Reflections on Feynman per J. Case

My next serious read (what's yours?) is Competition, a (mostly nontechnical) plea by prominent mathematician James Case for a post-equilibrium economics. A browse in the bookstore reveals that he has little respect for the equilibrium models favored by quantitative economists. I think he is starting from results in game theory. More on this anon; I haven't read it yet.

For the present, I just wanted to discuss something from his epilogue. An important message for "believers" (as I (not to mention James!) am described elsewhere) and "skeptics" alike:

Seldom has anyone explained what science is - and is not - as simply and well as Richard Feynman in his 1974 commencement address to the students at Caltech. Science, he said on that occasion, is nothing more than a method developed over the years for separating ideas that work from ideas that don't. Anyone who observes the same natural phenomena day after day, such as the ebb and flow of the tides or the barking of dogs in a village street, will begin to develop ideas about them. Try it and see. There's nothing scientific about having ideas. Everyone does that. Science, said Feynman, begins when somebody figures out a way to test an idea to see if it works or not.

...

Feynman devoted a substantial portion of his 1974 commencement address to the subject of scientific integrity. Scientists, he said, have a responsibility to other scientists - and perhaps to the public as well - not to fool themselves. "after you've not fooled yourself" he assured his listeners, "it's easy not to fool other scientists." But not fooling yourself is far from easy because, liking your own ideas, "you are the easiest one to fool". Scientists have been learning for generations - indeed are still learning - ways of avoiding self-deception. One such way, he hastened to add is to divulge every reason you can think of why your conclusions are only tentative and may yet be proven wrong.

...

The perpetrators of pathological science are guilty not of fraud but of self-deception. Enamored of their own ideas, and fully expecting their experiments to confirm their theories, they find confirmation where none exists and - entirely too often - rush into print with results that are easily disproved. Such behavior is irresponsible, because it creates unnecessary work for others. Yet those who engage in it are seldom accused of dishonesty.

...

There is a scene in Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo in which the master and his assistants are preparing to test the Copernican notion that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo explains to the others that as a matter of discipline, their purpose must be to prove the earth stationary. Only if the ascertainable facts render that position untenable will they allow themselves to find in Copernicus' favor. In fact, says Galileo, "if we find anything which would suit us, that thing will we eye with particular distrust."

(Emphasis added; resemblance to any real "AGW skeptic" living or dead except those who happen to be economists is coincidental; Case is talking about the failure of mainstream economics to attend to this ideal.)

Let me add my own taxonomy here, back to the AGW issue and related themes. There are "skeptics" and "believers" and there are also investigators and pseudo-investigators.

Investigators cultivate certain habits of mind that enable the advancement of science, while pseudo-investigators cultivate those habits of mind which advance a particular agenda even as they attempt to make use of the justified credibility of the real investigators.

Unfortunately, and increasingly, the habits of mind of the investigator are somewhat unfamiliar to a public that when it rises above distraction and confusion retains a very utilitarian frame of mind. The network of trust among serious investigators no longer extends to the general public, which is prone to various distractions, some well-intended and some amazingly malign.

To be sure every auto mechanic and every plumber, every engineer and every MD, not to mention many other professionals of modest or exalted reputation, is an investigator in a very real sense. And one thing that infuriates me as well as some serious skeptics is the arrogant refusal of science to learn from more utilitarian professions some of the commercially successful techniques for refining a solution to a particular problem.

However, it doesn't follow that the expert in some domain understands and has thought about the methods by which the expertise was brought into the world. And here we see a certain hubris appearing again and again: "I don't understand it so it must be mumbo-jumbo". Not to say that every scientist really thinks about epistemology or needs to. But what scientists are looking for is deeper than a diagnosis or a repair strategy, and is based on a more diffuse platform. Furthermore, some things are hard to understand, because not many people understand them, and they may not be experts in explaining it, and there may not be enough demand for the knowledge to support people expending too much effort on the explanation, and it may take years of study to see the picture emerge.

