I think we've lost touch with the whole scientific method on climate change. Propose a theory. Test the theory. Revise the theory. Repeat and repeat as we gain a more accurate understanding of our world.
I think you've never been in touch with the scientific method on climate change because your "how it should work" outline is exactly how I saw it go down in the literature.
Theory: Earth is warming ~1K/century, we have a bunch of models to project from here, most of which are bad news.
Observation: Temperature dips below predictions on enough models over enough time to be statistically significant.
Theory: Some negative feedback mechanism kicked in to reverse our forcing on the climate. We no longer have to worry about the previous trends.
Observation: Radiative flux measurements say that the difference in energy going in and going out of the planet is still positive. Whatever the negative feedback mechanism is, the energy is staying on Earth, so thermodynamics says the feedback mechanism must eventually fail.
Theory: The heat is being stored in the ocean. It's the biggest heat sink around.
Observation: If we adjust the models to use observed ocean currents instead of predicted average currents, we find that that the refined models reflect the observed heat storage.
Theory: Parts of the ocean are heating up, as seen in the models.
Observation: Yep, we went and measured them, and they're heating up. Corrected to reflect this evidence, the models still point to upward trends.
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Climate is so complicated. Of we're going to get things wrong. The trick is revising our theories in light of recent discoveries.
Good thing that's exactly what happens. The real trick is in convincing people like you that it has happened. Clearly it's not enough to
1. Publish cross-referenced short summaries alongside detailed methodologies (papers) in a system where people compete to prove each other wrong
2. Provide high-level reviews to connect the dots established by #1 (the IPCC reports)
3. Have the thousands of scientists doing #1 sign off on #2 so that you know it's not misrepresenting how their #1 results fit into the big picture
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many people have a lot of money and clout invested in The One True Theory that they don't want to admit any mistakes at all.
If someone can prove an alternative there is far more money and clout in it for them than if they had toed the line. There is a large social penalty for false alarms, but that's because there is a political party, monied industry, and media apparatus poised to turn a false alarm into actual counterproductive action.
How can the debate be considered fair if one side is censored? Easy: "false alarm" hypotheses are only ever stated in the context of research results that prove them wrong (i.e. as null hypotheses). They still get proposed, inspected, and analyzed, just not in a way that allows political forces to trivially misrepresent them. Research that could disprove the whole GW/CC theory gets done in the context of investigating puzzling nuances of GW/CC. So far, the overall theory has endured, even though the details have evolved to account for new information.
Consider a debugging analogy. Suppose you're convinced that you have a compiler bug, but you know that you'll get laughed at if you say so out loud. The social stigma is never an issue because you can do reductions without getting laughed at. If it really is a compiler bug, you will eventually have a "smoking gun" test case to prove it. If not, no harm done. Your social status hasn't suffered because you can claim you never really believed it was a compiler bug anyway.
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That is closer to religion than science.
How many actual research papers have you read on this subject? Because if you think climate scientists aren't following the scientific process I suspect the answer is 0.
(notice how the discussion revolves around primary literature with links at the bottom)
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One choice quote from the link above:
And a reminder: The warming trend of the 15-year period up to 2006 was almost twice as fast as expected (0.3°C per decade, see Fig. 4 here), and (rightly) nobody cared. We published a paper in Science in 2007 where we noted this large trend, and as the first explanation for it we named “intrinsic variability within the climate system”. Which it turned out to be. - See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...
There is absolutely no social penalty for false alarms of that sort - not so long as the alarm goes in the right direction. Remember Schneider's "we have to offer up scary scenarios" quote - coming up with alarms (that might be false) is essentially part of the job of environmental activists, even ones who choose to do science for a living. If there were a large social penalty for false alarms, Ehrlich wouldn't have remained credible after all his past prediction failures. (predictions such as: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.")
The idea that our "missing heat" is hiding in the deep ocean is still a speculative hypothesis. It could potentially be correct but it's hard to be sure because the data coverage wasn't there until recently. The trend one gets depends on how one does the reanalysis.
Wow, great response. I'm afraid I'm not qualified to really respond in depth. I'm more on the pop-science side of this issue. For example I've heard Al Gore speak in person about it in ~2004 (Overall, best powerpoint presentation I've ever seen), but I don't read any journals on the subject.
