Excellence in Wanker Science!

Today's winner(s), Melanie Phillips, Gaius of Blue Crab Blvd, Jules Crittenden, Maggie's Farm and Wretchard of the Belmont club for linking to [or referencing] this article by Mike Hulme and not really getting the point:

Lack of such reflective transparency is the problem with "unstoppable global warming", and with some other scientific commentators on climate change. Such a perspective also opens a chink of weakness in the authority of the latest IPCC science findings.

Mike Hulme is reviewing a book by Dennis Avery and Fred Singer called "unstoppable global warming". He references what is called Post-Normal Science. Post-Normal Science accepts that the scientific process is never "complete;" we now know more about the climate than we did in the past, and we will definitely know more about it in the future but at the same time more questions will also arise. The area "PNS" tries to address is not necessarily the science itself, but the policy. Given that uncertainty will always exist in science and policy is a complex mix of values-based perspectives, a simplification of either (the "normal" process) is insufficient to solve problems.

That's where the three blogs linked to above are a little off: Post-Normal Science does not mean that the science behind global warming is not rooted in the traditional scientific method. "PNS" holds that there are indeed correct and incorrect hypotheses that can be empirically proven or disproven. But that has nothing to do with using the science to solve complex policy problems. Moreover, whenever someone attempts to simplify the scientific conclusions--as Hulme claims Avery and Singer do and as I claim the linked blogs above do--one must ask what motivates them. At the same time, the answer to one of Wretchard's questions is: anyone can participate in the process of evaluating policy as long as their motivations and values (i.e. "background") are clearly stated.



The above diagram illustrates where policy and science interact according to PNS. I suppose my science would be well within the green area, close to the origin (there is almost no public policy risk to anything I do, and uncertainties are minimal). The example of the physician or the engineer is given to be located in the yellow area: "skill, judgement, sometimes even courage are required" to implement the science. The red area is where global warming policy lies: action might involve serious economic consequences, but inaction might involve serious environmental consequences.

We need to understand that everyone involved in advocating policy--either action or inaction--has an axe to grind. And that is why, as Hulme states...

What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy; it is whether we have sufficient foresight, supported by wisdom, to allow our perspective about the future, and our responsibility for it, to be altered. All of us alive today have a stake in the future, and so we should all play a role in generating sufficient, inclusive and imposing knowledge about the future. Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.

A far cry, it seems, from asserting that Hulme admits that global warming science is all made up.