The failure to provide a "complete explanation" is interpreted as caginess, but with twenty dedicated skeptics for each even marginally first rank climate scientist who has many other responsibilities, there simply isn't enough response to go around. Gatekeeping is the inevitable result. (Sometimes excessive gatekeeping happens for this and other reasons, but under the present constellations of forces and social groups some gatekeeping is inevitable.)

I've been exposed to a couple of great climatologists.

(Update: Specifically Ray Pierrehumbert and Francis Bretherton, who bear no responsibility for my beliefs, but whom I have been privileged to interact with at length, and who jointly hold primary responsibility for my deep respect for climatology as a respectable branch of physical science. And I cannot imagine myself or anyone else explaining much of what they say in a typical single hour's peer group conversation to an above-average electrical engineer (say, a graduate of Northwestern University's tech institute from the 1970s like myself) in less than three months of one-on-one full time exposition. )

There is more there than curve fitting or squashing facts into a preordained pattern. You can tell a person who has a healthy skepticism about his or her own ideas once you listen to them expound for a few dozen hours. That doesn't mean you can explain it.

On the other hand an AGW "skeptic" can be relied upon to celebrate certain results and mock others not depending on the quality of their evidence or their reasoning, but on whether or not the evidence is convenient for their beliefs. This is, in other words, pseudo-investigation, or in John McCarthy's formulation "lawyers' science".

On the other other hand, it is rare for a theoretical science of modest means and accomplishments (such as climate science) to abruptly become not only an applied science but a subject of controversy. And therein lies the reason we are still arguing over the parts of the picture that are not in great doubt among the community of actual investigators.

I don't think there is any poll, per Bi's recent suggestion, that can capture this. The only thing I can imagine improving matters is a re-established network of trust, a thing which has been deliberately undermined by the obvious malign social forces which seem to exult in promoting fear, division, hostility and suspicion whether it is warranted or not.

Conflation

John Fleck has an interesting article about confusing the two questions: 1) is there significant AGW? and 2) should very much be done about it? I missed it when it came out but fortunately Revkin linked to it.

John argues (presumably somewhat under the influence of RP Jr.) that the latter question is legitimately an open one, that substantive information already in existence is insufficient to settle it.

The primary audience of this blog is people who disagree with John on the second point. That is, we agree that the focus of the discussion should move away from physical climatology, the focus on which is a deliberate red herring on the part of people who oppose action. We disagree with anyone who suggests that it is a marginal or unproven case that such action is necessary. This requires us to broaden the conversation from physical climatology to the whole structure of modern society, which makes it incredibly interesting and incredibly difficult to make a case. It's immensely frustrating that there is still a focus on the physics part; regardless of what you may hear it is really a slam dunk by now that contemplated levels of CO2 are climatically significant.

So, one of the questions that most irks me is how and why we are still spending so much time on the first question. On the other hand, while I am convinced that only one answer is possible to the second question once present evidence is accounted for, it doesn't immediately follow from the first. Several steps are missing between a significant change and a policy imperative, but they are all quite solid.

One way of looking at it is as follows:

1) Are humans changing the composition of the atmosphere?
2) Does that change have observable consequences already?
3) Given current human behavior, what is the likely trajectory of those consequences into the future?
4) Are those consequences morally acceptable?
5) If not, what action should be taken?

It's hard to avoid a doubt whether question 4 is admissible. Some will prefer to substitute "Are those consequences economically acceptable?" I find this substitution unacceptable for various reasons.

Aside from question 4, a conclusion that dramatic changes need to be made is extremely solid. So why aren't we discussing point 4? Well, because that would get us thinking seriously about what society is for and what life means. All sides seem intent on avoiding the question of what our moral obligations are and how we should think about them. Focusing the conversation on a basic and unsurprising and incontrovertible result in climate physics at the expense of a discussion of who we are and how we should make collective decisions is a sign that social maturity has ebbed drastically.

So, as a refinement of John Fleck's argument, I would say that it's true that all of these are typically conflated. The extent to which we are discussing 1 and 2 to the exclusion of 3 and 4 and 5 is simply a mistake. On this point I agree with John.

