Climate Scientists Reluctant to Examine Big Research Picture
/Nature News online has published an interview with climate researcher Martin Parry at Imperial College London. I left a long comment, which is reprinted here.
Setting the climate record straight Nature News
Climate researcher Martin Parry at Imperial College London co-chaired the second working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the group charged with assessing the effects climate change is likely to have and how these might be mitigated — for the IPCC’s fourth assessment. During the past month, the IPCC has corrected an error about the amount of melting anticipated for the Himalayan glaciers and defended its estimates of the financial costs of damage caused by natural disasters. Nature talks to Parry, who has been busy juggling writing up his own research with investigating queries about the 2007 report.
Do you feel responsible for the Himalayan glacier error?
I have responsibility, with my co-chair, for the whole volume. Likewise, authors have responsibility within the structure of the IPCC for their conclusions. My job is to see that procedures are set up in such a way that we’ve got good quality control. That the procedures apparently weren’t followed in the case of the Himalayan glaciers is a pity. But if you set up procedures and they are not followed, that doesn’t absolve you from responsibility. Ultimately, it comes through to me.
Schagen World Map SkateboardsAs a thinking person who respects scientific inquiry, I found the interview very unsatisfying, and wrote a response, which is my intellectual property. The first comment, framing resistance to climate change science as coming from Sarah Palin and American Conservatives ticked me off.
I try to post reliable climate research whenever possible. We all know that each week, new discoveries redimensionalize prior ‘facts’ about the environment.
What disturbed me about Martin Parry’s position is a total reluctance to admit that there’s countervailing findings around man-made climate change.
My long commentary sums up my view of an environmental research mess that will come unhinged before it gets to a place of intelligent understanding and knowledge-based resolution. I compared this morass of misunderstanding with Toyota’s problems, and I meant to do so.
Some men will call it illogical, but a holistic interpretation of these events allows me to look at other industries and organizations. If Toyota can falter, why is climate science sacrosanct?
My comment left at Nature.com
As a lay person who writes frequently about the climate change topic, I’m not pleased reading this interview.
Just for the record, I’m a NYC Democratic liberal. Beyond political badges, I’m a thinking person with a high-traffic website AnneofCarversville.com.
Americans who are trying to understand the facts of climate change don’t all worship in Sarah Palin country.
There is no agenda in my writing. On Feb. 4, I printed a post: ‘Black Carbon from India, Not Greenhouse Gases, Primary Cause of Himalayan Glacier Melt’. Researchers at Stanford explored other options behind glacier melt in the Himalayas besides global warming and came up with new results.
Carbon in the air from India is a huge problem, according to the Sanford team. This is science 101, given our knowledge of carbon particles associated with coal and other fossil fuels. Why was this issue never investigated until now?
Knowing how people’s minds work — 65% of people’s brains will not consider a new possibility — I have no confidence that multiple explanations for climate results are explored. All people have an agenda, not just American Conservatives, who I don’t typically defend.
More importantly, having read and posted many new studies where A now influences B, I believe that climate scientists are linear thinkers, when Nature is a holistic system.
I don’t believe that there’s any top-level biosphere model that processes all the research into a dynamic climate research model.
People like me aren’t challenging each individual result or saying that climate change isn’t happening. But before we retool the world’s economies in the midst of a global recession, I would like to believe that research scientists have an integrated global view, and that when another scientist’s research challenges his/her own, the findings aren’t dismissed.
What I see is a scientific bureaucracy no different than any global multinational. Players become linear thinkers, obsessed with the company vision. And one of your key leaders admits to the BBC that he’s disorganized with paperwork and can’t find all his records. Terrifying!
Look at Toyota. If Toyota is guilty of being totally myopic in facing the facts of known problems, why are climate scientist suddenly exempt from the possibility?
You must also address the issue of what climate change is unavoidable and not the result of America’s ambitions and over-consumption tendencies, which are real, but not the primary reason for climate change — perhaps.
I’m no authority, but it seems that much climate change is unavoidable. What we do about this reality is another topic. Climate scientists do not separate the conversation into these two topics.
Like Icarus, men believe they can fix everything? Is that true? Can you turn back climate change that’s happening of its own accord?
When I see a UN climate negotiator threatening to cut her wrists on global TV, because America won’t admit our guilt, I see that this entire debate is wrought with emotion on all sides.
My instincts for American thinking are superb. You would be best served elevating this discussion out of Sarah Palin country and on to the global intelligence stage, where it belongs.
I can give you 15 new scientific studies that raise major questions around core assumptions of climate change. I only hope the scientists will start reading them and interpreting their implications honestly and accurately for the world’s citizens, because I — a fashion and design person — should not be asking these questions of climate scientists.
You guys are no different than Democrats and Republicans. No one is really having honest communication with each other any more, and it’s positively frightening to watch the world come unglued.
Alas, my job is to communicate the folly, because I have no understanding of real facts.
