Summing Up
This is brilliant:
BREAKING NEWS IN THE CLIMATE DEBATE!!!
By R.U. Kiddingme.
Unassociated Press
15 minutes ago
“Realists” use analogy of scientists to dentists” while “Skeptics” use analogy of scientists to Lysenko (and Inquisitors)”
Voicing “concern” today, “skeptics” all over the blogosphere weighed-in write blog comments objecting to an analogy used in a WSJ op-ed comparing scientists to dentists. This comes after much ado over the past few days, when “realists” all over the blogosphere weighed-in to write blog comments objecting to an analogy used in a WSJ op-ed comparing scientists to Lysenko.
In other news, nothing ever changes.
Not as brilliant when you consider context, but also not as cute.
More specifically,
Climate scientists use analogy of consulting scientists with no climate-related expertise to a patient with a heart condition consulting a dentist, while “Skeptics” use analogy of climate scientists objecting to the behavior of two individuals intent on corrupting peer review at a targeted journal (the Soon/Baliunus thing), to actions of Lysenko (and Inquisitors)
If the former was actually comparing the hacks to dentists, it would be rather insulting to dentists. Most of them aren’t this stupid or ideologically driven…
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/some-questions-for-rutan/
So the climate scientists are compared to murderers and inferred that their entire field is a propaganda fraud, and the other guys are merely called non-experts in the climate field — and this is same!? Both marginalized equally? Wow. I suppose this does sum up the reporting of this debate well.
#1 & #2
you guys are so clueless
Really? Let’s see. 16 random academics, who appear to be perpetually caught in the red-scare, make several incorrect statements and compare current climate science to a murderous regime.
OTOH, you have a group of climate scientists and a couple economists with relative expertise in the correct interface make a rational analogy and an innocuous statement about a how a low carbon economy could help drive growth and avoid some future climate change.
Media reports some inaccuracies, then seems to come to the conclusion that this is six in one hand, half dozen in the other.
Most everyone else come to the conclusion that the initial op-ed is wrong and nuts and the signatories should be embarrassed for themselves and that the response is arguable, but very rational.
Disconnect? Yes.
I’m totally with grypo on this one.
At least this article inadvertently serves a good purpose. This one piece of shallow cleverness epitomizes the failure of the American press to report responsibly on the issue. I cannot think of a clearer or more succinct example, though Andy Revkin’s comparison of Gore and George Will comes to mind.
#4, #5: you guys are so clueless
this commenter is speaking to all that, and more
it is, as Keith says, brilliant
grypo (4), Michael (5)
What? This is a satiric observation from a regular commenter (“Joshua”) at Judith Curry’s blog. He has a distinct talent for driving the climate contrarians over there batshit crazy. He seems to thrive on it. And while I doubt Judith would agree, “Joshua” also probably keeps her on her toes.
This one comment (and your response to it) epitomizes just how much of a rabbit hole this debate has become.
Ha! Well, I don’t read the comment section enough over there anymore to distinguish between Joshua and others with common names. It appeared the comment was made to show that these arguments in the letters were equal, which they obviously are not.
Yeah I noticed that after I posted. But still, you call it brilliant. What it is, is just more toxic lunacy. And it comes after Andy’s ridiculous balancing act.
The WSJ published an article that is basically crazy. Great swaths of the right are believing things that are crazy. I am not hurling epithets here. The WSJ article was obviously nothing short of clinically insane
I’d think there would be a story there.
As long as mainstream journalism doesn’t have the balls to say that, mainstream journalism is part of the problem. You can’t say you weren’t handed this opportunity on a silver platter. Yet your response is to feature a tiresome cartoonist splitting the difference at Curry’s and call it brilliant?
Sorry if I’m unimpressed.
Michael Tobis,
No offense but your calling anyone crazy is a bit of the kettle calling the pot.
AGW has become a toxic pseudo-religion, and you true beleivers are running out of time.
Hang tough. You can probably find another popular cult to link up with after not too much time.
@7
I’d say instead that it shows how prior knowledge (or lack thereof) of a person invariably affects how we interpret their words. Joshua was clearly being coy, but MT and grypo, not realizing that he shares many of their complaints about the MSM tendencies for ‘framing’ the debate badly misinterpret his intent.
OTOH, I think that grypo and MT are exactly right that part of the problem is the failure of the MSM to police itself when it comes to baldface pieces of propoganda/misrepresenation/lies.
Sometimes ‘liar fucking liar pants on fucking fire’ is the appropriate response. If Andy or you were to use that as your lede once in a while it would be appreciated 😉
Marlowe,
If Revkin or Chris were to properly use “liar fucking pants on fire”, they would both lose many friends and sources in the climate science community.
The MSM has profited greatly from repeating the unfettered hype of AGW promoters for decades. How would you propose the media start breaking that habit?
Michael Tobis Says:
Great swaths of the right are believing things that are crazy. I am not hurling epithets here. The WSJ article was obviously nothing short of clinically insane
Sorry Michael…
My wifes Uncle was ‘clinically insane’, he also gave more then a few speeches at ‘left leaning’ political rallies in his lifetime and was respected in his peer group as a ‘great thinker’. The guy heard voices and believed the police were monitoring his every move, just as many other paranoid schizophrenics do.
Journalists are not the ‘arbiters of truth’ and I would have no respect for a journalist that believed that was even part of their job description.
Journalists present ‘perspectives’, some of those perspectives may in fact be from people who are ‘clinically insane’.
How do you think Robert Goddard’s neighbors might have classified his ‘mental state’ when he was building those ‘moon rockets’ in his back yard? What about those loser high-school dropout bicycle mechanics that were building a ‘flying machine’?
Moon rockets..flying machines…that was once considered ‘crazy talk’.
Harry, if a major newspaper published leftwing screeds as crazy as the Lysenko piece, the other papers definitely ought to jump all over them.
I think they would, actually.
To achieve a comparable result, it would be necessary for the Democrats to gradually become crazier and crazier over a period of decades.
I for one do not think this is a good way to arrive at a reasonable compromise.
(Nor do I think the two parties are reasonably considered the only sources of respectable ideas, for that matter. But the American press has found a convenient way to duck its responsibilities and call it “objectivity”. A vigorous third party might shake them out of their lazy complacency. But neither of the existing parties nor the press favors such a thing.)
A friend told me when I entered these “wars” (I didn’t know they were wars at the time, and was startled by the ignorance and vitriol I found – an honest inquirer doesn’t stand a chance unless they get some armor) that it’s all about the clicks. Controversy breeds clicks.
And a 58:1 profit on fossil fuel lobbying dollars does less than nothing to advantage the truth.
You cannot be surprised that climate scientists feel battered after the last few decades of intensifying attacks. Physics Today (linked with partial extracts below) has a good new article about the phenomenon. Anyone who hasn’t checked their real skepticism (questioning all sides equally) at the door can figure out for themselves that the phony skeptic movement is political and cannot stomach real facts and evidence. That evidence can be found from every expert organization in the field, worldwide. Political distortions like those available from WUWT et al. can be identified because their “leaders” lack technical qualifications; Watts, for example, is a former weather presenter, though in his own area of expertise he made the contribution of checking weather stations for local conditions, though it didn’t pan out quite how he expected. It is, however, hard work and one must not allow oneself to be led by the nose – check references and scientific arguments for integrity and errors. Get help if necessary, but not from an obviously political source, particularly on the right where there is a unified front.
