Why Watts Up With That? is where its at

More evidence today on why many consider Anthony Watts' blog Watts Up With That? to be the best blog.

First is his publication and discussion of the resignation from the American Physical Society by long time and prominent member, Hal Lewis.  Reason for his decision? The APS dogmatic stance on AGW and their lack of commitment to the principles of scientific integrity:

• In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

As Watts points out, the resignation and its rationale are significant for all scientists and those interested in the implementation of effective policy and should be read in their entirety.

The second example is this wonderful graphic: 

and the accompanying post on the latest peer-reviewed publication which concludes:

• It is at present impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity (defined as the equilibrium warming in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) from past records, partly because carbon dioxide and short-lived species have increased together over the industrial era. Warming over the past 100 years is consistent with high climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with a large cooling effect from short-lived aerosol pollutants, but it could equally be attributed to a low climate sensitivity coupled with a small effect from aerosols. These two possibilities lead to very different projections for future climate change.

Taken in conjunction, the two posts confirm both the position of WUWT as one of the best sources of emerging information and perspective on the web, and the rapidly changing status of climate alarmism one year after ClimateGate and the collapse of the Copenhagen conference.

No longer is climate alarmism the default, nor the defining paradigm of accepted science.  It is still a prominent perspective but it is no longer an un-questioned, axiomatic construct.  

Increasingly critics of AGW are described as skeptics, and no longer demonized as "deniers".  The tenor has changed.  The politics has morphed into a wider promotion of a more nebulous and still emerging concern for "energy" -- still embracing the familiar narratives of limits; anti-consumption; anti-capitalism; soft green, warm and fuzzy ecology, and; centralized, elite planning -- but a notable absence of global warming or climate change embedded within its central imperative.  

AGW has become global warming, has become climate change, has become climate disruption, has become the albatross of science.

how not to win friends and influence people...

Well the bar for tasteless, stupid and offensive eco-hype has been set at a new low with the heavily promoted but disastrous release of the 10:10 No Pressure film, excellently dissected by James Delingpole.

Characteristic of the all-time box office failures, No Pressure may be the Ishtar, Gigli or Heaven's Gate of the environmental movement.  Huge hype, major talent, big budget and no one with enough common sense or courage to say "no", this is not satirical, not funny, not good communications strategy. 

Why?  Sadly it appears those involved in the production felt justified that their message was so significant that their ends justified the means.

This attitude characterizes the  Teflon Doomsayers, the professional fear mongers who  direct the eco-myth disinformation program: get them young, keep them dumb and instill them with fear!

As Budiansky summarizes:

• ...while the entire presumable goal, purpose, and raison d'être of applied environmental science is to solve environmental problems, any environmental scientist who dares to suggest that problems are being solved is asking for trouble... we have arrived at a state where even the most wildly irrational pessimism is treated with reverence, while the most cautiously sober optimism is ridiculed.

• What I find almost inexplicable in all of this, however, is how the scientific doomsayers get away over and over again with making predictions that are fabulously, ridiculously — and demonstrably — incorrect, without the slightest repercussions upon their credibility or careers. Predictions of impending doom are published based on absurd methodologies and threadbare evidence of a kind that in the normal course of scientific affairs would be sufficient to ruin careers ten times over, and the authors walk away from them without a scratch.

Just another example of how the unbelievable can become the accepted.

Or perhaps this time, this is a Myth Too Far and just as with climategate, the greater mass of public will say enough already.

Update:

This insightful conclusion:

• Rather than an isolated aberration, then, the 10:10 video can be seen as the end result of years of ad hominem attacks meant to marginalize skeptics and make it unnecessary to actually address their concerns about the science.  Perhaps this video will mark a turning point where we can finally start talking about the science rather than attacking motivations.

Even social democracy is changing

Change is inevitable, even in politics it seems.  As the US braces for a big Tea Party in November, other democracies have seen traditional centrist, parties of ordained power for life, suffer significant losses.  This year, it has happened in Britain and in Australia. Now even the social democratic haven of Sweden has seen a massive change in its prevailing political landscape.

As Nathalie Rothschild discusses:

• ...the problem is that the Social Democrats, along with their opposition in the centre-right alliance, have lost any real connection with the electorate and increasingly treat politics as a technocratic, managerial job.
• ...all of the major mainstream parties demonstrated their belief that debate about big ideas should be erased from the political process.

When Fidel Castro finally admits what has been evident to everyone, especially Cubans, for several decades, that the socialist economic model of Cuba is not a sustainable economic system, people everywhere look at their politics and ask, when are they going to change?  Realization is beginning to set in for the majority, that big spending only produces bigger government.  Moreover, not only does government spend inefficiently, it does so ineffectively.

