“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
Yesterday I got into an exchange with a person who posted a comment wishing the curse of a pox to the students writing on the UoMichigan COP15 Blog . It reminded me of Joseph Welch’s question to Senator Joe McCarthy, “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” (Welch-McCarthy Exchange from American Rhetoric)
In the United States we devolve into something that is more like tribalism with sides taken based on the color of your uniform or who pays you the most. Discussion is based not on ideas and solutions, but on who makes a statement. Issues are advocated, and ideas are placed into extremes that take on attributes such as good and evil, for and against. The other side is wrong, and their intentions are of hidden control or hidden profit. This threatens our credibility and our viability.
US Senators pursue an investigation of climate science based upon the stolen and published correspondence of a small clutch of prominent scientists. Here at the Conference of Parties (COP15) in Copenhagen the news says that we should anticipate a visit by Congressman Sensenbrenner to call for the end of “climate fascism.” This will place this US political tribe in solid alliance with, perhaps, Saudi Arabia.
For the conference as a whole, I, my students, my colleagues, new people I meet, the discussion in the plenary sessions – from all of these sources, I hear no serious discussion about any challenge the CRU emails present to the basic conclusions that the Earth will warm, ice will melt, sea level will rise, and the weather will change. I have had a small number of interviews, and the question is asked almost as a curiosity. It’s more like the scandal of the emails is really a scandalous aspect of the US culture, like displays of disfigured animals in the back lot of a traveling freak show.
Some of my American colleagues, those closest to the IPCC, these people spend time developing rational responses to calls for investigations, allegations of lies, searches for conspiracies, and efforts to control the participation of individual US scientists in IPCC assessments. They work to craft rational responses to the irrational. Members of the Congress form and dissolve COP delegations. The rationalist’s response to a process that is being managed to be irrational is, itself, irrational. As the rationalist counters the irrational, their irrationality becomes more and more damaging.
It took me several years of management at NASA to realize that there were some people who thrived on the fight. There were those who were disruptive and sometimes deliberately hostile. Others, who benignly fueled chaos. These efforts to cause organizational dis-structure, to increase organizational entropy – these efforts were their strategy for success. Or if not a strategy for success, it was a strategy to keep others from succeeding, of using the distraction to outlast efforts they viewed to their disadvantage.
I spent some time as a manager of scientists trying to find the rational arguments that would help people see the intent and advantage of what I was trying to do and to develop buy in. I had some success, but there was always a group that worked, deliberately or subconsciously, to sabotage. Their strategy was often to create disorder. Their tactic was often to isolate facts or conjecture that in their isolation suggested rationality, compelled a rational response. The rational response was, ultimately, parried with the next isolated fact or conjecture. This is a tactic to build selective doubt.
While at NASA I had the experience of being on a long camping trip with a person who had a psychotic episode. My companion started to hear voices in the radio background, and transmissions through rusted cans lying on the side of the trail. There were always perceived people with weapons in groups of people near us. My first response was to discuss the inability of people speaking through rusted cans. Then I proceeded to showing that nothing bad did occur following the perceived threat. I tried to use a rational description of reality to prove a point that was motivated and fueled by extreme irrationality. Irrationality ultimately anchored in fear.
As a manager, I became more aware of fear and the fear of change. I tried to make my contribution as organizing disorganized systems. I hired a sociologist to work with me at NASA. What I learned is that this tactic of developing the rational response to the isolated assertion, conjecture, or fact was, fundamentally, ill posed. I learned that irrationality and sabotage were a natural part of getting the job down. I learned that if you allow the isolated assertions, conjectures, and facts to grow to dominate the job, then progress will be slowed, perhaps stopped. I learned that if you want to make progress then the leader has to differentiate her/his self from the turmoil, objectify the irrationality and sabotage as part of the whole – and manage it. Place the disruption in its place – the place of the disruptors.
I also learned that it is important to listen to the disruptors, to truly understand the motivation of the disruption. Almost always a sound foundation of the disruption is offered. It was my job to determine if the stated foundation was the real foundation – what is the subtext? It was my job to determine if I needed to accommodate the concerns of the disruptors into the direction the project or organization needed to take. The reason people disrupted ranged from a true conviction that a certain path was wrong to strong emotional attachments to particular ideas and, even, pieces of software. There were always some who where, often by their own admission, contrarian. And, if one is contrarian, it is usually because being contrarian has been a successful strategy in their lives. There are a host of reasons to disrupt, to resist, and to sabotage change.
As long as the community of climate scientists engages in the disruption and the creation of selective doubt, the disruptors will garner attention and an exaggerated amount of success. The march forward will be slowed. The behavior of all will be reduced to one where it makes sense to question decency. The disruptors cannot be convinced by the exposition of the rational totality; they are not looking to be convinced. Their motivations are elsewhere.
