Science as Politics at Real Climate
October 6th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Real Climate is a popular blog that advocates action on climate change. Its authors often uses bullying tactics to enforce a view that their views on science are the sole authoritative basis for judging political action. In turn, here at Prometheus I’ve occasionally used the actions of Real Climate as excellent illustrations of how climate science becomes so politicized and partisan by activist scientists. In this way the skeptics and the activist scientists engage in a dance that requires both to participate to reinforce the belief that science provides the basis for political action. So both have an interest in keeping debate on matters of science, rather than more explicitly on the far more important questions of policy and politics.
Lucky for us, the best example yet of these dynamics can be found in the post that that Real Climate have put up today on Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Real Climate post seeks to elevate the importance of skepticism in the climate debate (yes, you read that right) so that it can knock it down, while at the same time ignoring far more meaningful issues related to climate policy, like whether a cap and trade program has any chance whatsoever of actually succeeding. In this way Real Climate serves to politicize climate science, make climate policy an even more partisan issue, and draw attention away from the policy questions that really matter most. (read on . . .)
First, it is worth pointing out that Real Climate has no qualms violating their own blog policy:
The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.
Well, this is nothing new and it is of course their blog and they can write about whatever they wish regardless of their stated intent. But it may also be that they simply don’t see themselves talking about politics when they are critiquing the views of a vice presidential candidate. They may think that they are just talking about the science. If so, then this of course is part of the fundamental problem that happens when scientists enter into debates over policy and politics. There is no such thing as sticking to the science. To suggest otherwise is either to be really naive or just disingenuous.
Now on the substance. I claim no ability to discern the meaning behind Sarah Palin’s convoluted and undiagrammable sentences — on global warming or anything else (and while I’m at it, a shout out to the 3rd graders at Wasilla Elementary, extra credit for reading this post — wink!). Further, in my view she is unqualified for the position she is running for (an understatement), but that is not the point of this post. Lets start with Real Climate’s interpretation of Palin’s remarks at the VP debate in response to a question about the causes of climate change, which is that Palin’s statement reflects
“a nod in the direction of acknowledging (tentatively) the possibility of a human influence” on climate in Alaska and/or worldwide
Lets contrast that with Joe Biden’s response to the same question,
“I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade,”
which Real Climate applauded as, “direct, straightforward, and simple.”
Palin’s acknowledgment of a human role, while expressing some serious doubts about the magnitude of that role, was clearly contrasted by Biden who expressed no doubt. Whose views are right? Well the IPCC says that at least 50% of the global temperature increase since 1950 can be attributed to human causes. Presumably that leaves as much as 50% of the increase due to non-human causes. So it probably is fair to say that there is a mix of human and non-human sources for change. Further, understanding climate changes at the regional level is of course much more difficult than at the global level which is why the IPCC calls such changes “complex and perhaps even counter-intuitive” and observes that “even continental-scale averages contain much greater variability than the global mean in association with planetary-scale waves and events such as El Niño” (p. 240 of Ch. 3 of WGI here in PDF).
So if I’m grading the debate performance of Palin and Biden on this particular question, I give them both pretty poor grades. Climate change, whether in Alaska or globally is not commonly understood within the scientific community to be entirely human-caused, but at the same time there is evidence of a significant human role. But if you are Real Climate you excuse Biden’s incorrect answer by saying,
Well, maybe he left out the kind of caveats and qualifications you’d attach to the attribution of the recent loss of (North) polar sea ice if this were an AGU talk instead of a vice-presidential debate.
It is as if Real Climate is saying that it is OK to be wrong, so long as you are wrong in a politically acceptable direction. And in a bizarre sort of circular logic Real Climate seems to use Palin’s political views to reinforce their impeachment of her views on climate science:
One can moreover doubt even Palin’s commitment to dealing with the consequences of climate change. Surely, that would include doing something to save the polar bears, yet the State of Alaska (against the advice of its own wildlife biologists) is suing the Interior department over its decision to list the polar bear as “threatened”
Well, it is not clear to me that viewing Alaskan climate change as 100% human caused leads one to accept a particular ESA designation on polar bears. There are probably a few other factors involved.
And this gets us to the nub of the matter, and that of course is policy. In this election, while it is true that both John McCain and Barack Obama have strongly endorsed a national cap and trade program to achieve emissions reductions, exactly what they propose remains murky. In its effort to maintain a focus of attention on skeptical views of science, Real Climate gets the basic facts of these policy commitments wrong when they assert that:
it has been encouraging that both John McCain and Barack Obama favor mandatory action to reduce US carbon emissions
They both favor action, but how mandatory is open to question. In fact, both Obama and McCain leave plenty of wiggle room in their plans for a cap and trade approach to reducing emissions, such as indicated in their replies here. In fact, a clear-eyed view of the evolution of the debate over cap and trade as well as its performance in Europe and elsewhere would suggest that there are important questions to be asked about whether or not such an approach can ever meaningfully reduce emissions. This is a debate worth having.
