"We found that there is just no way that the observed changes [in hurricane strength] [in sea-surface temperatures] could be attributed purely to internally generated natural variability."
(see correction at bottom of post)
So said Tom Wigley -- one of many people at NCAR with more expertise and peer-reviewed papers in the area of hurricanes and climate change than Roger Pielke Jr., but far fewer media appearances -- when he and 18 other respected researchers published a study in a recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, he said, "closes the loop" between climate change and hurricane intensity.
The story quotes Pielke Jr., a prodigious blogger with a PhD in political science, disputing the conclusions of these 19 climate scientists. The credentials behind his self-appointed role as arbiter and schoolmarm on this issue have never been made clear.
Al Gore has publicized the conclusions of Wigley, Emanuel, and other working scientists who believe there's a strong connection between climate change and hurricane intensity. Is Gore, as Pielke Jr. put it in this tsk-tsk-fest, guilty of "departures from scientific standards"? Are Wigley and his colleagues?
The point is, Gore's statements are not "scientifically unsupportable." There is science that supports them. Remember, the IPCC is not original science, it is a review of science, with extremely conservative standards. It did not find a preponderance of evidence in favor of the climate change/hurricane connection sufficient to warrant its inclusion in a consensus document.
I have great respect for the IPCC's standards. It's a much-needed baseline-establishing process. I don't want to let Gore "supplement" or change the IPCC.
What I'm arguing is, there's no reason the IPCC's conservative weight-of-evidence standards should be everyone's, at all times, governing our entire public dialogue or policy-making process. Should no one (including Wigley?) be allowed to have a position on the hurricane/climate change question until the IPCC or WMO says it's OK?
I'm completely with Andrew that by and large, the IPCC should be the scientific standard in matters climate-related. But on the hurricane question it simply provides no guidance. It doesn't say there is or their isn't a connection. We'll have to make up our own minds based on our own science reviews, or the opinions of people we trust, or various other workaday heuristics. Neither deciding for nor deciding against should brand us "extremists."
Gore, based on the totality of his knowledge and experience, believes that the work of Wigley et al. will be born out, and is sufficiently strong that it's worth accepting the connection for the purposes of public education and policy-making. Others disagree. Others resolutely have no opinion until the IPCC makes up its collective mind. So be it.
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A couple of other semi-related notes:
- None of this is to say that I agree with the emphasis many climate advocates place on hurricanes. I don't. I tend to agree with the statement from a group of scientists on the both sides of the issue that hurricane damage is best reduced by changing perverse financial incentives and land-use patterns, along with nurturing coastal buffer ecosystems. Hurricanes are not the big global warming story, and nothing particular hinges on them, policy-wise. But drawing conclusions about the science before the IPCC doesn't ipso facto make one a wacko.
- Andrew, if Inhofe accepted the IPCC generally but argued that there's no climate change/hurricane link, I'd have no problem with it. He'd be able to find some support in the peer-reviewed scientific literature -- a first for him. But that's not even close to what he's doing, is it? Which is just to say that what Inhofe and his crowd are up to has nothing in common with what Gore does. They are not parallel "sides" of any debate.
- Pielke Jr. delights in airily dismissing others as "political advocates," and pointedly includes the IPCC scientists among those who have "values and political agendas," but he's less forthcoming about his own advocacy and agenda. His, um, "outreach" is relentless, and it's easy to come away with the impression that he's a climate scientist (in fact Science called him one), though he's not. In virtually every case, he pops up to criticize those fighting for action on climate change. He is beloved of denialists, wrote for the Cato Institute's journal to defend Bjorn Lomborg (PDF), and is quite fond of citing a paper he published in a non-peer-reviewed journal that turned out to be a veritable clearinghouse for skeptics. Who else was quoted bashing Wigley's work? William Gray and Steven Milloy. He claims not to love the climate cranks as much as they love him, but it's difficult not to raise an eyebrow.
- As it happens, I don't care much about any of that. I don't see anything wrong with being an advocate. I don't accept that it inherently includes dishonesty. Everyone's an advocate. Everyone's views are worth discussing. I hope we can all have a little fun while doing it and not take ourselves too seriously.
