The Early Days of a Better Nation

Posted 8:57 pm by Ken

Climate science a hot topic at Social Session 04

Our fourth Social Session last week went well: the audience of thirty or so, a good proportion of which was from the natural sciences, almost packed out the room. The presentations were clear and the discussion lively. Thanks to all the participants, to the audience, and to Margaret Rennex, Jo Law, Emma Capewell, and Clare de Mowbray for making it all work.

As chair I welcomed everyone and made some opening remarks:

Last November one sentence from a hacked email by Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia from ten years earlier went around the world.

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

These words have been and no doubt for a long time will be endlessly quoted and misquoted to suggest that climate scientists are conspiring to hide a recent decline in global temperature, and that global warming is a hoax. The saying that a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on has seldom been so brilliantly confirmed.

When I looked into this and other supposed scandals in the hacked emails - about peer review, refusal to release so-called raw data, and badly-designed computer code - and especially when I compared what the scientists and their defenders had to say with what their critics said - from the most fervent doubters of global warming to George Monbiot - I began to suspect that lots of people have a completely false and idealised view of how science is actually done and what scientists are like. Now I knew a bit about that from my own experience as a postgrad, from talking to scientists, and also from some of the science studies literature that I've had a chance to look at over the past year or so. My initial pitch for this session was ‘Can Science Studies Save the Earth?’ but we decided to go for the populist version.

So tonight we're going to ask whether and if so how the messy, human and uncertain practice of science can deliver reliable knowledge, and how and whether this knowledge should be used to inform policy.

I then introduced the speakers:

Simon Shackley - School of Geosciences
Colin Macilwain - Nature columnist
Ben Pile - Climate Resistance blog
Colin Campbell - EaSTCHEM Research Fellow, School of Chemistry
Steve Sturdy - Genomics Forum Deputy Director

Here are some reconstructions of what the speakers said, taken from my scrappy notes. If anyone feels they've been misheard, please let me know.

Simon Shackley began by referring to the widely held ideal of science summarised as Robert K. Merton's CUDOS principles: communism (in the sense of no private property in ideas), universalism, disinterestedness, and organised scepticism. These work fine in normal science, but in post-normal science, where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent" , not so much. In normal science it would be quite acceptable not to provide algorithms and program code, but in post-normal science the only course to follow was complete openness. The CRU people were still doing normal science, when they should have realised that their situation was post-normal and that everything they did and said - not just their published work - would come under scrutiny from other interested parties, not just other scientists. Put it all up on the web!

Colin Macilwain pointed out that the public needed more than raw data on a website. A crucial mediating role was played by science journalists - Ben Goldacre is a good example. Colin argued that the CRU scientists had been harassed, including with FOIA requests, and that it was obvious that the 'trick' was not deceit. But he added that climate models - as distinct from climate observations - could very well be queried, and that in the models there was indeed much to be sceptical about.

Ben Pile insisted that the climate change issue was centrally about moral and political, rather than scientific, claims. Statements such as: 'We have just ten years to save the planet', or the comparison of fossil fuel use to slave-owning, are (overstated) moral claims. In the absence of clear sources of moral authority or political principle, 'the science' of climate change has served as a source of 'cheap moral realism'. ('Realism' in the sense, I think, of moral principles as existing independently of, rather than arising out of, human concerns.) The CRU had to carry the weight of being at the centre of all those moral arguments, thus making it, naturally, the focus of hacking attacks.

Colin Campbell, coming from a less publicly contentious field, allowed that some poor research gets published in the less prestigious journals, but that in science it's only possible to get away with 'low-impact lies'. He agreed that sometimes a scientific orthodoxy can shut out minority views, but not indefinitely: Peter Mitchell's chemiosmotic hypothesis was not at first well received, but eventually won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and is now in all the textbooks. One advantage of doing normal science is not having to deal with the coupling of scientific debate and moral norms.

Steve Sturdy argued that scientists are seen as trustworthy not because the general public can independently assess their work - we can't, without being scientists ourselves - but to the extent that they live up certain expectations and ideals, which the Mertonian norms (referred to by Simon at the start) express as well as any. Scientists need to be completely open about the scientific process and about uncertainties. Science journalists are guilty of not engaging with the actual arguments of 'climate sceptics', preferring to expose their funding and political affiliations - which are, strictly speaking, irrelevant to the content of their arguments, which have to be met.

The discussion that followed ranged over science journalism - with Colin Macilwain sticking up for the profession - science education, with some in the audience arguing that it had all gone downhill in the past forty years or so - and the politics of the climate debate. Curiously enough, despite the differing perspectives of the panellists, what emerged was something like a consensus - that whatever may have been the case in the past, the only way forward for climate science was for every step of the process to be out in the open.