But hey, why ask such questions when we can spend time cheerleading against Sarah Palin’s failure to reflect certain scientific views and take sides in the presidential contest. Because we all know that if we could get everyone to accept a certain view on science — or more accurately, an erroneous view coupled with the right political views — then climate problem would be solved. Right?
Wrong. The fact is that neither campaign has outlined an approach to reducing U.S. emissions that has any chance of working. The fact that both Obama and McCain seem to agree on this issue simply means that neither sees a political advantage in it — with the economy and wars, and now Reverend Wright and the Keating Five, there are plenty of other wedge issues that are at the focus of attention. Anyone thinking that candidates views on climate are meaningfully important in this election is not paying attention. However, the candidates views on climate policy will matter come January when the new president outlines a plan of action, and it currently looks like both platforms are pretty weak. While it is surely a lot of fun to pile on, serious efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate variability and change are going to require much more than a deconstruction of Sarah Palin. Self-professed climate experts should leave that to the professionals — like Tina Fey.
Popularity: 2% [?]
October 7th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Comment submitted over at RC in response to Gavin Schmidt once again crying “misrepresentation”, saved here as insurance:
Gavin (#77)-
The IPCC suggests as much as a 10% chance that all of the observed increase could be due solely to natural factors:
“Attribution studies show that it is very likely that these natural forcing factors alone cannot account for the observed warming.”
p. 60 of the TS (quantification of uncertainty terms found on p. 23):
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-ts.pdf
On that same page the IPCC also says that there is a >90% ["very likely"]chance that >50% ["most"]of the observed increase is due to greenhouse gases:
“It is very likely that anthropogenic greenhouse
gas increases caused most of the observed increase
in global average temperatures since the mid-20th
century.”
So the IPCC says that there is
*as much as a 10% chance of natural forcing alone causing 100% of the temperature increase
*more than 90% chance of GHGs causing >50% of the temperature increase
Although the IPCC unfortunately did not chose to express its uncertainty for the role of internal variability (what you call “noise”) it leave an explicit role for it:
“There is also increased confidence that natural internal
variability cannot account for the observed changes”
Presumably then internal variability accounts for whatever is unexplained by GHGs + other human + natural forcing.
But lets be clear, the IPCC leaves open the possibility of a 100% non-human cause in the forcing to explain the temperature increase, at the <10% level. It also leaves open the possibility that internal variability plays a role in some part of the observed global temperature increase.
We also know post-AR4 that engine intakes on ships also play a role, but I digress;-)
Anyway, this is not skepticism, it is simply reporting what the IPCC actually says. Uncertainty is OK, we can live with it. There is no need to pretend that it does not exist.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Roger, I agree.
While it is surely a lot of fun to pile on, serious efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate variability and change are going to require much more than a deconstruction of Real Climate’s inability to see that they are being either really naive or just disingenuous in pretending they are just sticking to the science.
But I remain unconvinced that they will be more effective (and the science less politicized) if they changed their blog policy to acknowledge expressly that they are concerned about GHG emissions and build-up and wish to see policies that take their concerns into account.
The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.
I agree that they should
October 9th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Oops, my bad. I had intended to end with the first two paragraphs.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:16 am
This condescending reply from Gavin Schmidt to a serious, substantive comment illustrate why it is that Real Climate is not a place for serious dialogue, if you didn’t know that already. I am done with them and will not again try to disrupt their echo chamber:
—————————–
# Chip Knappenberger Says:
8 October 2008 at 5:46 PM
Gavin,
As always, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not (nor have I ever) trying to argue that natural forcings explain all of the observed global temperature change during the past 50 years. Heck, I don’t even argue that they explain a majority. They do explain why the rate of global temperature rise has slowed during the past 6-7 years. And perhaps some of the “observed” rise may not actually be a real rise. But, nevertheless, I agree that the majority of the real rise (whatever that amount is) during the past 50 (although I prefer 30) years is caused by human enhancement of the earth’s greenhouse effect.
I am pretty sure Roger agrees with that as well.
