While PNS has raised legitimate issues about the adequacy of scientific institutions and practices in what have become post-normal times, it does not provide an excuse for legitimizing incoherent arguments. The bottom line is that, if PNS is to retain any relevance going forward, it is important to be able to identify cranks and hold them to the same standard as real scientists when evaluating the quality of information. In other words: to be able to distinguish between those with legitimate disagreements and those who don’t accept the consensus either because they don’t understand the science, or for ideological reasons. Boundaries are also important, lest cranks become the evaluators…

Jerry also did not comment on any of the examples I used to illustrate bad faith, which included numerous references, links included. To quote ‘Lucy Skywalker’ (who he cites), apparently “no amount of good references is good enough for someone whose mind is already made up.” I’ll confess that I did not take the time to click through all of Skywalker’s links either, as anyone who evangelizes the plagiarized, misleading and discredited Wegman report to dismiss the hockey stick has simply lost their credibility. She also references Benny Peiser’s “challenge to the legitimacy of [Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming] CAGW’s claim of consensus”, but all three links she provides go to a code “401” non-existent page. Both of these cases were among the detailed examples I elaborated on, and for which some of the key source material can be found only using the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine”, because they are no longer available at their original locations. Could it be that they were taken down out of embarrassment after they were thoroughly debunked?

Instead, Jerry provided more anecdotes and vague assertions, but I will try to briefly respond to his main points, one at a time.

Regarding the “impassioned lecture by John Schellnhuber, detailing his ‘cascade of catastrophes’ as if they were sober predictions based on tested models”:

Without the direct quote from Schellnhuber himself, it is difficult to tell what was actually said and whether or not certainty was implied or overstated. But it is my understanding that, as a general rule, models leave out extreme events because their impacts depend heavily on when and where they happen, and models are simply not good tools for credibly capturing randomly timed and non-linear events. However, I do think it is important that such events be included in scenarios, and that it is important for scientists to make the case that such events are plausible, and are something we should worry about. It is also important to keep in mind that giving a speech is not the same thing as doing science, and that informed opinions of scientists should be welcomed, as long as they are stated as such.

The Meteorological Office statement that snow would become a distant memory is anecdotal, and also irresponsible – if it was actually said. Even with climate change, it still gets cold, and even snows in the winter, perhaps even more so now that there is more moisture in the atmosphere. I did not see a citation for this one. Update: Actually, that is not quite what was said. Steve Bloom provides the background on this in the comments that I am now incorporating into the post:

Regarding the second item (the future of snow in the UK, it was a newspaper quote (in the Independent) of an individual scientist, not by the Met Office as such, and was anticipating conditions in 2020, so regardless it’s a bit early to be criticizing it.

But the 2020 prognosis is almost certainly wrong, although for a very interesting reason. (This is from recent work done by Francis and Vavrus, primarily.)

It is the case that there was a general expectation from the modeling results circa 2000 that climate zones would continue to shift poleward (consequent to expansion of the tropics) and that the already not-too-snowy UK climate would become even less so, especially if we’re talking London and southern England. That was all fair enough given the science of the time, but then polar amplification threw a large and unanticipated monkey wrench into the works in the form of changes in the northern jet stream.

While the climate zones indeed have continued their northward movement, the jet has slowed and increased its amplitude, making it possible for cold weather to set up and persist farther south than would otherwise have been the case. Worse than that for UK winters, a related change is the much-increased tendency for a persistent high to set up around southern Greenland, with a resulting downstream trough tending to channel high-latitude winter weather straight into the UK.

So, while it would appear that those snow-bearing storms won’t largely taper off (i.e. turn to rain) by 2020, none of this reflects poorly on the scientist who made the statement except insofar as he failed to anticipate an unknown unknown that has made things worse.

Lord Robert May could have done better than to simply base his argument on his own position of authority – which may work better in the UK than in the US, but there is deep consensus around Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), if not about the particulars, such as feedbacks and regional impacts. Science can be wrong, but given what is known and accepted by “all but cranks”, it would require extraordinary evidence to overturn that consensus.

Climategate exonerations may not have been universally accepted but I fail to see where they were lacking in candour, as is alleged in the New Scientist. Nor has anyone made a credible case that the scientists involved were not acting in good faith, even if documentation and record keeping practices could be improved in light of unforeseen demands for greater public accountability as climate science moved from the lab to the policy arena.

Sir John Beddington may have made a poor word choice, but we should be grossly intolerant of cranky and deceitful arguments, even if we might have some sympathy for those who make them – it is unsettling to have ones world view challenged. Given that good science tends to do just that, cranky reactions come with the territory. I could even respect the cranks if they made honest arguments and conceded to value differences, in which case I would no longer dismiss them as cranks.

