Let’s start by Googling “climate psychology”. I won’t attempt a diatribe on the subject because my background is engineering, but take a look at the first few dozen hits. Wouldn’t remaining in our nice warm beds as the Titanic sinks make more sense than risking our lives by jumping hundreds of feet into icy water? What will mass hysteria accomplish, anyway? If fixing climate means we have to give up our houses, cars, food, luxuries, and wealth, then why bother? What good is fixing climate if it destroys our lives, and we may not have to anyway, because science always comes through in time? Right?

What about Googling “climate economics”? What do climate scientists know about this subject? Probably about as much as I do, which is virtually nothing. Check out the first few dozen hits. When the climate medicine is worse than the climate ailment, especially when the ailment may not harm me, then why bother? I may feel your climate pain, but I certainly will feel my climate medicine more than your pain. A Google search of “climate pain” will reveal that it is real. Anyway, “climate medicine” isn’t very popular, but “Climate Fix” tends to be a bit more trendy.

Then there’s “climate mitigation” or “climate action”. Google brings up millions of hits on the second one. What do climate scientists know about these subjects? Who are the experts and what papers and websites are credible? Who decides? Climate scientists? Us?

We could hone in on some of these broader subject areas. What about “climate fear” or “climate suicide” or “climate denial”? The consensus seems to be that climate denial is an organized attempt to disprove climate scientists, but I believe it is the result of human traits; when faced with overwhelming evidence of future disasters over which we have little or no control, our natural instinct will be ignorance (which can literally be translated into stupidity) or shoot the messenger if he persists. Otherwise perpetual fear and anxiety would drive us all crazy.

What about Googling “climate happiness”? You’ll get fewer hits, but some people may be elated about the prospects of global warming. If you lived in a cold climate, you might welcome a few degrees extra warmth on those cold winter nights. One might also be enticed to read Climate, Affluence, and Culture (Culture and Psychology), which brings us full circle.

Science is a self-correcting system where decision making can be likened to how an ant colony works. No one is actually directing things, but there are sets of rules that govern behaviour (e.g., ethics, the scientific method, peer review to verify that the science described is factual and accurate). It is the net application of those rules that steer science away from big errors. To pick up the ant colony analogy, the ant that comes back with food from a new foraging area will be followed by at first a trickle of other ants, but if they in turn bring back food and other ants going to other places don’t, the tide will shift for awhile to the new foraging area. No one ant decided to redirect the ants.

An example: Darwin’s ideas about evolution were not universally accepted by biologists or even geologists when he first published them, and the underlying genetic mechanism wasn’t properly explained until much later. As evidence accumulated in support of Darwin’s idea that natural selection was the principle underlying evolution, and that the earth was in fact very old and many transitional fossils were found, the theory became more complex and more robust. Climate change is no different. As we learn more about how the climate works, today and in the geological past, our understanding improves and the computer models are modified in different ways by different research teams to seek better predictions. The best models are then adopted, or the best changes incorporated into other team’s models.

Science then is a trial and error system, rather than a directed ‘top down’ system where the minions lower down are instructed on what to do. Quite egalitarian, so in fact contrarians, scientists who hold ideas outside of the mainstream can prosper provided their ideas have some factual basis and use the scientific method (Scientific method: based on existing obervations pose an hypothesis; using new observations or experiments, test the predictions of that hypothesis; on the basis of the new data either reject the hypothesis or modify it to fit the better understanding, or accept that the initial hypothesis was right at which point it becomes a ‘theory’ or explanatory model).

“… a research finding is less likely to be true when

1) the studies conducted in a field are smaller;
2) when effect sizes are smaller;
3) when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships;
4) where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes;
5) when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and
6) when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance.”

Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.”

And then the poster sums up with “Note these characteristics closely fit climate science.”

The last statement is so completely wrong it is laughable. The original article was primarily directed at medical science, not most physical science. There are important differences between medical research and almost any other area of science. let’s deal with them using the bulleted list provided.

1) climate science today is not a ‘small field’; there are thousands of papers now published in this field – a quick scan of the references cited in the IPCC reports will attest to this, or type in ‘climate’ and ‘change or warming’ in a science search engine like Google Scholar (restricting your search to science areas) and see how many hits you get – I did and got 721,000.

The article was directing this point at medical studies that focus on an obscure or rarely studied disease, where there are few researchers, and so fewer ‘peers’ to undertake critical review, and those few that there are may either be close colleagues or rivals.

2) depending on the climate process being studied, the effects measured can be large. It is true that the published rate of temperature change averaged for the earth over the past 100 years is a fraction of a degree, but the temperature rise in the Arctic is a little over 2C in the past 50 years (http://www.acia.uaf.edu/PDFs/ACIA_Science_Chapters_Final/ACIA_Ch02_Final.pdf); my recently published paper in the science journal Geology shows a 19C shift between the Pliocene (the last time in geological history when CO2 levels were the same as now) – not a ‘small effect’.

In contrast, the effect of some chemiclas in the body may be at very small concentrations, or a new drug may have only minor efficacy in treating cancer, for example; the extra percent that survive with the treatment may be small, so at the margins of what can attributed to chance alone.

3) and 4) studies of what pushes climate towards warming or cooling across the globe have explored a multitude of relationships and causal factors, so may be some issues here. Media coverage of climate change science focuses on CO2 as that is the area of intersection between science and politics that has most consequences for our lifestyles; energy use = CO2 output. The science that underpins the role played by CO2 has been understood for a long time (over 100 years). Climate models don’t just crank up CO2 and see what happens. They are now quite complex and factor in things like; variable output by the sun, variations in the earth’s orbit around the sun, greenhouse gases AND dust from volcanoes, greenhouse gases from decay in wetlands and from agriculture (rice paddies are artificial wetlands), differences in the reflectivity (‘albedo’) of different surfaces (grass reflects more sunlight than forest, and ice much more than open water etc.) … and there are many more. But my point here is that climate science isn’t focused on a small set of possible exaplantions; it is exploring many and studying their interactions.

