If we can use the sociology of science to foretell where science is headed, we could save a lot of money not having to in fact do the research. The climate issue is full of surprises and this one just about takes the cake for me. Now I’ve seen everything!
I’m not qualified to comment on Dr. Hansen’s work — though I cannot help but notice the frequent press focus on Hansen’s pronouncements on climate science/climate policy [many of which seem to be about being muzzled - no opinion on the truth of that charge]. For sure, Hansen is effective at attracting coverage, as evidenced by “Silenced — 1,400 Times [$$]” — just published March 27th by the Wall Street Journal:
…Naturally, Mr. Hansen claims he’s being muzzled by the government.
The story came to a head last week at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which Mr. Hansen testified that “for the sake of the taxpayers” he “shouldn’t be required to parrot some company line.” He complains that in December 2005 he was told by NASA bureaucrats that he would have to obtain official clearance before granting press interviews, giving public lectures or posting articles on the Web. More heinous still, a 23-year-old NASA spokesman rejected a request by National Public Radio to interview Mr. Hansen.
That would seem to make the climate scientist something of a martyr for truth, which in his case means the imminence of global warming doom. But as Republican Congressman Darrell Issa observed, the climate scientist managed to give 15 interviews that same month, and that’s just a fraction of the 1,400 interviews he’s granted in recent years. There’s also the fact that all NASA scientists are required to obtain official permission before speaking to the press, a detail Mr. Hansen shrugs off as beneath his dignity.
In contrast, I have closely followed the work of Roger Pielke, Jr. on science policy. Roger is a highly valued Seekerblog reliable source. Without comment, here is Roger’s March 29th post:
NASA’s Jim Hansen has discovered STS (science and technology studies, i.e., social scientists who study science), and he is using it to justify why the IPCC is wrong and he, and he alone, is correct on predictions of future sea level rise and as well on calls for certain political actions, like campaign finance reform.
In a new paper posted online (here in PDF) Dr. Hansen conveniently selects a notable 1961 paper on the sociology of scientific discovery from Science to suggest that scientific reticence can be used to predict where future research results will lead. And he finds, interestingly enough, that they lead exactly to where his views are today.
What evidence does Dr. Hansen provide to indicate that his views on sea level rise are correct and those presented by the IPCC, which he openly disagrees with, are wrong? Well, for one he explains that no glaciologist agrees with his views (as they are apparently reticent), suggesting that in fact his views must be correct (a creative use of STS if I’ve ever seen one;-). If holding a minority view is a standard for predicting future scientific understandings then we should therefore apparently pay more attention to all those lonely skeptics crying out in the wilderness, no?
I find it simply amazing that Dr. Hansen has the moxie to invoke the STS literature to support his scientific arguments when that literature, had he looked at maybe one more paper, indicates that Bernard Barber’s 1961 essay, while provocative is not widely accepted (see, e.g., this book or this paper). And even if one accepts Barber’s article at face value which argues that scientists resist new discoveries (Thomas Kuhn, hello?), what Dr. Hansen doesn’t explain (as he is throwing out the IPCC model of scientific consensus) is why his views are those that will prove to be proven correct in the future rather than those other scientific perspectives that are not endorsed by the IPCC. (Dr. Hansen appears to ignore Barber’s argument in the same paper suggesting that older scientists are more likely to be captured by political or other interests when presenting their science.)
The notion of “consensus” in science is a much-abused concept, and I cringe every time I hear the term used in the context of the anthropogenic global warming issue. I think “consensus” has no place in science. It is possible the IPCC estimates of future climate responses to GHG emissions are wrong; specifically that they have overestimated the amplitude and deleterious impacts of future global warming. It’s also possible that Jim Hansen is right and glaciologists have underestimated the ice-sheet response. It does not matter how many scientists believe something; it could be wrong. We’ve been wrong before and we will be wrong again.
The ice-sheet response to global warming, as Hansen acknowledges, is a bit of a “wild-card” in the system (in the sense that it’s difficult to estimate the sign, let alone the amplitude of the response).
With all due respect to Jim Hansen (and I have a lot of respect for him) his argument that the glaciology community is “reticent” is not in and of itself much of an argument.
As citizens and policy-makers we have to decide: is there enough chance IPCC is right, and that the effects they predict will be harmful, to warrant action now?