I have looked at the “critical blogs” Jerry suggests, and I am going to admittedly cherry pick, since they also aren’t worth spending much time on. Tallbloke apparently believes a theory has been confirmed that would overturn Einstein’s theory of relativity… (with thanks to MikeH for noting this one in the comments). As I am not a physicist, I am not even going to try to explain arguments about ether.

I should perhaps revisit Judith Curry’s posts on PNS, but I did recently read her paper on Consensus, and it actually pointed me to a few good references. However, while concluding that the “consensus seeking process used by the IPCC has had the unintended consequence of introducing biases into the both the science and related decision-making processes,” nowhere does she provide any examples to make the case that this has actually  happened, or say more specifically why she disagrees with the AGW consensus.

She also writes “consensus among a reference group of experts thus concerned is relevant only if agreement is not sought. If… arrived at by intent, it becomes conspiratorial and irrelevant…”  which is quite a broad statement. As she is quoting someone else (Lehrer), I’m not sure I can call it another one of her unsubstantiated allegations, or whether it implies she really thinks that most climate scientists are part of a global conspiracy.  She concludes from this passage that “with genuinely well-established scientific theories, ‘consensus’ is not discussed and the concept of consensus is arguably irrelevant.”

As I discussed in my paper, consensus is not sufficient because it tends to exclude processes that are not well understood for which there is insufficient information on which to agree, leaving large uncertainties that are not in our favor. However, Curry, like Joe Bast, apparently rejects a consensus approach without saying how policy could otherwise be informed by what science can offer. Should we act on information that does not have broad acceptance by peers? Or just accept Judge Judy’s verdict? Or only act on tacit knowledge that is so broadly accepted that it is not even discussed? That doesn’t seem to be working – as shown by Oreskes (2004) many if not most journal articles on the subject of global climate change accept the AGW consensus implicitly or do not even question it – which suggests that AGW is a genuinely well-established scientific theory that should fall in the category of “accepted by all but cranks.”

Jerry’s statement: “now that we have had some considerable time without continued warming,” is a gross misinterpretation of what the UK Met Office actually said. He may have cherry-picked this statement from the BBC article he linked to: “If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.” But the article also contains this quote from a Met Office spokesman: “this definitely doesn’t mean any cooling – there’s still a long-term trend of warming compared to the 50s, 60s or 70s.” Further clarification can be found on the site of the Met Office itself: “Small year to year fluctuations such as those that we are seeing in the shorter term five year predictions are expected due to natural variability in the climate system, and have no sustained impact on the long term warming.” There is further analysis at Skeptical Science, concisely explained also in this video clip:

Jim Hansen, cited on Judith Curry’s blog, elaborates a bit:

The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the fact that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.

The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.

Curry simply dismisses this as simplistic, based on “GWPF reports on the latest decadal simulation from the UK Met Office, which basically predicts no warming for the next 5 years.” This is because, she has more confidence in UKMO predictions than in “Hansen’s back of the envelope reasoning” – which leads me to wonder if she actually read the UKMO statements themselves. Perhaps she can explain how they differ from Hansen’s statements? Note also that the GWPF, aka, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, is directed by Dr. Benny Peiser – who cannot tell the difference between uncertainty about whether or not global warming is human induced, from uncertainty about possible impacts, or between studies of the climate itself from studies of climate policies, or between uncertainty and lack of consensus! (for more on Peiser see the paper attached to my last post)

Jerry often quotes Angela Wilkinson on the “evangelical science” of global warming, but without context or citations, it is difficult to know what she meant by that. In his paper, Jerry suggests that the leading practitioners of this science “propounded, as a proven fact, Anthropogenic Carbon-based Global Warming” leaving “little room for uncertainty.” Since science doesn’t provide “proof”, and I haven’t actually heard any climate scientists say that, he is going to have to back that one up. It is, of course, common to find evangelizers on all sides of any issue of broad scope – I am reminded of Lucy Skywalker’s “conversion” by Al Gore, which was apparently followed by some sort of reversion, which is more typical of “true believers” than of scientists.

One cannot blame Al Gore for becoming a polarizing figure as a result of a media campaign that set out to make him one! I still think we all missed an opportunity for leadership by someone who gets the complex and systemic nature of global issues, not only on climate change, which I probably first became aware of as a result of his first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s – when there was still time to take early action. Spurred by the oil embargo as well as Three Mile Island, there was even momentum towards renewables. Unfortunately Ronald Reagan was then elected, the solar panels came off of the White House, and a few people I know had to switch careers.

