From The Signal and the Noise (Nate Silver, 2012) p408-11
The fundamental dilemma faced by climatologists is that global warming is a long-term problem that might require a near-term solution. Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for so long, decisions that we make about it today will affect the lives of future generations.
In a perfectly rational and benevolent world, this might not be so worrying. But our political and cultural institutions are not so well-devised to handle these problems – not when the United States Congress faces reelection every two years and when businesses are under pressure to meet earnings forecasts every quarter. Climate scientists have reacted to this challenge in a variety of ways, some involving themselves more in the political debate and others keeping it at arm’s length.
Michael Mann, who is director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, was once at the center of a controversy. “Climategate” concerned the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, which produces the temperature record that the UK’s Met Office uses. Skeptics alleged that Mann and other scientists had conspired to manipulate the CRU’s temperature record.
The pertinent facts are that the scientists were cleared of wrongdoing by a panel of their peers,104 and that the CRU’s temperature record is quite consistent with the others – but Mann and other scientists in the hacked emails demonstrated a clear concern with the public relations elements of how the science would be perceived. Mann is happy to tell you as much. I met with him on a crisp fall afternoon at his office at Penn State, where we chatted for about two hours.
Mann is exceptionally thoughtful about the science behind global warming. Like most other climatologists, he has little doubt about the theoretical mechanisms behind climate change, but he takes a skeptical view toward the predictions rendered by climate models.
“Any honest assessment of the science is going to recognize that there are things we understand pretty darn well and things that we sort of know,” he told me. “But there are things that are uncertain and there are things we just have no idea about whatsoever.”
“In my mind, one of the unfortunate consequences of this bad-faith pub lic conversation we’ve been having is that we’re wasting our time debating a proposition that is very much accepted within the scientific community, when we could be having a good-faith discussion about the uncertainties that do exist.”
But Mann, who blogs along with Schmidt at RealClimate.org, sees himself as engaged in trench warfare against groups like the Heartland Institute. “We’re in a street fight with these people,” he told me, referring to a Nature editorial that employed the phrase. The long-term goal of the street light is to persuade the public and policy makers about the urgency (or lack thereof) of action to combat climate change. In a society accustomed to overconfident forecasters who mistake the confidence they express in a forecast for its veracity, expressions of uncertainty are not seen as a winning strategy by either side.
“Where you have to draw the line is to be very clear about where the uncertainties are, but to not have our statements be so laden in uncertainty that no one even listens to what we’re saying,” Mann told me. “It would be irresponsible for us as a community to not be speaking out. There are others who are happy to fill the void. And they’re going to fill the void with disinformation.”
The Difference Between Science and Politics
In practice, Mann’s street fight is between “consensus” Web sites like RealClimate.org and “skeptical” ones like Watts Up With That, and revolves around day-to-day scuffle about the latest journal article or weather pattern or political controversy. Both sides almost invariably stick up for others in their circle a refuse to yield ground. When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.
I do not mean to suggest that the territory occupied by the two sides is symmetrical. In the scientific argument over global warming, the truth seems to be mostly on one side: the greenhouse effect almost certainly exists and will be exacerbated by manmade CO2 emissions. This is very likely to make the planet warmer. The impacts of this are uncertain, but are weighted toward unfavorable outcomes.
The street-fighter mentality, nevertheless, seems to be predicated on the notion that we are just on the verge of resolving our political problems, if only a few more people could be persuaded about the science. In fact, we are probably many years away. “There’s a point when I come to the conclusion that we’re going to have to figure out how to take the carbon out,” Richard Rood told me in Copenhagen, anticipating that there was almost no way the 193 members of the United Nations would agree to mutually acceptable terms.
Meanwhile, the American public’s confidence that global warming is occurring has decreased somewhat over the past several years.109 And even if there were 100 percent agreement on the effects of climate change, some states and some countries would make out better than others in any plan to mitigate carbon emissions. “We have some very progressive Democratic governors in coal states,” I was told by the governor of Washington, Christine Gregoire. “Boy, are they nervous about all this.”
I don’t know how to resolve these problems, which are not unique to the climate debate. What I do know is that there is a fundamental difference between science and politics. In fact, I’ve come to view them more and move as opposites.
In science, progress is possible. In fact, if one believes in Bayes’s theorem, scientific progress is inevitable as predictions are made and as beliefs are tested and refined. The march toward scientific progress is not always straight-forward, and some well-regarded (even “consensus”) theories are later proved wrong – but either way science tends to move toward the truth.
in politics, by contrast, we seem to be growing eve! further away from consensus. The amount of polarization between the two parties in the United States House, which had narrowed from the New Deal through the 1970s had grown by 2011 to be the worst that it had been in at least a century. Republicans have moved especially far away from the center, although Democrats have to some extent too.
In science, one rarely sees all the data point toward one precise conclusion. Real data is noisy – even if the theory is perfect, the strength of the signal will vary. And under Bayes’s theorem, no theory is perfect. Rather, it is a work in progress, always subject to further refinement and testing. This is what scientific skepticism is all about.
In politics, one is expected to give no quarter to his opponents. It is seen as a gaffe when one says something inconvenient – and true. Partisans are expected to show equal conviction about a set of beliefs on a range of economic, social, and foreign policy issues that have little intrinsic relation to one another. As far as approximations of the world go, the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties are about as crude as it gets.
It is precisely because the debate may continue for decades that climate scientists might do better to withdraw from the street tight and avoid crossing the Rubicon from science into politics. In science, dubious forecasts are more likely to be exposed-and the truth is more likely to prevail. In politics, a domain in which the truth enjoys no privileged status, it’s anybody’s guess.
The dysfunctional state of the American political system is the best reason be pessimistic about our country’s future. Our scientific and technological prowess is the best reason to be optimistic. We are an inventive people. The United States produces ridiculous numbers of patents, has many of the world‘s best universities and research institutions, and our companies lead the market in fields ranging from pharmaceuticals to information technology. If I had a choice between a tournament of ideas and a political cage match, I know which fight I’d rather be engaging in – especially if I thought I had the right forecast.
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