- One thing I do agree with Roger about is that debates over science far too often serve as proxy policy debates. I didn't want to get bogged down in the science, much less the hurricane science, and plan to move on to more interesting questions post haste.
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* John Fleck is right in the first comment. Wigley is referring to sea-surface temperatures. Scientists had found that Cat. 4 and 5 hurricanes had increased. They'd found that sea-surface temperatures had increased in hurricane breeding grounds. They'd judged the two connected. What was left to discover is whether the sea-surface temperature increases were due to natural variation or anthropogenic warming. Wigley et al. determined that it was the latter -- that's the "loop" the study closed.
Again: we know there are more intense storms, we know storms gain intensity from warm water on the surface, we know the surface water is getting warmer, and we have very good reason to believe that the greenhouse effect is warming the surface waters. Everything we know about how the greenhouse effect and hurricanes work leads to the intuitive conclusion that the former is intensifying the latter -- intuitions now backed by a growing body of evidence. The WMO doesn't think the balance of evidence is sufficient to draw a firm conclusion. Wigley does. Gore does. They use this as another -- one of many -- argument in support of trying to slow global warming. Whether or not you think it's legit for them to reach this conclusion, you have to have a pretty warped view of the political and cultural landscape to think that it's equivalent to what Inhofe et al. are doing.
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Comments
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jfleck Posted 7:02 am
06 Jan 2007
This is a textbook example of what I'm talking about. You've chosen to hang your hat on a good paper by a terrific group of scientists which is one of a number of papers out there right now coming to different conclusions.
Given that there is no clear consensus in the literature as a whole, one has two choices: do what you have done, which is pick the horse you think is going to win, or do what your fellow GristBlogger Andrew Dessler suggests, which is to look for a clearly articulated consensus view, as articulated by an expert panel (in this the WMO has stepped into the breach), which says:
"A consensus of 125 of the world's leading tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters says that no firm link can yet be drawn between human-induced climate change and variations in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones."
You're free to cherry-pick a particular paper that supports your view if you want, but in so doing you lose any moral authority to criticize the other guys when they do the same. And they do it an awful lot more than your side does. That's why this seems to me like such an ill-advised tactic.
In this case, though, I'm not sure it's even a very good cherry-pick. That's why your criticism of Roger Pielke Jr. is a little cheap, given that he's only pointing out the obvious, which the Daily Camera reporter should have noticed for herself: this paper is about attribution of sea surface temperature change, not hurricane intensity. The paper's final paragraph makes that abundantly clear. Roger's not disputing what the scientists said. He's merely pointing out to the reporter what the paper actually says.
I'm curious as to how you were confident enough about what Wigley meant to insert the parenthetical phrase you did into his quote. It wasn't there in the original, and the following paragraph (not to mention the paper itself) suggests to me that Wigley was more likely to have been talking about sea surface temperature in the quote you cite, not hurricanes.
Whatever. As a journalist, I'd certainly never insert a parenthetical like that into a quote unless I was darn sure that's really what the speaker meant.
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jjwfmme Posted 7:06 am
06 Jan 2007
If you look at this table the difference between sustained winds for categories 2 and 4 can be as small as 21 mph. But the difference between the damage caused is quite significant.
Let's say that hurricane wind speed only goes up by 4 mph. That doesn't sound like much, but it would mean you'd get about 20% more category 4 hurricanes that would have been category 3 before. Probably not a huge difference, but not a small one either...
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David Roberts Posted 7:25 am
06 Jan 2007
I'm not cherry-picking, it's Al Gore (and many, many others working on this issue) who are cherry-picking; I'm just offering a qualified defense of them. I personally think the whole hurricane issue is a diversion. But there's cherry-picking and cherry-picking. This is not one isolated study -- there's a sizable group of scientists working in this area that think the evidence of a connection is strong. There's a real division in the scientific community about this. The cherry-picking the "other side" does is in service of trying to refute settled IPCC conclusions. Choosing sides in this debate is not trying to refute IPCC conclusions, it's simply drawing conclusions before the balance of evidence meets the IPCC's conservative standards. It may sound like semantics, but I think it makes a difference.
