[Osx-nutters] Denial

[Stefano Mori]

On 2007-Aug-14, at 08:20, David Cake wrote:

> 	I used to work in an environmental science place that did a
> lot of modelling. Lest this cause Stefano to right off all my future
> comments as institutional bias,

There's a real difference between acknowledging that we all have some  
bias, and simply dismissing people because we believe they are  
completely biased.

It was that dismissive tone that people used when referring to  
climate skeptics that I found alarming. Before people started talking  
that way, I had no reason to doubt AGW. I believed it was real and  
happening and a serious serious problem.

But once they started proclaiming virtual certainty, and I couldn't  
understand how they could be so certain, combined with the outright  
dismissal of criticism, and the personal attacks on skeptics, that I  
started being very suspicious of AGW theory and the culture  
surrounding it. Then I started reading and found significant reasons  
not to trust their certainty. They can be right about 90% of their  
science, but there's a remaining critical percentage that's a problem  
and doesn't justify their conviction.

That is essentially my position.


> they had almost nothing to do with
> AGW, they were a water science place who modelled lakes a lot. And
> also, I thought the head of the place was an ass, who treated the
> professional opinions of his highly trained non-academic staff (which
> included me) with about the same respect as most of us would the
> opinions of a talkative cabby.
> 	They buy big computers. The computers themselves can cost
> millions (they didn't have supercomputer access when I was there,
> they do now, but had experimented with a lot of specialist
> 'mini-super' type gear). The really serious computing stuff (super
> computers, really big clusters) requires specialist physical
> facilities, which get very expensive, just like any major data
> centre. They have admin staff doing all sorts of random faff, but who
> take up a big percentage of the budget.
> 	All this could be counted as overhead, but if they are, the
> figure of $100,000 with overhead is way too low. $100,000 just gets
> everyone an office, super, a machine for email, health funds etc,
> normal stuff. It costs a lot more to get them super-computers.
>
> 	The computers have hardware and software guys (who generally
> don't publish) and grad students (who do publish, but not significant
> solo publication) doing most of the care and feeding, and writing
> code.
>
> 	They generally work on data collection as well. Modelling
> people always want bits of data they don't have. Data collection
> means there are bunches of techs building things, sometime very odd
> things.  Data collection projects can involve sending people to odd
> bits of the world, which takes up a lot of time and effort. Even if
> the centre isn't doing major data collection themselves, they'll be
> devoting quite a bit of effort liasing with people who do, and
> probably have data collection experts on staff.
>
> 	There are also scientists who work in the climate modelling
> centre, but never publish directly the results of models (they
> publish their tweaks to numerical analysis algorithms, or their data
> from from particular new means of data collection, or comparisons
> between results of different data sets). And there are probably quite
> a few projects going on that involve much more specific climate
> modelling projects (ie predicting likely micro-climate conditions for
> your local agricultural industries) that are perfectly valid
> modelling science, but don't have a direct impact on AWG and global
> climate science.
>
> 	To inject another bit of personal anecdotage, I have a few
> friends who are professional scientists, and who deal with what could
> be called climate science. None of them directly work on AGW science.
> They do, however, work in fields that have something to do with the
> climate, and its not a big stretch to imagine their careers taking a
> turn so that in 5 to 10 years they get dragged into the AGW debate.
> Its just that right now their careers have little to do with it. When
> you look at specific examples, it seems pretty obvious that the idea
> of climate science funding as funding for the AGW culture war is
> nonsensical.

You're still thinking the culture war is just paid adverts or paid  
speakers or something?

What you're describing shows there's plenty of scope for a "momentum  
of entrenched opinions". There's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of  
jobs, and as you described, the arrogant attitude of your head of  
department. If the head thinks that they can bring more money in by  
directing people into AGW research, then that's what he'll likely do.  
And if he doesn't then someone else will.

There are some cancers that deserve more research money but don't get  
it because they are not the big "sexy" cancers that the public is  
generally aware of and reading about in the news.



> For example, one is a geographer, with a professional
> specialty in remote sensing. It seems perfectly plausible that she
> might end up, in a few years so she is in a more senior position,
> being drawn into the public debate about the extent and economic
> effects of AGW. We are going to make those estimates from satellite
> data, and she is a scientist who is an expert in climate-related
> satellite data (she went to visit with the European Space Agency just
> a couple of weeks ago), and the exact interpretation of satellite
> data has come up in the public debate several times. But what does
> she do right now? Well, currently she spends a lot of time tromping
> about in fields collecting grass, as part of a project that
> correlates satellite estimates of vegetation density with field
> (hah!) data, and even more time crunching the satellite data to
> compare. Is this perfectly good academic preparation for offering her
> professional opinion as a contribution to a public debate about
> climate data gathered from satellite data at some later point?


Yes, thanks that's really interesting. It shows that spending  
billions on research isn't that impressive once you see how it works  
in practice. Where I work they bring in millions in research money  
but that quickly gets spent on staff and infrastructure. There's  
maybe one senior academic to every 20 support staff.

It raises another point though, that many of the thousands of papers  
on climate change are things like the migration of antelope in the  
Rift Valley and suggestion that this may be climate related. That  
billions does is many ways tie in with global warming, even if it's  
not directly spent on the most prominent papers in the IPCC summary.



> Sure.
> Does it constitute political indoctrination into the AGW cabal? No.

You know, I don't know the last time I saw an anti-AGW advert on TV.  
But many adverts seem to be about reducing carbon footprint. Why do  
we have these adverts on TV here in the UK? We have a pocket of  
culture that values caring for the environment, and we have many  
environmental scientists who say it's a problem. And those scientists  
wouldn't be there is they didn't have a paycheck. It's part of the  
culture and it's a movement that's been growing for decades.

I'm surprised about the word "indoctrination". But adverts on TV  
teaching people they should think about the environment is, I guess,  
a form of that.



> 	No field is immune to politics. Science isn't special in this
> regard. But like many many fields, ideology is more or less unrelated
> to advancement within the field, and professional competence - and
> bucking the orthodoxy is often a career shortcut. Stefanos base
> position seems to be that ideological indoctrination is part and
> parcel of being involved in climate science - and its just not the
> case.

The cultural aspects are many and varied. Here's a couple of examples:

Effects A, B, C and D are related to climate, but the standard text  
books say that D is very minor, so nobody does any further research  
on D. Then 30 years later they incidentally discover that D is  
actually significant, and it will take another 10 years for the it's  
implications to be understood. Ie. the culture teaches new  
researchers what to look at and what to ignore. Assuming the original  
knowledge is correct, this is expedient. But errors can lay hidden  
for decades.

After several dirty technological disasters, like Three Mile Island  
and Bhopal, oh and the invention of the bomb, over the decades young  
people grow up with the intuition that technology is generally bad,  
unnatural, and leading to disaster. Many turn to irrational  
homeopathy. This worldview has been going since the 60s, and there  
was even a Trek episode, "Journey to Eden" about it's pitfalls.  
Nevertheless it's part of our culture. Young people become  
researchers and take this "feeling for the natural" into their work.  
Very few people suggest that AGW is a technological problem, but many  
share the view that it's a moral problem demanding that we change our  
lifestyle. The anti-GM movement shares many of these feelings.

But seriously, politics is unrelated to advancement?!?

You just said that?

Stefano