Climatologist Dr. John Christy tells Congress: ‘Consensus Science is not Science’
Hearing – Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method
US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
March 29, 2017
Full Congressional Statement here:
Red Teams needed because Consensus Science is not Science
One way for congress to receive better (less biased) information about claims of climate science is to organize “Red Teams” as is done in other parts of government and industry when critical systems, programs or infrastructure are under consideration. I have discussed this idea is several previous congressional hearings. I will include here the section describing Red Teams from my testimony on 20 Sep 2012 before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The term “consensus science” will often be appealed to regarding arguments about climate change to bolster an assertion. This is a form of “argument from authority.” Consensus, however, is a political notion, not a scientific notion. As I testified to the
Inter-Academy Council in June 2010, wrote in Nature that same year (Christy 2010), and documented in my written House Testimony last year (House Space, Science and Technology, 31 Mar 2011) the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for
me a consensus of much more than the consensus of those selected to agree with a particular consensus. The content of these climate reports is actually under the control of a relatively small number of individuals – I often refer to them as the “climate
establishment” – who through the years, in my opinion, came to act as gatekeepers of scientific opinion and information, rather than brokers. The voices of those of us who object to various statements and emphases in these assessments are by-in-large dismissed
rather than accommodated. This establishment includes the same individuals who become the “experts” called on to promote IPCC claims in government reports such as the Endangerment Finding by the Environmental Protection Agency. As outlined in my [31 Mar 2011] House Testimony, these “experts” become the authors and evaluators of their own research relative to research which challenges their work. But with the luxury of having the “last word” as “expert” authors of the reports, alternative views vanish.
I’ve often stated that climate science is a “murky” science. We do not have laboratory methods of testing our hypotheses as many other sciences do. As a result what passes for science includes, opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and …
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry slams ‘manufactured consensus’ of ‘global warming’
Hearing – Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method
US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
March 29, 2017
Full Congressional Statement here:
Motivated by the mandate from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the climate community has prematurely elevated a scientific hypothesis on human-caused climate change to a ruling theory through claims of a consensus.
• Premature theories enforced by an explicit consensus building process harm scientific progress because of the questions that don’t get asked and the investigations that aren’t undertaken. As a result, we lack the kinds of information to more broadly understand climate variability and societal vulnerabilities.
• Challenges to climate research have been exacerbated by:
o Unreasonable expectations from policy makers
o Scientists who are playing power politics with their expertise and trying to silence scientific disagreement through denigrating scientist who do not agree with them
o Professional societies that oversee peer review in professional journals are writing policy statements endorsing the consensus and advocating for specific policies
• Policymakers bear the responsibility of the mandate that they give to panels of scientific experts. The UNFCCC framed the climate change problem too narrowly and demanded of the IPCC too much precision – where complexity, chaos, disagreement and the level of current understanding resists such precision.
• A more disciplined logic is needed in the climate change assessment process that identifies the most
important uncertainties and introduces a more objective assessment of confidence levels.
‘Scientifically proven’ is a contradiction in terms – science does not prove anything. Scientists have a vision of reality that is the best they have found so far, and there may be substantial disagreement among individual scientists. Science works just fine when there is more than one hypothesis to explain something – in fact, disagreement spurs scientific progress through creative tension and efforts to resolve the
disagreement.
How scientists fool themselves
Prior to 2010, I accepted and supported the consensus conclusions from the Assessment Reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – I felt that this was the responsible thing to do. However, following the revelations of ClimateGate,4 I realized that I had fallen victim to ‘groupthink’ – a pattern of thought characterized by conformity to group values and the manufacture of
consensus that results in self-deception. I undertook an investigation into the ways that scientists can fool themselves, by examining …
The Science Is Settled! Now Shut Up!
A few “scientific” examples of instances where liberals demand conformity without putting forth evidence.