Like I said, I'm perfectly content to wait for the IPCC to make up its mind. The case for action against global warming has a thousand and one justifications -- even some that have nothing to do with warming itself -- so I don't need this additional one. It's just that the easy imputation of "extremism" to Gore and other advocates, and the comparison of them to the denialists, rubs me the wrong way.
As for the parenthetical -- I may have been hasty about that. I'll look into it later today. Right now I'm trying to type with two kids hanging on my arm, demanding I read them "Good Night Gorilla."
www.grist.org
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jfleck Posted 8:09 am
06 Jan 2007
Your repeated appeal to the "denialists" is a straw man. There are many much more reasonable skeptics - the John Christy's and Petr Chylek's of the world - whose arguments cite outliers of exactly the same sort Gore cites on hurricanes. These people are using outlier science to discredit the consensus. They're pointing to the same sort of uncertainties you're describing on the hurricane question. As soon as you defend the legitimacy of Gore doing what he did on this question, you lose your most potent argument - the IPCC-style consensus - against the Christy's of the world. You sanction, instead, the sort of gridlock that Sarewitz so ably describes.
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David Roberts Posted 9:01 am
06 Jan 2007
One thing we certainly agree on: these arguments over science are conducive to deadlock. I doubt many people outside the scientific community care about the science as such. What the public cares about are two questions: Should we be concerned about climate change? And what should we do about it? The IPCC consensus, with or without any mention of hurricanes, is more than enough to offer a Yes to the first. So it's the second we should be talking about.
www.grist.org
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markbahner Posted 9:31 am
06 Jan 2007
So I follow the wonderful hyperlinks to Roger Pielke Jr.'s and Tom Wigley's publication lists (that Dave Roberts provided), and I see:
Roger Pielke Jr.:
Pielke, Jr., R.A., Gratz, J., Landsea, C.W., Collins, D., Saunders, M., and Musulin, R., 2007. Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005. Natural Hazards Review, (submitted).
Höppe, P. and R.A. Pielke, Jr. (eds.), 2006. Workshop on Climate Change and Disaster Losses: Understanding and Attributing Trends and Projections, Final Workshop Report. Hohenkammer, Germany, 25-26 May.
Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2006. Seventh Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture: Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent Calamities, Oceanography, Special Issue: The Oceans and Human Health, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 138-147.
Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631.
And Tom Wigley...
...ummmmm...I don't see anything that mentions hurricanes, tropical cyclones, or anything like that. Of course, the publications are only from 1990 to ~2000 (i.e., they're not current to 2006 or 2007).
Dave, why don't you list the peer-reviewed papers on hurricanes and climate change that Tom Wigley has authored...particularly the ones where he is listed as a primary author? Or the workshops where he has served as an editor, or performed similar duties?
Mark Bahner
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 10:48 am
06 Jan 2007
NCAR Publications 2006
NCAR Publications 2005
NCAR Publications 2004
Much of Wigley's published work (both recent and from the 1990s) focuses on marine surface temperatures, ocean expansion & sea level rise, insolation, precipitation, and atmospheric circulation. Those are the factors that determine the intensity and lifespan of major storms.
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atreyger Posted 1:24 pm
06 Jan 2007
From the abstract:
'Model "20th-century" simulations, with external forcing by combined anthropogenic and natural factors, are generally capable of replicating observed SST increases. In experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually rather than jointly, human-caused changes in greenhouse gases are the main driver of the 20th-century SST increases in both tropical cyclogenesis regions. '
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atreyger Posted 1:28 pm
06 Jan 2007
Influence of greenhouse warming on tropical cyclone frequency
JOURNAL OF THE METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN 84 (2): 405-428 APR 2006
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Sam Wells Posted 3:00 pm
06 Jan 2007
I am even more clueless as to why one would link the "global warming" thing with hurricanes. There is not one shred of data or information that could lead a rational person to believe that increased atmospheric temperatures caused hurricanes that worse in intensity, coverage, and destruction.