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1?bypassSSO=1
permalink:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1431
“Harassment of climate scientists by climate-change deniers goes back at least to 1995, after the IPCC published its Second Assessment Report. Santer was the lead author of chapter 8, which looked at the causes of climate change. “The single sentence “˜The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate’ changed my life,” he says. “I was the guy who was associated with this sentence. Those who did not like that finding did everything not only to undermine the finding but also to undermine my scientific reputation.”
“The harassment has ramped up in recent years …. “Political intimidation, character attacks, what appear to be orchestrated phone and email campaigns, nasty and thinly veiled threats, not just to us but to our families, are what it means in modern American life to be a climate scientist,” says Mann. Even this magazine, after publishing last October articles on the science of climate change””about its being under fire and about communicating that science to the public“”received an abundance of letters ….” [Dr. Mann]
Fossil-fuel interests, …, “have adopted a shoot-the-messenger approach. It’s been a very successful strategy. They have created a chilling effect, so other [scientists] won’t say what they think and the conversation in public stays bereft of anyone who knows what they are talking about.” Schmidt cofounded RealClimate.org, a forum for climate scientists to “provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.” Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a vocal opponent to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, is suing NASA for the release of Schmidt’s personal emails.
“Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says he has seen young scientists get a surge of nasty emails when they publish on climate change. “They are flabbergasted. A lot of the community is unaware this is happening.” And, he notes, the people who send the emails have “gotten off scot-free.“
Michael,
Your inability to consider that maybe, just maybe, you are ticked off at the Lysenko comparison (which is not a new one, and is obvious to many people who are historically literate)because it struck a wee bit close to home is entertaining. While youdo pontificate on a great many topics I see no reason to believe that you are qualified to make the judgement about the 16 authors that you make. You frankly sound like the way a fundamentalist responds when told that evolution is real, the Earth is ancient and that there is no evidence of a soul. Your ‘insane’ remark comes across more like a confession that you cannot comprehend a world not facing a CO2 driven apocalypse and that you have wasted a great deal of time claiming otherwise. But then, if you are in it only for gold, perhaps you are not really bothered.
Susan,
So the debbil is behind the denialist scum?
hunter
That’s not what she said.
Rational as ever, I see.
No one’s ever accused me of writing a brilliant comment before – but I’ll take it.
NewYorkJ –
“Not as brilliant when you consider context, but also not as cute.”
I don’t think that the two analogies are equally tortured. However, I do think that they both miss the larger point. IMO, the purpose of an analogy is to shed new light on a subject, to help someone understand something in a way that they didn’t before. Of course, analogies can also be used to chalk up rhetorical points – but in the context of the climate debate, IMO, that is a pointless exercise. People are running around scoring points as we get absolutely nowhere. No one was convinced of anything by either analogy. No one gained new insight from reading either analogy. The only purposed served by either analogy is to add fuel to the fire.
grypo –
See comment above to NewYorkJ
Michael Tobis –
“This one piece of shallow cleverness epitomizes the failure of the American press to report responsibly on the issue.”
That point is not mutually exclusive with the point I was making about the analogy. I agree that a reflexive reporting that equate unequally bad rhetoric, or unequally good analysis, is part of the problem. But that doesn’t change the uselessness of the “climate skeptics are like dentists” analogy (or the “climate scientists are like Lysenko and/or Inquisitors” analogies).
So now, as the result of these two editorials, we have “realists” yukking it up at “realist” websites about how stupid the Lysenko/Inquisitor analogies were, and we have “skeptics” at “skeptical” websites yukking it up about how stupid the dentist analogy was, and we have same old, same old.
Trenberth could simply have said that he believes that in balance, the views of people who study this issue in more depth, and who submit their their analysis on this issue to peer review, should be afforded more weight. That would be an arguable contention when taken to extreme levels ““ but I think it has some merit. It isn’t dispositive, but it reflects a certain (legitimate, IMO) take on probabilities.
Same old, same old, would have ensued nonetheless – but why not just take the “high road?”
Keith Kloor (#7)
Yup.
Susan Anderson
“You cannot be surprised that climate scientists feel battered after the last few decades of intensifying attacks.”
I partially agree. One of the (many) bones I pick with Judith Curry is that she focuses on “tribalism” in the “climate science community” by originating it in an isolated point in time without considering (IMO sufficiently) the antecedents. It is a useless strategy if her real intent is to “build bridges” rather than exacerbate tribalism.
I’m not exactly surprised, but I am confused by the reaction of some folks to the attacks from “skeptics” in that, IMO, they are engaging “skeptics” at the the same level of useless rhetoric. I will repeat that I see no purpose, none, served by the dentist analogy. The reactions, on both sides, were entirely predictable. Creating productive change in the climate debate is, undoubtedly, extremely difficult – but why continue using rhetoric and strategies that have proven counterproductive?
Joshua
Trenberth could simply have said that he believes that in balance, the views of people who study this issue in more depth, and who submit their their analysis on this issue to peer review, should be afforded more weight.
But… but that’s elitist!
Joshua,
Enjoy your moment of fame!
BBD,
somehow being judged by you as to my rationality is not really any more significant than finding out that Tobis now offers free psychiatric evaluations.
BBD –
Sure. Same old, same old.
It’s like when “skeptics” cry about “appeal to authority” by pointing to the qualifications of the people who signed the “climate scientists are like Lysenko” editorial.
But from where I sit, it makes a difference when I read a rhetorical attack (i.e., an analogy that is basically an ad hom) versus an explanation of a perspective.
(btw – since I’m famous now, I should be more edit more carefully; please change “afforded more weight” to “accorded more weight.”)
@24
In that case I think you miss the point entirely. The audience for the rebuttal letter is not the self-identified skeptics that are active in the blogosphere as you seem to suggest. If that were the case then I think your point would have more merit. I’d argue that the intended audience in this instance is the broader public that has no opinion on the issue. Consequently, the dentist analogy is entirely apt as it provides an appropriate and accessible description of the critical ‘who to trust’ issue as it relates to disparate claims about climate science.
So then you really do think that the letters have the same effect?
we have “realists” yukking it up at “realist” websites about how stupid the Lysenko/Inquisitor analogies were, and we have “skeptics” at “skeptical” websites yukking it up about how stupid the dentist analogy was
So what? I don’t care about the usual people yukking it up. These letters fell outside that group and deserve diligence that reflects it. Should the press only concern themselves with how a small group of bloggers and comments react?
Marlowe –
You may be right – but I think that the analogy fails, miserably, to reach the intended audience, and IMO, my suggested rewording would be more effective.