I fail to see the relevance of Jerry’s statement about the “consensus focused on the evils of fat while ignoring those of sugar” – even if I agree with it, from my own experience with the evils of sugar, which I have found it best to avoid for many years.  Climate change science has at least strived to be an integrated science, in spite of the feudal institutional barriers to cross-disciplinary work. I’ll save that rant for another time, but it has come a long way, even if it still has a long way to go with respect to the social sciences. Again, it is important to distinguish the kind of science that has led to unintended consequences, from the kind of science that investigates those consequences, and tends to lead to a questioning of the legitimacy of existing institutions that got us where we are. But both kinds of science are rooted in the same dysfunctional institutions, because that is all we’ve got. In other words, the practice of science is messy. I agree with Willard, that there is no Normal Science “except perhaps when Kuhn studied it at the dawn of the militaro-industrial complex.” The problem is that it still exists in the public image and expectations of science. And beliefs drive human behavior and decision-making…

And with that, I hope I’m done responding to crank arguments, which are a diversion from the critical challenges presented in Jerry’s earlier work, on how science can support a transition to sustainability – which cannot be achieved without addressing climate and also  equity, and which is where I would prefer to focus this blog. I’m happy to continue the conversation with Jerry if we can stick to that.

[Updated, 2-2-2013, 3:35 pm est to incorporate Steve Bloom's comment on the Met Office statement, and to correct a few typos. ]

Letter from Jerry Ravetz:

I have written at great length on ‘climategate’ without convincing Sylvia of my case, or even of my rationality and integrity, so this time I will make only a few brief remarks.   I think that our deepest difference is in our perceptions of the opposed sides in the debate.  She sees a consensus of the established, high-quality scientific community on the one hand, with an assortment of cranks, prostitutes and self-deluders (as myself) on the other.  By contrast, I would argue that one important source of strength and conviction among the opposition has been the perception of bad practice among the mainstream.   For that a very important source is the autobiographical account by ‘Lucy Skywalker’, who describes how she was converted by Al Gore, and then painfully discovered ever more shoddy and tendentious science among the ‘alarmists’ (#1).   I had my own experience of that sort, when I heard an impassioned lecture by John Schellnhuber, detailing his ‘cascade of catastrophes’ as if they were sober predictions based on tested models.  Later I discovered that while not essentially implausible, his scenario was highly speculative.  Also, here in the UK many will recall the assurance by the Meteorological Office that by 2010 winter snow would be a fading memory.  This had direct consequences on policy, for local authorities then cut their budgets for coping with snow, and when severe winters occurred later in the decade, they were underfunded and unprepared.

Over here, again, the idea that leading mainstream scientists have been sober and cautious in their pronouncements is not borne out by experience.  Lord Robert May, in particular, has been a fervent advocate of the cause.  Roger Harrabin has a revealing comment about Bob May (#2) .  As to ‘climategate’ itself, the various commissions that exonerated the CRU scientists have not had a broad acceptance; the very critical words of New Scientist are significant (#3).  If Sylvia wants a sample of intemperate remarks, she could not do better than to read John Beddington’s lecture, where, referring to some unidentified opposition elements, recommends that we should be as ‘grossly intolerant’ of them as of as racialists and homophobes (#4).

I do recommend to Sylvia that she have a look at some of the critical blogs.  In particular I recommend Tallbloke’s Talkshop, where mainstream scientists are welcomed into the technical debate, and Judith Curry’s blog, where philosophical questions are discussed.  From my experience, the only thing that unites the ‘denialists’ is their denial that ‘the science is settled’.  Now that we have had some considerable time without continued warming, and the Met Office has referred to the ill-understood low-frequency effects that might be responsible, it would seem that Bob May was indeed premature in foreclosing further debate (#5).

Making sense of all this is a big job.  One could start with Angela Wilkinson’s description of CRU as ‘evangelical science’, an originally radical message that had its ‘Constantine moment’ around 1995.   Or one might recall that earlier socially responsible science, eugenics.  Just now I am thinking about Nutrition.  In one sense this should be a straightforward natural science.  People need food of the right sort and quantity; why shouldn’t science be able to advise them?  And of course in many ways it does.  But then at the fringes, and sometimes right at the core, there is not merely fashion and fads in the science, but also crankiness and corruption.  For how many decades was the scientific consensus focused on the evils of fat, while ignoring those of sugar?  Such a science is inevitably post-normal; sometimes I wonder whether it is actually ‘wicked’.  Given what we know about the difficulties of ‘climate’ as an object of scientific inquiry, elaborated by Mike Hulme (#6) the analogy would seem to be useful.

