Think Local, Act Global

The Archdruid (he really does seem to be the hierophant of some minor religion but you wouldn't know it from the way he writes) actually seems headed toward some constructive ideas this week rather than just doomsterizing, which he is very good at. Along the way, he presents about the most cogent case for radical localization that I've seen.

I still don't buy it. A radical globalization component is also needed, difficult though it may be. In the end our problems are so tightly coupled that there is only one problem: can we learn how to have a modern civilized society that can be sustained, or not? Without a global governance layer, I think not. Without functioning feedback loops from the local to the global, I can't see how the local scheme can add up to anything but collapse. The floaty part of the boat can't float if the sinky part is sinking, and that's all there is to it.

But it's good stuff, very much worth a read anyway.

Coochie and the Witch Hunt

Of course, most readers will have heard of Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli's persecution, er intended prosecution, of Michael Mann who is accused of having actually once perpetrated willful acts of scientific research not only within the State of Virginia, but in fact with some modest contribution of state funds.


Remarkably, most of the soi-disant "lukewarmers" have criticized this nonsense in no uncertain terms. This is certainly a good thing. It is far from a peace treaty, but it is a good step toward an armistice. And as Itzhak Rabin said, "you don't sign a peace treaty with your friends."

At the very high risk of getting flamed by Marion Delgado, I will note that Tom Fuller, of all people, offerred some well-meaning advice on Monday.

Want some well meaning advice?

Write a letter today and get it into circulation for signatures. Get it delivered to Cuccinelli and a couple of Virginia newspapers tomorrow.

Follow it up. There is a US head of the state district attorneys. Get it to him/her. You guys have the in with Romm--get CAP to push Maddow and Olberman to get on this. How come Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias are not writing about this?

It's been days and you don't even have this on the agenda. You don't need a 'right wing echo chamber' to get your story out there.

Get on the case.

Some of my readers reacted with deep suspicion. If Fuller wants us to do this, if McIntyre and even "Jeff Id" are doing this, it must be a trap and we shouldn't do it.

To quote Steve McIntyre about a zillion times, "oh, please." What are we supposed to do, encourage Cuccinelli? The question is, after all, what we can do to discourage him.

Today Tom shows some slight impatience.

You guys border on the truly bizarre. You spend your day picking apart our motives (and getting it 100% wrong) and refuse to do one thing yourselves. It would be humorous if it weren't so pathetic. You spend your lives bitching about us and a real threat to your livelihood appears and you... do... nothing.

Well, there is a question of who "you guys" is. If we presume that it is "us members of mainstream science" I have to say I still have very little influence from what I can tell, and nobody's consulting me as to what to do. But I did discuss this a bit behind the scenes, and the point brought up here was echoed by a few. The national press, largely DC based, is already aware of Coochie, though he may be new to the rest of us, and already thinks him a buffoon. (In fact, the association of "climategate" with Coochie may contribute to finally bringing the press to its senses. This is ACORN, Kenyan birth certificate, death panel, fake moon landing stuff, guys, get it? Anyway I can hope, can't I?)

Further, the likelihood that this is more than grandstanding seems thin. This does mean that calling attention to this matter is not the right thing to do. For people taking a truly Moranoesque view of matters, any controversy about climate is a good thing. So there's a reluctance to stir the pot for fear of tickling a few more inattentive neurons along the "climate science/scandal" axis.

There's also the astonishing fact that the environmental press can't fight on two fronts at the same time. The interest in the media in environmental issues is so thin that by definition the number of major environment stories at any one time is capped at one. (Update: I should have completed the thought: That's why Coochie's timing, right under the Horizon disaster, is tactically lousy. So much the better.)

Then, there's the question of whose signatures on the letter would be effective. UCS has already issued a statement. Many of the more prominent science blogs have weighed in:

Discover -- The Intersection -- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/05/04/cuccinelli-fishing-expedition-makes-the-washington-post/

Deltoid, Scienceblogs -- http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/the_republican_war_on_science.php

Discovery -- Bad Astronomy -- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/04/deniers-abuse-power-to-attack-climate-scientists/

PZMyers, Scienceblogs -- http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/cuccinelli_is_using_the_law_to.php

RC is wise to avoid the ample temptations on this one.

