Category Archives: Politics

As a scientist myself (or at least an apprentice), it utterly confounds me when climate deniers argue that scientists only pretend to believe in climate change because their research grants depend on it.  These arguments are not only slanderous, but expose a deep misunderstanding of how scientists receive funding.

In general, there are two classes of scientist, public and private.  Public scientists are paid a salary through government institutions like NASA or NOAA. As laid out in yesterday’s comments from James Hansen, these scientists are compensated regardless of the outcome of their research, thus there exists no financial incentive to skew results one way or the other.

Private climate scientists are often employed by universities and must actively seek out research funding.  One potential source is our nation’s collection of federal science agencies. There are many, but one of the most prominent is the National Science Foundation, an agency which supports about 20% of all federally funded basic research conducted in US universities.  Its funding process is typical of agencies of this kind, so I’ll discuss its allocation process in greater detail.

Scientists may apply for research grants by first submitting a research proposal.  According to NSF criteria, successful proposals must demonstrate that their prospective research be of high academic quality, have high and hopefully broad significance, and preferably be transformative.  Proposals are merit-reviewed by a panel of independent experts in the field and the top submissions receive grants to continue their work.  This process is highly competitive.  Of the approximately 45,000 proposals received each year, the NSF only funds about 11,500.

One thing you’ll notice is that research into a plausible alternative theory to human-driven climate change satisfies all of these criteria.  Given that 97% of climate scientists currently agree with the conclusion that global climate change is occurring and is caused by human activity, a plausible alternative theory clearly constitutes a great scientific advancement, one which would generate waves in many other fields.  So not only are climate deniers not penalized in the grant process, if their proposals demonstrate legitimate scientific merit they might actually receive preferential treatment.

There are other factors which serve to support climate deniers.  First, any scientist who can debunk a scientific paradigm (as Einstein did with his general theory of relativity) in favor of a better theory will earn prestige and his name in science textbooks.  This is a huge incentive.  Second, if a professor has tenure, then he needn’t fear reprisal from his employer should his research cut across the grain.  Third, because review panels are comprised of a broad selection of experts, one can expect a representative plurality of opinions to be held by appropriators, which mitigates consensus groupthink.  Fourth, scientists are skeptical by nature.  They assume their knowledge is incomplete and are always acting to refine it.  Scientists will tell you that one of the most exciting events for them is when an experimental result completely defies theoretical expectation.  It is in these moments that new truths are often revealed.  Scientists yearn for these moments; they do not penalize the search for them.

The final point I’ll make about the public grant process is simple common sense.  It’s functionally impossible for allocators to only fund “pro-climate change” research when the results of that research are unknown until it’s conducted!  And even if you think all proposals coming in tacitly acknowledge anthropogenic global climate change a priori, meta-publication data gathered by Skeptical Scientist reveals that approximately half of climate research papers do not explicitly endorse the consensus opinion, but rather function primarily as fact-finding missions.  Those missions in total have created the consensus opinion, but scientists did not have to assume it before receiving their funding.

The other method by which private scientists obtain research support is by courting private donors and corporations who have a vested interest in it. For lots of basic research, this process of pitching for funds is a huge hassle.  As the famous Microsoft computer scientist and Turing Award winner Jim Gray once put it, “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before one turns into a prince.”

Except sometimes the prince comes to you.  Because climate change requires corrective actions, corporations that stand to lose in the transition have a strong incentive to spread misinformation themselves or fund others willing to do so.  This is a clear example of climate deniers’ arguments working against them.  There are many examples of scientists who receive funding because they reject the consensus opinion. In fact, research from the Global Warming Policy Foundation has found that in an analysis of 900 papers supporting climate change skepticism, 90% of the authors were linked to ExxonMobil.

At the end of the day you ultimately need to ask yourself which is more likely: that A) 97% of all scientists have independently come together to collectively pull the wool over the world’s eyes and perpetrate the greatest scientific hoax of all time for unclear motives or B) moneyed interests like oil and coal companies who stand to lose profit in a world that addresses climate change are spreading disinformation to forestall action.

Given the current condition of media coverage in the United States, it’s not surprising that so much skewed information abounds.  First, many media agencies like newspapers release dedicated science reporters as margins grow thinner.  Second, the media often mistakes balance with “hearing all side of an issue.”  Granting climate deniers equal air time with members of the 97% majority would be like presenting the opinions of a Auschwitz survivor alongside someone who argues the Holocaust never happened.  Third, the media (television and radio especially) has an incentive to create conflict for ratings.

Ultimately, though, scientists owe it to themselves and to the general public to lift the haze of confusion that surrounds their work.  The public ought to know how its tax dollars are being spent, the valuable research it supports, and the mechanism by which scientists are funded.  Combining this with greater knowledge about the skeptical nature of the scientific process would go a long way towards exposing scientific partially, greed, and impropriety as the myth that it is.

Aside: If you liked this article, please repost it!  It would be a shame if only 3 people got to read it.  Thanks!