The question is then, what is a good person to do?  In pondering on that, I am pondering on the insights of existentialism, achieved in response to the contradictions and tragedies of left-wing politics.  Of course we have to choose our activist cause, but unless we do so with our eyes open we risk being destroyed, politically and ethically. Stalin destroyed Socialism as a noble endeavour, so it is not outlandish to suggest that Al Gore might have done the same to Environmentalism.  Zionism has come a long way from the kibbutzim to the settlers.  Even the U.S.A. ‘conceived in liberty’, enshrined the sub-humanity of Africans into its Constitution with the ‘three-fifths’ rule for the electorate in slave states.  Some would say that these betrayals and contradictions were inherent in the situation as it developed; for others, they could have been avoided.  We can never know who was right, and that includes ourselves.

I know that these issues are particularly difficult and painful in the U.S.A., where climate change has been involved in the vicious culture wars between ‘coastal’ and ‘middle’ America.  But even this is not new.  George Orwell could not find a left-wing publisher for his account of the tragedy of Catalunia.  They didn’t want to disrupt the anti-Fascist movement, and then Stalin did it for them shortly afterwards with the Pact of Molotov and Ribbentrop.  For me, the most important thing to remember is that when science leaves the lab (as in the climate change issue) it becomes political.  Its simplicity is gone, and it then shares all the complexity of politics.  This includes ‘night battles’ where friend and foe are confused, shifting alliances, savage internecine struggles, and sudden changes in the deeper significance of events, so that sincere and self-sacrificing activists are always at risk of being stranded.  When we understand all that, we will be able to cope, and also to retain our love and compassion for those with whom we find ourselves in disagreement.

———————————————————–

1.  “Lucy Skywalker”, Curious Anomalies in Climate Science, http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm)

2. I remember Lord May leaning over and assuring me: “I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over.”

Lord May’s formidable intellect and the power of his personality may have made it hard for others to find a corner from which to dissent. “The debate is over” was a phrase used in order to persuade Tony Blair that policies were needed to tackle the rise in CO2.

Roger Harrabin, Harrabin’s Notes:  Getting the message, 29 May 2010 / BBC News – Science & Environment.

3. Some will argue it is time to leave climategate behind.  But it is difficult to justify the conclusion of Edward Acton, University of East Anglia vice-chancellor, that the CRU ‘has been completely exonerated’.  Openness in sharing data, even with your critics, is a legal requirement.

But what happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done.  Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.

Editorial, New Scientist, 17 July 2010.

4.  Sir John Beddington, FRS, closing remarks to an annual conference of 300 scientific civil servants, 3 February 2011.

John Dwyer and Laura Hood, Beddington goes to war against bad science,

http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_news&template=rr_2col&view=article&articleId=1032320

5. David Shukman, Climate model forecast is revised, BBC News, Science 7 Environment, 8 January 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20947224

6. Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Cambridge U.P. 2009.

Although the concept of Post-Normal Science (PNS) was a major source of inspiration for The Post-Normal Times (PNT), I was as surprised and baffled as anyone else at turns taken by Jerry Ravetz ever since he posted an essay back in February 2010 at the climate “skeptic” blog WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). The essay, which has long since been published as a journal article, appears to accept what has become the “Climategate” myth at face value. It was followed by a workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate, held January 2011 in Lisbon, for which Jerry was the lead organizer. The agenda of that workshop was to discuss points of agreement and disagreement on some scientific issues, such as the Hockey Stick, regarding which there is little if any actual disagreement within the scientific community and which are well supported by peer reviewed literature, but that are often contested from outside of the normal scientific process, following a very different set of rules.

As if all of the above were not confusing enough, there have also been some non-sensical interpretations of PNS, made not only by the Heartland Institute at its 2011 Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC6), which have little to do with the concept as it was defined by Funtowicz and Ravetz in 1991. These essentially blame PNS for the “abandonment of the scientific method” which presumably led to “Climategate.”

Another incident was the Civil Investigative Demand filed by Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, who went so far as to allege that Michael Mann committed fraud because he did not disclose the post-normal nature of climate science in a grant application. That case was ultimately dismissed by the court on a technicality, with prejudice, without ruling on whether this claim might be considered a valid cause of action.

For anyone just tuning in, PNS has come a long way since the term was coined in 1991, and is now recognized even in the journal Nature, where a recent editorial about a workshop in Hamburg states: “Science becomes ‘post-normal’ when facts are uncertain, stakes high, values in dispute and decisions urgent; in such cases, societal needs must be taken into account to avoid costly mistakes.” As I started graduate school in 1993, after having worked at both the National Academy of Sciences and the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, I found that the concept explained a lot with respect to what has been a dysfunctional interface between science and policy, and still does. However, without some common understanding of the term, it could become a meaningless one.

When I started the PNT in 2005, Jerry became an advisor and occasional contributor – and although I have discussed this subject with him, he has not contributed to PNT since he changed course. As for the future, we will just have to see where this discussion goes.