5) geez, this one comes up time and again. ‘We’re in it to make money.’ Gee, where did I park the sports car??? There is an excellent shattering of this myth on Scott Mandia’s blog (http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/taking-the-money-for-granted-%e2%80%93-part-i/ see also his part II).

Medical research does include some real pitfalls in this regard because, particularly in the USA, there are buckets of money to be made in medical research. That is why big-pharma hires lots of biochemists and molecular biologists and the like to do research, and that’s why your family doctor might give you a free sample of some new drug. I don’t know many corporations doing climate change research.

6) this is about competition between scientific teams. It happens. But that is what the peer review process is for, and why it is usually anonymous reviewer. Is peer review perfect? No. But it works pretty damn well. Its also why almost every journal I review for posts an policy on ethical guidelines for both authors submitting papers and reviewers for their reviewing. yes, its something of an honour system, but most cases of scientific fraud have been in medical research (where the big money is …) and not in the physical sciences. Scientific fraud is sniffed out pretty quickly and would ruin any scientist stupid enough to try it.

My final point is that many of the posts I have seen that pose questions like these are simply saying ‘we can’t trust the scientists’. This is the fruit of the AGW denialist campaign, and is oh so similar to what the tobacco companies tried in the 1960s-1970s; sow doubt, muddy the waters, and stave off the inevitable. Basically, we scientists are being called liars. If I wanted to make a career out of making stuff up and making decisions based on my ‘opinion’ or the consensus of my ‘friends’ on facebook or Twitter, or how many thumbs up I got on the Globe and Mail or CBC website or other blog, I would have become a politician. I’m not saying scientists opinions should be accepted blindly. Quite the opposite. But I am saying that there are so many checks and balances in the system that when an overwhelming majority of scientists come to the same conclusion, that should not be dismissed as rhetoric.

Do you trust the laws of physics and metalurgy etc enough to fly in a plane? Do you accept that your GPS will direct you to your destination? Do you believe that taking a pain killer will ease your aches? Do you trust that the diagnosis for your disease more often than not will be correct, leading to a good outcome? Do you have house insurance? (the premium is determined from calculations of the probability of each event you are insured against – mathematical modelling!!!) How is climate change science any different?

I have previously commented on your blog about how various scientific professional societies in the US, Canada and Australia (and elsewhere) have developed position statements on climate change. For the unitiated, these professional societies represent scientists, and in the case of the Geological Society of America, that society includes many geologists who work for oil & gas and mining companies. GSA has a strong and long-standing relationship with those industries and receives financial support from them. Because this organization is composed of and governed by scientists (mostly geologists and geophysicists), GSA would sit high in the credibility spectrum.

Given some of the arguments against AGW, and its close relationship with oil & gas and mining, some people might have expected that GSA may have adopted either a neutral or skeptical position on AGW. It is certainly true that some members of GSA are AGW skeptics, and some GSA members were contributors to the IPCC 2007 process. The AGW position statement on climate change was recently revised and I think readers of your blog would be interested to read this commentary piece in this month’s issue of the society’s newsletter ‘GSA Today’ by William F. Ruddiman (a paleoclimate researcher, like myself). Dr. Ruddiman in this commentary reflects on the process undertaken by the Panel set up by GSA to draft the revised GSA Position Statement on climate change. Of greatest interest, though, is their response to comments received from GSA’s membership (including comments by AGW skeptics) in response to the release of the draft Position Statement. In those responses, placed at the end of the piece together with citations of the science behind their responses, readers will find rebuttals for many of the concerns raised by geologists and other earth scientists over the science of AGW, and rejection of any bias or lack of expertise by the GSA Panel. Its a free to all PDF document download.

http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/20/7/pdf/i1052-5173-20-7-40.pdf

The GSA Position Statements, including the one on climate change, can be found here:

http://www.geosociety.org/positions/

Cheers
David G.

No, not “some” papers will be proven wrong – but many if not most. Although I cannot give you a citation, but the last quantitative one I can recall got the result that two-thirds of scientific papers are later overturned. (Obviously, estimates vary depending upon the sample and criteria.)

A quick google search finds a New Scientist article cited a study claiming 50%.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/18128/

This fact (and its ilk) are important to keep in mind when claiming “peer review” as sufficient authority. It is reason enough to keep one’s critical lights on.

“19 degrees C warmer is alot. Is that figure a yearly average? How cold was it in the winter? In the summer? Is that difference measured from todays averages?”

The 19 degrees refers to ‘mean annual temperature’ or MAT which is as the name suggests is the yearly average. For reference, the MAT of Vancouver is about 9.9C, Winnipeg 2.3C, and Eureka Nunavut (a few 100km from the fossil site) is -19.1C. Our estimate for MAT averaged across 3 independent methods was about -0.4C with uncertainty of about 0.4C to 5C, depending on the method used. So ’19C warmer’ is the difference between our estimate and modern-day Eureka NT. All modern climate values are from Environment Canada’s climate normals online: http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climate_normals/index_e.html

We also estimated summer and winter temperatures. Winters were dramatically warmer than now (which is entirely logical; its extremes of cold that limit most plant and animal distributions) at -11.6C but with large uncertainty (+/- 7.1C) vs. -37.6C today at Eureka NT; summer was 14.4 +/- 2.0C vs. 5.7C today at Eureka, about 10C-14C warmer in summer. Trees only grow where summers are on average warmer than 10C, and this defines the northern treeline. If you want to find a modern equivalent, try Goose Bay in Labrador. Lots of snow in winter.