Labels: climate, genomics

58 Comments:

Yes. I was being a bit nosy, sorry.

A random other thought or two - even if I accept Shackleys labelling climatology as a post normal science, I don't see why the CRU people should have been expected to realise that in fact their work had shifted to being a post normal science. For starters, I've not met any scientists who have had training in philosophy of science, whereas I feel it should be covered in 1st year in a few lectures. Secondly, how often do normal people realise such a change is required from them? CRU were already putting stuff online, just not the basic information demanded by everyone and their dog (And who appear to have been unable to make much use of it).
Thirdly, the posible uses and effects of the internet are still being thrashed out. Us SF readers of course knew what it would be like years ago, but merely putting stuff online means nothing if there is no possibility of feedback and ways of filtering the signal from the noise, since the internet had such a high noise to signal ration.

Oh yes, regarding Sturdy's point again, you might have gathered I'm on the scientists side here, and therefore see loads of 'climate sceptics' whose arguments are totally wrong as not being worth answering. Must all arguments by any opponent be dealt with? Perhaps in politics. But why expect scientists to do politics? That is a different skill and apptitude set. (Involving statements such as "ten years to save the planet" and a less rigorous attention to accuracy, because thats politics, folks)

By guthrie, at Tuesday, March 23, 2010 6:04:00 pm

But therein lies the problem - according to the science we are unprecedentedly heating up the planet and will cause major stresses to our supporting ecocystems, the cost of which is pretty huge (see Stern report and the literature on ecological services). I have trouble seeing precisely what politics are read off the science, insofar as environmentalists and actual conservative minded people then inject awareness of the science into the politics, and things get messy. But how you read politics from the scientific facts and projections is unclear to me. It may be that you don't care about the environment and therefore thing action to curb AGW is not justified.
But in that case why do we get entire roadshows of Plimer, Monckton, Heartland sponsored conferences involving people from Carter to Lindzen, all saying that the science isn't settled and it isn't our fault or if it is climate sensitivity is only 1C, and so on. Why don't we get people saying "Actually fuck the environment, it doesn't matter."

Of course the trickier approach is that of Lomborg, to claim that the money is better spent on other things right now rather than on dealing with AGW. But oddly enough he never seems to actually help get this money to help the poor starving africans...

By guthrie, at Tuesday, March 23, 2010 9:12:00 pm

No, my point is that scientists are your first port of call for statements on the science of climate change, then you go to the economists and others when it comes to the costs. This is not a science only issue; however the way the denialists seem to get most coverage in the media is by framing it as a science issue. Hence my comments upthread about it all. I was under the impression that the issues under discussion here weren't the reality or otherwise of AGW or the best approach to dealing with it (Or not) but the role of scientists and how much you can trust them etc. There has always been room for social sciences in my view, so why you should make such an accusation is unclear.

The point about Lomborg is that he makes claims about costs etc of AGW, and pushes for a certain approach to it all which argues that we are better spending the money on other things like water supplies and malaria treatments. That logically suggests he should also be lobbying to some extent for appropriate aid and malaria treatment etc, rather than setting up a rigged thought experiment which seems to conclude that we can deal with either climaet change or starving africans, but not both.

It would help if you could give an example of how politics is read from science, since that is a point I am unclear on.

By guthrie, at Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:39:00 pm

Ahh you clearly don't see it the way I do. Which is, to start with, that there is not one debate, there are many.

In the case of the CRU, it is clearly a matter of non-science denialists attempting to affect the perception of the science. In the wider media world there have also been a large number of non-science stories, more recently slanted against the climatologists, although one cannot deny that there has been overstatements from the likes of Greenpeace or Gore. Thus we have a continuum from the deliberately understated IPCC consensus, running through to, on the side of those who agree with much of the science, people like Lovelock who seem to think we're dooooomed, and on the other the science rejectors, who spend their time claiming it is all a conspiracy and trying to prover there isn't warming. And all these people and bodies are trying to communicate with governments, the people in the street, and corporations.
Thus, in my opinion, it is necessary to state which bit of the debate you are talking about.

Have you ever thought of trying to set up some sort of debate/ discussion about the moral views on climate change? I'm sure it would involve both atheists and believers of various sorts, and you'd get bonus points for getting hold of someone who believes in the rapture.

By guthrie, at Wednesday, March 24, 2010 10:22:00 pm

With respect, I don't think you have a particularly coherent, or at all nuanced perspective on the debate. For instance, your first comment at the top of this comment box painted a picture of virtuous scientists, whose work was reported on by science journalists, who largely ignored the evil deniers.