On the other hand, I believe that we disagree in that I think the evidence on points 3 and 4 is overwhelming, but my position of #4 (and the implicit position on #4 of most who agree with me) is not based on an explicit social consensus, for once we get to the meta-question of what the right question 4 is, we are in a deep quandary.

We need to adjust to a finite world or that world will adjust us for us. The decisions involved are not well-represented in an economics that models labor and capital and real estate as first order inputs but consumable resources as a correction.

The press is not so much afraid to discuss this as utterly incapable (what news slot does it come under?), and advocates on all sides (except for market libertarians for whom it is all too simple) ignore the elephant altogether. Consequently the public is utterly confused about the choices imposed by the transition that is upon us, one that is as great as any in history.

Journalists and Hyperlinks

Regardless of how you feel about the content of the article (and I don't want to discuss it here) it is nice to see someone at the NYTimes who uses hyperlinks profusely, properly and effectively. A little progress.

 

Wishful thinking department

A not-very-informative history of climate change science  is remarkable only for its headline:

Ian Sample looks at how the study of the climate has moved from being a relatively minor branch of science to one that now dominates most others, thanks largely to the work of one man

Leaving aside the toxic lone-genius model of science, i.e., science as mutant superpower (see "Good Will Hunting"), wouldn't it be nice?

If you're seriously interested in the topic, Spencer Weart is a good source. 

How Loud to Squawk

The question of scientific neutrality vs scientific obligation to the greater good comes up constantly.

As the title and explanatory anecdote of this blog allude to, one of the most irritating aspects of denialism (which is to say, about deliberate lying regarding science) is the suggestion that controversy advances one's career. In fact, it is always safer to pick the strict neutrality position for someone pursuing a conventional career in science. People like Joe Romm have a different career path; people like me, not conventionally ambitious, have less to lose. The career scientists who are the mainstay of RealClimate, though, get no advantage for their efforts: time spent on taking a position, even a position that is totally in line with scientific evidence, is time at best wasted in advancing a career in geophysics.

(It may be different in biology, particularly wildlife ecology, for reasons which are interesting.)

The usual person who comes to mind in this context is James Hansen, who has clearly become an outspoken advocate. Even some of his peer reviewed papers have a tinge of advocacy. Is this the right thing to do?

On the one hand, one wants a body of knowledge that is reliable and as untainted by custom, culture and opinion as is possible. That is what makes science science. On the other hand, eventually matters reach a point where one has to begin to insist that society is grossly mishandling a situation, is severely out of touch with the extent of risk that is happening.

I received via email a pointer to an interesting debate on this subject involving my correspondent and the the Texas State Climatologist, who is a meteorology faculty member at Texas A&M and a blogger at the Houston Chronicle.

The question is to what extent the State Climatologist's job is to rub the government's nose in the mess it is leaving on the carpet, fully aware that doing so may lose one the title and the modest funding that I am guessing goes with it. To suggest that this is part of the role of the State Climatologist is itself interesting; certainly that is not the traditional role of that position. A case can be made. On the other hand, if the SC is so outspoken as to lose his or her position, the replacement is likely to err on the side of caution.

Max Planck found himself in a similar quandary. The question of the extent to which to defend Einstein and Haber as contributors to physics in the light of a certain lack of respect from the German government for people of Jewish descent turned out to be a major theme in his later life. He avoided speaking out. Wikipedia has the following anecdote:

Hahn asked Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others."[6] Under Planck's leadership, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG) avoided open conflict with the Nazi regime, except concerning Fritz Haber. Planck tried to discuss the issue with Adolf Hitler but was unsuccessful.

All of this is discussed in detail in the remarkable biography of Planck: The Dilemmas of an Upright Man (J. L. Heilbron, 2000).

Science, properly construed, is neutral, and the main goal of the scientific community must be to protect that neutrality. The question is what is the right thing for an individual scientist or a scientific community to do when society's relationship to that neutral science goes awry. Such quandaries go back to Copernicus. I don't think we have an easy answer.

Is "Climate Change" Everything?

Via the Guardian, some peculiar editorial cartoons about sustainability here. I have pasted in my favorite, since it ties into many of my themes. Some of them are worth thinking about.

However, the headline is most peculiar: "Cartoons make climate change a laughing matter".

