In relation to a previous post including an article
describing Naomi Oreskes research on the scientific concensus, I have come
across a more recent publication of hers as a chapter in a book about how do we know we aren't wrong about climate change?
She quotes that “There are numerous historical examples where
expert opinion turned out to be wrong […]geophysicists were confident that continents could not
drift” (Oreskes, N. 2007). She relies heavily on and discusss most of the compiled
reports regarding the current climate science consensus: the reports from IPCC,the
National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society and AmericanGeophysical Union. These are obviously not an exhaustive list of
the reports available, but being American, Oreskes focused on information from
that country. She points out that in today’s scientific peer reviewed world,
there are literally thousands of reports published so it is not easy for a
scientist, much less and average person, to read all the evidence on a topic,
so one must depend on these compiled reports. (through the Institute of Science
database, there are over 8,500 journals!).
She also touched on how skeptics and the media can cherry
pick information to make it look like it
is supporting something it is not. An example is a 2001 paper titled ‘‘Modeling Climatic Effects of
Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Unknowns and Uncertainties’’ discusses
the use of Global Circulation Models and improvements needed for future
predictions. It in no way tries to disprove anthropogenic global warming, as
the author’s clearly wrote in the review (page 259), but it has been quoted by
many skeptics as a real and legitimate peer reviewed paper that disputes the
anthropogenic role (Oreskes, N. 2007). Claiming that climatologist don’t follow
THE scientific method is inaccurate, they have to rely on models, not laboratory
experiments because the scope of Earth’s atmosphere/oceans is quite difficult
to rebuild in a lab!
Oreskes asked why does the public have the impression of
disagreement among scientists. She came to several conclusions:
The false association of scientific with
political uncertainties.
Uncertainties about the future
predictions can be generalized with uncertainties about the current state of
scientific knowledge.
Perhaps the most important for a
climate scientist: scientists have not managed to widely portray their
arguments and evidence beyond the science communities. “Scientists are finely
honed specialists trained to create new knowledge, but they have little training
in how to communicate to broad audiences and even less in how to defend
scientific work against determined and well-financed contrarians” (Oreskes, N.
2007).
On the use of models:
One of the most useful quotes in basic science understanding/falsification
from the author was this: “If I make a prediction, and it comes true, it does
not prove that my hypothesis was correct; my prediction may have come true for
other reasons”. Karl Popper, probably the scientific philosopher of his day, in 1959 proposed that one can never really prove
something to be (Oreskes, N. 2007). Using CO2 doubling (from
pre-industrial) as a parameter in modeling can also be problematic in the
results as it may go beyond the doubling amount; the models show that the
temperatures will in fact warm but how much? Yes there could be mistakes in the
science knowledge of the importance of some parameter of feedback, but even if
corrected, the problem could become even worse than expected, not better.
Science is not about proof, but explanation
“If
science does not provide proof, then what is the purpose of induction, hypothesis
testing, and falsification?” Oreskes, N. 2007)? The author relates scientists
to lawyers in a sense in to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt, various
pieces of evidence must be presented that holds true.
I enjoyed reading Oreskes write up, especially the philosophical points, but I felt that since
this is a chapter in a main stream book readily available, that she should have
put much more citations to scientific papers when she explained facts. For example, she said “Scientists predicted a
long time ago that increasing greenhouse gas emissions could change the climate…”
(Oreskes, N. 2007) but no citation! She should have included the citation to
where this belief was first published so a normal reader or even skeptic can’t
wonder where she got this fact. A person that is fighting for the sake of the
communication of climate change needs to back up every single detail
(unfortunately) so one can not be disputed!
American Geophysical Union Council. 2003. Human impacts of
climate. American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC. hwww.agu
American Meteorological Society. 2003. Climate change research:Issues for the atmospheric and related sciences. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84.
National Academy of Sciences, Committee on the Science of ClimateChange. 2001. Climate change science: An analysis of some key questions. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Oreskes, Naomi, 2007, “The scientific consensus on climate
change: How do we know we’re not wrong?”
Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our
Grandchildren, edited by Joseph F. C.
DiMento and Pamela Doughman, MIT Press, pp. 65-99.
Popper, K. R. 1959. The logic of scientific discovery. London:
Hutchinson
Watson, Robert T., ed. 2001. Climate change 2001: Synthesis report.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
