2009-10-25

Clive James on knowledge, scepticism, and climate change denialism

Clive James on knowledge, scepticism, and climate change denialism

.... and my email to him:

Dear Clive

I have derived a great deal of pleasure from your writings and broadcasts over many years but your broadcast this morning on Radio 4 filled me with dismay.

I’m afraid that your assessment of the climate science debate was profoundly mistaken – on a number of counts.

Don’t worry, I don’t intend to bombard you with the scientific evidence that counters the claims of the denialists (you can read this for yourself if you wish at sites such as http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462) but I do wish to explain why the climate change deniers really are on a par with Holocaust deniers.

First of all, most of the science is about what has already happened and what is happening now. Nobody (except the scientifically illiterate - I think here of “journalists” such as Melanie Phillips) disputes the figures for the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the growth of those figures in response to the burning of fossil fuels. Nobody (except the scientifically illiterate) disputes the claim that CO2 in the atmosphere leads (ceteris paribus) to a “greenhouse effect”. This much is basic physics and chemistry.

Of course scientists also claim that there has been a long term increase in average global temperatures and here they are on slightly shakier ground. The written records only go back so far and many of the figures have to be inferred from all kinds of other disparate evidence. The accuracy of historical records and the validity of such inferences may be disputed (on perfectly reasonable scientific grounds). Nonetheless, there is a very very wide consensus amongst scientists that there has been a warming trend in average global temperatures since we began burning lots of fossil fuels.

The claims of many denialists that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to delude the rest of us are belied by the fact that those same scientists have reported a slight cooling trend in very recent years. Of course, the assumption is that this is a short term blip in an otherwise relentless upward trend…

…which brings me to my final point; and your most serious error:

None of the science described above is based on “modelling”. Computer modelling of the climate is designed to predict what might happen in the future. Of course, nobody knows for certain what will actually happen in the future. For example, the super-volcano under Yellowstone Park may blow and plunge us all into a decades long winter. But computer models can provide educated guesses as to what is most likely to happen given certain assumptions about continuing trends. There is far less scientific consensus here (especially when it comes to the details) but there is a very widespread scientific consensus that (assuming current trends do continue unabated) some pretty dreadful things are very likely to happen over the next couple of hundred years.

There are some who have genuine scientific concerns about things like the measurement of average sea temperatures and the rate of ice sheet melting and so on; but they are in a minority. Most of the “scientists” who tend to get quoted by journalists seeking to discredit the theory of global warming are scientists in the same sense that David Irving is an historian.

8 comments:

  1. From my experience, to most scientists would find it difficult to comment with authority on a situation or set of circumstances outside of their field. It seems that this notion doesn't apply to climate change where everyone seems to have the ability to sweep together findings from many diverse scientific areas and make concrete statements. It's all just a little too convenient (for the pro climate-change lobbyists).

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  2. Did you even read Clive James's article?

    "Really they should know better, because the two events are not remotely comparable. The Holocaust actually happened. The destruction of the earth by man-made global warming hasn't happened yet, and there are plenty of highly qualified scientists ready to say that the whole idea is a case of too many of their colleagues relying on models provided by the same computers that can't even predict what will happen to the weather next week."

    You clearly have no understanding of the scientific process, or the concept of scepticism.

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  3. I was pretty riled by Clive James's piece as well, and like you sent him an email.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Climate change denial means confusing hard evidence with uninformed opinion, facts with prejudice, reality with propaganda.
    NOBODY who knows what they are talking about denies the evidence for anthropogenic climate change (as opposed to questioning some details of it) except for a tiny dishonest minority who are being paid to lie to us by the oil companies.
    And no, I'm not a climate scientist myself, but if I want to know what they are saying then I read what they write, not what climate change deniers write about them.
    I was shocked that an otherwise intelligent guy like Clive James could be taken in like this. Well put, Scroedinger99, and I'll write to him too.

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  5. Your article is incomplete. You failed to
    make the case for the progression from "climate change" to "dangerous climate change", and failed to explain why skepticism of dangerous climate change is so unreasonable as to be so severely berated.

    Let's start again.
    You say CO2 has been increasing, and that's due to us burning fossil fuels. Fine.

    You say CO2 is a GHG. Yes, I agree - but you
    didn't mention the non-linear relationship,
    and you didn't mention saturation, and you
    didn't mention the assumption of positive feedback. Why not?

