The original story:
‘Post-normal science’ is perfect for climate demagogues — it isn’t science at all.
James Delingpole
The Spectator
10 March 2010

Summary of the story:
Here are some clips from Mr Delingpole’s artice:

Background:

[It is  widely assumed]…… there must be some truth in this man-made global warming thing — or why else would so many scientists believe in it?

(1) On Karl Popper and the falsification principle

Science is never settled. That’s not how it works. ‘The science’ is no more nor less than a series of hypotheses, none of which lasts any longer than it takes some impertinent, iconoclastic upstart to come along, prove it wrong, and replace it with some fancy new improved hypothesis of his own.

(2) On Thomas Khun and Paradigm Shift

The paradigm is the current, more-or-less universally accepted world-view held by the scientific community. A shift takes place when ‘anomalies’ are niggled away at by a growing body of dissenting scientists, leading to a period of uncertainty and foment (‘crisis’), which in turn leads to the creation of a new paradigm.

In the last decade there has been a paradigm shift over AGW. Or rather there would have been, had not a powerful and unscrupulous cabal in the scientific community refused to allow science to progress in the normal way.

(3) On Jerry Ravetz, Mike Hulme and Post Normal Science

In 1991 a Marxist philosopher called Jerome R. Ravetz had helped to invent a seductive and dangerous new concept called ‘post-normal science’ (PNS). No longer was it considered essential that scientists strive after objectivity….

Post-normal science and the AGW movement were made for one another. No need for any of that tedious objectivity; no need for careful observation or the risk of frustration through falsification. All that mattered now was the quality of the ‘narrative’, the scariness of the future scenarios cooked up by computer models which — as the hockey stick curve demonstrated — could predict for you whatever you wanted them to predict.

Hulme once wrote: ‘The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved… It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change — the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals — to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.’

livingissues comment:

(1) On Karl Popper and the falsification principle

It is true that “science is never settled” and indeed proceeds by offering up theories and hypotheses which stand until they are knocked down. Popper’s idea was that an idea only had meaning and a proposition could only be a statement of fact if it was capable of being proved wrong. Delingpole misjudges the statements of climate scientists if he supposes that they suppose they are not in principle capable of being proved wrong. 

(2) On Thomas Khun and Paradigm Shift

It is true that Khun advanced an important idea about how science is done, namely that  its theories tend to operate under a series of over-arching rationales which tend to become rather well-embedded, though are usually – if wrong – shifted in the end. Over time, all sorts of evidence accretes which cracks the shell of certainty (see how tectonic plate theory took time to get a grip as a good example).

Actually climate change science at heart makes quite simple, quite small assumptions about very large processes. That’s to say, that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere tends to warm the planet. It then – quite seperately – says that such warming can now be observed. And then (less certainly) it says that various current climate effects can be attributed to these processes. And then it suggests where the warming may lead us.  The big “paradigm” here is about physics and chemistry, and no-one is yet saying that the existing paradigms in those fields are very likely to be wrong. New theories and ideas and evidence may come along and quite easily shift our understanding of climate change without any paradigms standing in the way.

(3) On Jerry Ravetz, Mike Hulme and Post Normal Science

Post Normal Science may or not be a typically modern or post modern piece of windy talk. Insofar as it makes sense, Mike Hulme (who is something of a fan of Post Normal Science) actually insists that both sides of the argument ought to understand it better. Hulme, using Post Normal Science thinking in a way which ought to appeal to Delingpole, says that scientists often have cultural prejudices which influence their work; ought to understand how forceful their prejudices are; ought to understand that they are often asked to answer questions which are really political; and are seldom good at spotting all sorts of complexities and uncertainties in their thinking.

But all these apply as much to scientists who hate the conventional climate change science consensus as to those who promote it.

Here is a useful way into Hulme’s thinking:

We need this perspective of post-normal science if we are going to make sense of books such as Singer and Avery’s [staunch climate sceptics]. Or indeed, if we are to make sense of polar opposites such as James Lovelock’s [a staunch climate alarmist] recent contribution The Revenge of Gaia, in which he extends climate science to reach the conclusion that the collapse of civilisation is no more than a couple of generations away.