However, I do think I represent a sizable portion of the population. I'm open to being wrong, but innately skeptical about the depth of our understanding of something this complex. If this was like most other science, then who cares what a lay person like myself thinks? No astrophysicist need worry what I think about black holes. However, climate scientists want don't want to just change their own fossil fuel use. They want to change the fossil fuel usage of the entire developed / developing world. If the goal is changing the behavior of many humans, folks in the field need to start convincing many people.
Comments
I think you've never been in touch with the scientific method on climate change because your "how it should work" outline is exactly how I saw it go down in the literature.
Theory: Earth is warming ~1K/century, we have a bunch of models to project from here, most of which are bad news.
Observation: Temperature dips below predictions on enough models over enough time to be statistically significant.
Theory: Some negative feedback mechanism kicked in to reverse our forcing on the climate. We no longer have to worry about the previous trends.
Observation: Radiative flux measurements say that the difference in energy going in and going out of the planet is still positive. Whatever the negative feedback mechanism is, the energy is staying on Earth, so thermodynamics says the feedback mechanism must eventually fail.
Theory: The heat is being stored in the ocean. It's the biggest heat sink around.
Observation: If we adjust the models to use observed ocean currents instead of predicted average currents, we find that that the refined models reflect the observed heat storage.
Theory: Parts of the ocean are heating up, as seen in the models.
Observation: Yep, we went and measured them, and they're heating up. Corrected to reflect this evidence, the models still point to upward trends.
----------------
Good thing that's exactly what happens. The real trick is in convincing people like you that it has happened. Clearly it's not enough to
1. Publish cross-referenced short summaries alongside detailed methodologies (papers) in a system where people compete to prove each other wrong
2. Provide high-level reviews to connect the dots established by #1 (the IPCC reports)
3. Have the thousands of scientists doing #1 sign off on #2 so that you know it's not misrepresenting how their #1 results fit into the big picture
----------------
If someone can prove an alternative there is far more money and clout in it for them than if they had toed the line. There is a large social penalty for false alarms, but that's because there is a political party, monied industry, and media apparatus poised to turn a false alarm into actual counterproductive action.
How can the debate be considered fair if one side is censored? Easy: "false alarm" hypotheses are only ever stated in the context of research results that prove them wrong (i.e. as null hypotheses). They still get proposed, inspected, and analyzed, just not in a way that allows political forces to trivially misrepresent them. Research that could disprove the whole GW/CC theory gets done in the context of investigating puzzling nuances of GW/CC. So far, the overall theory has endured, even though the details have evolved to account for new information.
Consider a debugging analogy. Suppose you're convinced that you have a compiler bug, but you know that you'll get laughed at if you say so out loud. The social stigma is never an issue because you can do reductions without getting laughed at. If it really is a compiler bug, you will eventually have a "smoking gun" test case to prove it. If not, no harm done. Your social status hasn't suffered because you can claim you never really believed it was a compiler bug anyway.
----------------
How many actual research papers have you read on this subject? Because if you think climate scientists aren't following the scientific process I suspect the answer is 0.
Start here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...
(notice how the discussion revolves around primary literature with links at the bottom)
----------------
One choice quote from the link above:
There is absolutely no social penalty for false alarms of that sort - not so long as the alarm goes in the right direction. Remember Schneider's "we have to offer up scary scenarios" quote - coming up with alarms (that might be false) is essentially part of the job of environmental activists, even ones who choose to do science for a living. If there were a large social penalty for false alarms, Ehrlich wouldn't have remained credible after all his past prediction failures. (predictions such as: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.")
The idea that our "missing heat" is hiding in the deep ocean is still a speculative hypothesis. It could potentially be correct but it's hard to be sure because the data coverage wasn't there until recently. The trend one gets depends on how one does the reanalysis.
Curry discusses the question here: http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/21/ocean-heat-content-uncerta...
Pointing in particular at this paper (which I've only skimmed so far): http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_fina...
Wow, great response. I'm afraid I'm not qualified to really respond in depth. I'm more on the pop-science side of this issue. For example I've heard Al Gore speak in person about it in ~2004 (Overall, best powerpoint presentation I've ever seen), but I don't read any journals on the subject.
However, I do think I represent a sizable portion of the population. I'm open to being wrong, but innately skeptical about the depth of our understanding of something this complex. If this was like most other science, then who cares what a lay person like myself thinks? No astrophysicist need worry what I think about black holes. However, climate scientists want don't want to just change their own fossil fuel use. They want to change the fossil fuel usage of the entire developed / developing world. If the goal is changing the behavior of many humans, folks in the field need to start convincing many people.
Thank you for writing that.