As evidence, I offer the fairly large % of the American public who doubt that the climate is changing. Of course, that % might just be attributable to the propaganda of “skeptics,” or it could be attributable to the difficulty of getting across the implications of a long-term phenomenon when short term phenomena (cold winters) don’t fall in line. But I think that there is more at play than those factors, and that poor communication strategies are part of the explanation. Views on the climate debate almost fall in line, lock step, with political orientation (or other partisan orientations). To the extent that the non-convinced are going to be reached, IMO, it can only be done in ways that don’t configure so easily into a partisan framework. As difficult as it is to devise effective strategies, an analogy as ad hom strategy, IMO, is doomed to be ineffective. .
Do you really think that anyone who wasn’t already convinced one way or the other w/r/t the climate debate was given new insight by the use of the dentist analogy?
grypo –
No, of course the press shouldn’t place undo importance on the reaction in the blogosphere. Blogaholics are, for the most part lunatics, and certainly an outlier.
But the partisan fulminating in the blogosphere spills over into the larger societal debate.
Once again, IMO (I’ve been wrong before) the sort of analogy used in that editorial will convince not one person. That sort of rhetoric has been a mainstay of the “realist” community, and I’d have to say that on the whole, it has been largely ineffective. Perhaps no other strategy would have been more effective, or perhaps they would have been less effective. There is no way to logically make such a determination. Perhaps the strategies of “skeptics” would be equally or more effective if “scientists as dentist” rhetoric were not used. But from where I sit, such rhetoric only further entrenches the partisans on either side of the battle line, and the current strategy is not winning the war.
@Joshua
While communications theory isn’t my particular area of expertise, from what little I do know, analogies and metaphors are effective means of mass communication so I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree unless you can provide some more tangible evidence that this particular analogy is ineffective in general or wrt to climate change specifically.
Marlowe –
They are effective strategies if they shed new light on a topic, or give someone a window for understanding something from a different perspective.
We all use analogies (and models), effectively, to understand everything that we understand. They are a basic building block of human cognition.
But that doesn’t mean that all analogies are equally useful. I’m asking your opinion.
(1) Do you think that the dentist analogy have anyone new insight into the climate debate?
(2) Assuming you do, do you think that the description I offered would reach offer greater insight to the same number of people? Fewer? More?
(3) How would you estimate the differential positive effects of the two different strategies might be mitigated by the easily predictable reactions (I’m arguing that the reaction to the dentists strategy would be stronger, even though as BBD points out, “skeptics” would cry “elitist” in reaction to my suggested rhetoric).
You seem to have formulated an opinion on this issue – so I think that saying that I need to offer some scientific evidence is a bit of a cop out. What scientific evidence are you using to judge the scientists as dentist rhetoric to be effective?
IMO (I’ve been wrong before) the sort of analogy used in that editorial will convince not one person. That sort of rhetoric has been a mainstay of the “realist” community, and I’d have to say that on the whole, it has been largely ineffective.
That may be correct. Tho I’d expect people to be shifted in the direction of the rational debater. It’s not like dentists he a bad name! 😉
But from where I sit, such rhetoric only further entrenches the partisans on either side of the battle line, and the current strategy is not winning the war.
Battles, like this one, for the public mind happen on ethical grounds, or, world view. This is not a fight that scientists can win until moving into activism and stepping outside their comfort zone. I found this letter to be appropriate for who wrote it. Not at all for the initial op-ed.
@34 Sorry for the garbled syntax. I assume you can figure out what I was trying to say?
Joshua
But from where I sit, it makes a difference when I read a rhetorical attack (i.e., an analogy that is basically an ad hom) versus an explanation of a perspective.
Oh, agreed. Perhaps I should have added a smiley to my earlier comment. Apologies for any ambiguity. Also, I wouldn’t presume to edit quotes, nor was this a moment for the [sic]s of sarc 😉
The thing about the well-worn medical analogy is that it is valid; it sheds some light on the situation.
The thing about the Lysenko analogy is that it is wrong and polarizing and crazy.
Yes, of course we need to choose our words carefully. But we also have to avoid being so diplomatic as to be soporific. There is nothing anybody can say that will reach everybody and nothing that will please everybody.
A priori and viewed from outside, claiming that the formal climate science community is the legitimate authority on the subject is merely a claim, but it’s hardly an outlandish one, especially given the support of the larger scientific community. The reader is invited to consider the plausibility of that claim vs the counterclaim.
In my own experience, it is perfectly reasonable for the signatories of the rebuttal letter to claim to be authorities in the field. I would say I recognize many or even most of them as such, and I am consequently sure the colleagues that are unfamiliar to me are of comparable quality.
So, no. You can quibble about emphasis in the rebuttal. (As, in fact, I do. I for one do not entirely like or agree with the closing paragraph.) But on the whole, the rebuttal is a reasonable position to take, and it is in response to an unreasonable one. There is no real symmetry, and the press needs the discernment to make that judgment. Any other summary compounds the problem.
Marlowe –
Maybe I can make this simpler. To me, the point of the dentist analogy was to discredit those who hold an opposing viewpoint. It was rhetoric used from a defensive posture. Basically, I saw it as an ad hom. I didn’t see it as a good faith attempt to explain a perspective. The same, absolutely, goes for the Lysenko nonsense. I think that there are two categories of rhetorical usage of analogies: One is to really help someone see something in a new light, and the other is as an ad hom. What I see, for the most part, in the climate debate is a lot of wasted energy spent exchanging ad hom-like analogies. One begets another that begets another, etc. People waste time arguing about which ad hom-like analogy was more tortured. It all seems pretty juvenile to me. I know that makes me sound elitist. It is what it is.
Michael –
“There is no real symmetry, and the press needs the discernment to make that judgment.”
How long are you going to wait for that to happen before you give up expecting it to happen? There is nothing about “the press” and the forces that play out in the media, that lead me to conclude that happen in anything like the near term future. As such, it seems to me smarter to develop strategies that are based on the realities that exist.
“The thing about the well-worn medical analogy is that it is valid; it sheds some light on the situation.”
I’m of the opinion that the scientist as dentist analogy shed no more light on the situation than a simple explanation – but that it predictably generated more useless, and counterproductive, heat.
Again, analogies are useful if the help someone to see a situation from a new perspective. It is my opinion that the scientists as dentist analogy is not likely to have done that for anyone. Instead, I think it was a defensive ad hom.
“A priori and viewed from outside, claiming that the formal climate science community is the legitimate authority on the subject is merely a claim, but it’s hardly an outlandish one, especially given the support of the larger scientific community.”
I agree – that is largely my point. Please, read my suggested rhetoric (comment #22 directed at you) and tell me why you think it would have been less effective (without nit-picking the details – it was off the cuff – but focusing on the point I’m making).
@36
I’m not convinced that it’s an inappropriate or ineffective analogy but I’m open and willing to be convinced otherwise!
In response to your questions:
1. Yes I do. The reason I think it is effective is that the issue for the disengaged reader ultimately comes down to one of ‘who do you trust’. They don’t have the inclination or time to learn the facts themselves and so resort to cues from other ‘trusted’ sources. the analogy correctly shows in an easy to understand manner who they should trust in this instance and who they shouldn’t.
