Monday, 6 April 2015

Changing your mind




Being shown wrong is central, however, to scientific progress.

















Calls for walks to walks to Canossa only hinder scientific progress.







Let me close with a beautiful analogy by Tom Curtis:

Related reading

Are debatable scientific questions debatable?
On the difference between scientific disputes and political debates.

Falsifiable and falsification in science

How climatology treats sceptics


Stop all harassment of all scientists now

Climatology is a mature field



Peter Domonkos said...

I believe that much of us know that the recognition and correction of our errors tend to accelerate scientific development. However, it is not always easy, because:

1. When I realise an error in my own work, first I hope that the error is not big, and try to find evidence that the error is relatively little, or its impact on the results is limited. This first reaction is spontaneous and happens either with or without personal or financial interests, just because I like my earlier works including my products and ideas.

2. When I realise an error or shortcoming in the work of some others, I must consider that humans do usually not like if somebody warns them on their errors. Therefore, what would be favourable for the advance of science, might be unfavourable for my personal relations or even for my career.

I think that scientific debates should appear much more often in our high level professional journals, even when there is no obvious mistake. To see the scientific theses from different points of views could be useful, even sometimes when the argued thesis is not erroneous. Criticising or commenting another work should not be considered an “attack”, we should consider it a normal part of our activity.

Paul Kelly said...

I'm still trying to get a handle on in what way Watts and, per BBD, lukewarmers qualify as mitigation skeptics. Tom Fuller styles himself as a spokesman for lukewarmers. He's all for mitigation. His proposals are not much different from Stoat's. Curry is often linked with lukewarmers. Is she a mitigation skeptic? What about PIelke Jr.?

Is there a minimum set of opinions one must have to avoid the mitigation skeptic label?

Victor Venema said...

Paul Kelly, when talking about a certain person, you can simply use their name. Sometimes you need a term for a group.

Victor Venema said...

Peter, I fully agree that errors should be corrected. This does not contrast the above post about doing so in a gentle manner.

If you find an interesting problem, that is a good reason to debate it at conferences and to write polite articles about it. If it is a silly mistake, it is more damaging to someones reputation and I would suggest telling the person in private. When the mistake is then still repeated and important, that would be the moment to become less friendly and ask questions at conferences and write comments or articles in scientific journals.

Item 1. It is quite human to have the immediate urge to find evidence that your error is small. Part of being a good scientist is being able to suppress that urge in time. That is one reason why it is a good thing that science goes rather slowly. Every time you rewrite your article, every round of review you have the possibility to make the account more objective.

Item 2. It seems not to be common, but I do regularly give people feedback. If you do so gently and in private people normally do get defensive in the moment, but the next day normally everything is fine again. You only have one life, so it is hard to judge, but I do not have the feeling that this has affected my relations or career. Public attacks quickly escalate, if I thought it possible to convince public mitigation skeptics and I had enough time to talk to each of them, I would reply in private. Only then people start to think, if you do this in public, people start to anti-think and just to defend themselves.

Peter Domonkos said...

Victor, I understand your standpoint around politeness and partly agree. I think that 3 kinds of mistakes should be distinguished appearing in scientific publications: i) Misprinting or miswording which is obvious for the majority of readers; ii) False ideas whose mistakes, however, cannot be proven easily; iii) False ideas whose potential impact on the generation and maintenance of false practices is substantial, but the mistakes can be shown clearly for the public hindering the escalation of false ideas or practices.
My opinion is that for mistakes i), you are absolutely right, the best way is the personal communication. For mistakes ii), it is truly advisable to be very polite, but we should try to promote the spread of right views in various ways. For mistakes iii), in my opinion, we must do everything to have a correction be published. I think that for a scientific researcher it is not a possibility: it is a duty.

Steve Bloom said...

Sure, PK. Reason from physical reality (the science) toward solutions rather than from solutions toward the science.

Given a "mitigation skeptic" (I prefer a less polite term) like Fuller who has non-climate reasons for wanting to get off of fossil fuels and who sees climate as much less urgent than those, it's entirely possible at this point in time for him and Stoat to seem to be proposing similar solutions. The difference would become obvious in a discussion of the criteria to use to set a carbon tax and then adjust it over time.

Paul Kelly said...

Fuller cannot, by any definition of the term, be called a mitigation skeptic. There is no part of mitigation he is skeptical of.

So, who are the "they" that are in the mitigation skeptic group? Those who have non-climate reasons for wanting to replace fossil fuels are not mitigation skeptics. They are mitigation allies. The differences in reasons are unimportant compared to the commonality of shared goals.