The complaints we hear about "global warming" superceding everything else may make some sense at least as a criticism of the press in the UK. Really, the way the cartoonists responded to the challenge of "climate cartoons" makes little sense.

Most of them were not about 'climate change' at all but simply about the total appropriation of the biosphere to economic activity. I would call it the 'sustainability' issue, but there is a theme running through these cartoons that is a bit darker, more visceral. These are "end of nature" comments. It's most peculiar calling them 'climate change'; only two of them seemed related to climate at all, #13 and the remarkable #9.

Also, most of them were far more gloomy than funny. "Cartoons make something other than climate change something other than a laughing matter", then, but go look for yourself. They are interesting.

Update: Some rather funnier cartoons via ICE.

Limits to Clean Energy

I've been meaning to talk about the comparison between carbon-based energy and clean energy in terms of global warming. One way this comes up is when the delusionists bring up "heat island" effects. Somebody who doesn't understand that the greenhouse warming is already observed will pipe up that "maybe it's just the amount of energy we're using".

Well let's get some numbers. A CO2 doubling is usually treated as a top-of-atmosphere imbalance of about 4 W/m^2 with fast (century delay or shorter timescale) feedbacks included. What would the comparable number be for ordinary, sensible, net-emission-free energy usage?

Well, here's a site claiming "Using 1995 figures provided by the World Bank, in that year, the world's energy consumption totaled 316 quadrillion BTUs." OK that's 316,000,000,000,000,000 = 3.16e17 BTUs = 9e16Watt-hour = 9e13 KwH = 9e13/7e9 KwH/capita-yr = 12800 KwH/capita-yr = 12800/(365*24) Kw/capita = 1.4 Kw. So the average person and all his or her support infrastructure currently burns about 1400 watts, night and day. That seems believable.

Then the world wattage is 1.4e3 * 7e9 = about 1e13 W. The area of the world is 5.1 e8 km^2 = 5.1e14 m*2. So the direct heating of existing energy is on the order of 1e13/5e14 W or about 1/20 watt per square meter. Compare this with 2 watts of anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, on its way to 4.

This is in line with what I got all the other times I worked it through, it's just verging on noticeable but is certainly not comparable to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing. Even if everyone lived at much higher US power consumption levels, this would still be a small forcing, about 1/3 W/m^2, comparable to observed solar variability.

But in the 8 July 2008 issue of EOS, whose website, proudly proclaiming its mission for the advancement "through unselfish cooperation in research, [of] the understanding of Earth and space for the benefit of humanity." doesn't make available to nonmembers, Eric Chaisson of Tufts and Harvard puts a different spin on this story. He suggests that this comfortable margin is not as comfortable as all that under conventional growth scenarios.

He points to theories that 1) economic growth is tightly coupled to energy growth and 2) economists believe healthy economic growth is at least on the order of 1%/annum sustained. Suppose we stipulate these ideas. When does non-greenhouse anthropogenic global warming become a problem? High school level computations suffice for an estimate on the order of 450 years for a global warming of 10 degrees Celsius. Higher growth rates bring that point much closer. And nothing in the assumptions allows the warming to stop there.

Accordingly, even in the total absence of an anthropogenic greenhouse effect, the world cannot sustain indefinite increases in energy use. Either the coupling of growth to energy or the growth itself will necessarily stop. Blithely ignoring the discount rate and thinking like a geophysicist, Chaisson concludes as follows:

Even acceding that the above assumptions can only be approximate, the heating consequences of energy use by any means seem unavoidable within the next millennium - a period not overly long and within a time frame of real relevance to humankind.

More than any other single quantity, energy has fostered the changes that brought forth life, inetlligence, and civilization. Energy also now sustains society amd drives our economy, indeed grants our species untold health, wealth and security. Yet the very same energy processes that have enhanced growth also limit future growth, thereby constraining solutions to global warming. Less energy use, sometime in the relatively near future, seems vital for our continued well-being, lest Earth simply overheat.

Got that? It's a fundamental limit to growth from which there is no escape (short of escape velocity) It won't cut in soon but if none of the other ones do, this one will eventually show up. The future of the planet has fundamental limits.