2. Fewer. It’s just as accurate but it presumes the reader knows what peer review is (and isn’t).
3. No idea. Hence my request for evidence! I understand what your saying but I think that the accessibility of the analogy trumps the degree to which some would find it off-putting.
@41 – Marlowe-
OK. Fine. I think we’ve milked about as much as we’ll get out of this discussion. Thanks.
Joshua
To be fair to all, I suspect that if the response had run along the lines you suggest and I endorsed (22; 25), the response would have been equally rebarbative. Hence the joke about elitism.
It is at least reasonable to suggest that we’ve reached a point where ‘sceptical’ rhetoric is having an adverse effect on the language used by both sides. Which I think was Keith’s point in an earlier post.
Joshua, I may have somewhat misjudged you and I think I have conflated you with somebody else, for which my apologies. Nevertheless, I think your comment which Keith highlights is a part of the problem.
Should we assume that the American press will never learn, and find a way to work around them? Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.
But I’m trying to do that precisely because they love falsely balanced comments like the one of yours that Keith features.
Is the cardiologist/dentist thing so out of whack that it would be tactically better to just use the dry language you suggest in #22? Maybe but it’s a close call and I could argue it either way.
But it’s totally out of proportion with the astonishing flaws of the Loony 16 letter. It’s the compulsive parallelism that I am objecting to. These are not comparable errors of fact or emphasis.
What we are discussing is primarily the reality of the situation. Those of us who are serious are constrained by that. The malefactors have the advantage that they can indulge their creativity. Our advantage is our respect for truth makes our position coherent.
It can be hard to tell which is which by casual inspection. The general public has no choice but to delegate the decision.
The extant press does not serve that role, especially in America. So it is necessary to replace the extant press with new journalistic institutions, and to criticize the press for its credulity and its abdication of responsibility.
So when you and Keith go on about these analogies being TACTICALLY comparable, you are asking the horse race question. And the horse race question is what we are complaining about.
Please do not advise the public about who is winning the public relations battle. That is both painfully obvious and throughly irrelevant. And it’s an extremely irritating habit.
Your job as a journalistic professional is to make a good faith effort to advise us about who is right. If you <a href=”http://pressthink.org/2012/01/so-whaddaya-think-should-we-put-truthtelling-back-up-there-at-number-one/”>won’t do it</a>, it is the job of those of us with something to say to work to replace you with somebody who will.
That link again: Jay Rosen on Arthur Brisbane’s query “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?”
Lots of links to other reflections on the subject. Here is Clay Shirky:
“[Brisbane] is evidently so steeped in newsroom culture that he does not understand ““ literally, does not understand, as we know from his subsequent clarifications ““ that this is not a hard question at all, considered from the readers’ perspective. Readers do not care about the epistemological differences between lies and weasel words; we want newspapers to limit the ability of politicians to make dubious assertions without penalty. Judging from the reactions to his post, most of us never understood that this wasn’t the newspapers’ self-conceived mission in the first place.”
Michael –
“Please do not advise the public about who is winning the public relations battle. That is both painfully obvious and throughly irrelevant. And it’s an extremely irritating habit.”
I think that is is on point and relevant. I didn’t raise that point to “remind” anyone of anything – but to speak about the implications of said phenomenon to the discussion about the advisability of different sorts of rhetoric.
What I find particularly interesting is that: (1) polls show that most Americans trust climate scientists, (2) many Americans think that the Earth isn’t getting warmer and that even if it is, it is “natural,” (3) many Americans don’t have any idea how most climate scientists view the science of climate change.
That configuration of phenomena exist for a reason – the point, IMO, is to figure out what needs to be done differently to alter the configuration.
It seems to me that your way of working with the press integrates a pedanticism that is bound to be ineffective. Working with the press does not mean explaining to them how, if they did their jobs properly, they’d address the situation differently. If there is one thing that the Iraq war was good for, it would be it could put to rest any such illusions. IMO, there are reasons why the press promotes a he said/she said “balance” in myriad debates in addition to the climate debate, and explaining to them how such an approach isn’t valid won’t change the larger influences at play. The climate debate takes place in a larger political and media context.
I have similar objection to compulsive parallelism (Revkin is a good example). While I think that striving for balance is laudable, it is a false goal to strike a “balanced” perspective irrespective of context. You and I have no disagreement there as far as it goes. Our disagreement is w/r/t strategies for dealing with, among other things, the existence of that knee-jerk “balance” on the part of the media.
“Your job as a journalistic professional is to make a good faith effort to advise us about who is right.”
??? You think I’m a member of the media?
Michael Levi has a related post up.
@ 47 – Keith
Linky no worky?
The link to Levi’s article? It’s slow. Probably his server.
Yeah.
I got “timed out.” Could be my service here (I’m traveling and the service is not great – I just tried again and got it this time). Thanks.
Joshua, I don’t know which Joshua you are and consequently I don’t know anything about you. (Again, I think I had you confused with somebody else.) But I know that Keith thought your very false-balanced comment at Curry’s was brilliant enough to repeat it here.
So whatever you say that seems in agreement with me and not with Keith just muddies the picture for me.
If you are opposed to false balance, why do you do it?
My “approach to the press” is primarily to try to do better. See http://planet3.org
I keep trying to explain to Keith and Andy why they drive me (and plenty of other people) crazy, but that’s a minor pursuit. Andy seems to “get it” more than Keith does, but they both keep doing it. And you did it too.
Michael, whatever you are doing over at Planet 3, the feverish, conspiratorial manner you treated this book revealed, once and for all (to me, anyway), that advancing and communicating science is not your objective.
Like I’ve said to you before, you’re a walking embodiment of why the deficit model is flawed. Ironically, you don’t realize how much you have in common with your equally hard-headed counterparts in the climate debate.
Michael –
“If you are opposed to false balance, why do you do it?”
Again – I think that you missed the point of my fake news story. I do not see the competing analogies as “balanced,” and if you read my fake news story in that way, it was a misreading. I just think that the lack of balance in the analogies obscures the larger point that both editorials amounted to more of the same crap that has gotten us to where we are now. In my view, while one was less scientifically valid and more egregious in its rhetoric, that is more a distinction than a difference in this case – at least in terms of how the editorials will play out in the important arena of public debate. Whether you or I see a real difference doesn’t mean squat, really.
If you’re interested in my view, I’ll give you a couple of links from some of my comments over at Curry’s crib. I’d like to discuss it with you, but don’t want to take the time now to explain my perspective in full detail from scratch. I think that the links, while from a bit of a different context, could serve as a sort of shorthand (they aren’t long). It seems to me that you have established a pattern of misconstruing my points – perhaps because of some inaccurate perception about who I am and/or where I’m coming from.
BTW – I like planet3 very much.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/01/tracking-the-line-between-treatment-and-diagnosis/#comment-165103
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/01/tracking-the-line-between-treatment-and-diagnosis/#comment-164842
@52 Keith Kloor:
“…the deficit model is flawed.”