However, this is not the point of contention. The point of contention is how what the IPCC wrote should be interpreted by the reader. If either I or Roger are confused, then clearly, the IPCC’s meaning is not very straightforward. If there is no evidence whatsoever that natural (or internal) variability alone (or together) could have explained all of the warming, then why on earth didn’t the IPCC plainly say so? There would be no argument had the IPCC simply written: “It is extremely unlikely that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing and it is virtually certain that it can not be explained by natural external forcing alone.” This would leave no room for (mis)interpretation.
Right?
As it currently is written, such a level of certainty is left unclear. Or, in fact, it can be interpreted as Roger has.
-Chip
[Response: Next time you are invited to be a lead author, why not suggest it? - gavin]
——————————
October 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am
“This condescending reply from Gavin Schmidt to a serious, substantive comment illustrate why it is that Real Climate is not a place for serious dialogue, if you didn’t know that already.”
Yes, Real Climate isn’t a place for serious dialogue. There are very few places that are. But that didn’t stop me from putting in this comment:
“The analogy would be a criminal trial in which the defence challenges every piece of the positive evidence indicating their client is guilty, but offers no evidence at all that anyone else committed the crime. The jury might well have some doubts remaining as to the defendent’s guilt, but there is still no evidence for anyone else’s. – gavin]”
If the defendant has not committed the crime, then there is evidence that *someone* else has committed the crime.
And in fact, the IPCC even names the someone else. They wrote:
“Attribution studies show that it is very likely that these natural forcing factors alone cannot account for the observed warming.”
By their definition of “very likely,” they are saying that there is a 90-95% chance that natural factors alone can’t account for the observed warming. That means there is a 5-10% chance that natural factors alone can account for the observed warming.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
If we’re going to parse words, please read the following two passages and tell me if they’re consistent:
1) “In fact, a clear-eyed view of the evolution of the debate over cap and trade as well as its performance in Europe and elsewhere would suggest that there are important questions to be asked about whether or not such an approach can ever meaningfully reduce emissions. This is a debate worth having.”
2) “Wrong. The fact is that neither campaign has outlined an approach to reducing U.S. emissions that has any chance of working.”
Clearly, you’ve already decided the outcome of the “debate” you claim to wish to have! The campaigns both propose cap and trade (with different details), and you claim the neither one has ANY CHANCE of working. I don’t think that’s an officially defined IPCC term, but I assume it means “0%”. Given that only a handful of carbon cap and trade systems have ever been tried, and subsequent ones seem to be learning from earlier (auctions in RGGI vs. handouts in the EU), isn’t it a bit presumptuous to claim that no cap and trade system will ever work? The burden of proof does not fall entirely on one side or the other in this argument.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Hi Asa-
I surely have my views, but a “debate” means presenting a range of different views, and challenging them. Maybe minds will be changed, maybe not.
So, if you have strong arguments for why you think a cap and trade approach can lead to a reduction in emissions, please feel free to share.
Thanks!
October 9th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Hi,
Well, at least Gavin Schmidt seems to truly believe what he’s writing. And actually, I think he has a point. What the IPCC wrote was wrong.
But there isn’t much debate about what they wrote.
Here’s my latest comment to Real Climate:
Gavin Schmidt writes, “The ‘very likely’ is a confidence statement, not a probability in the sense you assume.”
So you say. But that’s not what the IPCC says. Go to page 23 of the Technical Summary (TS). You’ll see:
“The standard terms used in this report to define the likelihood of an outcome or result where this can be estimated probabilistically are:
Likelihood Terminology Likelihood of the occurrence/ outcome
Virtually certain > 99% probability
Extremely likely > 95% probability
Very likely > 90% probability”
On page 22, they explained what their wording was when the wanted to express confidence. For example, “Very High Confidence” is explained by the IPCC as meaning, “At least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct.”
Now perhaps you think the statement that the IPCC made was wrong. Perhaps you think they should have written something like, “Based on attribution studies, we are highly confident that these natural forcing factors alone cannot account for the observed warming.”
But that’s not what they wrote.
He continues, “I challenge you to find one decent attribution study that shows the two-sigma attribution to natural factors anywhere close to the observed trend…”
Hey, if you don’t like what the IPCC wrote, talk to them. They wrote the report, not me. (If *I* had written the report, I would have at least had the technical ability and honesty to come up with falsifiable predictions of future climate forcings and global temperature changes. But I digress.)
Mark
October 9th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I goofed. I didn’t word my comments properly. I just made this correction:
Oops. I wrote, “Based on attribution studies, we are highly confident that these natural forcing factors alone cannot account for the observed warming.”
But a better way of putting it would have been, “We are highly confident that attribution studies show natural factors alone cannot account for the observed warming.”