I have no patience for policymakers who claim they want to wait for “certainty” before making decisions to act. Or not. What garbage - politicians make decisions every day in the face of huge uncertainties. On security (should we or shouldn’t we commit more troops to Iraq?), fiscal policy, monetary policy - you name it.
If they’re waiting for “certainty” they’re not going to get it. We don’t know for certain the future course of tax revenues, or interest rates, or oil prices, or where the next deadly viral outbreak will emerge, or where the next security challenge will come from.
Will,
As citizens and policy-makers we have to decide: is there enough chance IPCC is right, and that the effects they predict will be harmful, to warrant action now?
Yes — the policy choice is between now or later, and if now, how much of GDP to allocate? As you outlined, the outcome for any given investment amount is uncertain. Also under uncertain outcomes homeowners still manage to decide how much they are willing to pay for fire/flood/hurricane insurance.
I view the mitigation investment as a combination of insurance and pre-payment of debt [the latter I think I borrowed from your analogy]. I’m willing to buy some level of insurance to attenuate the risk of our climate experiment turning out badly.
How much of the annual cost is insurance premium vs. pre-payment depends on your choice of discount rate. E.g., Nordhaus would probably see it as mainly insurance, while Stern would see mainly pre-payment [since he favors near-zero discounting].
Personally I have more of the Nordhaus view — and am keen to see good expositions of the range of payoffs from the choice of % of GDP allocated to mitigation so I could form an opinion on what I think we should invest. I.e., what do we estimate the emissions loading time-series looks like in a range between say 0.1% to 1.0% of GDP? [it won’t be a constant percent, but lets keep this simple] Hopefully that discussion will begin to show up in the political arena soon.
I think “consensus” has no place in science.
Agreed. Check me on this — I’ve concluded that the focus of the IPCC on “consensus” follows from the extremely wide range of estimates of future outcomes [including as you said sign, not just magnitude]. Since a lot of the contributors are worried about the bad end of the outcomes they favor buying insurance now — which they think policy makers will not do unless they have some simple forecasts for designing policy. Hence “consensus”, which is a political negotiation of a simplification the group is willing to vote for. […?…]
Steve, you note “I’ve concluded that the focus of the IPCC on “consensus” follows from the extremely wide range of estimates of future outcomes…” This is correct.
Although most of us climate scientists do favor “insurance” steps now, and do think policymakers need simple forecasts, the scientific assessment side of IPCC is not meant to be a call for specific policies. And the “consensus” is not meant to be a political one. It is meant to be an unbiased technical assessment of “best-estimate” science. That is to say, the science best-supported by data and theory.
Whether the assessment report is indeed an unbiased synthesis is, I suppose, open to debate. But it’s not supposed to be a “political” document in the sense of legislative or diplomatic negotiated settlements. The scientific “truth” is “out there” and not subject to negotiation or vote, even if we are not yet in a position to “know” it with agreed-upon certainty.
This is not to say there are no “politics” in science. There definitely ARE politics in science, as in any area human beings are involved, but they’re not the same as electoral or legislative politics in which “consensus” not only can, but must, be reached.
This is why I object to the use of the word “consensus” in the context of scientific assessment.
Will,
Many thanks for taking the time to expand and clarify. I think you neatly summarized what I understand to be the IPCC’s challenge. Further, as you wrote:
which is what I think of as the IPCC “politics” behind writing the summary [about all that is read by non-scientists]. A similar political example might be the internal workings of a university department on tenure decisions.
Coincidentally, it appears there is a debate raging around the IPCC assessment - at least as regards the summary. E.g., I just noted a lengthy 26 March post by Roger Pielke, Jr. aptly titled “Whose political agenda is reflected in the IPCC Working Group 1, Scientists or Politicians?”. Note that in the title, Roger explicitly refers to two agendas. Roger concludes:
And I don’t think the press or the public appreciate that the three-sentence summaries typically seen on ABC, BBC, NPR conceal a HUGE amount of complexity. E.g., when they announce something like “the IPCC has concluded that…”. I will speculate that the journalists who write these reports don’t read anything beyond the IPCC summary - possibly only the press-release-summary of the summary.
UPDATE: See also Pielke’s discussion of the just-released “consensus statement” [sorry, but here we go again] “Thinning of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Demands Improved Monitoring to Reduce Uncertainty over Potential Sea-Level Rise”