Keith, is it your position that information about the state of client science doesn’t/cannot translate into increased support for climate action? I’ve asked you this several times, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you answer…
Michael tobis,
IRT to your dodging the Lysenko comparison: Recall that ironically in the old USSR one of the ways people in positions of power would deal with those who questioned them in ways they did not approve was to declare them insane and treat them accordingly.
I find it fascinating that you rely on calling insane those who dare point out that scientists, properly politicized, can make terrible group decisions. You peg the irony meter.
TB (54)
It is my position that more information about evolution won’t convince billions of people to stop believing in an all powerful, all-knowing, all merciful god.
Does that answer your question?
Incidentally, you shouldn’t take that to mean that I think more information on evolution shouldn’t be communicated to the public. The more science reported on and discussed, the better, as far as I’m concerned.
But based on what we know about how people process information (see the fantastic cultural cognition project, for example), I have adjusted my expectations, accordingly.
For some reason that escapes me, people like Michael Tobis can’t seem to wrap their minds around the social science that speaks to the climate issue.
Keith,
Thanks for the link to the Cultural Cognition Project. Some very interesting material there. Of particular relevance to the deficit model would be this paper:
“The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.”
I disagree, Joshua. Someone reading the op-ed piece from the gang of 16 who is not convinced either way might get the impression that they are both experts and are objective, and have no expertise to analyze their arguments one way or the other. The dentist analogy effectively debunks the first, which effectively sheds new light on the gang of 16 piece to passive observers who might get a wrong impression. Polls show that much (if not most) of the general public believes there’s a raging scientific debate among qualified scientists about the reality of anthropogenic global warming, or if even global warming is occuring, and op-ed pieces from the gang of 16 tend to reinforce that false notion, as do pseudo-scientific blogs, Inhofe’s list of “prominent scientists”, etc. Shying away from simply pointing out their lack of qualifications makes no sense. It should be a part of every editorial that debunks gang of 16 type of material, but by no means the only part. Else, the public is stuck with receiving the steady stream of pseudo-skeptic material “balanced” with climate science coverage, and has no way to determine who the qualified presenters are.
Now did my comment shed new light on the situation? Reading thougtful comments from MT and Marlowe, perhaps not. I think they’ve covered it.
#57 from your recitation of the paper- “We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. .”
People have converged on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. They have discovered that the best evidence tells us to avoid doing that which was advocated at Davos and, instead, doing something different (something effective in my opinion). The fact that folks like MT do not like what the best evidence tells us to do, is not evidence of communication failure.
NewYorkJ –
In my estimation, the # of people reading the WSJ editorials who don’t already have a fixed orientation to the debate and who haven’t already heard the ad hom level of rhetoric is probably miniscule. In my view, the scientist as dentist analogy was meant to discredit the people who wrote the Lysenko editorial. Now don’t get me wrong – when someone like Lindzen writes essays analogizing environmentalists to eugenicists, or when 16 people sign on to the Lysenko analogizing, they lose credibility in my eyes. But stooping to somewhat above their level of ad homs does not seem to me to be effective.
The incongruency between the general public’s trust in climate scientists (which is high), their views on climate change (many think it’s not happening), and their knowledge about the predominant perspective on AGW among climate scientists (that there is widespread disagreement), is indeed, the nut to be cracked. I would suggest that incongruency does not persist because of a lack of climate scientists trying to discredit the perspective of “skeptics.” In my view, that type of tactic has been used quite frequently for a long time; it creates a blowback that outsizes any positive conveyance of information. And the incongruency persists.
“Else, the public is stuck with receiving the steady stream of pseudo-skeptic material “balanced” with climate science coverage, and has no way to determine who the qualified presenters are.”
That, in my view, is based on a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground between analogy as ad hom and silence.
“The dentist analogy effectively debunks the first, which effectively sheds new light on the gang of 16 piece to passive observers who might get a wrong impression. ”
Sorry – but I think that statement is wishful thinking. I would guess that the editorial “debunked” precious little for precious few. I know that there is a widespread misconception about the degree of “debate” among climate scientists; I see no evidence that the kind of rhetoric used in Trenberth’s effectively addresses that problem. In fact, the more people know about the climate debate, the more they are likely to go in the direction you might have predicted from the outset (based on their ideological or social orientation). It isn’t simply that people need more information; if you’re going to change perceptions, they need carefully constructed information that will not simply push them in the direction they were going in anyway. Polls show us that those who have no idea what the true balance of perspective is among climate scientists are more likely to be Tea Partiers or conservative Republicans; relatively few are liberals or Democrats. Those whose opinions are likely to be changed are watching Fox News’ take on something like Trenberth’s letter. They’ll read a report that says: “Liberal climate scientists tied into the climategate hoax compare Nobel Prize winning scientist to a dentist.”
Nothing will be debunked.
Keith, I made several good faith efforts to convince myself that the Easter Island book was a serious effort and that I owed the authors an apology as you suggested. That is, I acted as a genuine skeptic, tentatively disbelieving my own position and testing it. I was unable to find a way to take their position seriously.
In that way, I acted and am acting exactly as I suggest is proper. If a reporter doubts not only the veracity but also the objectivity of something publicly claimed, that is what the reporter should report.
I’m sorry we disagree so sharply on the specific case, but apparently I haven’t convinced you, nor vice versa. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t expect reporters to be infallible.
But I expect them to report when they think something is BS, and that is what I did.
Don’t pretend that striving for objectivity and striving for neutrality are the same thing.
On climate, it is true that superficially both sides appear equally stubborn. But either nobody, or only one side, is actually informed. The reporter must make the judgment or fail to add any value. I can just read the press releases myself.
@ 56 Keith Kloor:
Does that answer your question?
Not clearly, no. It seems like you want to answer “yes” to my question, but won’t quite come out and say it.
But based on what we know about how people process information (see the fantastic cultural cognition project, for example), I have adjusted my expectations, accordingly.
For some reason that escapes me, people like Michael Tobis can’t seem to wrap their minds around the social science that speaks to the climate issue.
I think it’s because people like Michael Tobis seem to be right in some respects. At least according to “the social science”:
* Support for climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientific agreement
* Causal thinking and support for climate change policies
Making sure the public understands 1) what is causing climate change, and 2) that there is a strong scientific consensus is a good way to gain support for climate action. People like yourself and Roger Pielke Jr. seem to believe that trying to fight these battles is not worthwhile.
I don’t want to put any words in your mouth, so please if you think I don’t have your position properly defined don’t assume that I am doing so out of bad faith. I am just trying to assess why you think “the deficit model is wrong”.
@MT:
Don’t pretend that striving for objectivity and striving for neutrality are the same thing.
Hear, hear.
I’d rather be compared to a dentist than to Lysenko!
Is there supposedly something insulting about being called a dentist?
To use an analogy to explain my view on the use of analogies…
A while back I was arguing with some people who were analogizing Tea Partiers to “proto-Nazis.” I wondered who they expected to reach with that kind of rhetoric. Would they convince someone who already viewed the Tea Party negatively? How about someone who was leaning in the Tea Party’s direction but hadn’t yet taken the plunge? How about someone who was undecided but knew some people who were members of the Tea Party and didn’t think they were particularly Nazi-like in demeanor?
