The Great Climate-Gate Debate at MIT

I attended The Great Climate-Gate Debate yesterday at MIT. It was videotaped, so maybe eventually it will be available online, but for the moment, here is a brief and possibly inaccurate description based on notes I took during the event.

It wasn't really a debate. None of the participants really addressed each other in any substantial way. It consisted of 5 10-minute presentations, followed by questions from the audience. My summaries of each speaker are given below, with my comments in italics.

---

The first speaker was Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT. He contrasted the situation in science with politics. In science the truth will win out; but politics enters the scence because the coal industry will lose billions. They spend lavishly in campaigns to protect themselves. Just like the tobacco industry, which set up fake grassroots organizations to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer, the anti-AGW [anthropogenic global warming] crowd sets up similar organizations. The tobacco industry's efforts were successful: it took decades before smoking began going down.

The anti-AGW efforts are even more successful. The scientific consensus is clear. All scientific organizations agree. Yet polls show that the percentage of the American public who believes that global warming is human-caused is decreasing. How did this come to pass? By deployment by vested interests of advertising techniques. Terminology is controlled. Deniers are called skpetics. Most of the people called skeptics are not really skeptics, since no evidence would persuade them. By contrast, people who take the problem seriously are called "alarmists". The public relations machine has been successful in branding atmospheric scientists as out-of-touch liberals who want to return to an agrarian society. On the other hand, deniers are compared to Galileo.

The thousands of e-mail messages that were stolen show scientists at work. Among them are a few lines of scientists showing human failings. Scientifically it means nothing. But it is a windfall for the anti-AGW machine.

The next speaker was Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth Sciences at MIT. He started by denying that there is an anti-AGW machine. [Hard to take this seriously: exactly who does Lindzen think is behind ads like the ones reported here?] He doesn't know what AGW has to do with smoking. [It's because, as Emanuel clearly stated, the techniques used by the deniers on both sides are similar. Also, Lindzen himself -- a smoker -- is famous for his skepticism on the link between smoking and cancer, so I imagine it was a little dig at him.] It's a red herring. What we're here to talk about is e-mail and computer code. There's no chance that some machine unknown to Lindzen is behind this.

The relaeased documents are unambiguously dealing with things that are unethical and illegal. There is no good in any scientific organization endorsing this. The documents show scientists manipulating raw temperature data. [Uh, manipulation of raw data goes on all the time; that's why it's called raw data.] They refused to allow outsiders access to data. [Uh, because they signed a non-disclosure agreement]. They destroy data rather than release it. They don't allow responses to their papers to be published. This is not ethical.

What are the implication? It won't have much influence on Copenhagen. You don't get 20,000 people to change direction. Very few people can read these documents and not conclude that there was something bad going on. There is diminishing popular support for this issue. This is not mass hysteria, this is elite hysteria. The notion that science is prone to cheating and if Kerry [Emanuel] is right, that this is endorsed by scientific organizations, is detrimental to science. If your information environment is NPR and the New York Times, you believe one thing. If your information environment is talk radio, you believe another. He recommended Anthony Watts' blog. It's good that ordinary people can check the temperature measurements; people are discovering bizarre changes to the data.

Next was Judith Layzer, who is a professor of Environmental Policy at MIT. [I didn't get much out of what she was saying.] She is an observer of science. She concluded by saying that scientists are fallible but offer the best hope of understanding the natural world.

Next was Stephen Ansolabehere, professor of Political Science at MIT. [I didn't get much out of what he said, either.] Scientific evidence hasn't been vetted the way it should. So far it's in scientific journals, congressional committees, etc., not vetted in public the way it should be. However, the e-mails don't affect most of the data people are using. But it does raise a fundamental question of science - the importance of scientific standards. It raises the question of how science can maintain its standards as it gets pulled into public debates. Who is going to police scinece and maintain its public credibility? One of the great crimes is the violation of the standard of replicability. Who is going to discipline the scientists? What will the response be from scientific academies?

The last speaker was Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. He began speaking about the hockey stick. In answer to Lindzen, we care about a few tenths of a degree because it is important to compare current temperatures with historical data. He looked at the emails and was disturbed. He discussed the disagreement between Michael Mann & McIntyre-McKittrick. Around 1850, the blade "sticks out" (referring to rise in northern hemisphere temperatures). It did disturb him when looking at the emails to see the personal nature of the discussion. Are some of the e-mails unprofessional? Yes.

Were the people successful in preventing publication? Five papers by McIntyre were published and discussed in the 4th IPCC. There's a signficant case to be made that temperatures are higher - the "blade" has survived the scrutiny. It's unclear if the "handle" is straight or broken. People will think of other proxies. Were the people successful in the endeavor that seemed to be stated in the emails? No.

Was the research at E. Anglia critical to the case for climate change? He looked at this because he gave testimony about climate change. There are many different lines of evidence. Several independent data sets exist - the work at UEA is not the only group. Without even including analysis from UEA the conclusion that most of the warming is human-caused remains robust. Since 1997 to 2007 when he gave testimony in the House Ways and Means Committee, he changed his mind. The new data was enough to convince me that there was statistical significance to the conclusion. His view is that we have no other planet to retreat to if we are wrong. If we screw up this planet, what do we do?

Has the integrity at the IPCC been compromised by these revelations? UEA people were involved at IPCC. IPCC is arguably the most influential. Those emails did not lead to McIntyre-McKittrick papers not being discussed. Answer is no.

Is public perception of climate science affected? Media ability to scrutinize is a problem. E-mails contain a lot of juicy soundbites who want to write stories. Answer is yes.

Can we do better? Climate researchers need to step back from the tendency to polarization. Scientists have got to stop that process. That means having mutual respect. I have great respect for both of these guys (Lindzen and Emanuel) as excellent scientists. Find additional ways to communicate conclusions and the ways conclusions were reached. A single paper is not enough. Many results needed before consensus is reached.

Peer-reviewed literature is where science is done. Not in blogs or opinion pieces. These should not be the source of information. Can we do better? The answer is yes.

---

After the presentations, there were many questions. I did not take notes during the Q & A. If the event video is ever shown, you can see me asking a question towards the end.

Finally, one minor note that bugged me. Speakers referred to each other using their first names, making it hard to follow. If only the organizers had bothered to put a card in front of each speaker, with their full name, the audience would have been much better off.

Update: the video of the event is now available.