In your next post, you imagined Sturdy to be somehow against science - you were on the scientists' side, and "therefore see loads of 'climate sceptics' whose arguments are totally wrong as not being worth answering."

When Ken points out in the discussion about PNS that there is confusion about science and politics (indeed, you seem confused about it), you reply that we get "entire roadshows of Plimer, Monckton, Heartland sponsored conferences involving people from Carter to Lindzen"... Again, the bogeymen - the deniers - haunt your argument to polarise it. It becomes a morality play between goodies ("scientists") and baddies ("deniers").

You then state your highly linear model of dissemination of science - "scientists are your first port of call for statements on the science of climate change, then you go to the economists and others when it comes to the costs." Which is, of course, wishful thinking. Moreover, it again posits an implausibly innocent and virtuous institution at the centre of the entire affair, with baddies laying siege to the uncorrupted process.

Although you now protest that your view of things is slightly more sophisticated and that there are many parallel debates, at the centre of this view we have the familiar story. It is "a matter of non-science denialists attempting to affect the perception of the science". You've populated the fringes of the morality play with expendable, "non-scientists" who are a bit of an embarrassment - the Gores and Greenpeaces. But it's the same story.

On your view, the debates that exist are all about whether climate change is or isn't happening. It remains a very black and white, wrong and right, goodies and baddies affair. This leads you, I think to make the kind of mistakes that you do - for instance seeing any argument that questions climate politics as an argument that denies climate science, and conceiving of scientists and science as invulnerable to politics, influence, or prejudice.

By Ben Pile, at Thursday, March 25, 2010 5:46:00 am

So to make that extra clear for Guthrie, if it is true that scientists are under attack, it is because people - such as he - make "science" the keystone of their moral and political arguments. As I put it, to take issue with the politics is to seem to be taking issue with the science. Hiding ethical and political arguments behind science in this way puts a great burden on it. The result is the mess of Climategate.

For what it's worth, I have been very critical of sceptics and "deniers" for making so much out of Climategate. I think largely their campaigns have been ineffectual and pointless. The dynamic driving things like Climategate up the agenda are not deniers and sceptics, but incoherent political arguments that invest an explosive quantity of moral capital in climate science. When it turns out - surprise surprise - that scientists are humans, not paragons of virtue, but just as ambitious, capricious, and partial as the rest of us, then of course it's a problem for climate politics. And of course, people investing in such arguments will pass Climategate off as an 'attack on science'. But this misses the point that it was their expectations of science which caused the rumpus.

By Ben Pile, at Thursday, March 25, 2010 6:14:00 am

As I read it, Guthrie is so far making more sense than Ben, chiefly because, in fragmenting the analysis (fair enough, if you want to describe it) Ben appears to be missing the big picture, which is that, unlike in most other experiments, we're all in the test tube.

Thus (crudely) what we are doing in our various ways is to respond to the question "Is this going to threaten me?". So the ordinary norms of dispassionate truth-finding (which, I accept, are often honoured in the breach) that generally characterise science are very likely to be thrown out of the window, because in this case, what we do (if anything) is closely tied up with the science, starting with the science of "Is there a problem?" but crucially also involving the science of "Can we solve it?"*

Let's look to crime as an analogy: I can't predict the exact chance of my house getting burgled next year, but I see it as high enough to justify insuring it. As it happens, I probably know the people who could arrive at the best possible figure to predict that burglary, but they would accept that it has very wide error bars. Whatever - given that I perceive it falls above a certain critical level, I'm going to buy insurance anyway. People who buy insurance do so in advance of definite knowledge from applied criminologists: social action is not led by social science.

Re-reading this, I don't think that it ends up functioning as an answer to Ben: I think that Guthrie and myself are having a subtly different conversation from him, and we're unlikely to get further until we define what each conversation is about.

Chris Williams
*sentence from hell. Sorry.

By Anonymous, at Thursday, March 25, 2010 2:28:00 pm

Well, the "stuff coming out of the top of Ratcliffe-on-Soar" isn't going to do anything to your kids.

There is no proper answer to the question, because any outcome is predicated on many other factors.

You can drown in just a few inches of water. Such a flood might well prove catastrophic for a population that doesn't have sufficient resources to cope with it. But on the other hand, the same water might prove useful to a wealthier society.

There is this claim, for instance, that pops up quite frequently "climate change will be worse for the poor". But nobody seems to be saying "well, we better start making sure everybody is wealthy, then". (You get called a denier if you try).