The original story:
“Trudie Styler: Saving the world one jet at a time”
Marina Hyde
The Guardian
15 May 2009

Summary of the story:
Ms Hyde is making something of a profession discussing the absurdity of celebrity conscience and here’s a good installment in the saga. It’s a tale of extravagant flying in jets and helicopters by a woman with lots of homes and a mission to save the planet.

livingissues comment:
Ms Tyler responded to the piece with an interesting assessment of the trade-offs to be made. Every square mile of rainforest that’s saved, saves a good deal of greenhouse gas and so a bit of jet fuel to save a lot of forest is a good deal.

I have no idea how much rainforest Trudie Styler has saved and how much her flying was indispensable to her saving it.

In principle, she could be right. Similarly, the airmiles of a person like Sir Nicholas Stern might well be worth it, if what he achieves needs face-to-face contact.

In her response, she mentioned her part in the campaign against Chevron and its supposed involvement in destroying Ecuador’s wildernesses. It happens the Economist had a little piece on the background to this saga and it’s well worth a look. One way of looking at things is to say that the Ecuadorian government squandered its own assets and it’s far from sure that any US company has much to blame itself for.

The original story:
“Wall Street slow to see zeitgeist”
Chrystia Freeland
Financial Times
3 April 2009

Summary of the story:
Chrystia Freeland’s piece discusses the public anger about failures in Wall Street and The City. Here is a key passage:

The technorati and the punditocracy have tended to characterise public anger provoked by the crisis with the lazy shorthand of “populist rage”.

This week’s robust mass manifestation of that discontent in London will have strengthened that perception. But the truth is that the people’s disgruntlement is far more focused than that dismissive tag would suggest. Even those London crowds – and remember, these were people animated by the passions of a public demonstration, not participants in an Oxford Union debate – targeted the windows of Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the big public welfare recipients, rather than the hedge funds of nearby Mayfair.

livingissues comment:

Chrystia Freeland seems irritated that Wall Street people dismiss as “populism” the anger about the hiatus in capitalism. Fair do’s: one imagines that there are elite, educated, thoughtful people who are angry with the generation of capitalists who have so failed their customers, employees and firms. Certainly, it’s not just mob folly to dislike what’s been going on.

But Ms Freeland’s analysis seems to emphasise the wrong things. Here are a few:

(1) The street protest against the G-20 was mostly old-style anti-capitalism of the sort we’ve heard for a decade or more. This anger is always directed at whatever capitalist target looks the most unpopular at the time.

(2) This wasn’t “popular protest” by “The People”. Not many taxpayers (all of them) with money in RBS would think it clever to add to the bank’s problems by breaking the firm’s windows.

(3) The really interesting thing about the mass media response to the financial chaos we are living through is how little of it is anti-capitalist. There seems to be a quite a lot of tacit understanding that capitalism hasn’t failed us, we have failed capitalism.

(4) It is very interesting how much interesting discussion there is now about what sort of controls are needed on capitalism as we rebuild the system. The good thing is that there is a lot of sensible discussion about how too much new regulation would be as dangerous as too little.

(5) The important thing is that Chrystia Freeland seems quite wrong to say that the G20 leaders have much to learn from the protestors. They are already being quite thoughtful and have plenty of more interesting voices to take account of.

The original story:
UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school
Amos Harel
Haaretz
3 February, 2009

Summary of the story:

Haaretz’s reporter began his story:

The United Nations has reversed its stance on one of the most contentious and bloody incidents of the recent Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, saying that an IDF mortar strike that killed 43 people on January 6 did not hit one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools after all.

livingissues comment:
[This is slightly amended from earlier versions of this blog - apologies, RDN 14.45hrs, 4 February 2009.]

Haaretz’s story mostly checks out at a site referred to by the UN as an official source, ReliefWeb. See their story here. The story is buried by the UN low down in a document, without headline or signposting. So it looks like multiple apologies are in order.