What really bothers me is how people tend to glorify hurricanes such as Katrina, which didn't even hit New Orleans and had calmed down to a nice 100 MPH before coming ashore and dying out. Other hurricanes such as those over the Bahamas several years ago blew 110-140 for three consecutive days.
To say any of this was fueled by Global Warming is pure bull. Intensity, duration, rainfall, pressure, fetch, swell, surge, areal coverage and all those factors must be taken into account. By nature they are random events which cannot be predicted, no matter what Dr. William Gray says.
The one thing Dr Gray would agree with is that the link between GHG and hurricanes is silly in the extreme. Put that in your IPCC pipe and smoke it.
Onward through the fog
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pielke Posted 3:25 pm
06 Jan 2007
Thanks for the exchange. A few responses to your comments.
On Wigley's work. He is a prolific scientist; in fact, one of the all-time-greats on climate change. I am happy to play "count the papers and books" on tropical cyclones. But so what? If I have more peer-reviewed papers on hurricanes, then are my [political/scientific/both] views correct? I don't think so. (And, yes, I do have more on this specific topic;-)
On "political advocates" -- It may seem subtle, but what I actually am concerned about are those in the scientific community who say they have no agenda or are "value free" but really are using science to advance a political agenda. I've got a lot of respect for regular old political advocates. They are essential to a healthy democracy. This includes me, you, Al Gore, and Senator Inhofe.
As far as my own political views, (it seems to me) I've been quite forthright about them:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_...
If you have questions about the details, then ask. I'll answer. (And, are you really criticizing me for blogging?!?)
4. As far as buzzwords like "denialists," "Lomborg," "Gray," "Cato," "Milloy" ... they probably resonate with a few folks, but for most readers I'd assume that they'd want to know: is there anything in the substance of what I've written that you take issue with? Or is it just an effort to impeach by association?
I've argued that "cherrypicking" of science is not a misuse of science. It is often business-as-usual in highly uncertain, contested areas of science. But in doing so it does take away the ability to criticize your political opponent for doing the same. And in uncertain, contested areas of science the inevitable result is political gridlock.
The more important question (to me at least) is what action might be both broadly supported across political divisions and robust to the reality of scientific uncertainty? On hurricanes, at least, I think from what i've seen of your writing that you and I are in 100% agreement about the answer to this question. Now if we could only convince Mr. Gore ... ;-)
Thanks!
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David Roberts Posted 7:02 pm
06 Jan 2007
Indeed. I suspect you and I will disagree about the answer to this question, but you're right that it's the appropriate focus.
For the record, I very much doubt Gore thinks we can dial back hurricane damage in the short term by reducing emissions. He's not an idiot. Nor do I think he says otherwise.
His concern is how to educate and motivate people to demand political action on this problem. There are very few aspects of climate change that trigger human affective responses. It's an extraordinarily difficult problem for a communicator. It's easy to carp about how he does it, but I've yet to hear any of his wonky critics propose a better strategy. I've heard plenty about policy, mind you, but not about how to make it happen. Anyway, I hope to post about that soon, and leave the science quibbles behind.
Thanks for dropping by.
www.grist.org
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raines Posted 2:37 am
07 Jan 2007
Even better, we're getting linked into an online community where we can keep in touch with the scientists as new questions arise or new data.
David, your comment is right on about the heart of the struggle being about engagement, finding ways to get the message across that don't cause people to run for the hills but rather lay out paths to action.
Here's another trainee's dailyKos diary on the training. And another.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 12:09 pm
07 Jan 2007
In response to your statementI've argued that "cherrypicking" of science is not a misuse of science.I couldn't disagree with that point of view more (I blogged on this question here).
My question for you is: if you don't consider cherrypicking a misuse of science, then what DO you consider a misuse? In my view, cherrypicking is the number one way to misuse science.
Thanks!
