How is it possible that there is so much perception of uncertainty about the fact of climate change when agreement among scientists is near-universal with respect to the broad facts, though not necessarily agreement over every detail?
In the case of climate change, the honest disagreements and rigorous debates that are instrinsic to the scientific method have often been mistaken for equivocation in the service of ideological agendas. Professional diversity of viewpoints among, say, climate modelers, has somehow mushroomed into a perception that they haven’t really found solid evidence of climate change. How did this situation arise?
I believe that scientists in the public eye need to emphasize their agreements more than their disagreements. This isn’t always how things are done in the world of science research, where disagreement and debate leads to the furthering of human knowledge, as it should.
But what can we do if these specialized debates cause confusion and dilution of the bigger message when they reach the public spotlight?
2 comments
May 20th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Hank Roberts
Read the articles, if you can. You, yourself. One of the things I found most puzzling about the list of participants in this project is that none appear to be climatolgists. I checked the couple of names who appear to be working scientists in Google Scholar. I found the arctic assessment cited in only one draft paper, for example. And that had seemed to me the most likely to be written by a working scientist. I can’t tell how many of you read primary sources.
It would help for you to be asking questions — and there is a way that works that the programmers understand better than the academics. Consider reading this:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
In summary, first read as best you can. Ask a question that shows that you’ve tried to understand and says what you’ve read. Ask questions that further get the scientists to describe what they meant to write in their papers.
Then visit realclimate and ask questions of the scientists. Get them to write simple clear answers to your questions.
Or — most of you seem to be important and busy people — have someone you can rely on do this for you.
Almost everyone in these “debates” is relying on second- and third-hand opinion pieces for their talking points, and almost nobody is paying attention to the scientists.
No scientist is an expert outside a very small area of research. At least they mostly know how to ask each other questions about research work in their general area.
Getting the questions asked clearly and answered by the people whose names are on the primary published references in the refereed journals ought to be — and is, at realclimate — possible.
Make this area interesting enough for some working climatologists to comment on, if you can — but don’t steal attention. Get them to come and say “this question is already well answered at [link]” when discussing the basic research.
Point to the research and discussions at the level where it’s close to the facts.
You can’t always do it. But you can find it done by the researchers.
Ask them clearly enough and they’ll tell you if your shorthand summary is even close to the facts. That’s the only way to go into “debates” with any credibility.
Fortunately the people posting only stuff written long ago by the PR industry for Exxon et al. are never able to provide references or footnotes for their legends and scare stories and they tend to drop out of public discussions or simply reiterate talking points without substance. For them, the Internet invented the killfile/filter, which we sorely need in web-based conversation.
Now, did you already read the Eric Raymond piece on how to ask questions the smart way? If no, please do.
July 28th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Steve Jewson
The first thing the scientists need to do is to start making their research papers and their data on climate change publicly and freely available, and easy to find.
Right now the general public can only get hold of it through expensive pay-per-view websites. In a few cases scientists put their papers on their personal or institutional websites: good luck trying to find them using google.
Once the scientists have done that, then the rest of us can start reading what they’ve done, and we’ll make our own minds up.
But until they do, can you blame the skeptics for being skeptical?