Update: Tidal notes that this limit does not apply to earth-based renewable energy, i.e., directly or indirectly solar. The question of what fraction of that we can appropriate is not obvious to me, but the total is vast. A quick follow-up on the calculation above indicates that solar forcing (after relection) is about 4000 times human energy consumption. We appropriate a good fraction of it already for food, though.

If we assume that we can appropriate 10% of that energy effectively at most (allowing some for a biosphere, some for food production, and some for insurmountable inefficiency in the conversion process) that leaves some 8 or so doublings. At 1 % growth that is about 560 years until we run out of renewables. Still in the same ballpark as Chaisson's numbers. At 3% growth in a pure renewables scenario, we run out of sources of renewables in 180 years.

Filling Texas up from the bottom

It's amusing, the way Americans draw their maps... They don't even see it as odd.

The image the from National Weather Service shows 24-hour precipitation in southern Texas ending at 7 am CDT this morning. The white area represents 10" or more.

Hope things are going well down in the valley - on both the side which exists and the one which doesn't. Dolly is losing energy but still is providing plenty of moisture. Up here we got a few sudden splats but that's it.

Post-Paper Journalism

Once the news media understand that the printed paper is an adjunct to the website and not the other way around, we may start getting more useful information.

Hank Roberts just posted a comment on this thread pointing to a recent case wherein our friends at the Wall Street Journal got it right. Now of course, they didn't get it right on any topic of immediate interest to sustainability questions, but there's no reason that the same approach couldn't be taken.

OK? To review:

1. Take an extra day and get it right.
   
2. Word count doesn't matter. If you only have a paragraph about an important news item, write a paragraph. You can add more later.
   
3. There is no more ink. If it takes 15,000 words to tell a story that is not featured prominently, tell it all anyway.
   
4. Your work will be more valuable if you link to your competitors than if you just link to random places on your own site.
5. Link to your sources. If you did your job right you have nothing to hide.
6. Not everything important has a specific dateline. Feature slow but important stories on the front page sometimes.
   
7. The paper copy isn't important. It isn't a "paper" anymore.
   

Thanks.

Update: So much for getting it right. You'll have to just imagine the example now; it's behind the subscriber firewall. (Or at least I will, anyway. While Rupert Murdoch should feel free to send me money, I prefer not to have it flow the other way, thanks. )

How the Public is Deliberately Misled

Deltoid reports on a complaint to the UK's media watchdog commission about the unfairness of the infamous Great Global Warming Swindle swindle. The outcome appears to have been somewhat marginal; if I understand correctly the commission agreed that the program was egregiously misleading, but somehow not in violation of the letter of the law.

Actually Ofcom said that to be in breach, not only did Swindle have to materially mislead, this misleading had to cause "harm or offence". Ofcom decided that it wasn't harmful if viewers came to believe untrue things about the science, so it sidestepped the question of whether Swindle was misleading.

Charming. Anyway, the text of the complaint is perhaps the most thorough document we have of the methods of this particular effort to mislead the public on matters of science, and is most revelatory about the techniques used elsewhere in the misbegotten sleight-of-mind industry.

People taking the bait on such nonsense as the culpability of Rachel Carson in all malaria deaths and so on ought to consider that there are people going around doing this sort of thing.

The text of the complaint is available, and a summary is also available.

[Update: Above emphasized because it is my main point and I didn't want it lost in all the bickering.]

The plaintiffs have also got some interesting supporting commentary from some leading lights including Pachauri, Houghton, Wunsch, Santer and Trenberth. (Unfortunately the organization of their website is a mess; hopefully they will reorganize it somehow. The only thing worse in an information website than a how-to-use page is an information website whose how-to-use page is 404.)

Tim Lambert has crossed my mind several times this week, and it's time I doffed my cap to him for some extremely valuable work he has done over the years on his blog. People interested in environmental science and environmental policy really ought to follow his efforts.

And congratulations also to William, who appears to have had a hand in setting the ball in motion, and who has an insightful summary of the outcome. Links in the comments there are also useful.