One result is voter anger and the rise of Tea Party protest style movements.  As Codevilla's seminal article discusses, there is widespread push back to the "ruling class"  in every democracy, fueled by a growing resentment to perceived entitlement, intellectual snobbery, imposed green moralism and the imposition of patently unsustainable "sustainable" programs, which reflect the poverty of political thought and moral imperative within those same detached, political elites.

Another reaction is the broader abandonment of politics itself -- as voters look at their choices, they see a plethora of political taupe -- bland, easy to look at, passive, innocuous, not offend anyone, meaningless,background.  No foreground leadership. No bold statement of intent, of policy, of originality.  Just oceans of taupe.

And the political establishment's response when the intellectual poverty of their politics is revealed?  Add a bit of lipstick and trot the same stuff back out there again.

As discussed here on many occasions, sustainability is not precluded by, nor a function of, science.  Sustainability is entirely a question of political implementation.  Slowly, inexorably, the change is going to come. 

Sing it Otis.

changing perspective

Facts don't change your perspective, your perspective changes your facts.  Seems so axiomatic to me, that I use it to summarize the defining mantra for this blog.

Not surprisingly, when I use this statement in class with my students, I discover that it is both a mantra and not axiomatic.   The irony being that the blog exists to both challenge prevailing mantras in environmentalism and to examine all things axiomatic.

So let's examine the construct of data and changing perspective.

Bjorn Lomborg provides an excellent starting point and example.  Recently, the media was quick to point out that Lomborg had undergone a road to Damascus conversion and one of the world's leading deniers was suddenly a believer in AGW.

Notwithstanding the fact that Lomborg has never denied climate change, nor human agency (not a denier then) but merely had the temerity to point out that climate change is

• not a pressing issue,
• not our most important issue
• nor anything we can do anything about (an economic pragmatist maybe?)

the media and warmist, alarmist activists of all stripes gleefully sent emails quoting his conversion as smug proof that an Icon of contrariness had recanted.  (Not enough to be admitted into their inner sanctum of smug self-righteousness of course, but enough to vindicate their vilification of him since his landmark refutation of the Litany).

Well. I  still haven't read his new book for myself but it appears Lomborg has published an op-ed to clarify the remarks in the Guardian.  Apparently, it appears comments by Lomborg that climate change is real and human agency is a factor, were, how shall we say, embellished?

All that has changed in Lomborg's view is that we now have the possibility and the capability of addressing climate change not through taxation nor carbon trading by government's (a delusional prospect fraught with fraud, self-interest and unsustainable suppositions) but, rather, by technological innovation and advancement in new energy -- not just alternate fuels but new means of energy generation.

This is a lot closer to my understanding of his views -- and if he is echoing Schellenberger and Nordhaus, he is reflecting a strong emerging, adaptive management approach to climate policy also advocated by Pielke Jr. which does much to shift the policy debate to energy policy and seeks to leave the ideological debate over climate policy behind.  Again, all of these are policy people discussing how the climate science has been politicized within public policy.
 
The distinction between science research and public policy has been a subject of high contention within environmentalism for some time: the debate over climate change has served to both polarize and exacerbate viewpoints.  Post Copenhagen and post-Climategate, there is now considerable movement to move beyond the ideological posturing -- sadly not all parties are embracing this shift in dialogue as being constructive.

Which brings us to the central issue: why don't facts change people's perspective, whereas a change in perspective can cause a change in the "facts" as we know them? 

The answer is in our ideology, which in turn is a function of how we think and why.  Luckily, there are those who seek to improve our understanding of how and why we think like we do and why we do or do not act rationally in response to facts that accord or contradict our perspective. 

Resonance and dissonance.  Leadership is resonating with people.  Good leaders empower people to make changes by visioning a perspective that resonates with their ideas, fits the facts as people understand them and, offers them hope for improvement.  

The problem with environmentalism is it does none of these things.  Instead it evokes:

• an elitist mantra
• enforced by appeals to authority
• requiring conformity with dictated changes 
• that fit the facts of those enforcing the change and
• not the reality of those suffering the imposition of change.

Junk Science: the basis for all Ecomyths

At the heart of all ecomyths is a mis-use of science.  Sometimes it is a mis-representation of data, sometimes it is a lack of proper context, sometimes it is an inappropriate study protocol, poor study design, bias in variables or method, or just suspect interpretation.  Sometimes it is the subservience of science to ideological presumption, sometimes it goes beyond manipulation and exaggeration and constitutes lies.  All are possible within Junk Science.

