Weart

“In the IPCC reports, scientists gave their best answer. Now the main questions is what people will choose to do.”

Science & Politics

Source: USCUSA

Released Monday December 13, 2007

Images: United States House

Image: U.S. House

From Executive Summary of House Oversight & Governmental Reform

Committee (16 months of investigation)

Image: U.S. House

Winner of the 2007 Science Idol: Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest

(Image [“Truth” cartoon] removed due to copyright; can be found at the artist’s website)

Systems with multiple variables

1) Sensitivities

2) Positive feedbacks

3) Negative feedbacks

4) Thresholds (“Tipping points”)

5) Complexity (non-linear feedbacks)

Thresholds

Side view Back view

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Bart de Goeij Source: Wikimedia Commons, Gertjan R.

Jim Hanson interviewhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc4OzpgTOhk

Image from Thomas Kondenkandeth

(Image [“Mis-Information” cartoon] removed due to copyright; can be found at the artist’s website)

Tipping points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNH3HTDpuk

Feedback Loops & Tipping Points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_3WJPYY9g

Which presentation is a more effective communication, and why?

(Cartoon [UCS Lab Coat cartiib] removed due to copyright, available here.)

(Cartoon [“Greener environmental report” by Peter Hess] removed due to copyright, available here.)

Is there a controversy in the science?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "firmly" standing by findings that a rise in the use of greenhouse gases was a factor. It was responding to a row over the reliability of data from East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit. Leaked e-mail exchanges prompted claims that data had been manipulated. Last month, hundreds of messages between scientists at the unit and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents.

-BBC News

Quote 1

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.

Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was discussing gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature with other scientists.

Quote 2

“"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

A scientist responds

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/febrile_nitwits_and_the_hacked.php?utm_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link

Main points

1. Emails were obtained illegally. It is probably not a coincidence it was immediately before the international meeting in Copenhagen.

2. There appear to only be two particularly damning emails out of the hundreds (or thousands), both of which are interpreted out of context.

3. There is no ambiguity in human-induced global warming.

4. Scientists are people, and everyone has faults. Climatologists, in particular, are under immense public scrutiny.

NY Times coverage

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html

The relationship between science and ethics is very complex.

But, the understanding that scientific findings tell us nothing about the ethical implications of those findings. Climate change (and stem cells) are excellent examples of scientific research that are highly ethically charged, yet this is not necessarily a result of the science itself, but of its implications.

Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in attempting to fathom the Earth is to gain a proper sense at our own size as a human species; like spoiled children, we routinely overemphasize our own importance on the planet but underestimate the destructiveness of our self-absorption.

- M. Bjornrud (geologist)