For reasons of practicality, I decided to focus this blog on post-normal “times”, I.e., the context or situations, rather than on what can easily become obtuse discussions of science philosophy that don’t lend themselves very well to the blog format. However, In this very long and long overdue post, I am going to revisit the basic definition of PNS, at least as I understand it, and the role of “extended peer review” as a basis for public participation in science-based decision-making as. In the process, I will address a few questions that were raised in the course of these events, that I refrained from commenting on because I did not have pithy answers:

• Is PNS “tailor made for the denialist crowd because it speaks of science in negative terms”? ( as was suggested by the Policy Lass)  or
• Has PNS simply been hijacked? (as was suggested by Deep Climate).

Adopting Ravetz’ (2006) criteria of “negotiation in good faith” as a basis for evaluating the quality of an extended peer review process, and using illustrative cases, I will then want to address the question of how one can:

• distinguish a “good faith negotiation” from a sham – in the context of science for policy,
• identify cranks, and
• evaluate the quality of scientific information when cranks are at the table.

I had a chance to talk with Jerry and other leading PNS practitioners at another Lisbon workshop held in May 2011 in honor of the retirement of Silvio Funtowicz. I also had an opportunity to ask Joseph Bast, the president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, just what he understands “post-normal science” to be. Since ICCC6 was held in Washington DC last year, and they welcomed bloggers as press, I attended it as a correspondent for The Post Normal Times, free of charge.

While at the conference, I happened to sit next to a very pleasant woman from the Ayn Rand Institute, who gave me a book entitled The Logical Leap – which seemed a fitting description of the entire affair. Although PNS does speak about certain kinds of science in negative terms, my overall argument is that the tale of corruption in climate science, as told by cranks and contrarians of various persuasions, only appears to fit this negative narrative if one takes a flying leap over crucial distinctions between the kinds of science that have led to unintended consequences – in which risks tend to be downplayed, and the kinds of science used to understand and address those consequences. It is also important to consider distinctions between different types of knowledge, uncertainty, and peer review – all distinctions that Jerry himself has observed.

That tale of corruption is only believable because of unrealistic public images and expectations of science, e.g., that it provides “proof”, or that it is some sort of a crystal ball. Although skepticism is inherent in the practice of actual science, for reasons that should be obvious, I also argue that many of those who call themselves “skeptics” are actually cranks and contrarians who are performing something like a parody of science. Missing is the crucial wink/nod to indicate it as such – thereby crossing the line from parody to outright deception (see Nachmanovitch 2009), as the act gets mistaken for the real thing by those least informed, and/or cannot tell the difference. The paradox is that parody only sticks when it has some element of truthiness, which means there are lessons in all of this for the practice of science as it enters the policy arena.

Since I still don’t have pithy answers, and it seemed useful to keep this all in one piece as a reference document, I have posted these reflections as a pdf. In response to comments, I may follow-up with shorter posts on some of the sub-topics. Click here to download.

1-10-2013: Updated to fix broken links.

Apparently expecting the future to be like the past, last week, North Carolina GOP legislators circulated a bill  that begged for and just received the Colbert Report treatment. The bill not only dictates that estimates of sea-level-rise (SLR) are to be based only on historical trends, post 1900, and may not take into account scenarios of accelerated rates of SLR. It also forbids state public entities from making policies based on any estimates not produced by the only state agency authorized by the bill to make them – the NC Division of Coastal Management, which may only do so at the request of the Coastal Resources Commission, using said method. Eli the Rabett sniffed out the back story, with lots of links – with more added in the comments.

The bill, apparently based on the advice of one John Droz, was prepared in response to a report of a state science panel that recommended adoption of a 1 meter (39”) rise in sea level by 2100 for purposes of policy and planning. Droz, a retired real estate developer with a degree in physics, and not a single peer-reviewed publication on climate or any other topic, and science advisor to an NC-20 (an advocacy group representing coastal counties) “says he consulted with 30 sea-level experts, most of them not named”  in his critique of the science panel estimates. Which is not how science works.

As a consequence of this “fight against sea level rise predictions”, if the bill were to pass, state agencies would be unable to plan for and respond to actual sea level rise, even when using federal funds. According to the Charlotte Observer, a $5 million federally/FEMA funded study being carried out by the NC Division of Emergency Management, would only be able to report a projected range of SLR from 3.9 to 15.6 inches rather than 1 meter.

Which will lead to even higher costs as the state attempts to stabilize beaches already eroding as a result of coastal development patterns.

[Long promised and long overdue post revisiting Post-Normal Science in Post-Normal Times, coming soon….]