    You say temperatures have been rising while
    we've been burning fossil fuels. There are two problems with that; firstly correlation
    is not causation, and secondly that to say
    temperatures have been rising is short in truthiness. I'd say temperatures have been generally rising since the LIA, but there have been several episodes of cooling (eg.
    1940-60 ish) which falsifies a simplistic
    "more CO2 = warming" hypothesis. I'd also
    argue that the LIA was a time of hardship
    and that the warming since then has been "a
    Good Thing(tm)."

    You say the current cooling is assumed to be
    a blip. Why? By whom? Surely it's just as real as the warming that preceded it.
    You seem to be selecting observations to fit
    a storyline, rather than looking at what has,
    and is, happening.

    You concede that there's less consensus, wrt
    model predictions, yet you still insult skeptics. Given that skepticism is essential
    to the scientific method, I'd have to give
    your selective "reasoning" a big fat FAIL.

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  6. @sleepalot

    I presume your comment is directed at me.

    You said: "Your article is incomplete. You failed to make the case for the progression from 'climate change' to 'dangerous climate change', and failed to explain why skepticism of dangerous climate change is so unreasonable as to be so severely berated."

    I quite deliberately "failed to make that case" (though I think it can be made). That is a prediction about the future and is obviously less certain than the science concerning what has happened and is happening now.

    I didn't say that scepticism concerning dangerous climate change is so unreasonable as to be severely berated. I certainly don't think that Clive James should be berated (severely of otherwise) and I shall continue to berate Melanie Phillips regardless of her views on climate.

    "correlation is not causation" - true but misleading.

    Consistent correlation between A and B *does* imply causation. It's just that the causal relationship may (in the absence of any other information) be from A to B, from B to A, or from C to A and B. It is the job of scientists to gather this "other information" and that's what they have been doing.

    Another job that scientists do is to try and distinguish signal from noise. The noise is very real and it has its own causes. This does not mean that the signal is not there.

    Thus the "blip" and the unusually cold UK and US winter are real, but so is the fact that *globally*, we have just "enjoyed" the warmest January on record. The important issue is the global, long term, underlying trend.

    I agree that there are a few genuine scientific "sceptics" out there who have reasonable concerns about aspects of the scientific consensus (to the extent that one can talk about a "consensus" on this) on likely future scenarios. But there are also "denialists" who seem to have ideological rather than scientific objections to the notion that relentlessly increasing the levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere might just cause a greenhouse effect.

    Such people (if, and I realize it's a very big "if", the worst case scenarios play out and the denialists persuade humanity to allow this to happen) may end up killing far greater numbers of people than were killed in the ideological conflicts of the 20th century - though the denialists themselves will, of course, be long dead by then.

    I do insult such people and will continue to do so.

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  7. @Schroedinger99

    "I quite deliberately "failed to make that case" (though I think it can be made). That is a prediction about the future and is obviously less certain than the science concerning what has happened and is happening now."

    Without the presence of danger, the question
    of warming is largely academic. What you're effectively saying is that you make vicious
    attacks against skeptics as a matter of course on issues of mere academic interest,
    _even though skepticism is entirely proper
    to science_!

    "I didn't say that scepticism concerning dangerous climate change is so unreasonable as to be severely berated."

    No, you didn't _say_ it, you _do_ it! You
    liken skeptics to holocaust deniers. If that's not berating, what is?

    ""correlation is not causation" - true but misleading."

    No, just true.

    "Consistent correlation between A and B *does* imply causation."

    Now *that's* misleading. You should've said
    correlation *implies* causation. That implication may be entirely false. "Consistent" is a "weasel word". I've already claimed the correlation between CO2 and temp.
    is poor, and you haven't argued to the contrary.

    "The important issue is the global, long term, underlying trend."

    Heh. There's just the one long term trend, is
    there? (The One True Trend(tm)?) Remind me,
    which one is that?

    If the global climate was a simple linear
    system, you might have a point, but I suspect
    it's a bit more complicated than that. Unfortunately, the whole question has been
    hijacked by the activities of eco-advocates
    to the extent that the science is in tatters.

    "I agree that there are a few genuine scientific "sceptics" out there who have reasonable concerns about aspects of the scientific consensus (to the extent that one can talk about a "consensus" on this) on likely future scenarios. But there are also "denialists" who seem to have ideological rather than scientific objections (...)"

    Nonsense. You're effectively asserting that climate science is pure and ideology-free.
    I joined this discussion with the intent of
    shaming you, but clearly you are utterly
    shameless!

    ReplyDelete

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