Academic attempts to take the hot air out of climate science debate

Judith Curry aims to turn inflammatory debate of 'climategate' into reasoned online discussions to rebuild trust with the public



Professor Judith Curry, who currently chairs the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has embarked on what she's describing as a "blogospheric experiment". Having written a lengthy essay entitled Losing the Public's Trust which will be published later today, she decided to alert many bloggers across the climate change debate in "the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them". She has asked the likes of Anthony Watts, Andrew Revkin, Roger Pielke Jr, among many others, to pitch in with their own thoughts about her essay with the goal of "bringing some sanity to this whole situation surrounding the politicization of climate science and rebuilding trust with the public". I genuinely hope she achieves her aims.
As and when other bloggers publish their own responses I will try and provide links to them below, but here are my own thoughts on Curry's article. First, I agree with her opening premise that "credibility is a combination of expertise and trust" and that the climate research establishment has failed to understand that the "climategate" furore is "primarily a crisis of trust".
In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. Much has been said about the role of the highly politicized environment in providing an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct science that produces a lot of stress for the scientists. There is no question that this environment is not conducive to science and scientists need more support from their institutions in dealing with it. However, there is nothing in this crazy environment that is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. And when your science receives this kind of attention, it means that the science is really important to the public. Therefore scientists need to do everything possible to make sure that they effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints. This is an important responsibility that individual scientists and particularly the institutions need to take very seriously.
If the "climate research establishment" is to take away one lesson from this sorry episode it will surely be the need to "effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints".
Up to this point I strongly agree with Curry's sentiments, but I think she is a little complacent in her assessment of the "changing nature of scepticism about global warming". She correctly identifies that climate scepticism is a multi-headed and ever-shifting beast. There are as many flavours to the sceptics as there are to environmentalists. To label them all as flat-earthers and big oil deniers is just as ill-judged and lacking in subtlety as labelling all environmentalists as "eco-Nazis intent on taking us all back to the caves". Genuine climate science sceptics such as Climate Audit's Steven McIntyre are a world apart from the out-and-out denial pumped out by the likes of Prison Planet's Alex Jones. Somewhere in between are the likes of Anthony Watts who risks polluting his legitimate scepticism about the scientific processes and methodologies underpinning climate science with his accompanying politicised commentary. But Curry bags them up together and describes Watts and McIntyre both as "climate auditors":
They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have developed substantial expertise in aspects of climate science, although they mainly audit rather than produce original scientific research. They tend to be watchdogs rather than deniers; many of them classify themselves as "lukewarmers". They are independent of oil industry influence. They have found a collective voice in the blogosphere and their posts are often picked up by the mainstream media. They are demanding greater accountability and transparency of climate research and assessment reports… So how did this group of bloggers succeed in bringing the climate establishment to its knees (whether or not the climate establishment realizes yet that this has happened)? Again, trust plays a big role; it was pretty easy to follow the money trail associated with the "denial machine". On the other hand, the climate auditors have no apparent political agenda, are doing this work for free, and have been playing a watchdog role, which has engendered the trust of a large segment of the population.
I think Curry has misjudged this point a tad. If the "climate auditors" were exactly as billed above I would agree they are a most welcome addition to the debate. But to claim these blogs have no political agenda is naïve, I feel. Granted, both McIntyre and Watts do make regular efforts to tone down some of the very worst off-topic comments that follow their posts, but it doesn't take much analysis to know where the political heartbeat of these blogs lies. For right or wrong, they have attracted a particular crowd of followers – predominantly right-wingers in favour of the free-market and libertarianism – and it must be a difficult horse for McIntyre and Watts to ride at times without playing to the crowd.
Curry goes on to say:
There is a large group of educated and evidence driven people (eg, the libertarians, people that read the technical skeptic blogs, not to mention policy makers) who want to understand the risk and uncertainties associated with climate change, without being told what kinds of policies they should be supporting.
I think this is an important point. Some sceptics such as Bjørn Lomborgand Nigel Lawson have made a very conscious shift in their stance in recent years away from one that questioned the science to one that now largely focuses on questioning the policy responses to climate change. If we are to have a fierce, politicised debate let it lie here, surely. But let's keep the politics out of both the climate science and those that choose to try and audit it via their blogs.
And it is on this point that I think Curry makes her most powerful point:
While the blogosphere has a "wild west" aspect to it, I have certainly learned a lot by participating in the blogospheric debate including how to sharpen my thinking and improve the rhetoric of my arguments. Additional scientific voices entering the public debate particularly in the blogosphere would help in the broader communication efforts and in rebuilding trust. And we need to acknowledge the emerging auditing and open source movements in the internet-enabled world, and put them to productive use. The openness and democratization of knowledge enabled by the internet can be a tremendous tool for building public understanding of climate science and also trust in climate research.
I, too, think it would be a grave mistake not to make better use of the obvious open-source and crowd-source advantages enabled by blogs such as Climate Audit. Just as the SETI@Home project has made use of thousands of otherwise idle computers to scan radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life, if people are willing and able to interrogate climate datasets in their spare time it would be strange in my view not to try and make use of this collective resource.
But the key for me is that word "trust" again. I think until those that frequent these sites come out from behind the cloak of anonymity that most of them choose to hide behind very few people, particularly climate scientists, will be willing to trust the motives of this army of DIY auditors. Anonymity allows for some spicy free speech beneath blogs such as this one, but it is not the right tool if we're seeking the "openness and democratization of knowledge". If we are to once again try and drive a wedge between science and politics, then all the participating actors – on both sides of the debate - need to be open about who they are and where their motives and vested interest, if any, lay.