I’m generally not a fan of reposting others’ content, but I found this so compelling that I had to share.  As I was reading through the assimilated works of Climate Progress, I came across some statements made by NASA’s premiere climatologist, James Hansen.  While these remarks were made in December 2009, in light of the death threats leveled against Australian climate scientists recently they are particularly timely.  He wrote:

I am now inundated with broad FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science”¦. The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available, on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians would certainly have done that ”” but they have not.

Harassment like this has even prompted a strongly worded reply from AAAS yesterday (American Association for the Advancement of Science) who wrote, in part:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems.

Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results.  Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise. Moreover, we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.

The implication of these threats is that climatologists are lying or fudging their data to achieve some personal end.  One outrageous claim often bandied about is that scientists publish results affirming human-caused climate change just so they can get more research dollars.  Arguments like these can only be made by people who have no idea how the scientific funding process actually works.  I could go off on my own rant here, but I’m going to lift again from James Hansen who wrote the following in an open letter to the Prime Minister of New Zealand:

BTW, do you really believe that scientists make up or exaggerate global warming to get research funds? Our salaries do not depend on how much research the government funds. Government scientists get paid for working 40 hours a week, regardless of how long they work. My wife claims it is about 90 hours a week, but I say about 80. If you succeed in getting the government to cut back on science, because you don’t like the results, the main effect will be erosion of our competiveness relative to other nations. Your hounding of scientists does not bother me, but it may discourage young people from entering the profession, contributing to a national spiral into second or third rate technical and economic status. Perhaps, instead of questioning the motives of scientists, you should turn around and check the interests (motives) of the people who have pushed you to become so agitated.

I couldn’t have put it any better.

In an earlier post, I wrote what I thought was a reasoned and well-researched response to some common misconceptions about climate change. The reply I received was hostile in tone:

The claim that both liberals and conservatives politicize the climate change debate is disingenuous at best. It it the liberals who are fomenting hysteria and using distortion and outright LIES to push their agenda which is establishing soc…ialism and destroying capitalism.

It is unambiguously clear that climate change has become politicized.  Generally speaking, in the United States Democrats acknowledge climate change is happening and driven by human activity while Republicans, and the Tea Party in particular, do not. But how is this possible? How is it that one’s political affiliation, which is really a statement of preferences, values, and morals, can dictate which facts they choose to accept. Facts are facts, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Research done at Yale Law School’s Cultural Cognition Project reveals that people disagree “sharply and persistently about facts on which expert scientists largely agree.” To quote from their research:

“Scientific opinion fails to quiet societal dispute on such issues not because members of the public are unwilling to defer to experts but because culturally diverse persons tend to form opposing perceptions of what experts believe. Individuals systematically overestimate the degree of scientific support for positions they are culturally predisposed to accept as a result of a cultural availability effect that influences how readily they can recall instances of expert endorsement of those positions.”

As evidence in support of this conclusion, here is more from the reply I received to my last post:

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich made many predictions, NONE of which came true. Then the parade of Hollywood celebrities, such as Ted Dansen who appeared on the Johnny Carson show sometime in the ’80’s, claiming somewhat hysterically that if we didn’t do something, the oceans would be dead by the early 1990’s. The oceans aren’t dead. In the early 1990’s, one of the actesses in Head of the Class (Khrystyne Haje) did an hour special that aired on the Disney Channel detailing the “rain forests” of Brazil. She claimed that a certain number of acres per second were being burned, the the number seemed high to me, so I wrote it down and looked up the square acreage of Brazil, and ran the numbers. According to my math, the ENTIRE country of Brazil, including cities, lakes and rivers would have been burned down in about 3 and a half years. Brazil is still unburnt. I could go on, but we all know of examples of this kind of hysteria equivalent to “the sky is falling.”

Clearly, this person has an entire collection of facts at her disposal and she is not afraid to wield them. However, nowhere in her reply did she directly respond to any of the 18 separate citations I provided. Because these references were coming from me, an untrustworthy and potentially antagonistic source, she was less likely to embrace them.

Here’s another example from the reply to my post:

And then there’s the scandal of faking data that was uncovered last year. Even scientists can be motivated to lie. More government money, job security, prestige, face time on TV, it can all be very seductive.

She’s referencing the controversy surrounding climate scientists at the University of East Anglia last year where in an email a scientist suggested using a “trick” to “hide the decline” while other scientists ridiculed climate change skeptics. For those predisposed to reject the veracity of climate change, these are damning pieces of evidence.

The question is whether or not those same individuals equally weighted the reports that largely exonerated East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit including those from House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, an independent science assessment panel, Penn State University, and the US’s Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Commerce.

The simple truth is that as human beings we preferentially seek out news and opinions that coincide with our world views. For liberals this might mean watching The Daily Show as opposed to Bill O’Reilly. For conservatives it might involve favoring The Drudge Report over The Huffington Post.

But when it comes to critically important issues like pollution, the deficit, gun control, climate change, etc. we have an obligation to overcome our baser natures and commit ourselves to objective study. For my part, I have read and carefully considered all manner of arguments both supporting and denying climate change (see, e.g., this post) and have come to an inescapable conclusion: climate change is real and it is almost certainly being caused by human activity. My only hope is that others take a critical look at their own prejudices and do the same.