Terence Corcoran introduces the 12th Annual Junk Science Week in the Financial Post with this explanation of Junk Science:

• Our standard definition is that junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.
• That definition needs to be refined. It was shaped by the idea that junk science is strictly the bailiwick of scaremongers.
• But science can also be warped to promote the opposite of fear. Unscientific hope mongering may be just as prevalent as scare mongering. In some ways, the role of the media in hope mongering is more important than in scare mongering. In the hands of journalists bent on doing what they think is socially beneficial work making people aware of new developments, even good science can be twisted, distorted and exaggerated for political purposes.
  

Examples of contemporary Junk Science profiled in this year's series include:

• the absence of scientific evidence to validate the scaremongering around the amount of salt in people' diet,
• the assertion that smog is claiming thousands of deaths despite improvements in air quality and, of course,
  
• the harder to kill than a vampire continuance of climate junk despite virulent discreditation and refutation of every kind.

Not only do these profiles highlight how and why people should discount these ecomyths, they highlight the more insidious nature of ecomyths themselves.  If Junk Science is so easily disproven, why then do ecomyths continue to be embraced by governments, agencies and authorities even though the evidence of the Junk Science upon which they are based is clearly and categorically outlined?

The answer is both simple and depressing: ecomyths are a contrivance.  The issue is not people's health in the case of salt, nor people's health with smog, nor the sustainability of the environment with climate change.  These are the excuse, the contrivance upon which public compliance to policies and p[programs is required.  The focus is those policies and programs, and the control which they seek to enforce over people and their lifestyles.  Ecomyths are merely a contrivance by which power can be exerted over people, their lives and their lifestyles.  Junk Science is the authoritative assertion of "The Truth" by those whose ideology is predicated on the desire to impose control over others.

Beyond Petroleum indeed.

sustainability is change

The worst thing to happen to the concept of sustainable development was its devolution into sustainability.  The semantics are important because they belie two key points: 

• the denial of change as the central construct defining sustained growth and future prosperity,and
• the transference of a human management construct into a purely scientific measure of precautionary possibility.

The recent events in Haiti and Chile show the consequences of this shift in thinking.  


Both Haiti and Chile experienced large earthquakes: in Haiti the effects were severe, in Chile they were not.  In the past two decades, Haiti has been subjected to extensive "sustainability" thinking from NGOs and government intervention in the economy: it has neither experienced development nor is it any more sustainable than when those efforts started.  In contrast, Chile has sustained its development, experienced real economic growth and was able to sustain its population through a natural disaster.

Sustainability is a term derived from the original concept of sustainable development.  Sustainable development was predicated on the recognition that environment, economy and society had to be integrated constructs within the management of development for it to be sustainable.

Sustainability is a management construct. The central question it addresses is:

• how do we manage growth and future change so that it is sustainable?

Science might provide some measures, some indicators as to levels of sustainability but absent of the integration of environmental measurements with economic indicators and social variables, those  measurements lack interpretive meaning and become co-opted dogma within the ideology of its proponents: hence the emergence of politicized science (and the associated pre-dominance of contrived environmental imperatives for morally constructed political action).

Sustainability is not some game.  It does not have a scientifically derived end line measurement, a set of goal posts society should be shooting for.  

Sustainability is the process of capacity building that gives communities the capability to adapt to change, sustain their development and provide hope to future generations.

As Fullan states:

• Sustainability is the capacity of a system to engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose. 

Capacity.  Providing individuals with the ability and skills they need, empowering them, giving them the confidence, esteem and social conditions under which they can self-actualize.

Engage.  Becoming active agents in the determination of their own futures.  Being empowered not pawns of governments, NGOs and elites exerting power over them "in their best interest".

Continuous improvement.  Leaving the world a better place, a changed place, but a more healthy, prosperous place by embracing technological advancement and improving the human condition.  Embracing change as constructive, positive and liberating.

Deep values of human purpose. Sustainability is a management construct for political decision making based on values.  Those values should reflect the community's determination of moral standards, cultural differences and preferences.  It is contextualized by community and should not be dictated by dogma and elite ideology.

Sustainability is change.  Not the denial of change, the suppression of change, nor the control of change.

To implement sustainability effectively we must address this distinction directly in the consideration of power, precaution and the perpetuation of ecomyths..

Indoctrination is not higher education

I recently responded to a commentary in the National Post that was lamenting the openness of debate in academia around climate change. In the same discussion thread another academic using the moniker "scate" posted a series of comments that illustrated the wide gulf that exists between my own perspective on academia and the role of higher education, and the attitude of many within the halls of academia itself.