We seem to accept a "natural" level of poverty. As I said at the meeting, we naturalise social problems, because we seem to lack the means to understand social phenomena. A more shocking instance of this is the WHO and GHF's claims that "Climate change kills 150/300,000 people every year". This makes it "the biggest threat facing mankind". Except that 10 million people - according to the very same WHO report - die from first order effects of poverty.

Poverty kills many many more people than climate will for a very long time. Why isn't that "the biggest threat facing mankind?" And meanwhile, why are you so disproportionately preoccupied with the "stuff coming out of the top of Ratcliffe-on-Soar"?

Risk is an inherently political concept. Clearly, you don't worry about the risk that poverty presents to your kids. So why should you worry that they're vulnerable to climate change?

By Ben Pile, at Thursday, March 25, 2010 8:32:00 pm

Well, the WHO & GHF inform the debate about climate in much the same way as scientists do. People trust these kinds of authorities. So their studies inform the various ideas about poverty that exist in heads and in arguments. Oxfam took the figures seriously, and speak about “climate poverty" and "climate justice". I’m not really interested in saying "you don't care about poverty/people". The word "care" turns the discussion towards yours or my moral character - it personalises it. Of course I think they and you probably do "care". The point is about how ideas about poverty &c are constructed (or how routine anxieties are exploited for political capital), and what happens as a result.

You were critical of what I had said, for it missing 'the bigger picture'. When I broadened it out, you brought it back to the domestic level with the concern about your kid's futures. Then you got annoyed with me making assumptions. Now you say it really is a matter we should take personally. You'll excuse me if I'm confused about what kind of discussion you want to have. It's difficult not to make assumptions, when the debate is switching between 'the big picture' and an instance of 'the personal'.

I have no idea why you think climate change is more like anti-fascism than it is like some dry, legal-technical discussion about bosses and unions. Perhaps you’ve not had to listen to a sustainablist waffle on about how we can balance each aspect of our lives by composting our faeces, only showering once a week, and living in a semi-subterranean home made from recycled tin cans, complete with spreadsheets detailing each and every exchange between our bodies/lifestyle and nature.

The climate issue is only at face value about something as very exciting as vanquishing fascists - saving the planet. The reality of it, however, is as much fun as a spreadsheet detailing each aspect of our lives, using to determine how much travelling is reasonable and how, what kind of showering arrangements should be allowed for by law in the construction of new homes, what economic measures can be deployed to 'encourage' behaviour change, and how global, national, regional and local institutions of all forms can be used to limit carbon consumption. In ideological terms, it is banale in the sense of the word Hannah Arendt uses it to describe Nazism. It is putatively about some transcendent end, but the reality is that it is dehumanising.

That's why Climategate is interesting. I really don't give a fig, frankly, for the content of the emails and what they stand for. That stuff is intensely boring. My first post on it was called "Cracking the Climate Da Vinci Code" precisely because it's trashy and cheap. More seriously, it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. (See Ken’s introduction to the debate). Why it is interesting is that the scientists at CRU and datasets like HADCRU became, as it were, respectively the keystone of the moral arguments and the keystone of the spreadsheets. They tied the 'big picture' to the future of your children, not just in your head (if I may be allowed to make an assumption), but also *actually*. Because, whether or not your kids will have to live with a changed climate, they will certainly have to live in a world which has been organised on the basis that the climate will change. The relationships between workers and bosses is being so transformed, the relationship between individual and state has been so transformed. The functioning of economics is being transformed. It’s easy to say “oh, good, it’s about saving the planet”, but I think changes in society need scrutiny, rather than rushed through unchecked under emergency measures. {cont...}

By Ben Pile, at Friday, March 26, 2010 9:37:00 am

Ben: "We can’t really understand the scientific in this case until we have a grasp on the social."

Well, no - unless your definitions of 'really' 'understand' and 'scientific' are doing a lot of special work for you. We can understand the scientific, but this understanding in itself isn't very useful. We can't therefore read off what we must (could, can, should) do about it. Perhaps that's what you mean, but if so, it might help if you made that clearer.

I've concluded that attempting a conversation with you isn't worth it, so instead I'm going to adopt your MO - taking something that you have written and commenting on its rhetorical position. In this case:

"a sustainablist waffle on about how we can balance each aspect of our lives by composting our faeces, "

Phrases like this serve merely as a genuflection. Kicking the largely-mythical (and, if we know anything about social or political science, doomed to eternal impotence) deep greenies is done not because they have any purchase on the likely policy debate, but in order to establish the speaker's credentials. It's like averring opposition to fascism, or respect for Monarchy, or opposition to crime. It has no content.