What actually caught my attention was Perry’s less commented on reference to “man-made global warming” as a “scientific theory that has not been proven” – which is actually correct, because science doesn’t actually prove anything to be true. It can only falsify or disconfirm a hypothesis, and provide “levels of confidence” in its findings. The statement could just be careless and sloppy, or could be a very convenient way to call for postponing action on climate change indefinitely no matter what the science says, without appearing to oppose science or action.

Either way, I’m giving it a fifth Pinocchio because it is either based on, or takes advantage of a general misconception of what science can deliver, not to mention deep anxieties about the future in what have become post-normal times. Therefore it is more deeply misleading than a mere misrepresentation of facts. If there were a more general understanding that uncertainty is part of life, and that science is not a crystal ball, I suspect fewer people would be taken in by the arguments of the “skeptics”, whose arguments tend to hype uncertainties to make the case against taking action in response to human-induced climate change. As well as downplay, ignore or misrepresent multiple lines of evidence that all point in the same direction. The focus of public discourse could then actually be on whether and how to address human-induced climate change rather than whether it is happening.

Acceptance of uncertainty of course leads to many more questions as to: the implications of various kinds of uncertainty for decision-making, stakeholder participation in science-based decisions, and evaluating the quality of scientific information when there are cranks at the table, who are more interested in disrupting the process than in reaching a decision that is in the public interest. And why the double standard for acting with uncertain information when it comes to climate and other environmental sciences? Uncertainty does not seem to stop most people from following medical advice or investing in the stock market. I will come back to all of this in my promised and long-overdue forthcoming post, in which I revisit the basics of post-normal science as context for commenting on the recent conference of the Heartland Institute, and on the puzzling turn taken by Jerry Ravetz. To those who asked me to comment on these – my apologies for the delay – it is a topic that really merits a full article that I have not had the time to write, but I have not dropped it.

After explaining what a normal climate is, Heidi Cullen asks whether there actually is a normal climate at all, given that each of the past three decades has been hotter than the previous one, with 2000-2009 being the hottest on record. But nevertheless, she goes on to refer to the “new normals”, defined as a region’s weather averaged over 30 years, which are updated at the end of each decade. These show that “on average, conditions were about 3.6 F warmer from 2001-2010 than from 1971-1980.” As it will likely take a long time before we actually reach a new normal, it seems like it is time for a new term to characterize this interim period.

Again, Welcome to Post-Normal Times! And note that I am no longer the only one using the term. Since Zia Sardar published his article in the journal Futures, characterizing it as a time of Chaos, Contradictions and Complexity, several others have written rejoinders that generally accept and elaborate on the premise, and on what might be necessary to achieve a new normal.

In a somewhat different context, even Joe Romm says that “these are Post Normal Times” and that we are now in a Post Normal Climate. His post was in response to Cuccinelli’s fishing expedition – i.e., a Civil Investigative Demand from the Attorney General of Virginia, which suggests that Michael Mann might have committed fraud for not disclosing the Post-Normal nature of climate science in a grant application, and conceding to operating in an environment of uncertainty. As if there ever were certainty in anything other than death and taxes, let alone science, and demonstrating that Cuccinelli has either unrealistic expectations of science and/or does not have a clue as to what he is talking about. Nevermind his attempt to criminalize the normal practice of science now pending in a circuit court.

Cuccinelli is not alone is spreading confusion around the concept of Post-Normal Science, at least as I understood the concept when I embraced it. However, I chose Post-Normal Times as the theme for this blog so as to shift the focus from a wonky discussion of science philosophy to the policy context.

This blog has been MIA as controversy has swirled around the concept of Post-Normal Science, beginning with Jerry’s posts last year at WUWT, which gave me a bad case of writer’s block, Judith Curry’s engagement of climate deniers as an extension of the peer review process, and continuing with the recent Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate. The latter has the Policy Lass wondering if PNS is tailor-made for the denialist crowd, and has Deep Climate wondering if the PNS concept has been hijacked altogether. Full-time work over the past two years took the oxygen out of this blog, just as climate deniers are paralyzing the policy process and sucking the oxygen away from finding solutions. I’m still here but comments on PNS and Lisbon etc are going to have to be a separate post, coming next.

Stephen Colbert continues with the climate vs weather theme, in a “science catfight” between meteorologists – aka, TV weathermen, and climatologists. If it doesn’t make any sense thats ok. You can just pick whatever side confirms your beliefs. This is made for TV drama. But in the irony department, note that the American Meteorological Society sides with the 31% of meteorologists who believe that global warming is primarily human induced, as do 90% of climatologists.