I presume the actual scientific community at U Va and elsewhere in Virginia is weighing its options. I am sure this hurts recruitment, especially at the faculty level. As a Texan (with an insane school textbook policy statewide) I thoroughly sympathize.

I am not sure who Fuller thinks "us guys" is for these purposes, or what "we" should do.

If I could round up the actual US-based PhD level more or less consensus based climate bloggers not at RC, what, the eight of us (no way Nielsen is touching this) to sign something, what good would that do? I could easily round up a bunch of liberals, half of them Canadian, with a sound grasp of the basic science. Do you think that would have much effect on Coochie?

So, as usual, you seem a tad off base. Let's think about your closing. "You spend your lives bitching about us and a real threat to your livelihood appears and you... do... nothing." First, the threat to our livelihood seems awfully remote. If too many Coochies get in we'll have bigger problems than holding on to science gigs, but meanwhile this is just a sideshow.

Second "we", as the scientific community, are not a community that mobilizes around issues. Perhaps this will make you rethink what our community is.

"we" as the climate bloggers are not representative of the science community. The science community was until recently completely unaware of you guys. Recent events have changed "completely unaware" to "peripherally aware that some nasty bloggers had something to do with Phil's and Mike's problems". I am not, repeat not, bitching about you guys. You have as much right to your conspiracy theories as anyone else.

I am trying very hard to keep the focus of the "bitching" on the press which takes the innuendo seriously, and which deserves the bulk of the blame for the recent bizarre and tragic setbacks in science communication. (Well, I guess Tom is in both camps. OK then, I blame you as an inadequate science journalist with a bad sense of who the real experts are, not just as a run of the mill member of any of the thousand paranoid movements the country is plagued with.)

Anyway, in that light, since what I mostly want is for the press to ignore you (since they have no interest in your valid points but only in your overblown outrage and innuendo), there's a lot to be said for ignoring Cuccinelli. I guess U Va doesn't get to do that, but the rest of us do. If the press is willing to leave this as a local story, we should be too.

As for Mann, he must feel like Sam Gamgee returning to the Shire from Mount Doom to encounter a tinpot hobbit dictator, and somewhere in the mopping up process being accused by a stay-at-home hobbit of running away at the first sign of trouble. (The whole Lord of the Rings trilogy was just an immense shaggy dog story to set up for that line, you know.)

I expect what Mike is doing regarding Coochie, mostly, is laughing.

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Image stolen from SteveAudio who stole it from Monty Python and dressed it up a bit.

Ocean Ecologist Jeremy Jackson

Via TED; I was privileged to see him in person a few years ago at U Chicago.

He has plenty more where this comes from, including lots of data.



See also British Fish Stocks Fell Precipitously in Last Century for instance.

Trust in Models

rustneversleeps a.k.a. Tidal notes via email:

Stanton and Ackerman also have a working paper out on their own economics model (CRED) that is based on DICE but is meant to address the various shortcomings they identified. Again, I've just glanced at it, but this one statement just caught my eye on Stanton's site announcing it:

What the model shows is that the most cost-effective way to reduce global emissions and maximize the yield of “green” investment is to target developing countries: Because the impact of every dollar is bigger in a lower-income economy, shifting capital from rich to poor regions has the best payoff.

Developing nations have advocated this approach for years, but industrialized nations have resisted, not wanting climate mitigation to become a vehicle for the redistribution of wealth. In fact, widely used economic models specifically correct for this “problem,” and focus on climate solutions that leave global inequality untouched by design.

So, er, even if the other models show the most cost-effective solutions are X, the modellers get to override X with Y if X disagrees with their worldview? And its the climate modellers that get accused of fiddling with their models and fine-tuning to get the results they "want"???? Geez...

Rust also notes, in giving me permission to share this, that "all I am going on right now is their say-so... I suspect entirely valid but you know - caveat emptor!"

Anyone out there have any insight into this?

1 Science 2 Science Red Science Blue Science

Thanks to Ron Spross, a regular reader in the Houston area, who manages to be a Democrat and a petroleum engineer at the same time, and a delightful fellow at that, I had the honor to address the Democratic Party of Harris County TX (Houston) on climate change.