Scate's comments were equal part arrogance and self-serving conceit. They reflect a belief that many subjects, especially any involving science, are "tough" and "difficult for the non-expert to grasp". The corollary is that even undergraduates are incapable of understanding the nuances and subtleties of these tough subjects and thus must be "instructed" and "trained" on how to think,lest they mis-understand things. It is only after they have been "taught" how to think correctly, that they are allowed to consider material for themselves, safe in the knowledge that they too will concur with the prevailing paradigm on all matters. Then, the bright few who have shown the ability to conform well to this model are allowed passage into graduate programs where they can receive advanced "training" within the accepted parameters.

Advanced recognition and awe is reserved for those members of the academy who show a capacity for explaining "tough" subject matter in a way that is obtuse and re-inforces the internal vocabulary of the elite within any discipline. Simplicity and clarity of expression are not encouraged, especially when jargon, disciplinary dependent definitions, abbreviations and expressions may be employed to further confer an aura of authority and complexity on any aspect of enquiry.

It is within this conceited, arrogant and mis-guided perspective of "higher education" that the whole IPCC, Climategate, Himalaya-gate and ecomyth fraud resides, festered and continues to be fostered.

It is not surprising that the revelations of abuse and malfeasance were initially documented by bloggers and from those outside the world of academia. Those with the temerity to question the prevailing system from within are quickly and deeply ostracized by the academy. If an academic of the standing and accomplishment of Freeman Dyson can have his intellect suddenly besmirched solely because he allied his free thought with the "wrong" perspective, then it can happen to any academic (most of whom have nothing close to the list of academic accomplishments, awards and publications of the esteemed Dyson).

The whole point here is not whether AGW is "right" or "wrong". The question is how we as a supposedly advanced civilization utilize our best and brightest to examine such complex topics and even more profoundly, how we as an advanced civilization determine who and what constitutes our best and brightest minds.

I would contend that the ability to conform, to parrot correctly the prevailing mantra of any controlling elite, is not the desired nor defining characteristic of the best and brightest intellect. Higher education should be about the fostering and facilitation of lateral thinking, new innovations and intellectual freedom. Sadly, it has become a bastion of political correctness, conformity and intellectual compliance.

Climategate is not surprising, nor is it the exception. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark and it is not solely the science of climate change: it is the prevailing attitude of those who constitute the scientific body and are presently training their adherents.

Still think I am exaggerating? At the next ecomyth demonstration, ask any of the young, committed idealists on the front-lines of the protest what they are protesting and why. Whatever their answer, ask them "and why do you think that?". Their inability to provide a cogent, principled answer with an understanding of underlying constructs and concepts is a powerful indictment of their "training" and the inability of indoctrination to foster free-thinking individuals.

Indoctrination is not designed to produce free-thought. It produces a conformity of thought. Is today's academic training evident in the indoctrinated mantra and dogma of its converts or the insightful questioning of young enquiring minds?

Read any blog discussion thread and you will find academics like "scate" not just defending a system of academic indoctrination but blithely promoting it as higher education. You will also find many zealots who have graduated from this school and carry its message forward with fervour. 

Nothing scares a conformist society as much as a free mind that is actively engaged in the pursuit of its own learning.  What we do not understand, we fear.  What we fear, we seek to destroy.

shifting to energy policy

Perhaps now with the collapse of the Copenhagen talks, the revelations of abuse from Climategate and the knowledge that the Himalayas are not going to disappear in the immediate future, we can turn our attention to the real issue of cheaper future fuel options, particularly for developing nations.

As is often the case, the template for discussion has been established by another article by the excellent Nordhaus and Shellenberger:

