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Street Fighting

If anyone wants to understand why science is coming to be viewed as increasingly political one need only look to a quote from Kevin Trenberth in an article in the current issue of the Economist.

“For example, when Kevin Trenberth, head of the IPCC’s panel on hurricanes, recently suggested that there exists a link between climate change and the wave of powerful hurricanes last year, he was immediately challenged. Christopher Landsea, a hurricane expert at America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC panel, arguing that Dr Trenberth’s comments went beyond what the peer-reviewed science could justify. He wrote a public letter complaining that: “because of Dr Trenberth’s pronouncements, the IPCC process has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost.”

Dr Trenberth retorts that “politics is very strong in what is going on, but it is all coming from Landsea and colleagues. He is linked to the sceptics.” He explains the remarks in question by saying that he did not suggest climate change was affecting the number of hurricanes, but was affecting their intensity, because of hotter ocean temperatures, a conclusion he says the data readily bears out.”

(For background on the Landsea/IPCC issue please see recent discussion in the Prometheus archives.)

When Trenberth says that Landsea is “linked to the skeptics” (and to be fair to Kevin, several other scientists have also made this observation in debate) he is referring to a reference in Landsea’s open letter to a publication that has been submitted to the Journal of Climate. Here is the reference: “(Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted)”. Presumably the “Michaels” in this reference is none other than Pat Michaels, a research professor at the University of Virginia who is also affiliated with the Cato Institute. He is an unabashed political advocate who frequently uses science as the basis for his political arguments.

Trenberth is implying that because Landsea has collaborated with Michaels on a peer reviewed paper submitted for publication, that we can dismiss Landsea’s complaints as being politically motivated and without merit. In other words because of the “linkage” we don’t need to actually look to the science to resolve their disagreement.

Ad hominem attacks are part and parcel of a political fight. If scientists want to encourage the evaluation of scientific debates according to who is “linked” with whom rather than on the merits of the claims under dispute, then they should not be at all surprised to see science viewed as just another arena for political battle.

I maintain that Trenberth’s case would be better served if he could simply provide a single peer-reviewed study to back up his scientific claims, rather than engaging in McCarthyesque innuendo. Better yet, had Trenberth instead said at that now infamous Harvard press conference, "The IPCC concluded X, Y, and Z about hurricanes in its 2001 assessment, but my personal view is A, B, and C," then I be willing to bet that there would have been no Landsea/IPCC flap.

And a final note on the futility of the “linkage” argument as a proxy for real scientific debate. Trenberth himself has a very similar “linkage” to a prominent skeptic:

Hurrell, J. W., S. J. Brown, K. E. Trenberth and J. R. Christy, 2000: Comparison of tropospheric temperatures from radiosondes and satellites: 1979-1998. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 81, 2165-2177.

Both Trenberth’s and Landsea’s “linkages” are in the process of publishing peer reviewed literature and as such should be evaluated on their merits, and not on the personalities or politics of their authors. But if they really want to play politics, they by all means they use the ad hominem attack. But in pursuing such a strategy, don’t be surprised to see the diminishment of what is valuable about peer review and, ultimately, the further politicization of science.