My thoughts were much influenced by the fact that simultaneously, Chris Horner was talking to the Young Republicans organization at Loyola University of Chicago, where I remain to this day on the rolls as an adjunct professor. Chris Horner has a pretty looking resume, but he says things like

Liars--Al Gore, the United Nations, the New York Times. The global warming lobby, relentless in its push for bigger government, more spending, and more regulation, will use any means necessary to scare you out of your wits--as well as your tax dollars and your liberties--with threats of rising oceans, deadly droughts, and unspeakable future consequences of "climate change." In pursuing their anti-energy, anti-capitalist, and pro-government agenda, the global warming alarmists--and unscrupulous scientists who see this scare as their gravy train to federal grants and foundation money--resort to dirty tricks, smear campaigns, and outright lies, abandoning scientific standards, journalistic integrity, and the old-fashioned notions of free speech and open debate. In Red Hot Lies, bestselling author Christopher Horner...exposes the dark underbelly of the environmental movement. ... In the name of "saving the planet," anything goes. But why the nasty tactics? Why the cover ups, lies, and intimidation? Because Al Gore and his ilk want to use big government at the local, state, federal, and global level to run your life, and they can brook no opposition.

Ah, well that's their explanation then. I'm in an ilk.

Now we are in a pickle, when one party goes to one group for their science and another goes to the other. It's practically a caricature of Sanchez's epistemic closure. Now, I have a hard time presenting Horner's point of view, but I did raise the question of how you should go about deciding between us, since clearly we can't both be right, and clearly indecision ends up in Horner's favor.

In the end it wasn't the tightest presentation I've ever pulled together, but see for yourself. The audience was highly interactive, and most of them laughed at most of my jokes. Some of them asked for my slides. So I guess it was a hit. Anyway, here they are.

But I sure wish we weren't to the point where the two parties have two different sciences. You know, at least one of them has to be completely wrong.

The dems paid expenses including a generous per diem which Irene and I blew on dinner at a Pappadeaux somewhere in the Houston burbs, to straggle home at 2 AM. One thing about Texas is that there is a more than ample supply of it. On the plus side, Texas has some wonderful, clever, charming and original people in it; I especially appreciated meeting the members of the Oil Patch Democrats, a fascinating crew.

(PS - I'm available for talks and panels. Let me know if you're interested.)

Cumberland Blues

Interstate 40 in Nashville today
Via tweetphoto.com user WSMVJoshDevine and weather.com

"No single event can be attributed to climate change but the dice are loaded so that certain types of events become more common", you know the drill...

Anyway, great swaths of Tennessee got over a foot of rain this past weekend, and the Cumberland looks to crest about fifteen feet above flood stage. There is major damage through Nashville and much of middle Tennessee.

There's a silver lining, though an off-topic one.

Having had the unforgettable experience of spending a couple of nights at Nashville's Opryland resort while Irene attended a conference there, I am not sorry to report that the abomination in question is significantly damaged. My sympathies to the innocent victims who were staying there, as I did, out of ignorance or curiosity or some business reason, (who were rounded into the conference rooms, then shipped off to cots in high school auditoriums without their possessions; I hope any foreigners, especially those planning to extend their visit to Arizona, eventually get their passports back...) but I have little sympathy for Opryland itself.

The name "Opry" was originally a mockery of the town's opera-aspiring blue-bloods, who did not want their city becoming a center for a raucous and informal folk music. Now it's become a mockery of the original mockery.

The owners, "Gaylord", are putting a brave face on it and promising to reopen in several months, but perhaps the fates will extract some rough justice from this event, and the monstrosity will be irretrievably damaged. Then country music may go back to being a genuine folk culture rather than an overwrought pastiche of itself.

Update: Joe Romm has more, including a remarkable video and the amazing fact, via Jeff Masters, that as of May 2, this is the wettest May on record in Nashville.

5/5 Interesting Update at Sully's. "Stinko de Mayo".

Update August 9 2010: Hot link to Opryland picture no longer works, removed.

Heartland: Economics is not Science

See the program for their next caucus. (They call it a conference, but it isn't that, is it?)

It's got a pretty horrifying cast of characters. Lindzen, Delingpole, De Freitas, Monckton, D'Aleo, etc. etc. all in the same place. But there is an interesting implicit concession that "science" and "economics" are distinct.

