Monday, January 31, 2011

Reconciliation in the Climate Debate

 From January 26-28, Hans and I were invited to a workshop in Lisbon on "Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate". The workshop was organized by Jerry Ravetz and Angela Pereira, and the intention or rationale of the workshop can be read here. Among others, Judith Curry was there and already posted on her blog great observations, insights and comments (for part 1 have a look here;). No one is a better blogger than her, and I will only add here some random observations and afterthoughts. On a post-workshop stroll through Lisbon, I ran across this sign on a door in the Alfama. In English, it says 'no man's land - anarchist space', and in a certain way it reminded me of the open atmosphere of the workshop, which represented many climate tribes connected only through their effort to find out more about the current state of climate affairs. At least on this workshop, climate change indeed belonged to no one, neither the skeptics nor the alarmists.
For me as an anthropologist, it was a great opportunity to get introduced to different tribes and subcultures in climate science and beyond. With 'beyond' I mean here journalists such as Gerald Traufetter from Der Spiegel or Fred Pearce from the Gurdian, or critical experts such as Steve McIntyre,  Ross McKitrick or Steven Mosher, who also argue from outside of academia. Who is allowed to speak and to represent climate science? Who is included and excluded? Those were some underlying discussion threads during this really exciting workshop, and these questions are closely related to the science and policy of climate. Thinking along and across those dividing lines opened up new perspectives; seen from the outside, current hegemonic climate science appears as a system organized along exclusively academic criteria, where reputation, honor and your curriculum vitae are the main currency and used as weapons for gatekeeping or ignoring criticisms. Instead of getting an answer to your well argued critique, you get marginalized; at least, this was the experience as told by of some of the participants (and by climategate emails, too).  This is of course an unbearable situation, and it is highly necessary to open up the climate debate in order to represent a greater diversity of results and also uncertainties in the IPCC and elsewhere.  This workshop hopefully was a step at the right time towards this goal.

I was also impressed by the stunning individualism of some of the participants. "Skeptics" are not a homogeneous group; quite the contrary, some even insist on representing an individual standpoint and not being a part of a group. Considering the fact that some have highly influential blogs with many commentators and followers, the image of rather loosely organized tribes came to my mind.
To represent some of those tribes and currents was one of the virtues of this wonderful workshop, which had its moments of both tension and relief. Sometimes, just accusations turned into conspiracy theory and made me wonder whether there will really be a possibility of reconciliation - the hockey stick and climategate are open wounds and it is hard to imagine how there will be ever done justice to those hurt and overrun by those who are in charge of the IPCC process. In its best moments (and there were many of them), participants truly opened up the climate debate in a collective effort, through representation of different voices, perspectives and approaches. This was the case at the final public discussion, for example, when climate no longer was a matter of "but I have the better facts and I know the truth"; instead,  climate became a matter of concern and skepticism turned into a valuable tool for good thinking and humility. Only then climate debate leaves its often time all too narrow natural-science-only constraints and embraces views from the social or cultural sciences, from journalism and last but not least from people 'out there' in the audience. We are all in the same boat, scientists and laypeople,  and climate change is a collective experiment. Terra de niguém e clima de ninguém; é tudo um espaço anarquista!

In case you speak Portuguese, have a look at this article in O Público about the workshop.



16 comments:

Stan said...

"a valuable tool for good thinking and humility."

If so, a great step forward. For far too long in climate science, good thinking has been rare and humility nearly non-existent.

pointer said...

This sentence:

"In my view, in its most dense moments, the atmosphere became almost one of conspiracy theory and made me wonder whether there will really be a possibility of reconciliation - the hockey stick and climategate are open wounds and it is hard to imagine how there will be ever done justice to those hurt and overrun by those who are in charge of the IPCC process."

makes more sense when you remove the word "almost".

Werner Krauss said...

@pointer #2
I rephrased the sentence; hope it makes more sense now.

T said...

"We are all in the same boat, scientists and laypeople,  and climate change is a collective experiment."

Silliness to be expected from an anthropoligist.

The climate is what it is, and it only takes an individual to perceive the Truth.

Hans von Storch said...

T's comment #4 is a good example of a useless rant, which will later be deleted. Next time, T, you certainly will try to argue and not just demonstrate that you have a narrow-minded - though legitimate - opinion about your own "Truth".

Barba Rija said...

Hey, it's "Clima de ninguém", not "Climate de ninguém" ;).

Know your portuguese, if you are trying to teach it ;).

Werner Krauss said...

oh, claro, peço desculpa, sr. Rija.Vou corrigir imediatamente.

Werner Krauss said...

Hans #5, in general, I agree, but there is something I like about this statement:
"Silliness to be expected from an anthropoligist."
For two reasons:
1) Anthropologist is really a difficult word to write,
2)and didn't I praise in Lisbon the "idiot" as the one who prefers not to be mobilized, agitated or educated? Instead, the idiot slows down the mobilizers and one-dimensional activists - something we did or tried to achieve in Lisbon, I guess.
Thus, to be called "silly" is not only an insult, I guess.

Hans von Storch said...

True, Werner (#5) - I let it as it is. I did not consider the comment as an insult, but as lack of substance. But I have to yield to your argument. - Hans

severn said...

The only thing I can conclude from reading this is that this conference (apart from an excuse for a break in Portugal, is a displacement activity to avoid actually addressing the science - the theory and the evidence.

Scientific theory is tested by evidence, and is strengthened by passing tests that could fail the theory. In four years of following this climate science "debate" closely, I have yet to see the 'sceptics' even attempt any significant refutation of the so-called 'consensus'.

'Auditing' the scientists for alleged misbehaviour and hacking away at parts of the body of the science (like the hockey stick) as if they were the whole looks to me like an admission that the scientific debate has been pretty well settled on the basics. Of course every scientist knows that there is always debate at the leading edge.

And the IPCC is a diversion too - the science is in the published literature, and it's evident that the 'sceptics' rarely read it.

Stan said...

severn wrote:
"The only thing I can conclude from reading this is that this conference (apart from an excuse for a break in Portugal, is a displacement activity to avoid actually addressing the science - the theory and the evidence."

I have no doubt that this is a true statement.

Hendrik Hak said...

Werner, would you or others like to comment on Ross McKitrick's article which he planned to present at the Lisbon Conference ( don't know whether he did or didn't end up presenting it).
Is he overly critical of the IPCC particularly when he draws an analogy with an imaginary IMF version of the IPCC?

http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mckitrick_preliminary_notes.pdf

Anonymous said...

@ Hendrik Hak

McKitricks notes have been proposed for discussion in the neighbour blog "Ich bin nur Geologe" (comment N° 23) - without any reaction yet.

I think McKitricks critical approach is worth to be considered in the debate.

Meanwhile Judy Curry weighs in on her Blog ...

http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/08/lisbon-workshop-on-reconciliation-part-vii-mckitricks-comments/#more-2275

Ralph

Werner Krauss said...

@Hendrik Hak 12
Ralph hat recht, ich antworte also oben auf "Ich bin nur Geologe" auf Ihre Frage.

Werner Krauss said...

@Hendrik han
I hope you speak / read German! I completely forgot that you posed your question in English which of course would have deserved an answer in English!

Hendrik Hak said...

Thanks Werner, my German is a bit rusty but I think I got the gist of the comments on your thread from 41 on.