The person who made the original comment on the blog responded to me that their comments represented civility in 2009 and suggested that I would be intimidated by and unwelcoming of the language of Shakespeare. I do not, however, accept that participating in this game of personal attacks, repeated slogans, and outrageous assertions is the form of how we must now carry out deliberations of serious issues. I find no relevance of the curses of MacBeth’s witches. If I behave like a character in a tragedy, then it is likely the results will be tragic.
This behavior of disruption is an old and common tactic. It is always in present in politics and management - really throughout life. It is something one imagines as absent in the purity of science, but it is not absent in the best of worlds; it is a community peopled by scientists. We in the US have allowed it to grow to a way of doing business that threatens our relevance and our viability.
I sit here in Copenhagen, not far from Hamlet’s castle of tragedy. I hear quiet men developing community-based climate adaptation plans to link to development activities in their countries. I see interesting technology in transportation and energy from countries eager for wealth. I see policy and practices developing in other countries that promote efficiency and environmental trade. I see the US distracted and wasting its intellect and time on disruptions designed to play to people at home, and which will assure to hasten our marginalization as a great culture. We don’t even look smart to our own children.
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Other relevant blogs
Paul Edwards: IPCC Press Briefing
Paul Edwards: "Climategate," Not IPCC
Jeff Masters: Manufactured Doubt
Jeff Masters: Don't Shoot the Messenger
Rood: Climategate Copenhagen Impacts
Rood: Update from Copenhagen
And here is
Faceted Search of Blogs at climateknowledge.org
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2009) %u2014 A new analysis of the geological record of the Earth's sea level, carried out by scientists at Princeton and Harvard universities and published in the Dec. 16 issue of Nature, employs a novel statistical approach that reveals the planet's polar ice sheets are vulnerable to large-scale melting even under moderate global warming scenarios. Such melting would lead to a large and relatively rapid rise in global sea level.
Link
It's been about five years or so and still there is no light at the end of the tunnel. What gives you with me yet?
"Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from
all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives
by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good
for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it
requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An
instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An
'instinct' is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not
an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for
living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil
today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not
a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man
must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking,
which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his
own destroyer–and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. "
Who do you think said that, a liberal or a conservative?
It doesn't look to me like anything is melting right now in the Arctic. The increase in Arctic ice extent seems to be accelerating.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
How do you explain that? Don't show me historical tables that don't show the steady increase in minimum and maximum over the last two plus years.
i think south florida NEEDS to be submerged. it would be gods way of forcing people to pay for their sins by making them live in south alabama. I would worry it might ruin my neighborhood but i think the meth addicts will scare them away from relocating near me. I live 40 miles inland so maybe i will be waterfront.
curious what's wrong with Alabama??? let me guess you think we are all stupid..... Amazing the bigots here who hate
(1) Between the deniers, the activist and politics Nothing will get done.
(2) I'm/we are not going to save the Earth. The Earth will take care of itself when it shakes us off like the vermin we are.
(3)When sea levels rise and the Ice cap is gone, Ocean currents will change. With it will come new weather patterns. The Sahara Might become a Tropical forrest, and the Amazon a desert.
(3)Political...I don't see anything worth saving. Name one, Just one political entity or current regime worth standing up for.
And to those who deny that man can't affect the weather.
Look at the earth at night. Lit up by Billions of lightbulbs. A single Metalarc light bulb burns at over 1200 degrees consuming 250 watts for 10hrs a night. Do the math. 73 million miles of road a lightpost at every 100 feet, in the US alone.
So all this back and forth argumets will amount to NOTHING.
Enjoy the sunset or sunrise that's about all you and I can do.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/NIGHTLIGHTS.html
Still well below the longer-term average for this time of year.
Last month showed a continuing decreasing long-term trend for November.
And please understand that long-term trends mean long-term - note how during the long-term downward trend there are years when it goes up temporarily. There are no long-term climate trends that show a perfect decline with each and every year - that's not how the systems work and that's not we expect.
And this doesn't include the information on extent of new versus old ice. That ratio has been steadily worsening.
By wishful "thinkers".
Although your chart spell doom for Arctic ice, the chart only goes to show how we can distort with graphics and statistics. The ice extent is expanding faster than the last two years. November expansion was higher than the average. Those are facts, not pretty pictures. I asked for an explanation and you did the same old same old, trying to explain it away with a longer term graphic.
What will you do in 60 days if ice extent is above the average of the last 30 years? What will you do in 60 days if this winter across the northern hemisphere is the coldest since the seventies?
My guess is you will resort to more pretty pictures and avoid the questions.
streamtracker does not show is the 20% error in the measurements. therefore, the trend in the first graph is within the variability.
figure 2: the trend is also statistically insignificant. The average is 11 with a 20% error. thus range of values 1 st dev (9 to 13). Statistical tests use 1.96 st devs around the mean, thus range around the mean is (7 to 15).
the highest value in fig 2 was 12 and the min was 9.5, WELL within the statistical error.