Herring Curry

Modified from comments I made at Keith Kloor's Collide-a-Scape:

To respond to the events since Nov 19 by calling for regrouping and examining the contents of the WG I report, as Judith Curry recommends, seems to me profoundly problematic.

Curry's point

There is something to be said for making lemonade of the lemons life hands you. The contrarian blogs can serve a constructive function.

It is a good thing that there is a burgeoning community of amateurs interested in WG I problems, and that an opportunity to improve the practice of science exists in their demand for openness. The amateurs are potential allies in moving science off a 19th century model based on tight social networks to a 21st century model based on openness and sharing of methods and data. On these matters I completely agree with their critique.

Retroactive Enforcement of New Principles

However, it makes no sense to enforce this model retroactively. We can't just impose hoped-for future norms on past behaviors. Various groups of practicing scientists have concluded that both Jones and Mann have behaved according to the extant norms of pure science. These norms evolved in different technical and social circumstances than exist now and may be somewhat maladaptive, but norms in an established discipline are not easy to change.

McIntyre, Hughes, Liljegren etc. may be perfectly sincere and well-intentioned. For all the damage they do, I believe that they are.

On the other hand Mann, Jones, etc. may not be saints or extraordinary geniuses, but they are also sincere and well-intentioned. The implication that anything revealed by the emails rises to gross malfeasance is persistent in the comments in their blogs and often insinuated in the articles at the amateur contrarian sites. This itself is an enormous problem in the amateur climatology blogs.

No Change in the Science

If we weren’t in such a mess, it would be amusing to note how, as the work is slowly replicated in amateur circles, the more serious amateurs find that station placement isn’t important, that the observational record is more or less as reported, and presumably once someone gets a serious millenial reconstruction together they will find it will fit right in the spaghetti diagram of AR4 with an unspectacular MWP (*).

(* That would be in contrast to the much-beloved-of-naysayers millenial doodle, which, ironically, seems to have originally been scribbled on a placemat by H H Lamb, the founder of CRU).

In other words, the old fashioned and clubby version of science (of which, I want to say, I am far from a beneficiary) indeed, for all its flaws, reliably manages to come up with the right results.

So, like it or not we are talking about 1) normal behavior constrained by existing ethical principles and 2) broadly correct results.

Grotesquely Incommensurate Damage to Science

Yet, we have this repulsive word “climategate”. We have press reports insinuating gross malpractive. We have lawsuits instigated at the gubernatorial level against EPA based on the purported malfeasance “revealed” by the CRU emails. And now we have retroactive investigations of some two bit grant (”almost half a million dollars” over seven years may sound like a lot to anyone who hasn’t put together science grant proposals; this might have been almost enough to support a grad student) by the Virginia state attorney general, egged on by the inexcusable Fred Singer.

And we have ” ‘Since it’s public money, there’s enough controversy to look in to the possible manipulation of data,’ says Dr. Charles Battig, president of the nonprofit Piedmont Chapter Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, a group that doubts the underpinnings of climate change theory.”

Nothing in the actual record is used to support this repulsive witch hunt. There is merely “enough controversy”.

It is absolutely fine to try to reformulate the discussions of WG I matters in a less confrontational way. Zeke Hausfather is doing a good job of this over at Liljegren’s, for instance.

But it is absolutely irresponsible to take this moment, the moment when the excesses of the critics of climate scientists are reaching their most extreme crescendo, to be bending over backwards to make peace with them, as Judith Curry advises.

The Real Issues

We cannot possibly ignore the completely disproportionate damage they have done and are continuing to do. That is the issue that needs addressing now, not our relationship to the rather uncharitable but relatively serious corner of the contrarian blogs. We should welcome the increased attention to science in detail, and not try to shut it down in a misguided attempt at self-defense, but we shouldn’t allow that to distract us from the far more crucial and salient facts.

The serious issues raised by the CRU fiasco are:

• 1) injustice to innocent individuals,
  
• 2) an attack on scientific practice,
  
• 3) the vulnerability of conventional science communication channels to deliberate distortion by political forces and
  
• 4) fodder for potent propaganda from those who would like to distract us from the real open questions.