Chris Williams

By Anonymous, at Friday, March 26, 2010 12:03:00 pm

Well, Chris and Ben, I really would rather you continue your discussion.

By way of broadening the context: in the current LRB there's a long interview with Tony Judt, in which he says about the disconnect between peoples and politicians:

After World War Two governments retreated from politics. The French economic plan, for example, was not decided by the parliament, but by administrators and bureaucrats. The EU was institutionally invented by bureaucrats. The first elections were held only in 1979. Until then there were no elections, no polls, no votes, nothing. There was a feeling, partly a consequence of Fascism, that you couldn’t trust mass opinion any more. It was not reliable. Not only were the masses willing to throw you out, they might be willing to overthrow the whole system. Steadily from the 1950s onwards the influence of the street, of the media, newspapers, public opinion, of ideology, was pushed further and further away from the actual decision-making processes. In the end it wouldn’t matter very much anymore if you threw out the government since it wouldn’t change the fundamental policies, institutions, laws of the country or direction of the majority of the issues of public policy.

It’s only now that we are really seeing the results of a process that has been going on for a long time.

It strikes me that this is very much on topic.

By Ken, at Friday, March 26, 2010 1:24:00 pm

Ken - the passage of Judt's you've quoted is more interesting than the interview as a whole. I was disappointed to see the twist towards Rawls at the end, though I should have expected it. He's a bit confused in places, but (concerning the passage you’ve quoted) I think he's very right about the post-democratic era, and the impulse for supranational and supra-democratic political institutions.

If we accept any of what Judt says in this respect, then we cannot rule out that the process he describes has been expedited by the climate change issue (as an instance of some kind of politics of fear- a totalising crisis, that forces normal politics to be suspended), but also mediates our understanding of the consequences of climate change. I argue that it is precisely the notion of political impotence (the denial of human agency) which is the presupposition that climate models are ‘plugged-in’ to in order to determine the human consequences of climate change. (Most dramatically in the cases of the WHO and GHF – these being, again, attempts at supra-national supra-democratic institutions).

Of course, to suggest that climate change has a historical context, and that this needs to be understood before sense can be made of any claims made in the shadow it seems to cast over us, would seemingly put the author of such an argument in the ‘denier’ camp, and therefore (paradoxically) on the political Right. To countenance an opinion that challenges or questions the reality of the total crisis we face is to risk public opinion taking us towards catastrophe. As Judt says “There was a feeling, partly a consequence of Fascism, that you couldn’t trust mass opinion any more” – politics is dirty, dangerous thing. Concomitantly, you can’t trust mass politics. The distance between the public and authority nonetheless needs to be made legitimate... We’re not yet accepting of the ‘post-democratic era’, and public opinion still counts for something. Enter climate science.

By Ben Pile, at Friday, March 26, 2010 4:36:00 pm

Well, Ben, your powers of extra-sensory perception leave mine standing - I began with the hope of a rational discussion, and only put you in the 'potential dickhead' box when you wrote, bizarrely and with no evidence: "Clearly, you don't worry about the risk that poverty presents to your kids." Your last post puts you in a different box, obviously.

to everyone else:

There are a number of interesting ways that we can talk about the relationship between science and technology. I know a bit about the relationship between technology and policy in some (very few) fields, but very little about what's been written about the ways that basic science and policy interact. But since total ignorance hasn't stopped anyone from pontificating in blog comments, what the hell...

1. We can talk about basic discrete scientific projects, we can talk about the relationship between their discrete conclusions, and we do so in the language of science, with reference to the data [insert the Sociology of Science 'weak programme' here].

2. But once we start talking about the human impact of what we've discovered, of course we leave the realm of science and enter one of society, in which the complex relationship between physical facts and social facts is the crucial one. The tools that we can use to analyse this realm are different: economics and political science are necessary, inter alia.

3. Then, there's another realm, of the ways that people talk about science, technology, and environmental impacts. Here we can use cultural studies as well as political and social science. Evolutionary psychology might be quite good here, 'n all.

The trick, in my mind, is to be clever enough to know which realm you're operating in, and use the analytical tools which are most appropriate. The _sneaky trick_ is to run bait and switch between the levels - "Mauna Kea? perhaps but Monbiot! false alarms of Wexelblat! deep greens!" or alternatively "The state is using this narrative to justify all sorts of shit? perhaps but methane! Drax!"

Thus, I think that for whatever reason, Ben might know the first things about (3), but appears to be wanting to reach conclusions about (2) and to imply some about (1). I'm interested in (2), and thus have a highly instrumental attitude to (1) and (3). That's what I meant, and still mean, about 'different conversations'.