Steve Bloom said...

PK, it's all about support for solutions that scale to the problem. Fuller thinks the problem is so small it doesn't require much in the way of solutions. As we see in the somewhat incoherent passage quoted below, written in 2011 but which he stated a couple weeks back was a good summary of his stance, he thinks adaptation will be sufficient.

"I think that recent efforts to mitigate the potential impacts of climate change are important, but more because potential global warming can serve as a ‘last straw’ for certain portions of a beleaguered environment if it happens too fast.

However, 99% of stress on environments has other causes, most man-made, and addressing global warming in a mad and expensive rush without ameliorating our other impacts is madness, like treating a woman with cancer using a facial cleanser.

The environment, as Jeff Id alluded to, has thrived at times in warmer climates, and if warming happens slowly enough it could do so again.

Just as the alarmists forget (functionally, when talking of impacts and mitigation) that the climate always changes, some participants in yesterday’s thread seemed determined to ignore that our biosphere constantly changes too. For some species, warming will be a blessing, especially if warming happens to come in at a lower sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. For some it will not. But that kind of lottery has been occurring for a couple of billion years.

My main concern is exemplified by warmists hijacking iconic examples of negative effects caused by human activity and attributing the stress felt by or threats to, for example, polar bear populations and saying the major problem is global warming or climate disruption.

Climate is disruptive. It always has been. But species either adapt to the changes or make way for others that can. Our contributions to the disruptive nature of climate will not be welcomed by some species. However global warming is the least of their worries now, and is likely to remain so for the next century.

So how we use this century is critical. And my policy preferences are, just as with the human element affected by global warming, to make communities more resilient and able to withstand climate changes that we cannot control, to get off their backs with thoughtless development, pollution and dramatic changes in land use without environmental consideration."


Steve Bloom said...

If that's not clear enough, there's also this from 2/11:

"When I write about CAGW, I am referring to statements (mostly by politicians, lobbyists and NGOs) that predict or imply a real catastrophe happening on this our only planet due to global warming. Sea level rise, dramatic rise in surface temperatures, failure of agriculture or water supplies, dramatically increased number and strength of storm, drought and flood.

I do believe that sea levels will rise, temperatures as well and that there will be more and stronger storms, droughts and floods. But I don’t think any of it will be beyond our current (let alone our future) capabilities to deal with."

This would all be a bit more credible if Fuller hadn't started out as a science "skeptic." Later he shifted ground to being a "lukewarmer," but the constant theme was the dislike of mitigation. From 2/15:

"I started off as a skeptic. My skepticism was a reaction to the horrible behavior by some of those in the climate community (starting off with the hounding of Lomborg) and their transparent scare tactics, from doomsday imagery to incendiary labeling to hysterical exaggeration.

I have since moved to my current Lukewarmer status, as good people (mostly but not all) in the blogosphere walked me through various elements of the science and answered a host of questions. I have no issues with the science, although it’s clear many questions still need to be answered. My continued participation in the climate conversation is focused on attribution, adaptation and impacts–and the nature of the debate itself.

Skeptics, although I consider them off base with regards to much of the science, are essentially taking brass knuckles into a knife fight. The climate consensus is playing with big budgets, close connections and no scruples in a struggle to control the language and grammar of the debate. The real struggle is political, not scientific. Scientists who have focused on WG 1 issues are doing good work in framing boundaries and I think finally we will see saner descriptions of atmospheric sensitivity and attribution of anthropogenic contributions other than CO2e gases."

"Saner" meaning low enough to obviate the need for strong mitigation. The circle is unbroken.

Victor Venema said...

I would not mind if you would take your conversation about someone called Fuller elsewhere. It is getting very off topic and I do not like talking about people who are not there.

Paul Kelly said...


I'd still like a clearer idea of who or what constitutes mitigation skepticism, and will happily wait for your post on that specific topic.

Victor Venema said...

Tom, thank you for your friendly comment, but your personally preferred long list of solutions for the USA for climate change are not particularly on topic for a post on "changing your mind".

Tom said...

I see. By not printing my comment you and Sierra Steve can keep calling us mitigation skeptics.


Victor Venema said...

Ah, "Tom" is the "Tom Fuller" of the above off-topic comments? How could I have known? Not even your blogger profile gives your full name.

As you were mentioned feel free to provide a link to your policy preferences, but that is then really the final comment on this off-topic topic.