Republicans, Tea Partiers, and “skeptics” are much better at using ad hom analogies to discredit those that disagree with them. They have a huge media mouthpiece that thrives on just such rhetoric in rightwing talk radio and Fox News. Liberals and “realists” are not nearly as good at this game – and they never will be.
But anyway, if you think such rhetoric is effective, why not just go whole hog and start calling scientists Nazis instead of milquetoast ad homs like calling them dentists? Or you could just use Lysenko and Inquisition analogies.
MT – #63
Ironically, I think my #64 serves as an answer to your #63 even though I hadn’t read it yet.
Michael –
“I’d rather be compared to a dentist than to Lysenko!”
When a “skeptic” writes something like that, my response is to compare that reasoning to “Mommy, mommy, they do it tooouuu.” I don’t want to do that with you because (in my view) you’re on my team.
Again – I don’t think that the analogies are equally tortured. I’m not sure that makes much of a difference.
Micheal –
“Is there supposedly something insulting about being called a dentist?”
The point of the analogy was to discredit the Lysenko group at a personal level. It’s an ad hom.
Michael (61)
Not only did you not make a good faith effort (how could you, since you never read the book and decided not to), but my exchanges with you during that episode was revealing (to me). You let your biases dictate your reasoning, which was wholly apparent to me (but obviously not to you).
Joshua,
You will make about as much headway with Michael et al (on the WSJ op-ed) as you do with the climate skeptics you joust with at Judith Curry’s blog.
Yeah well, it was worth a shot – even if it isn’t as satisfying as ridiculing hunter.
Did somebody say Lysenko?
“More than a hundred countries now support a French proposal to create a “World Environment Organisation” at the upcoming 20th anniversary conference of the Rio Summit, France’s ecology minister said on Tuesday…
The idea is to beef up the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which critics say lacks muscle for dealing with the world’s worsening environmental crisis.”
http://news.yahoo.com/100-countries-back-world-environment-agency-france-154225650.html
All backed by “science.”
Joshua: In my estimation, the # of people reading the WSJ editorials who don’t already have a fixed orientation to the debate and who haven’t already heard the ad hom level of rhetoric is probably miniscule.
If the first was true, why bother submitting any piece on climate change, and why should WSJ bother to publish it? I think you underestimate the spectrum of views “in the middle”, and I recommend the Yale University study (Cautious, Disengaged, Dismissive, etc.), which is ultimately the audience the gang of 16 is after.
Of those in the middle, the vast majority have no expertise of which to evaluate the claims made in various opinion pieces. This is similar to a patient at a doctor’s office. Some go with whatever sounds good, but others want to know who to believe. At least in the case of dentists, they already know that a dentist is probably not a good resource for a heart condition. They lack that information with the WSJ editorial. At the very least, most come away with an impression of a raging scientific debate on the fundamentals. They believe that in part because on the surface, they have no means to evaluate how qualified the writers are in each piece. If most in the gang of 16 stated they don’t have credentials in climate science, have never published in the field, etc., there would be no need for it.
Sure – the analogy of patients with a heart problem seeking advice from dentists has been used before, and something similar probably has been heard by most, but that’s not really the point. The point is to apply it to specific situations, shedding some more light on the gang of 16 that was otherwise not there. Removing this piece of information is only detrimental to communication, and facilitates more public confusion on what qualified scientists believe.
Your objection to the usage of a very innocuous and accurate analogy as part of a broader set of arguments seems to be solely on the basis of it not being a direct scientific argument. Implicit is the assumption that scientific arguments, and only scientific arguments, can work to shape public opinion, to which I think many observing the so-called “debate” would disagree with.
Or to summarize concisely with a similar analogy, you seem to be objecting to a heart surgeon pointing out to a patient that Dr. Doe (who is passing himself off as an expert on heart surgery) is a dentist, not a heart surgeon, a disgraceful ad hominen only somewhat above comparing Dr. Doe to Lysenko. I object.
NYJ –
” Implicit is the assumption that scientific arguments, and only scientific arguments, can work to shape public opinion, to which I think many observing the so-called “debate” would disagree with.”
I’m very familiar with the material out of Yale.
We’re clearly not communicating effectively. I have stated a very different view directly than the one you think my comment imply. I think that skillful (non-science focused) rhetoric can be used to good effect – and that using the kind of analogy as ad hom seen in Trenberth’s letter is ineffective. I think that we, also, have gotten all that we’re going to get out of this discussion that’s useful.
Still got one in moderation. Not complaining, just an FYI.
Summing up, and looking at the whole picture, the analogy I see is the one between AGW and Iraqi WMDs.
The eco-crisis research-industrial-state complex and the military-industrial-state complex are like twins.
NYJ
I’m missing what Joshua is doing ‘wrong’.
I agree that we’re not really getting anywhere, Joshua, especially when one objects to effective legitimate analogies and observations on qualifications because they’re worried about how Fox News or Morano might spin something and twist their words to a largely swayable audience. I guess Keith shouldn’t have written that Taliban post. Not as terrible as an innocuous analogy on expertise, but still…
After a bit of snark, I’ll end with some more direct humor.
MT: Is there supposedly something insulting about being called a dentist?
Absolutely!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythrdCsOFJU
Well, let’s keep hammering away at the truth. Which is determined by that +4W/m^2 at TOA. And counting.
I’ll repost the relevant bit, as the original is probably going to get missed. Note, the bulleted are papers, and the original has the links to them.
At least according to “the social science”:
* Support for climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientific agreement
* Causal thinking and support for climate change policies
Making sure the public understands 1) what is causing climate change, and 2) that there is a strong scientific consensus is a good way to gain support for climate action. People like [Keith] and Roger Pielke Jr. seem to believe that trying to fight these battles is not worthwhile.
I don’t want to put any words in [Keith’s] mouth, so please if [Keith] think[s] I don’t have [his] position properly defined don’t assume that I am doing so out of bad faith. I am just trying to assess why [Keith] think[s] “the deficit model is wrong”.
Joshua, I fail to understand your position on this one.
The dentist thing is not ad hominem in the usual sense because the group of 16 presented nothing resembling an argument to refute. They simply baldly made assertions among which was an implied assertion of relevant expertise.
A group of recognized experts said “we do not recognize these people as having relevant expertise”.
It’s the single most important thing they could and should have said.
MT,
You keep doubling down on your reaction to the WSJ article.
The irony of you, a PhD in consciousness, claiming that the 16 were unqualified to the opinion on climate is rich. That you then move on to diagnose their mental health and to keep repeating that diagnosis is in a way to watch you self-destruct.
#80,
An ‘ad hominem’ argument is one in which draws its conclusions not from the content of the argument, but from the identity or other characteristics of the person or group making the the argument.
This includes all argument from authority, where the conclusion is taken to be true because of the acknowledged expertise, qualifications, or position of the person stating the conclusion. As well as its opposite, where a conclusion is taken to be false because of the lack of authority or qualifications. Many people confuse it with the ‘ad hominem abusive’ where the conclusion is wrong because the arguer is an idiot, a fraud, mad, wicked, a despised member of an opposing ‘tribe’ or hated group, or similar abuse.
