How Do Climate Scientists Know That they Aren't Wrong?

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.

right, but you can prove it to be false! Climate models are designed to forecast future states and until 50-100 plus years into the future, we won’t know if they are correct or not. By this time it will be pointless, so modeling is usually used to report what-ifs or ensembles, with tempo and mode being the underlying question

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

.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.htmli

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