• In the end, whether or not the Senate passes a cap-in-name-only climate bill, the long-term failure of Kyoto and all other efforts to establish binding emissions caps is virtually assured and is a function of a basic technological problem. We simply do not have low-carbon technologies today that can at large scale replace fossil fuels at a cost that any political economy in the world is willing to impose upon itself. There will be no political solution to climate change, no binding international agreement to substantially reduce emissions, and no effective domestic carbon cap until low-carbon technologies are much cheaper than they are today. 
• ...Obama was following two decades of magical thinking among both greens and liberal Democrats about energy technology. In this view, energy efficiency pays for itself, solar and wind power are already nearly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and both can quickly and cheaply reduce emissions. This Pollyanna view of fossil fuel alternatives and efficiency, which makes going green seem cheap and easy -- little more than the cost of "a postage stamp a day" -- has provided the justification for green-policy advocacy that has overwhelmingly focused on pollution regulations and carbon pricing while ignoring serious investment in energy research and development. 
• Incumbent energy interests had, in short, hijacked magical climate thinking for their own uses. They took cap-and-trade legislation and turned it into an opportunity for them to raise energy prices on consumers, invest a fraction of the higher revenues in clean energy, remove existing regulatory obstacles to the construction of coal plants, and lock in their competitive advantage while crowding out energy newcomers, including clean energy firms, for decades to come. 
• Solving the technology challenge will not be easy, but in terms of our collective wealth and knowledge we are in a better position today than at any other point in our history. In the end, global efforts to address the climate challenge, if they are to succeed, must centrally focus upon the creation of a new and extraordinarily important global public good: the development of low-carbon energy technologies that are cheap, clean, and abundant. After two decades of domestic and international failure to take real action on climate change, it is time for the purveyors of magical thinking to take their exit so that the main act can begin. 

I am still far more optimistic about a free market approach to this solution than Nordhaus and Shellenberger, who prefer a contemporary Manhattan Project investment by government, but I can agree with their analysis of the the overall policy objective: eventually, we will need alternate cheap, energy sources.  Where we differ is both the approach to this resolution (free market or government directive) and the time scale.  

The role of climate alarmism has been to present the immediate need for collective de-carbonisation.  Absent of that alarmism, the developed world has substantial low cost energy sources and no real incentive to push the kind of technological advancement Nordhaus and Shellenberger identify.  The need today is for low cost energy sources to fuel developing countries: nations that also lack the capacity to independently initiate the type of technological advances cheap alternate energy requires.

So the real issue is: do we wish to view ourselves as a sustainable global community?  As much as Nordhaus and Shellenberger correctly identify the need for new energy technology, the most pressing barrier to future prosperity remains our need to reconcile the social imperative for sustainability: 

• expanding and improving our notions of community
• decreasing the specter of fear and its grip on public policy, and
• recognition that what differentiates us need not divide us.

Free market or state intervention is irrelevant until such time as we view our collective interest as our own self-interest.

live by the sword....

It is fashionable amongst some eco-activists to refer to themselves as eco-warrriors.  In deference to real troops who fight, and die, to protect people's freedom, I have a problem with the self aggrandizement that activists seek to confer upon themselves with this label.  

No matter: if its warriors they wish to be then this is what they can expect:

It appears many of the activists are quick to dish it out but appear shocked that anyone should respond in kind.  Not that hypocrisy is new to eco-activism.

Looking at the issue beyond the immediate conflict, a number of questions arise:

• how many of the lay public who give money in support of such eco-activism are aware that their money is being used so that, in the name of the environment, young people can roam the oceans of the world in a competitive power boat?
• what is the carbon footprint of the power boat? (sorry, I was forgetting that carbon is so yesterday)
• geography pop quiz: you want to make a media splash about whaling, do you get a boat and protest  (a) Icelandic or Norwegian activity in the North Atlantic, or (b) Japanese activity in the South Pacific?

Not a lot of "eco" and certainly no "warriors". 

The Copenhagen Collapse

Towards year's end and time for lots of people to comment not only on the past year but the past decade.  Based on the collapse at Copenhagen, Lorne Gunter makes this valid observation that environmentalism is just the latest manifestation of authoritarian control, of stasis incarnate:

• ...saving the planet is not what environmentalism is all about. Saving the planet is just the excuse. Controlling other people’s lives and redistributing global wealth is the true goal.
• I’m not saying there is a conscious conspiracy by old socialists meeting in secret to rebrand themselves as new environmentalists so they can revive their Cold War-era campaign for international governance and regulation.
• Rather, it’s a mindset.
• When socialism collapsed as an intellectual movement in the 1990s, the intrusive, holier-than-thou, we-know-best attitude behind it did not disappear, it merely refashioned itself in the last decade as environmentalism.
  
• To be happy, they have to be telling others what to do based on a self-assured belief in their own moral and intellectual superiority.

Change is a constant in life.  The essence of sustainability is the capability of communities to adapt to change, something current environmentalism ignores to its detriment.

Rather than embracing change as the essence of sustainability, stasist politics seeks to control change and environmentalism to direct change towards ideological pre-determinism.  They are mutually reinforcing bedmates: stasist politics supplying the tools of enforcement, environmentalism the moral imperative for intervention.

It is an ideology that neither seeks, nor values, individual empowerment. In contrast, globalization is predicated upon a massive increase in individual empowerment from information technology.  The Copenhagen collapse is evidence that stasist politics is a bankrupt ideology, and so is environmentalism.