Climategate

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Submitted by ka1igu1a on Wed, 2009-11-25 04:08.

By now, i'm sure everyone is aware that the CRU at University of East Anglia was hacked recently either from the outside, or as inside job, and roughly 160 megabytes of documents and emails were archived and uploaded to a Russian file server(btw, russian server farms are a hackers' choice spot for storing warez and other booty). Since then, the document archive has been widely disseminated over the internet, and after the story hit Drudge, it has become fodder for the blogosphere. Predictably, the reactions have reinforced the tribalistic group polarization over this issue. I reviewed some of email correspondence, and unless someone has a firm grasp of climate science, it's virtually impossible if tell if there is any conspiracy to fudge the data. So, i suppose each side will refer to their own priests to tell them what they want to hear. However, it is fairly apparent from the email correspondence that there are some public choice games being played, which frankly, is hardly surprising; that's to be expected from any scientific research that is primarily being funded by the government and which has political ramifications. The only really troubling aspect of the email correspondence is the apparent conspiracy among a few prominent scientists at the CRU to use their political standing and influence to bully refereed journals not to publish papers contrary to "consensus research." This is a very putrid form of public choice, in that group A, which has significant standing with a government body(IPCC) and receives public funding, uses that power to threaten to boycott any refereed journal that publishes research research contrary to the consensus opinion of Group A, or if Group A uses that power to actively conspire to fix the referees.

In the end, Climategate probably doesn't necessarily say much about the reliability of climate science, but it certainly does reinforce the perception among many of an intolerant orthodoxy that that has built up around AGW. The term usually thrown around is "denier," with the connotation being the equating of "AGW consensus" skepticism with something like young earth creationism. I define such skepticism not to imply that there is no such thing as anthropogenic influence on climate(e.g, just nuke the amazon rain forests and we could witness first hand the possible anthropogenic influences on climate, as an extreme example to make a point), but rather with respect to the notion that climate scientists can model the impact of human collective action(or lack thereof) on future long-term climate changes. Admittedly, I don't know much about climate science per se, but I do know a little about non-linear dynamical systems. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the concept of "butterfly effect" in chaos theory, meaning that small variations in initial conditions of a non-linear dynamical system can result in wildly different evolutions in such dynamical systems over time. This is why you can predict weather only over a short term. Climate modeling, where climate is the long-term average of weather over time, however relies on boundary condition, numerical fluid dynamic modeling of the ocean and atmosphere to predict future climate, wherein current observable boundary conditions can be more or less plugged in to test the reliability of the model in explaining past and current climate. These models may be useful in understanding current climate, but it doesn't mean they will accurately predict future changes in climate by fiddling with the boundary conditions. It's a similar, analogous concept, I suppose, to a best fit curve to graph data points in an experiment, which of course, can involve fiddling and fudging, but how well will that best fit curve fit future data points? And in the real long term, that is paleo-climate, it doesn't matter what the fuck humans do, the earth is going to enter into another ice age.

One thing for sure, there should be plenty of skepticism about the public choice dynamics of any collective action. The two things that primarily aggravate me about the typical political debate is the contention that we have only T amount of time to act before it's too late, that we have to immanently act to pass whatever boondoggle before time T or else all is lost and irreversible. That's scientific nonsense and fear-mongering. The other thing is the propaganda that a public choice game of subsidized green technology is going to be an economic boom. No it's not. There is another type of "denial" at work here, namely "government failure deniers."

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climate change tomfoolery

#7769 On Fri, 2009 11 27 12:30 adam ricketson said,

I've been following this with particular interest as a professional scientist, with two particular concerns: how much responsibility do scientists have to evaluate the practices of fields other than their own, and how does the public view the scientific establishment.

My main focus right now is on the public release of data. Apparently, much of the raw data for climate change is held by various weather services around the world who share it with a few researchers but generally want to keep it proprietary and make money by selling it. As a genomics researcher, I take for granted that lightly-processed data is deposited in public databases such as GenBank, and I would not consider any assertions about a genome to be publicly credible until the DNA sequences were publicly released. If these climate change conferences and treaties are going to accomplish anything, they need to find a way to make this data publicly accessible.

As for the detailed predictions of climate change (cataclysmic event X will occur at time T), I agree that many people are treating these predictions with way too much confidence. In fact, I don't think that they should really be considered "predictions"--instead they should be viewed simply as possibilities. As such, they are still important to our decision-making because they clarify what the worst-case scenario is, and give us an idea of how our actions make them more or less likely.

As for the scare mongering, I hate it too, but I think it is driven by the recognition that the basic problem was understood 15 years ago, and we could have initiated a number of moderate reforms (increases in gas tax, decreases in energy subsidies, etc) to minimize CO2 emissions...but these were reforms were blocked by various interest groups and a public that would prefer to keep their heads in the sand. Reasonable discussion apparently isn't capable of overcoming the inertia of entrenched interests, and a generally illiterate public guided by the commercial news media.

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no credible news source

#7771 On Fri, 2009 11 27 12:48 adam ricketson said,

"generally illiterate public guided by the commercial news media."