A couple more interesting things about the November average chart:
1. The highest ice extent occurred in years where we know that average world temperatures were rising. Why? This seems to imply that atmospheric temperatures might not be the major forcing issue with Arctic ice. (That's the first time I ever used the term forcing. I hoped I used it correctly.)
2. One can eyeball the chart and eliminate the lows and highs and see that the todays ice extent is very close to the average with those highs and lows removed.
Again, here is this mornings satellite data on ice extent:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Note that we are now at or above the last three years ice extent for the same day with extent accelerating.
I was able to ask the President Nasheed of the Maldives about his adaptation strategy, and the Climate Change Secretary of Brazil about her growth and water resource protection.
Oneclimate.net, worth checking out.
On the other hand, we have chicklet, JF, and others wanting to throw out people that have PhDs in geophysics. Do you folks know what geophysics is? (stream does, which is why he didn't get into this)
That is a broad earth science physics subject encompassing everything earth science from the thermosphere to the earth's core.
How do you discount the opinion of a Dr. of geophysics? And one that proved to have an aptitude at solar physics and atmospheric chemistry?!? (Look at his work)
Will any of those so called changes put a dent into the warming momentum? No. No. and NO.
Worth repeating. comment #256...I really don't see what all the fuzz is about. Let me throw some cold water here.
(1) Between the deniers, the activist and politics Nothing will get done.
(2) I'm/we are not going to save the Earth. The Earth will take care of itself when it shakes us off like the vermin we are.
(3)When sea levels rise and the Ice cap is gone, Ocean currents will change. With it will come new weather patterns. The Sahara Might become a Tropical forrest, and the Amazon a desert.
(3)Political...I don't see anything worth saving. Name one, Just one political entity or current regime worth standing up for.
And to those who deny that man can't affect the weather.
Some crickets here won't like reading this, but these are the factoids.
It is a type of McCarthyism. Anyone, no matter PHD or other significant credentials, will be disqualified for any reason that can work. This includes guilt by association if you have ever been associated with any business entity. Business, as I'm sure you agree, is an evil thing. Higher education and non profit is always ethical, moral and angelic.
I am certain that many pro AGW have previously worked for, now work for or have accepted money and grants from business, but that doesn't matter if you are pro AGW. And it certainly is not relevant if you are an educator and are pro AGW.
There is little response here to a fact if it disses AGW. If it is unquestionably true, the board will be silent for a while and then start on a new topic.
I used to go to zoning meetings and sometimes argue with a neighbor that there would be no flooding or some other issue that a neighbor might raise, that we would engineer through the issue because the law required it and we would do what the law required. It never worked. They would go on as if facts were no matter. They knew better than the engineers and it couldn't be done. Eventually, our attorney would grab me and straighten me out and to get me away from them. He wouldn't want me to screw things up politically before he did the required routine for the council or trustees. Logic was not necessary. Let him handle it.
It's pretty much the same everywhere these days.
Actually I know of a few vocal people who have degrees in evolutionary biology and yet teach creationism along side biological evolution as if they were on equal footing.
I don't get into it because, the over overwhelming preponderance of data and research from multiple independent lines of evidence do not support their views.
It is also quite clear from what's is going on in multiple policy fronts nationally and globally that there is a will to respond to the issue of climate change.
So, it's not worth my energy to pick through the list. In real-world terms it is irrelevant.
What I am interested in is the real scientific debates that are going on in climate science. Like for instance what will the effect of rising surface and water temperatures be on tropical storm formation and intensification.
I have no time and energy for poeple that say their is no convincing evidence that the earth's temperature is rising and that increases in CO2 levels are the primary cause. There are just too many independent lines of evidence - too many fingerprints of an anthropogenic cause.
The fact that are multiple lines of evidence for both pattern and mechanism make it very very unlikely that what we are seeing is not real and that we don't understand the basic reasons for it.
When a science reaches this level of maturity (multiple lines of evidence for pattern and mechanism) it takes some very convincing work to the contrary to overturn a paradigm. I have seen no such body evidence that would overturn the current paradigm.
Still lots of room for fine tuning our understanding - that's the nice thing about science, the questions never stop coming.
Note to you know who you are.
I do not feel the need to answer the questions of folks who insult and assassinate my character.
Besides some of you are doing a fine job on your own of exposing the holes in your logic and understanding.
Finer resolution data and models should improve on the spatial and temporal of predictions.
Source
http://www.facebook.com/theclimatepool
Heck Even now nobody is looking to see if the THC conversion point has moved or if it's still in the same area 100 yrs ago. See what I mean by beware of experts.
Comment 256 still worth repeating.
Here's something from California:
Governor Delivers Remarks at Press Conference for E-Fuel's Revolutionary Fuel System
California on to something there? IDK, why I posted.
Actually I know of a few vocal people who have degrees in evolutionary biology and yet teach creationism along side biological evolution as if they were on equal footing.
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Actually, if you would stop being so bigoted you could invision how, along with the Big Bang Theory, they indeed can all be mentioned in the same breath.
WHAT!?! It is in it's infancy!
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