It would be interesting to find out more about the differences in educational background and employment of the meteorologists who do and don’t attribute global warming to humans. Perhaps the latter were all students of Bill Gray who are more interested in flying into hurricanes, chasing storms, and reporting directly from their path – which keeps eyeballs glued to the television. It has been awhile since I read it but for more in depth perspective on differences between these two camps, see Chris Mooney’s book, Storm World. Stephen also observed that, the percentage of Americans who trust TV weathermen, about 56%, is roughly the same as the percentage who voted for Al Gore.

Although it never made it to the top of the priority list, I always thought it would be a good idea to provide the concept with more scholarly treatment. On the other hand, the main idea behind the blog was to get such ideas out from behind the paywall ($41.95 for this article if you don’t have access to a good library) (now available here) and see if it might be possible to better illustrate science and policy conundrums from a post-normal science perspective, in more practical terms, in the context of commentary on day to day events which science illuminates, or to which it is applied. The closest I came to providing a formal definition of the concept was probably in the second post, on Unknown knowns and known unknowables, as a time when changes in climate are outside the range of natural variability, which brings us into terra incognita, or Post-Normal Times, and that are leading to greater and greater uncertainty that is found in our lives as much as in science, The post goes on to discuss the social aspects of this uncertainty, raising the question of whether all obtainable scientific information would actually make any difference in policy decisions and in actual practices, and ultimately, with their consequences. An issue that goes well beyond the question of

…whether or not estimates fall inside or outside acceptable margins of error. Use of science to support policy decisions implies also the need to understand the often rapidly changing conditions to which those estimates presumably apply, and therefore, to make judgments not only about the technical quality of information, but also about whether it is even relevant to the questions being asked, and whether the right questions are being asked. Whether outcomes are achieved also raises issues of trust and cooperation, and whether promises are kept. These questions cannot even begin to be answered unless there is some semblance of accountability, as well as agreement about the scope of the problem itself, and visions of the future.

This in not inconsistent with Sardar’s more formal and inclusive characterization of the concept, which also builds on the concept of post-normal science. A few excerpts – but read the whole thing if you can get access to it:

…It’s a time when little out there can be trusted or gives us confidence. The espiritu del tiempo, the spirit of our age, is characterised by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power, upheaval and chaotic behaviour. We live in an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense. Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future. It is a time when all choices seem perilous, likely to lead to ruin, if not entirely over the edge of the abyss. In our time it is possible to dream all dreams of visionary futures but almost impossible to believe we have the capability or commitment to make any of them a reality. We live in a state of flux beset by indecision: what is for the best, which is worse? We are disempowered by the risks, cowed into timidity by fear of the choices we might be inclined or persuaded to contemplate.

In the normal scheme of things, we know where we stand. The winters are cold and the summers are hot, the seasons flow-spring forward, fall back like clockwork – in a natural cycle. The economy grows steadily, at rates varying from sluggishly to dramatic, but guaranteeing a reliable general increase in prosperity and security. Markets work, warts and all, they regulate prices and we have confidence and trust in our financial institutions. Politicians, never the most trustworthy of breeds, acknowledge, and by and large adhere to, accepted principles of behaviour as they legislate effectively to order the affairs of society. When we are faced with a new disease or danger, science and medicine come galloping to our rescue. A global balance of power, with all its imperfections, maintains a semblance of peacable law and order; tin pot dictators, fearing the consequences of their actions, know where to draw the line. We live in coherent and cohesive communities, safe in the knowledge that the futures of our children are secure.

In normal times, when things go wrong, as they so often have, we know what to do. We identify and isolate the problem and apply our physical and intellectual resources to come up with a viable answer. The solid foundations and proven theories of our disciplines, from economics and political science to biological and natural sciences, guide us towards a potential solution. The weight and sheer power of intellectual, academic and political orthodoxy ensures that we successfully ride the tiger of change.

Little of this now holds true. Much of what we have taken as normal, conventional and orthodox just does not work anymore. Indeed, normality itself is revealed to be the root of all our ills. Take the current economic crisis, for example. This provides ample evidence that the old business model on which we have relied for centuries is bust. Not only has free market capitalism become dangerously obsolete but the branch of economics, which provided theoretical justification for this edifice is also intellectually bankrupt [1]. Economic man, the intellectual construct underpinning the edifice, a species once vaunted for his rationality, is extinct [2]. Markets propelled only by the profit motive have become ungovernable, predicated only on personal greed and unconscionable accumulation of unimaginable private wealth concentrated in few hands, Competition and the free flow of capital around the liberalised, deregulated globe is a revolving tale of beggar my neighbor to produce ever cheaper consumer goods that leave more and more ‘rust belt’ communities as de-industrialized wastelands while the realignment of global trade imbalances increases volatility and mutual distrust within and between nations [3].