These three realms are mutually constitutive, of course, but a fourth, nature, lies outside them all: and if several gigatons of methane rise from Siberia, it does so without reference to whether or not Al Gore is a nice man.

Chris Williams

PS I love Ben's use of 'Clearly' as quoted above. It's like the cod-Marxist use of 'essentially' in ways which often mean 'not', as in 'this dispute is essentially about class'.

By Anonymous, at Friday, March 26, 2010 8:06:00 pm

ESP has nothing to do with it – Chris told us of his preference for internet pornography over discussion himself. There is also a phenomenon of ‘climate porn’. Chris’s reluctance to engage in dialogue, and his preference for fantasies about what might happen “if several gigatons of methane rise from Siberia”, makes this an apt time to mention it. Climate porn is to debate what porn is to human relationships. It simulates drama and engagement by crudely satisfying base lusts and fantasies with explicit images without the danger of rejection. But it is an inconsequential solo pastime in which understanding and negotiation with another is avoided. It achieves no resolution or synthesis, and objectifies humans, their ambitions and desires. Worst still, it makes you go blind.

Just the possibility of a Siberian burp, it seems, is sufficient to close our minds to the historical context of environmentalism’s ascendency. It denies history, humanity, subjectivity, and agency for necessity. We can avoid the difficult questions by simply invoking the most distressing images, worst-case scenarios and single studies stripped of their caveats and cautions. You don’t even have to be a climate scientist to do it - if you do, it doesn’t even irk the scientists who normally get upset when people who aren’t scientists make scientific claims. Unless, that is, you make claims that question climate politics – that is equivalent to denying climate science, as this discussion shows.

Our political understanding of the material world’s potential to turn hostile has a long history. Thomas More conceived of the first Utopia, in which social institutions carefully organised every aspect of human development, labour and life. Men left to their own devices would otherwise live in ways that could not be sustained by divine providence – such was the human condition after the Fall of Man. And so the chaos our sin unleashed into the natural world would turn men against each other, in a vicious cycle of decadence (or is that positive feedback system) as they sought more and more for themselves, in an increasingly sterile natural world. The only way to achieve salvation was to accept that this condition is penance for original sin, and to accept the austere, authoritarian social order More set down.

All that it takes, then, to seemingly convince us of the legitimacy of such a form of politics is a story of doom, and Pascal’s wager. Not much has changed.

By Ben Pile, at Saturday, March 27, 2010 12:07:00 am

Chris’ three categories of discussion are underwhelming. The presupposition appears to be that to speak in #3 without sufficient knowledge of #1 or #2 is almost to propose that material reality is not immutable.

I think Chris’ model is only slightly more sophisticated than Guthrie’s science-->economics-->politics attempt. It speaks about complexity emerging from one direction (though seems to ignore entirely the creative potential of the agents of that process), but ultimately any category is contingent on the world’s continued existence, which is in turn predicated only on our obedience. After all, what are the politics in a world in which so much gas has escaped the Gulags? Like Guthrie’s argument, it holds the debate hostage – you’re either with it, or against it. And only The Scientists can speak about the possibility of the gas escaping, the plausibility of responding to it, what its implications are, and what political institutions are need to contain it. How dare we ask questions about whether this conception of risk is not ultimately about generating political authority rather than an understanding of the material world?

“Different conversations”, yet curiously it is mine that Chris takes issue with. This is clearly (yes, ‘clearly’) not a case of Chris aiming to maintain order between the different conversational categories. Regardless of the discipline Chris seems only partially interested in, my criticism of Guthrie’s argument stands: throughout the debate, the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gasses is routinely held to be equivalent to the sensitivity of society to climate, and when so much has established by the discussion, the trump card is the Siberian burp or somesuch thing, no matter what the actual risk it presents is. All that counts is that it is plausible. This is not ‘scientific’. It is not used ‘scientifically’. It is political.

(And you can stick evolutionary psychology up your arse.)

By Ben Pile, at Saturday, March 27, 2010 12:08:00 am

Wow, I go away to finish an essay and have a rest and find ben is still going on about me.

Suffice to say, I disagree with him generally although sometimes he has a point. But this bit is a nice bit of confusion and total misrepresentation which makes a mockery of any attempt at sensible conversation:

"And only The Scientists can speak about the possibility of the gas escaping, the plausibility of responding to it, what its implications are, and what political institutions are need to contain it. How dare we ask questions about whether this conception of risk is not ultimately about generating political authority rather than an understanding of the material world?"