There is an argument that argument from authority is a necessity for the majority of the general public who do not have the skills or knowledge to be able to judge for themselves. If only experts can safely express an opinion, then everyone else must perforce express no opinion. They must say “I don’t know”. But because they nevertheless need to act on the information, they have to draw a conclusion while having no basis for doing so, and trusting the ‘experts’ is one way of doing that.
But that raises an immediate problem: how do you tell which ones are the real experts? You don’t have the expertise yourself to see who has the better evidence, so again you have to trust somebody’s assertions. You rely on experts, like universities and governments, to hand out the qualifications and posts that confer authority. But then universities and governments vary in quality, so how do you decide which universities to trust? Does a professorship at MIT trump one at Penn State? So now you need an expert expert expert to tell you which expert experts can correctly identify the real experts. And so on.
It leads to an infinite regress, a chain with nothing solid to anchor it. Ultimately you have to cut it off at some point and make a leap of faith. Once you do, everything becomes much simpler. You simply have to chase each conclusion and endorsement back to an approved expert, whose ‘ipse dixit’ is sufficient, weigh competing authorities against one another, count the stigmata of orthodoxy and official approval – until the evidence and argument itself becomes irrelevant. European science stagnated for centuries because Aristotle and the Church were seen as the ultimate authorities, the ‘consensus’.
If your dentist tells you your heart surgeon has got it wrong, you ask how he knows. If he shows you comparative survival rates, explains good practices that apply to all medical procedures, if he reveals how the success cases in the glossy brochure were hand-picked by the surgeon to support the story he wanted, if you ask the surgeon to provide the data to support their claims and they refuse, telling you that it’s their personal property, that you’re only trying to distract them from performing operations, that you’re only trying to find something wrong, ranting that you’re a corrupt industrialist in the pay of the fast food industry… well, you might easily listen to the dentist rather than the surgeon.
And a surgeon who has been publicly caught out, who tries to say that nobody but another heart surgeon is allowed to judge, that you have to take their word for it without question, would soon be an ex-surgeon. Because while the general public may not be experts on heart surgery, they’re not stupid, and they can recognise bluster when they see it.
It’s good that they made their argument about expertise rather than what they said, because while the general public couldn’t keep up with the technical stuff, they recognise that one. Many people seek the public’s confidence and trust by claiming expertise, and the public have got quite good at spotting the nuances. At the least, with competing authorities and no way to decide between them, they’ll likely suspend judgement. If they see through the appeal to authority, they’ll turn against.
Not that it matters. Political action has stalled for reasons unrelated to the public mood, and the public mood has more to do with the economy than with op eds by sceptics. It’s already dropping off the radar.
The media will slowly just stop mentioning it, and it will fade from the collective memory without fuss. Just like all the others.
@78-
Except the TOA is not behaving as predicted. So in a real scientific inquiry, one would check the models. In AGW, by contrast, the believers start practicing psychiatry, demanding critics be silenced, and hiding the demise of their theory.
NiV
How deep is the pond?
Isaac Held will want to know.
Isaac will know it doesn’t matter.
NiV
I’ve a feeling that it rather does matter. And that the temperature at the bottom of a puddle will be a better analogy with a planetary atmosphere than the temperature at the bottom of a pond.
Remember when you eventually linked to the JC thread where SoD completely disagreed with you about back radiation?
What was it SoD said again? Ah yes:
Saying back radiation “has no effect” seems like such a strange statement I think I haven’t understood the point of the statement maker.
Will something like that happen if you link to the discussion(s) with Held where he supposedly provided you with your current take on radiative physics?
Why don’t you provide those links and we can see. We’ll get to the bottom of this eventually (pun intended, I’m afraid).
In this case, the dentist confidently tells the patient he has no heart condition (despite the heart attack), makes various dubious assertions about causality that the patient can’t determine one way or the other, recommends instead an aspirin (if such a heart condition does exist which the dentis claims the data doesn’t show), fails to indicate his qualifications in the field, claims that all heart doctors are just trying scare him to make money and rob his nest egg, and compares the behavior of heart surgeons to Lysenko. Many in the public can figure it out. Others need to hear a rebuttal, which includes challenging the assertions and noting that this individual does not have the relevant qualifications as was implied by such confident proclamations.
#87,
SoD, as he had surmised, hadn’t understood the point of the statement – he assumed that I was saying it had no effect on anything, no role in the physics, when what I had actually said was “back radiation isn’t what causes the surface to be as warm as it is”. Back-radiation is a consequence, not a cause, not an explanation.
I had said:
“If an increase in back radiation tried to exceed this temperature gradient near the surface, convection would simply increase until the constant gradient was achieved again. Back radiation exists, and is very large compared to other heat flows, but it does not control the surface temperature.”
and he had said:
“The “real mechanism” as Nullius and Leonard Weinstein describe is correct […] It isn’t one vs the other. One is a consequence of the other. The “controlling mechanism” is the radiative cooling to space which is determined by the effective height of the radiation. Downward surface radiation from the atmosphere increases as a result. All are linked.”
We agree on the physics, but SoD is used to the conventional exposition and doesn’t like it that back-radiation loses the emphasis that it is usually (and incorrectly, in my view) given. It’s an argument about the best way to explain it, not about what actually happens. I’m not going to claim we agree about everything, and contrary to his claim that the cognoscenti use the correct explanation, when he first started explaining the greenhouse effect he too left convection entirely out of the picture, too, but I think he was persuaded by the debate and on this point at least we agree.
And I know he’s done the maths for sunlit oceans with no convection, so I suspect he’d probably agree with the pond gedanken experiment, too.
I didn’t discuss this particular issue with Isaac Held – we were talking about something else. But if you can’t figure out the physics yourself, I don’t mind at all if you want to seek their help. If Held has the time, he’s probably the better bet for a clearer explanation, but SoD is more into the rough-and-tumble of debate and is already familiar with the issues.
The paper I was talking about was Soden and Held 2000, where the basic theory is described on pages 446-447, particularly the bit below figure 1. The surface temperature is the effective radiative emission temperature plus the lapse rate times the average altitude of emission. Ts = Te + LR*Ze. If you set the lapse rate and emission altitude to near zero, as you get in a pond of water, Ts will be almost identical to Te. The fact that you’ve got lots of back-radiation going on is irrelevant – it all cancels out.
If you understand the real mechanism and know that equation, plugging in a zero lapse rate is trivial. It’s only if you’re fixated on back-radiation that it becomes difficult.
It’s a perfect test. If unsure of whether the emission-altitude-lapse-rate explanation or the back-radiation explanation is correct, you find situations where one quantity is huge and the other tiny, and see if you get greenhouse warming. When you look at it that way the answer is obvious, but still you wriggle, eh?
#88,
If the dentist gets it wrong, you show why his arguments and reasoning are wrong by – for example – releasing the data and calculations. You don’t go around deleting files and hiding your “dirty laundry” data lest the sceptics get hold of it. You don’t argue about the dentist’s qualifications.