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pielke Posted 12:23 pm
07 Jan 2007
In a seminar class I ran we used the term to develop a taxonomy of "misuse of science":
Pielke, Jr., R. A. (ed.), 2004. Report on the Misuse of Science in the Administrations of George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and William J. Clinton (1993-2001). By the Students in ENVS 4800, Maymester 2004, University of Colorado, June.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files...
Imperfect for sure, but maybe a starting point for discussion. "Cherrypicking" is indeed a misuse if it is a also a misrepresentation of the science such as:
"Emanuel (2005) indicates that there is consensus that global warming strengthens hurricanes."
But cherrypicking is not a misuse if it is simply selectively reporting, e.g.,
"Emanuel (2005) indicates that that the power dissipation of hurricanes has increased dramatically during a period when ocena temperatures have warmed, according to Wigley et al. (2006) due to greenhouse gas emissions."
This sentence is not a misrepresentation, but it certainly is selective.
The reality is that all uses of facts are selective. Dan Sarewitz makes this point well in his paper on "The Excess of Objectivity." See it here:
http://www.cspo.org/products/articles/excessobjectivity.h...
And I discuss cherry picking in this short essay:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/ogmius/archives/issue_8...
Thanks!
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Andrew Dessler Posted 1:57 pm
07 Jan 2007
I guess our disagreement might boil down to our views on the "excess of objectivity." While an excellent debating point, I just don't see that it actually exists anywhere.
Regards
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pielke Posted 11:34 pm
07 Jan 2007
So you suggest that non-experts should respect the consensus view of the world in your area of expertise, but then you feel free to completely reject the consensus view of experts in another area of expertise?
Sounds like cherrypicking to me! ;-)
For the social science parallel to the IPCC, and in paticular the literature review led by Rayner and Jasanoff on "science and decision making" see:
http://www.battelle.org/bookstore/BookTemplate.aspx?ISBN=...
You comment to my ears makes about as much sense as some one saying "Global warming? While an excellent debating point, I just don't see that it actually exists anywhere."
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hank Posted 5:09 am
08 Jan 2007
Recent [since 2002] articles: about 432 for
(Tom OR T OR TML OR "Tom ML") +Wigley +NCAR
likely not clickable; dragging to search box works:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=100&hl=en&l...
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amazingdrx Posted 5:28 am
08 Jan 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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jjwfmme Posted 6:05 am
08 Jan 2007
You could say that this statement has the virtue of simplicity, but it is a false simplicity. (What's the H. L. Mencken quote? "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.")
Now, if you were less categorical--and frankly, more transparent--you could say, "What's perceived as cherrypicking is not necessarily an abuse of science." But that would be uncontroversial (and if I were being cynical, I'd point out that it wouldn't gain you as much attention).
I think what I'm getting at, Dr. Pielke, is that I hope you're not merely seeking controversy for its own sake. Because these are important issues. And these little public, socratic sidetracks can throw off a lot more heat than they do light.
One more thing: Obviously, the social sciences and political sciences both use the word "science." And I'm sure there are rigorously empirical aspects to them. But we're now a full 150 years past Auguste Compte, and we know that study of human institutions and behavior is not always as tidy as the study of physical things. When it comes to solid, tangible things it's comparably easy to make neat categories, and state things categorically. But neat, Aristotelian categories are often harder to apply to human institutions, habits, etc. And it can be unwise to try to force them to fit.
And I think a perfect example of such a force-fit is saying categorically "Cherrypicking is not science abuse. So all you denialist think tanks go have a field day."
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Zarkov Posted 6:41 am
08 Jan 2007
The deep knowledge,..or just how this theory interacts with all these other theories, ie the integration of scientific facts and theories, is usually not even dreamt of by onlookers.
It is this deep knowledge that always remains hidden to the public, and your concept "cherry picking", is just the outcome of a scientific dissertation presented to the public.
For the public there can only be water skiing ...too much information is not good for digestion, and sending the populous back to school is totally impractical.
The gulf will always remain... just one reason why a scientist is never understood.
Scientists are not always correct, more so in this age of toxic pollution, however the only way to question them is through an analysis of fact fitting..... theories are just models.
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