No, not just scientists, but they have to agree about the uses of evidence. The scientists don't get to hold the world hostage using their expertise, and oddly enough I've never heard of an example. As a corrolary, people have to be aware that, for example, ignoring the science behind vaccination will lead to more cases of measles and their ill effects. I don't ever recall seeing scientists (you speak in such generalisations) saying that only they can decide the political organisations to deal with climate change. Moreover, you can grandstand all you like about the appearance of risk being generated for political authority, but meanwhile the vast majority of scientists have little or no involvement with politics and no desire to do so.
If you wish to complain about how everyone tries to wrap themselves in the cloak of disinterested science in order to maximise their political advantages, thats fine, but also well known and not exactly a great threat.

By guthrie, at Monday, March 29, 2010 5:46:00 pm

Hmmm, Ken has thrown down his own gauntlet by broadening the topic to public disconnection from politics. Thats worth a post itself, Ken, hint hint. (Or maybe a story?)

Surely for starters many of us are disconnected from the EU because it is so complex and far away that all we can manage is irrational dislike or vague uninterest?

But I really like this bit:
"When I used to travel a lot people would say: ‘Tell us, please, tell us about the European Union. It is such a wonderful thing with nation states and transnational institutions, with its laws, courts and union regulations that people obey. How can we do it? How do you get from World War Two to Maastricht and the EU?’ Europeans don’t understand that this is an astonishing historical precedent."

when you put it that way, I feel a lot happier.
On the other hand the decrease in membership in political parties, their capture by rich individuals with their own purposes and so on serves to put lawmaking further and further from the people.

Of course we will see the products of scientific activity used to justify anything the ruling parties and their backers want (Or made to appear that they do, the amount of times the press actually make things up is staggering), which in turn means the man in the street becoming more cynical about science and therefore lose a contributor to part of what is necessary for political involvement, that is, reliable information about the world.

Moreover, the tendency for centralisation has been against the independence of the universities and the destruction of all alternatives to the central gvt who can give or take as it feels necessary in order to maintain hegemony. And thus we end up with an elective dictatorship.

By guthrie, at Monday, March 29, 2010 6:06:00 pm

Guthrie is confused about what I am saying here:

"And only The Scientists can speak about the possibility of the gas escaping, the plausibility of responding to it, what its implications are, and what political institutions are need to contain it. How dare we ask questions about whether this conception of risk is not ultimately about generating political authority rather than an understanding of the material world?"

The point is not that literal scientists appear in the *process* of politics with literal political authority, but that "the scientists" figure rhetorically in the debate. That this needs explaining to Guthrie is disappointing.

He speaks, nonetheless about "evidence". His point appears to be - and I hope that he will correct me if he feels I am "misrepresenting" him - that everyone who participates in the debate must be informed of the evidence, whether or not they are scientists.

I have been trying to explain to Guthrie why this is a problem.

1. First, 'evidence' and fact do not speak for themselves. It is theories that explain evidence. We have this idea that evidence and fact can speak. it is mistaken.

2. My argument is that climate's sensitivity to CO2 (and other GHGs) is mistakenly held as equivalent to society's sensitivity to climate. Such a misconception allows scientific projection from political premises (e.g. the WHO and GHF stats we discussed). Unless we are clear about things, then our inability to respond to climate is given in the "evidence" as evidence that we cannot respond to climate.

3. If we assume that anyone we disagree with in the political debate about what to do about climate change isn't in possession of "the evidence", then there's no need for science - we can just work it out from the politics backwards, based on who we disagree with.

Lastly, Guthrie seems to say that it's okay to take liberties with science for political ends:

If you wish to complain about how everyone tries to wrap themselves in the cloak of disinterested science in order to maximise their political advantages, thats fine, but also well known and not exactly a great threat.

Which leaves the question: why are you so worried about climate change denial, then, and why was it that you encouraged people to the forum debate to "rip him to shreds"?

By Ben Pile, at Monday, March 29, 2010 6:57:00 pm

Hmmm. First, I'd look at the claim itself in context. Ideally, I'd go to a summary like Chapter 20 of Ezzati et al. [Eds], Comparative Quantification of Health Risks (2004), then dig down into their references. The same for that piece by so-and-so in Environmental Heath Perspectives a few years back, which I'd have to search for ...