Qualifications only matter to those who need faith, or who rely on it.
“Trust me, I’m an expert.”
NiV
It’s an argument about the best way to explain it, not about what actually happens.
As you know, I take the trouble to read your comments very closely and consider them carefully. I am currently reading this and S&H2000 is on the stack. I am aware that you commented on the SoD article and will of course look through the thread there.
So when a railroad engineer heads up a group that writes a report claiming that the world is suffering, no matter how lacking the evidence, a great cliamte crisis, that is credible.
But when scientists disagree, that are crazy and unqualified. And self-declared climate experts who are not even scientists, like Tobis and Mooney, diagnose that those who disagree are crazy or genetically crippled. This is a wonderful time to be a skeptic.
@ 80 – Michael.
One thing I hate most about the blogosphere are long, protracted arguments about what comprises an ad hom, including bringing out dictionary definitions to argue one way or the other.
That said, I’m using the term to mean when someone argues against someone else’s argument by denigrating the person as opposed to the argument. That’s how I view the scientist as dentist analogy. In the grand scheme of the world, it isn’t particularly egregious.
That said, the widespread “concern” about the analogy strikes me as the politically expedient “concern” one often finds on the blogosphere. In my view, the dentist analogy and the reaction to the dentist analogy are just more evidence of the juvenile dimension of much of the climate debate – people calling each other names: “warmist,” “eco-Nazi,” “fraud,” “dentist,” “eugenicist,” etc., and then people taking deep “offense.”
In my view, both the name-calling and the faux “deep offense” amounts mostly to partisan bickering and point scoring. I think it is superfluous to the real issues to be debated.
Not getting it. I think Joshua may not think of a DDS and a cardiologist to be equivalent in status? I just took them as distinct disciplines in medicine. It could equally be asked if you’d ask your cardiologist to fill a tooth.
What does EdG think of the WTO, I wonder.
Sorry, let me try that again.
What does EdG think of the WTO, I wonder.
“consciousness?”
eh?
#96 – Different arm of the same octupus.
Oops. Octopus. Or maybe ‘octupus’ should be a new term for the global organizational octopus. Can’t use Vampire Squid. It is already taken.
Michael,
A history degree does not a scientist make. Now that I consider the vehemence with which you toss around your diagnosis, and think a bit about how you pretend to be a scientist, perhaps you are also projecting some?
Michael –
“I think Joshua may not think of a DDS and a cardiologist to be equivalent in status? I just took them as distinct disciplines in medicine. It could equally be asked if you’d ask your cardiologist to fill a tooth.”
Sure, dentists are medical experts., but the analogy was meant to discredit the other editorial by discrediting the scientists. Although not quite as bad, it is a scaled-down version of asking whether you’d consult your plumber on a heart problem; plumbers are experts and nice people also.
Minchael Tobis, Ph.D., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Madison 1996. Thesis topic: effect of slowed barotropic dynamics in ocean climate models.
Adviser: John R Anderson (currently at Google).
Foo, can’t spell me own name.
MT
I had a feeling hunter might have made a rare factual error.
MT,
He who lives by quick wiki dies by quick wiki.
I apologize for my incorrect claims regarding your educational background.
Joshua,
I believe that I already told you that one of your comment were brilliant, but I did not say “brilliant” exactly, and you weren’t exactly the author. But this one was good. I’ll steal it.
I’m not sure that refraining from analogies will help defuse the antagonism. More so when people not only use litmus tests toward one another, but also can’t help from recalling the same ones over and over again. I believe both MT and Keith just did that.
Speaking of which, I do like to talk about ad hominems. Some stuff I wrote on ad homs:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/adhominem
(Please do a search in your favorite tool while I am rebuilding the tagging system, which may take a while.)
So I’m not sure I understand how you can claim that attacking someone’s qualifications amounts to an ad hominem, or a fallacious one.
In fact, the way you neutralize the analogy shows that this ain’t a bad ad hominem.
I won’t say that me and Nullius already had this conversation many times, for it will undo what I just said about Keith and MT.
Since only love and humor will save us, I’ll applaud BDD’s efforts hereunder.
Ah. Understood.
Not only am I not Michael Tobias, I am not particularly an admirer of Michael Tobias.
All is forgiven. Well, perhaps not all. But this.
willard –
As I said, I find endless debates about what does or doesn’t constitute an ad hominem (many of which degenerate into exchanges of ad hominems) to be pretty boring.
I’ll just remove that label, and say instead that I consider the analogy to be an attack on the Lysekno analogizing scientists rather than a discussion focusing on the validity of their views.
“I’m not sure that refraining from analogies will help defuse the antagonism.”
I doubt that, if granted supernatural powers, we banned all analogies that (IMO) amount to personal attacks we’d end the junior high school cafeteria food fight aspect of the climate debate – but I do think that refraining from stooping to that level won’t have any harmful effects and might help raise the level of the debate just a notch.
Now I must admit I’m a bit of an oddball in a number of ways, but I can’t imagine that I’m alone in feeling that the credibility of scientists is diminished when they slip into using analogies as attacks to stand in for scientific debate. It certainly lowers the credibility of the Lysenko-analogizing scientists in my view, and although to a lesser extent, it also lowers the credibility of the dentist-analogizing scientists in my view (the more tortured the analogy, the greater the impact).
But it is my hope that people will see that the analogy-as-attack is a manifestation of a larger phenomenon: tribalism that is counterproductive towards the goal of reaching a workable solution to the debate. The impact of removing analogies-as-attacks in itself would be limited, indeed, even if it were slightly postive. The impact of people realizing that analogies-as-attacks, along with other tribalistic aspects of the debate, are counterproductive could be huge.
A man can dream, can’t he?
MT,
Thank you.The embarrassing thing is I typed your name correctly- but obviously while distracted- and simply went with what I found. An object lesson for the internet age. I am pleased to see we are in agreement on Tobias.
Joshua,
No more time for me this week. I’ll simply note that when you say:
> [T]he credibility of scientists is diminished when they slip into using analogies as attacks to stand in for scientific debate.
you seem to forget that we’re talking about op-eds, op-eds published in the Wall Street Journal. This is not where scientific debate.
Besides, you more or less recasted the same argument I criticized. To see that, replace “ad homimen is always fallacious” by “attacking with analogies diminish the integrity of the profferer.” I believe this is not always the case, even in a deliberative setting. And as I said in my first paragraph, this is an op-ed. A real debate, where parties are not expected to be “liberal” in Robert Frost’s sense, that is being too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
I do agree that showing respect is very important, and that showing contempt does not win approval. But I do disagree that this analogy comports comtempt. Bart Verheggen uses it all the time, to good effect, and without looking contemptuous. At least to me.
Of course, if we were to apply Postel’s law to the letter, you’d be right. But then, there is some kind of equivalence between this law and false balance. So I’d rather be liberal in applying Postel’s law, liberal in Robert Frost’s sense, of course. I have no idea what liberalism is, and I do believe in conservation laws, at least more than in conversation laws.
As promised, here you go:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/17265379529
Bye,
w