Oh yeah: it doesn't help that the mainstream media has repeatedly discredited itself, so there is basically no channel by which to convey important information to the public. The Republicans in my family love to refer to the "new ice age" alarmists of the 1970s as evidence that climate science is BS. Climate scientists claim that this alarm was the work of a single researcher who managed to get the attention of the popular press. Even if we accept that story and the researches keep their credibility, it still means that the press has no credibility, and so there is no way for researchers to effectively communicate with the public.

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Open source science

#7775 On Sat, 2009 11 28 08:32 ka1igu1a said,

if anything, I hope "Climategate" results in all climate data, all climate numerical/mathematical models being opened up and becoming publicly available; in effect, becoming part of the commons. that it is not, is a failure of collective action.

As you know, I'm optimistic about nanotechnology because, in large part, it is open-source; if it ever became closed-source, that is, politically captured under a Corporate State IP/Patent regime, then I would lose my optimism; indeed, I would become pessimistic because nanotechnology operates, of course, in the same nonlinaer eco-system that we are discussing when it comes to modeling "climate," and that nanotechnology potentially could be an orders of magnitude game-changer to our eco-system than human CO2 emissions.

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climate engineering and collective action

#7772 On Fri, 2009 11 27 12:59 adam ricketson said,

On a related note...

While pondering the politicization of climate science, I figured that such politicization is inevitable. Here's the idea: the practical purpose of research is to permit engineering of the system being studied. The inevitable result of climate research is climate engineering. All this talk of limiting greenhouse gases can be considered a form of climate engineering, albeit a fundamentally conservative form of engineering (deciding what aspects of the environment that we want to prevent from changing).

Anyway, even if we didn't have the threat of climate change, someone would eventually want to use this science to improve their climate--perhaps Saudi Arabia would try to develop a system for increasing rainfall in their country. Climate engineering is inherently collective, so the very existence of climate sciences produces a new opportunity for collective action (not that politicians need sound science to justify their calls for collective action).

Anyway, anyone's attempt to engineer their climate will have effects on the climate of their neighbors, so they will find that they have to work on treaties so that these actions don't result in wars.

In the end, it seems that some global climate treaty system is inevitable.

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Good Points...

#7774 On Sat, 2009 11 28 08:08 ka1igu1a said,

the practical purpose of research is to permit engineering of the system being studied. The inevitable result of climate research is climate engineering. All this talk of limiting greenhouse gases can be considered a form of climate engineering

I believe this is the same point being forwarded more or less by the "Freakonomics" guys in their latest book, which has become the target of much criticism in the "liberal blogopshere." So much fuss was being kicked up in fact that it prompted Jon Stewart to invite one of the "Freakonomics" guys on his show to clarify their position, which is basically:

collective action to stabilize or reduce human CO2 emissions is a crude yet costly model of "climate engineering" that will likely have little impact on warming; from an economic standpoint, it would make sense to consider the viability of other climate engineering alternatives; however, the current debate is often underpinned by a subtext of moral questions(e.g., human obligations to the planet or human obligations to live a "sustainable" lifestyle) that poisons the well, and are really separate issues from the intended problem the collective action is supposed to address.

On those points, Jon Stewart was basically in agreement. And as a side note(in reference to your other comment about credible media), a news source ostensibly serving as 'comedy" is actually serving a more credible, serious role than so-called "serious news outlets.

But your point about the inevitability of "climate treaties/cooperation" is spot on. And this is actually a separate issue from "global warming" per se; the fact is, geo-engineering is going to become a separate issue apart from anthropogenic CO2 emissions, in that the ability to technologically change local climates is going to become an increasing capability. The fact that the climate system is "nonlinear," in that say, anthropogenically changing local climate can potentially affect neighbors and even global climate, necessarily entails cooperation. The question is this 'cooperation" going to be "politically captured."?

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morality of pollution; conservative climate engineering

#7776 On Sat, 2009 11 28 18:36 adam ricketson said,

When I view global warming from the perspective of libertarian "negative rights", I come to the conclusion that the appropriate response to this risk is to restrict pollution, or at least demand compensation from the polluters. I think this contributes to the notion that the way to handle this is to target carbon emissions. The alternative is that some people pollute, and everyone else is responsible for cleaning up the mess or dealing with the consequences.

Another factor favoring reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is that it is the conservative option, which is good because we have more confidence in our ability to understand how to avoid messing up the climate than in our ability to figure out how to fix it once it is messed up. 

Based on Levitt's statements on the Daily Show, his attitude seems reasonable--he recognizes that these "fixit" technologies ore speculative. It is also worthwhile for us to think about how we will respond to climate greenhouse gas induced climate change, because it will happen. We have already produced a lot of these gasses, and we will continue to produce a lot more regardless of anything that the politicians do. 

I think that people attack Levitt for discussing this because they are afraid that this discussion will convince some people that there is no reason to address greenhouse gas emissions, and that we can just deal with problems as they arise (which is a bit of the reaction that I got at DailyKos when I discussed similar issues). These critics apparently think that the public is too stupid and lazy to deal with the complexity of the issue, and therefore any discussion of this complexity needs to be shut down. Needless to say, this is an illiberal attitude, though there may be some justification for it (if there were some way to separate the intellectual lightweights from the rest of the public who get offended by these over-simplifications). While there is good reason to discuss how discussion will be interpreted, there is no reason to get angry when someone uses a different communication strategy than the one that you favor. If your strategy can't hold water in a diverse field of ideas, then you need to fix your own strategy. 

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