel91316]

11. Name one PhD physicist from a university OTHER than those fundie places

who believes him/herself to be an expert in climatology without studying it. Yeah, I just asked you to name names.

(crickets chirping)

[mn9driver]

5. Realclimate is working on making all the data available to everyone.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/wheres-the-data/

...and they have always been willing to "engage" skeptics. They just don't humor them.

[Prometheuspan]

10. enaging skeptics mostly wastes time

what can you do with them but talk around in circles of their tired old circular logic loops?

You just have to provide the facts, get in, get out, and not get dragged down into the dirt with the scum.


Over and over again, no, solar increase is a real contributing factor which contributes to less than a billionth of the problem.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/index.noshade.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/4_stages_denial.php
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/C25/
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2009/02/global-warming-denial.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-siegel/bipartisan-global-warming_b_134812.html
http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/ExxonSecretsAnalysis.pdf
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/19/global-warming-denial-has-its-benefits/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/09/08/cartoon-guide-to-global-warming-denial/
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-henderson190806.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=522784499045867811
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/fight-global-warming-denial-george-will.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/a-troubling-trend-in-glob_b_158288.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJAbATJCugs&feature=related

[Johonny]

15. It depends

new concepts often find a lot of skeptics. It is general a good practice to remain somewhat skeptical to extraordinary claims until repeatable results have been demonstrated. Most scientists when present with overwhelming facts will change their mind. It is only after the science is firmly established does engaging in skeptics become of less and less value. Simply because those that haven't converted their thinking are either unconvincable or dishonest. More to the point those that haven't changed their mind aren't really part of the mainstream science anymore.

[Johonny]

14. I agree

[joshcryer]

9. This is the same as when people like Coast to Coast were insulting NASA scientists because data...

...wasn't easily acquired. NASA goes on and makes the PDS (where all data is posted), and they claim the 6 month no-compete period (where scientists get exclusive rights to the data) is too long. Some websites, like Phoenix Lander and MER put images up immediately, conspiracy nuts complain that MROs data doesn't have a nice site allowing immediate viewing (it goes to the PDS).

You can never explain shit to the irrational.