One study does not invalidate consensus on global warming

“The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.”

Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, “Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.” In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory.

From Introduction to the Scientific Method, CalTech

It’s a good thing to question scientific results. That’s an important part of the process we call ‘the scientific method’. However, to cherry pick a necessarily limited study from a particular institution, then extrapolate that ‘flawed’ result to a larger and vastly more complex subject - the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming - is simply ludicrous.

But, sadly, it happens. Read on from the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Mark Robison’s Fact Checker article [RGJ, Dec. 26] gets a “false” reading. Fox News can’t be relied upon anymore than MSNBC, CNN, PBS, ABC, the Internet or the Reno Gazette-Journal involving complex technical issues.

He quotes a survey of more than “3,000 world scientists, with more than 90 percent having Ph.D.s.” to dismiss the skeptics. Did Mr. Robison personally check out the credentials of the 3,000 believers, question their bias or agenda?

He relies on the opinion of an “actual climatologist,” working for Reno’s Desert Research Institute, which subsists on contracts measuring human impacts on
the environment. Who is truly unbiased when it comes to the source of your paycheck?

For the Clark and Washoe Remote Sensing Follow-on Study, DRI was contracted to measure automobile pollution in Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City. Carson was included because it doesn’t require smog (I/M) inspections. They measured higher pollution from cars in Carson to conclude the I/M was effective.

Curiously, the data showed that new cars not subject to I/M in Reno and Las Vegas also produced significantly more pollution in Carson. Why? One reason should have been obvious to climate experts: temperature. Carson was colder, and a simple correction using documented temperature effects explained the differences and eliminated I/M as a factor. A simple and obvious correction provided the exact opposite conclusion: I/M was not effective. DRI climate “experts” apparently did not even record ambient temperature for their tests!

Does all DRI’s work contain fundamental mistakes and false conclusions? Who has the time, technical expertise, and inclination to dig into volumes of data to ferret out the bias and mistakes?

The government agency that contracted for the work didn’t question the conclusions, perhaps because it was exactly what the federal Environmental Protection Agency wanted to hear, avoiding controversy and keeping the highway money flowing back to Nevada.

Climatology is a “soft science.” The mechanisms are vastly too complex to calculate directly, so it relies on statistical analysis of shotgun scatters of data input to unverifiable computer models. There is no easier way to inject bias into results than statistics. If we engineers tried to use such poor data for aircraft certification, the FAA would throw us out of the room!

Journalists typically assume de facto that a scientist earning his paycheck from industry must be biased and corrupt, but those paid by government or environmentalists groups are unbiased and wise.

This situation boldly underscores the lesser-known warning in President Eisenhower’s 1960 farewell address. Best known for coining the term “military-industrial complex,” he also warned: “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Thousands of scientists’ livelihoods depend on the presumption of human-caused global warming. Hardly surprising they see it everywhere.

Jim Chase is an aeronautical and mechanical engineer who lives in Reno.

Mr. Chase should know better, considering what he ‘claims’ are his educational credentials. This may sound ‘snarky’, but I only do this since he faulted RG-J editor Mark Robison for not having “check(ed)” the credentials of the “3,000 world scientists” comprising an internationally recognized consensus saying that global warming indeed exists, and that the preponderance of data suggests that it is due to human activity.

I’ve known and worked with leading scientists from the Desert Research Institute , a leading investigator into the human impacts on environment. One is my neighbor. And, sigh, they are merely human and therefore subject to human bias and error.

Gee, Mr. Chase … the known human tendency toward bias is a major reason the rigors of the ‘scientific method’ and ‘peer review’ were invented and continue to be practiced today. Average guys, like aeronautical and mechanical engineers, with access to the internet can come up with lots of amazing ideas - even the profound discovery or two. Unfortunately, one thing they usually can’t do is prove statistical manipulation of the data ( the kind of data that it takes Ph.D’s in related and arcane fields to even interpret or discuss) disputing climate change.

Mr. Chase would like to represent this one small supposedly flawed study from DRI as some sort of ‘smoking gun’, supposedly ‘proving’ once again that since error is possible then the entire concept of human-caused global climate change must come under suspicion. In this case, Mr. Chase is intellectually negligent, having himself engaged in common logical fallacies:

Ad hominem: attacking the person instead of the argument. In this case, attacking editor Mark Robison and DRI.

Appeal to motive: where a premise is dismissed, by calling into question the motives of the proposer. In other words, we can’t trust the scientific consensus regarding climate change since scientific institutions and the scientists themselves might be unduly beholden to the profit motive - throwing out the window any concern for their professional reputations by Mr. Chase’s ‘logic’.

Poisoning the well: We could also characterize Mr. Chase’s argument under this logical fallacy, wherein adverse information about DRI is presented in order to pre-emptively bias everything DRI might have to say about the greater subject of climate change.

 There’s also potential to be found in:

Confirmation bias: Where Mr. Chase chooses to ignore a vast and complex preponderance of statistical data on global climate change in favor of particulars of very limited scope - an auto pollution study in Nevada - in order to confirm what he might or might not believe about global climate change. This is just one reason scientists publish to their peers - so that such obvious biases might be noted and corrected.

The plot thins.

Interestingly, Mr. Chase proposes that American scientists could also be providing inaccurate interpretations of the global data - again, at the risk of their professional reputations - by intentionally suppressing or distorting their own data which the government may or may not wish to be made public. Again, this is why the scientific method is so crucial. It is, over time, self-correcting. Mr. Chase is right to be wary - although I’m queasy about his Eisenhower reference - since it seems that rather than the ‘scientific-technological elite’ holding us hostage, they were the ones held hostage, by an administration bent on protecting private interests (and campaign contributors) in the energy industry at all costs.

The Bush administration attempted just such a lame ploy when it attempted - more than once - to suppress legitimate scientific inquiry into global climate change by leading scientists.

According to The Union of Concerned Scientists, climate change research was indeed distorted and suppressed, not by the military-industrial complex per se, but by the Bush White House itself:

“The George W. Bush administration consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming.1”

Read on, regarding the damning evidence of Bush White House interference by clicking here.

If that wasn’t enough, the Bush administration - apparently on a mission to prove Eisenhower right - suppressed media access to a noted climate change scientist at NASA, Dr. James Hansen, by playing politics and manipulating the NASA Office of Public Affairs.

The Inspector General’s Investigative Summary of this event can be read here.

At the end of the day, I thank Mr. Chase for offering us a grand opportunity to examine how logical fallacies and cognitive bias can crop up in serious scientific inquiry, or even a simple letter to the editor, in addition to the dangers of so-called ‘conservatives’ who would suppress scientific knowledge to serve their corporate masters.

He’s provided a wonderful educational spotlight for us all.

I hope some of my scientifically minded friends will also chime in on this.

-maven