...Ah, (possible) point taken. By this point, your average policymaker's eyes have glazed over. Advocates at the political level are extremely unlikely to have done all this. And to be honest, on most scientific issues that weren't sufficiently close to my own work, I would probably stop following the reference trail well before I got to the "raw data" or whatever. So as far as the layman is concerned, especially one who believes that science has an overprivileged role, this could be all my balls. Why should scientists be trusted on such matters, especially when they start trespassing on philosophers' turf about moral rules? ;-)

Then again, it does look like the background about the WHO's claims is technically out in the open. As is the case with virtually all climate science data and methodology, even though this didn't stop the attacks. So is there any point at which scientists are legitimately permitted to throw up their hands and say, "Fine! You learn statistics / thermodynamics / virology / etc."?

By mds, at Wednesday, March 31, 2010 6:46:00 pm

Hmmmm, so much to say, so hard to explain.

Ben's last point is interesting, insofar as he uses more odd answers which appear to be designed to confuse little old me or gain rhetorical points. Which would explain why nobody outside out genial host actually manages to have a discussion with him for bery long.
Noting the existence of behaviour is not the same as approving it. Saying that Ben Pile kills kittens is not the same as saying that killing kittens is a good thing.

The point about climate change denialists is that they misuse facts, lacking the appropriate oerarching theories which explain the facts and evidence, and contibute to public misunderstanding of science in a way which is not helpful for the future of society. They get newspaper column, television shows, internet blogs galore, all dedicated to pushing lies and misdirection for the continued economic gain of the people funding them. Sure, some environmentalists are probably doing the same. But somehow they don't have the same budget and coverage, and also are usually a bit more open about their philosophy/ ideology.

Ripping you to shreds was the usual comment about my dislike of your ideology, tricky though it is to work out precisely what it is, and of course your debating style, lack of big picture and so on.

By guthrie, at Friday, April 23, 2010 7:05:00 pm

Hang on, I've worked it out - BP is an attempt to pass the Turing Test. Nice algorithm. Nearly convincing. One more iteration and I'd like to have an discussion with it.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about Ken's comment about the debate and its relation to the 'Edinburgh School' of STS. I checked out their website, and discovered that the only person on it that I know at all (and him slightly) is Ivan Crozier. He is undoubtedly a clever guy and does good stuff, but I mused on his research topics for a bit, and arrived at a hypothesis:

"It's a lot easier to embrace the strong programme of STS when your research subject is something like Havelock Ellis: human behavioural sciences tend to be far more closely-based on subjective factors than do other natural sciences. For these, the strong programme doesn't cut it."

Can anyone point to some really convincing strong programme work on natural sciences?

If true, this means, of course, that it's entirely legitimate to point the strong programme at many aspects of the 'climate science debate', but it won't work when we analyse the science itself, the ways that the underlying reality might change.

Chris Williams

By Anonymous, at Monday, April 26, 2010 3:13:00 pm

Even if your hypothesis is true your conclusion is only true if the "climate science" in the "climate science debate" is as
"free of subjective factors" as you propose that "other natural sciences" are.

I would argue that "the science" in "the climate science debate" is nebulous, changing according to who is making the argument, and to whatever ends are intended. "The science" is more often than not an imaginary object, shorthand for scientific authority, not for any actual science.

Biodiversity, sustainability, and species, are all concepts that have a significant degree of subjectivity about them, that carry more weight in any particular discussion than the binary fact of climate change. i.e. these ideas are used to create imperatives by demonstrating impacts and consequences of our in/action.

What I find interesting about the attempts to present these impacts as the discovery of "unchanging underlying reality" is that they simultaneously presuppose an unchangeable political - rather than formal - reality. And in doing so, they create that reality. It is a self-fulfilling hypothesis.

For instance, the World Health Organisation and the Global Humanitarian Forum have both produced estimates of how many people die each year "from climate change", by modelling the way malaria, diarrhoea, and malnutrition respond to temperature change. The GHF claim that this year 300,000 people will die from such causes, and that this will rise to 500,000 by 2020.

But whether it is 300,000 or 500,000 people who die each year "from climate change", each of these deaths are first-order effects of poverty. There are 10 million other such deaths, all first-order effects of poverty. But it's much, much harder to talk about the abolition of poverty when the thirst is for concepts that relate to an "unchanging underlying reality", rather than mere subjectivity. We can understand poverty as a "natural" effect with the help of climate change. But that way, we start to think of 300,000 deaths as our fault for driving cars, but the remaining 9,700,000 deaths nothing at all to do with us.

Not that I would argue that we should start using body-bags to start evaluating political ideas, of course. I'm only going with what the UN/WHO/GHF use as the substance of their moral calculus.

I would argue that the desire for a direction that is in accordance with "underlying reality" suggests a dearth of confidence in (maybe even contempt for) humanity, and in politics.

By Ben Pile, at Monday, April 26, 2010 5:48:00 pm