The Red Herring Attack

It is urgent and crucial that we discuss policy, adaptation and mitigation, about the future of civilization and the sustainability of the planet. If people want to spend years of their lives arguing about two paragraphs in an obscure journal about bristlecone pines, that is a peculiar hobby, but if that sort of thing is used to displace discussion about the enormous systemic problems we actually face, that is a deep and fundamental problem.

These are the “issues and questions we should be talking about” to pick up some of Curry's own words.

To first order, the work of WG I is done. The Charney sensitivity is around 3 C, with a range of 1.5 – 6 C. Even on the low side that is worth worrying about. Risk weighted that range is more than enough to require action.

Going back to physical science is a perfect delaying tactic for those who are motivated by ideology or financial interest (often both) to want to delay, but the chances that S is much less than 1.5, which the delayers need to be nearly certain in order to support their strategy, remain small enough to be negligible. Of course, science is never so "settled" that new evidence can't change things, but at this point people are asking us to bet the farm, really the whole dang world, on a very long shot.

My Point, Lest it be Missed Yet Again

The biosphere is a biological, chemical and physical system in space, whose properties humans are grossly altering without plan or purpose, to our own peril. We need to get a grip on these issues, CO2 among them. Let me reaffirm my point here since so many people seem to be missing it.

The main lesson of the CRU fiasco is that the crucial conversation of our time is easily derailed by narrow interests, nitpicking, hairsplitting, and misdirected outrage. This is a big problem. We need to fix it. Journalists are not passive observers in this dynamic; the role of journalism is crucial.

Curry buys the Red Herring

Attacking the messengers for not dotting our i’s is, I suppose, one way to react. It may even have some value. But taken as a substitute for getting a planetary perspective that is respectful of quantitative evidence, the approach taken in the blogs most critical of climate science and echoed by the press is dangerous even if not deliberately malicious.

As is plain to see, some people use that position as a camouflage for extreme malice that is hard to see as less than deliberate and calculated. Ignoring that aspect of the situation would have been wrongheaded even before the direct attacks from politicians on science began, but now it's obviously foolhardy.

Dr Curry’s responding by saying, OK, we’ll go back and dot all our i’s and cross all our t’s and so on, is not helpful, given that time is of the essence. She has expanded her horizon from the scientific community to the scientific community plus the more technically competent hobbyists, but that is a very dangerous, if seductive, place to draw the line. The context is much larger than that.

Engaging the amateurs on their own terms is one thing. It has many possible benefits.

On the other hand, since the amateur community emerged largely out of suspicion of the scientific community, accepting their definition of the social and political context is something else entirely. Given their connections to communities that are implacably, viciously and irresponsibly hostile to the inconvenient truth, it's very naive to do so.

Keep Your Eye On The Ball

The dominant uncertainties in climate policy are in impacts, adaptation and mitigation strategies, economics, policy, and interaction with other long-term sustainability problems. Even under WG I topics, geochemistry and emissions scenarios carry the bulk of the uncertainty. None of these fall under the remit of climate science, which isn't "settled" but is a whole lot more clear than any of the other crucial questions.

How and why the debate centers on the easiest part is interesting and peculiar, but it's mostly a problem. Picking up on the obsessions of the amateur statisticians wing is really not the place to put our attentions. We need to understand and cope with the obsessions of the press, and of the people who are bound and determined to put climate physics into an ideological frame. That's the CRU fiasco.

Curry has had a red herring dangled in front of her and has lost track of the real story. Let's not fall into the trap with her. The real story is that there is no story at all at CRU or PSU. No malfeasance, no manipulation of data, no evidence of poorly supported conclusions, no pattern of behavior outside existing scientific norms, no change in the broad scientific picture, nothing scandalous except for the scandal itself and the hacking that precipitated it.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And all that to do about nothing, that's something.

Michael Mann in the News

Intrepid journalism at work, presented without comment:

Megyn Kelly, Fox News: His [Mann's] emails, or, there were emails from a University in England were released online, that's what really got this whole thing started, because they reflected that, you know, this whole climategate and so on was being invented, or, at least, seriously question the science behind it, and suggested that he has been manipulating it, and then, but then, in Mr. Mann's defense, apparently, he has faced investigations both by Penn State and in England, and (incredulously) both found his work to be acceptable, so, does Mr. Mann have a case?

Marc Morano: No.

Meanwhile,

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Image: NASA