The world itself is now a far more uncertain place than it was during the second half of the twentieth century. It is not just that our own political system, based on self-regulation and comradely rules of gentleman’s clubs, is irreparably broken; the more politicians legislate, reform and amend the less significant and effective laws seem in achieving or delivering appreciable social benefit the more unintended and undesired consequences appear. The global geopolitical landscape is also changing rapidly. There is hardly a country where politicians, of whatever persuasion, are either trusted or respected. Even the regular cycles of our weather cannot be trusted anymore – thanks to global warming, with its attendant rises in temperatures and sea levels, changing ocean composition and transformed ecosystems.

‘The first decade of the 21st century has been a series of wake up calls’ says an advertisement for IBM. ‘These are system crises – from security, to climate, to food and water, to energy, to financial markets and more’ [4]. What is unique about these crises is that they have occurred simultaneously: ‘we have never seen any era when we have been hit by all these multiple crisis at the one time’, says UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon [5]. It is not just that things are going wrong; they are going wrong spectacularly, on a global scale, and in multiple and concurrent ways. We thus find ourselves in a situation that is far from normal; and have entered the domain of the postnormal.

The concept of ‘postnormal’ was first introduced by Ravetz, the celebrated British philosopher of science, and the Argentinean mathematician Funtowicz [6]. Working on the mathematics of risk, they noticed that the old image of science, where empirical data led to true conclusions and scientific reasoning led to correct policies, was no longer plausible [6]. There was a great deal of uncertainty in scientific work, which together with changes to funding, commercialisation, social concerns about developments in science and the complex issues of safety, all meant that science was no longer functioning in the ‘normal’ way. ‘ Whenever there is a policy issue involving science’, wrote Ravetz and Funtowicz, ‘we discover that facts are uncertain, complexity is the norm, values are in dispute, stakes are high, decisions are urgent and there is a real danger of man-made risks running out of control’ [7]. They described the emerging developments as ‘postnormal science’, which has now become an established field of inquiry.

Much of what Ravetz and Funtowicz said about science in the 1990s is now equally true about other disciplines – indeed, society as a whole. Everything from economics to international relations, markets to products in local shops, politics to dissent has become postnormal. There are very good reasons for this state of affairs. All of them are related to three c’s: complexity, chaos and contradictions – the forces that shape and propel postnormal times….

Another observation, that seems particularly poignant to anyone who has followed the dysfunctional or postnormal discourse on climate science, regards a major obstacle in negotiating our way towards new normal times:

the space, time and willingness to engage in coherent debate has become scarcer, the more complex, contradictory and chaotic things have become….  …there is no natural law that states that activism will should or ought to be, dedicated solely to the common good. Nor is there any rule that they should take a balanced view and think through the risks and benefits of their agenda. Indeed it is in the nature of many of the self-organizing networks that have emerged to confound the times by offering simplistic, single issue, one-dimensional prescriptions and thereby increase the toxicity, animosity and dissatisfaction of society as a whole.

It gives one the feeling we have entered into Dante’s inferno. Although Sardar does not quite suggest that we abandon all hope, the conclusion, that we will need to rely on imagination, creativity and an ethical compass to avoid the conventional patterns of thought and pathologies that got us into this mess, suggests that the way out might entail a similar kind of a journey.

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Update 2: Zia has kindly allowed me to post the full article. As it is still in press, the page numbers are not yet available but it will be Futures 42:5 June 2010. The permanent url, where you will eventually be able to find the correct citation is:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2009.11.028

He may also join the discussion in the near future. In the meantime, we welcome your comments. The question that particularly interests me, is: how science can play a more constructive role in finding our way to a new normal?

Update: The redirections now seem to be working. Figures appear to be missing from older posts – will fix those over the next few weeks.

In addition to being snowed in, I lost power for part of yesterday and most of last weekend, but I have another post on the way. Since I get paid for things other than writing this blog, it may not be until the weekend. In the meantime, an insightful report on weather and climate, from who else but Stephen Colbert.

Update: for more insight on the relationship between the snowstorm and climate see also: Capitol Climate, Jeff Masters/WunderBlog, and Jon Stewart. While no single event proves anything about the climate, the bottom line is, record breaking snowfall we just had in the northeast is what can be expected from record breaking moisture in the atmosphere, which is what can be expected from global warming, which increases evaporation from the oceans.

And welcome to visitors from wattsupwiththat, where Jerry Ravetz posted an essay I only partially agree with. As Jerry has provided much of the inspiration for this blog, and has been an occasional contributor, disagreements with him are not something I take lightly. His post merits discussion and careful comment. I will link to wattsupwiththat in the blogroll when I see arguments there that hold water and have not been refuted. Other than part of Jerry’s essay.