NAS Members Step Up on Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

A group of 255 National Academy of Sciences members, led by Peter H. Gleick, submitted a Letter to the editor of Science [7 May 2010] on the issue of climate change and the integrity of science.

Download Climate_statement

The first few paragraphs:

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."

They have little tolerance for political assaults on scientists by know-nothings and those seeking to 'score points' (my terms, not theirs):

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.

Here are the fundamential conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Excellent!

I hope the popular media picks this up [Op-Ed piece?], otherwise it's akin to preaching to the converted.

"Society has two choices: We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. " -- from the letter

Comments

[Tim]

Jon may have misunderstood the basis of my complaint. I do not dispute the conclusion that Earth's climate is changing, at least partly due to anthropogenic warming. The evidence for this conclusion seems overwhelming to me; even if you dispute the calculations of global mean temperature or ocean surface temperatures, there are worldwide observations of changing environmental conditions that are very difficult to reconcile with the no-warming hypothesis. And as I keep saying, it would be geologically unusual for climate NOT to change - rapid oscillations are characteristic of the last million years or so.

What I object to is jumping from scientific observation (AGW is happening) to ideological conclusion (we must take a certain kind of action). In particular, my scientific brain is offended by the way the conclusions are presented - even if I agree with them, it's not right to present them as if they were also "scientific facts" or the only possible response to observed conditions. We have a very wide range of possible responses before us, starting with "do nothing and adapt as conditions change." That may not be the best approach, but it should at least be explicitly considered and rejected if there is sufficient evidence that an alternative strategy offers a better outcome.

Claiming we must reduce emissions (especially "to save the planet") serves only to strengthen the polarization this issue is causing. Let's have an open discussion of all the possible options and the likely outcomes of each, before we settle on one strategy.

[PAUL F MILLER]

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, however, merely presenting what many reputed water "experts" feel is evidence respecting climate change without providing the education and background to enable "we" ... the people ... to legitimately "buy-in" ... is doomed to fail and becomes merely preaching to the choir...

Facts presented without understandable context for John Q Public will not bring about the paradigm change needed to turn this situation around. Yes, people need facts, but they desperately need an emotional context in which to honestly hold these facts allowing them to percolate and digest within and hopefully manifest in a supportive manner.

Respectfully,

[Jon]

"The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact."

No, what does change it are the numbers - which are fudged and cherry-picked so that scientists can continue to gorge themselves at the trough of public milk and honey.

1) That the planet is warming at all (it has, in fact, been cooling since 1999) is not a fact - it is a hypothesis.
2) That the planet is warming due to heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is not a fact - it is hypothesis.
3) A snowy winter in Washington does not alter the hypothesis any more than a polar bear on a slab of ice or (false) anecdotal evidence of retreating glaciers in the Himalayas supports the hypothesis.

This is the sort of imprecise language that keeps getting these frauds into trouble. As a scientist, he knows darn well what he's saying is not scientifically correct. Therefore, he is either lying, demagoguing, or as Tim suggests, blinded by his own ideology (or all of the above).

The ice sheets made a record come back this year (and are far above 1979 extents). The oceans are cooling. The sun's activity is changing. The predictive models don't work and the scare mongers can't explain why we haven't actually warmed as predicted in the past 11 years. Yet they still have the hubris to tell us we are being ignorant and mis-characterizing reasonable debate as "political attacks." They are quite happy, however, to use politics and demagoguery when it suits them (and their grants).

Sounds like a lot of evidence for proceeding with caution, skepticism and antidisestablishmentarianism.

[Tim]

I really dislike this statement, and the many similar ones endlessly repeated in the whole climate discussion: "For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet." The planet has been through much worse, quite recently in geologic time, and is under no risk whatsoever. There is a great deal of uncertainty in the predictions of no-action, and a great deal MORE uncertainty in the projections if various actions are implemented. Strident and frankly unscientific statements like that one do not help the public understand the essential difference between science and ideology.

The pull-quote is also irritating: it posits a false dichotomy, AND it presumes a level of certainty about our ability to reverse the ongoing changes that does not seem scientifically justified. The false dichotomy is probably the most annoying part to me, because it exemplifies the kind of blinkered thinking that has come to dominate public discourse on this issue. Just for example, we also have the option of acccepting that climate change will continue to occur, and planning to adapt human civilization to the changing climate. This has the obvious benefit of not relying on predictions - it is robust against uncertainty. Scientifically it has the elegance of mirroring natural adaptation, the mechanism by which all existing species (including ours) survived the last great climate change ca. 11,500 ybp.

Gleick is brilliant and I agree with him almost all the time, except when he lets ideology trump science.