---

Assorted bickering follows:

Update: [Meta-Update: McIntyre continues to insist I withdraw the following, on the grounds that the text "That’s not to say that Ofcom said that Durkin’s point of view had been vindicated, merely that the complainants were seeking comfort in the wrong bed." was in the original article. He is correct. Accordingly I hereby withdraw the following:

McIntyre is portraying this as complete vindication [Update: "vindication" is disputed by McIntyre: see below; however, unabashed admirers of McIntyre also read McIntyre's description as vindication] of the propagandists.

My attribution of "vindication" was factually incorrect, and I apologize for it.

I remain very unhappy with the way McIntyre is handling this business, but I did not phrase my complaint, which expressed my honest opinion after a quick reading, with acceptable precision. I'll be more careful in future.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled Update.]

Presuming he is serious, and not simply as malign as Durkin, this [McIntyre's apparent satisfaction with a result he sees as a "stuffing" of the plaintiffs] is a very grave error and a real shame, I think. I can understand a nonscientific body being shy about judging what is or isn't a reasonable representation of science, but nobody with any grasp of the issues should condone this level of spin, in any direction.

This sort of provocation cannot serve to improve communication between scientists and serious skeptics.

Update: Under my challenge Steve McIntyre recast what read to me as a celebratory bleat as helpful advice to scientists undertaking a legal challenge that I oddly misread. See if you are convinced (comments 69 and 71). Then go read the latest on Deltoid for some context. Tim seems to share my impression that McIntyre's report reads as something other than sage advice to future petitioners.

Update: quoth McIntyre (comment 92):

I repeated the statement that he had not been “vindicated” twice in the comments here here, including once in reponse to Michael Tobis.

Notwithstanding these clear and repeated statements that Durkin had not been “vindicated” by Ofcom (which is a quite different thing than thecomplainants being stuffed), Tobis told his readers at his blog that he had siad the exact opposite - that I claimed that Durkin had been vindicated. Tobis: in a post about “How the Public is Deliberately Misled”, then misleads his reading public by attributing to me a statement where I had said the opposite three times.

McIntyre is portraying this as complete vindication of the propagandists.

Maybe he was trying to see if his readers could pass a skill-testing question on being misled. If Tobis wants to talk to his readers about “deliberate misleading”, maybe he could start by withdrawing his untrue and misleading characterization of my post.

I concede that McIntyre has adopted a conciliatory tone in his response to me and explicitly disavowed vindication in that reply, as well as perhaps elsewhere.

This doesn't change the fact that his article actually seems not just to emphasize the aspects where the complaint failed but to relish them. To be sure, that seems to be what his audience wants, but I think it undermines his claim to want to get past games and actually look at the facts. There is little doubt that making fun of opponents can be fun. (See Joe Romm using an inappropriate and excessive Monty Python metaphor about the celebrated Lord Monckton of late) but it doesn't do a lot of good either way, insofar as one concedes that we need to collectively get a good estimate of the seriousness or otherwise of the carbon problem.

So I am a bit taken aback by the injured tone, here.

McIntyre here is just gleefully stirring the pot. At least Romm knows he is being puerile. (Not that this didn't lose Romm quite a few points with me; one should keep one's class resentments in one's own country and not try to import others'. Such things lose a great deal in the translation.)

I really do try to see the point of what the skeptics are saying, and it is on occasion more interesting and thought-provoking than you might expect (though, of note, a couple of silly lit-crit types apparently haunt CA trying to go all deconstructionist out of left field at the slightest opportunity!) It wouldn't take a great shift on their part to make the conversation much more productive than it is, and I'm willing to do some compromising of my own to that end.

Alas, though, McIntyre's protestations, though arguably valid in the letter, frankly seem contrived to me in spirit. Worse, they seem contrived to reassure McIntyre's audience, largely populated by politics-first no-such-thing-as-AGWists, and to offend those of us in the mainstream.

Update: Stoat's take, from closer range than McIntyre's, obtains a very different verdict on who was "stuffed". And Revkin comes right up the middle!

Update: Tim Lambert has mysterious psychic powers about such matters.