Source: The Science Is Settled! Now Shut Up!…
Warmist New Republic Mag calls Morano ‘the Matt Drudge of climate denialism’
…CFACT presents award to Apollo astronaut Walt Cunningham
…Watch Videos of Heartland DC Climate Skeptic Summit
…Great debate!? Judith Curry, John Christy & Roger Pielke Jr. set to battle against Michael Mann at House Science Committee Hearing on March 29
by Judith Curry Witnesses: John Christy, Judith Curry, Michael Mann and Roger Pielke Jr. The hearing will be held next week, March 29. The announcement for the Hearing is [ here ]. I’ve completed my written testimony, I will post it Wednesday once the Hearing has commenced.
Skeptical Scientist Dr. Willie Soon: Create a ‘place in hell’ for UN climate science – ‘Seriously, just close UN IPCC’
Willie Soon, a rock star among climate change skeptics, pitched the idea of shutting down the United Nations’ panel of climate change researchers on Thursday, calling it an “anti-science movement.”
Soon said he would create a “place in hell” to put the U.N.’s climate science and predictions. “There will be a very special place I will create for them. Please go there. It’s nonsense. Even a little kid will know this is wrong.”
Soon was in Washington to discuss new findings that refute the U.N.’s predictions on the disappearance of Arctic sea ice as a result of increasing global temperatures due to manmade carbon pollution. He discussed the research and took questions from the audience as part of the Heartland Institute’s annual two-day conference of climate skeptics being held this year in the nation’s capital.
The conference comes as President Trump is drafting a new executive order to repeal much of the work of the Obama administration to combat manmade climate change, much of which is based on climate assessments and research from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
“Just close IPCC,” Soon said. “Seriously, just close it,” he said, in responding to a federal worker’s question, asking why Soon has not met with the IPCC.
“I think you didn’t see my white hair,” Soon added. “I have a lot of white hair. I have tried a lot.”
• Things have gotten too bad to fix: “Oh yes, we tried for years and years and years, but the strategy has become so bad that I say we just have to close IPCC. Seriously, just close it. Because they are really [an] anti-science movement,” he said.
“There are too many of these people now, growing too large year-by-year,” Soon said. “Every year there is just conferences … [but] nothing has been done.”
• Once a friend of the IPCC: “Second and third [climate assessment], IPCC cited my work very prominently,” Soon said. “And then, all of a sudden” they stopped reaching out “because we are running out of favor, in a sense.”
Watch Live from DC! Skeptics gather at 12th International Conference on Climate Change
Livestream Youtube Day 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reVmhKjH_M8 (Constitution Ballroom A-B)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0i3HnA0TI4 (Constitution Ballroom C-F)
Livestream Youtube Day 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_3S1JcFWUA (Constitution Ballroom A-B)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9JayMz5FYg (Constitution Ballroom C-F)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on EPA chief Pruitt’s CO2 comments: ‘I think these two statements made by Pruitt are absolutely correct’
What Scott Pruitt actually said
Listen to what Scott Pruitt actually said on CNBC and then compare it to the portrayal in the media. Here is the key text:
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.
Can you square what Pruitt actually said with the distorted quotes and headlines about this? I can’t.
I think that these two statements made by Pruitt are absolutely correct:
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact
We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.
The other two statements give slightly conflicting messages:
I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet.
The main statement of controversy is:
I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.
You can interpret this in two ways:
1.Pruitt is denying that CO2 is a primary contributor to recent global warming
OR
2.Pruitt is saying that he does not accept as a ‘fact’ that CO2 is a primary contributor because we simply don’t know.
Since his subsequent statement is “But we don’t know that yet”, #2 is obviously the correct interpretation.
I think he is saying that he is not convinced that we know with certainty that humans have caused 100% of the recent warming (which is what some climate modelers are saying, see recent tweets from Gavin Schmidt), or that humans have caused ‘more than half’ of the recent warming (which was the conclusion from the IPCC AR5.
JC reflections
If I am interpreting Pruitt’s statements correctly, I do not find anything to disagree with in what he said: we don’t know how much of recent warming can be attributed to humans. In my opinion, this is correct and is a healthy position for both the science and policy debates.
Exactly what the Trump administration intends to do regarding funding climate science, energy policy and the Paris climate …