The British media pushed out powerful elements of the original untruths with a great deal of emphasis, and presumably they believed that such allegations if true would do real hard to Israel’s reputation. Using that logic the British media ought to put the record straight – and with a great deal of emphasis.

Of course, the 43 dead remain dead and their families’ grief won’t be diminished by this “news”. Nor, perhaps, their sense of grievance.

It is worth noting that early reports of the incident on 6 January 2009 were often headlined in terms of an attack on a school (for instance, the Independent‘s). But the stories themselves (including the Independent‘s) often then noted that the shells fell outside the school. It was then often left ambiguous as to whether the fatalities and casualties from those shells were inside or outside the school.

Some accounts did report at least one UN official saying that the shells were outside the school and that there were no fatalities (but some casualties) inside it as a result. Indeed, the UNRWA seems to have got itself into a muddle and reversed its account quite early on. So the latest UN account confirms what some said, and corrects others. Namely, that the shells definitely landed outside the school, killing no-one.

One is now looking forward to evidence on the two other main allegations against the Israeli military and its New Year operations in Gaza: that they used phosphorus and “herded” a group of civilians into a building and then shelled it and them.

The original story:
“This is indeed a class war, and the campaign against the Aga starts here”
George Monbiot
The Guardian
14 January 2009

Summary of the stories:
George Monbiot’s column criticises middle class consumption habits and asserts that the climate damage they will cause will mostly afflict poorer people. He cites the Aga (an expensive cooker and room-heater). But he also takes on the “no frills” flying revolution. He quotes authoritative data that whilst all classes are flying more than they used to, there hasn’t been much change in the share of flying done by the well-off.

GM also looks at the class warfare aspect of the argument over climate change and notes that the Marxists at spikedonline seem to be caught in a paradox as they defend the rights of middle class people to damage poor people.

livingissues comment:
George Monbiot is surely right that the better-off do much more climate damage than poor people (and he might have stressed the degree to which most damage by well-off people is discretionary whilst much of the damage done by poor people is unavoidable).

However, whilst it is popularly believed that the main effect of low-cost flying was to unleash a working-class flight to the sun, in fact almost everyone in all classes is doing more flying. It really ought not to be a surprise that the proportion of poor and rich people flying has not much changed.

The data GM seems to be using says that about 60 percent of leisure flying is done by people earning over £46,000. About 40 percent is done by those earning less. This may not be hugely just, but it is not very surprising.

Interestingly, the data also suggests that much of the increase in flying is amongst people travelling on business, and it seems that the big increase here is amongst the less well-off passengers.

GM is right that spiked online are vigorous – and seemingly paradoxical – in defending the freedoms of consumers (rich or poor) against the anxious nay-saying of the environmentalists. But he perhaps overlooks the value of spiked online as squib-merchants. Besides, spiked and others are surely on the money when they argue that environmentalism is in large degree an argument between affluent greens and affluent consumers, and that these are often really the same type of person and even the self-same person.

But then much protest has a middle class accent. Does now, allways has. See here for a wonderful video about a charming protest at Heathrow.

The original story:
“Legal move to crack down on climate protesters”
Afua Hirsch and John Vidal
The Guardian
18 December 2008

Summary of the stories:
The Guardian has got wind of moves by the UK government’s Attorney General to challenge the legal loophole” (“lawful excuse”) whereby people charged with criminal damage can assert that their admitted acts were damaging but not criminal because they were designed to avoid a greater damage. Thus, you can kick down the door of a neighbour’s house if it is on fire. Likewise, lawyers are arguing with great success, that protesters are invading military airfields, trashing trials of genetically modified crops and damaging power station chimneys so as to head off the greater damage of war or environmental damage. Judges and juries have mostly accepted the argument.

livingissues comment:
There is great merit in protest but there need to be limits especially when the protest is against activity which has been thoroughly debated and democratically agreed. There is no obvious parity between the modern use of the “lawful excuse” argument and the circumstances which originally spawned it.

The difficulty looks like being this: there is a superficial attractiveness in the “lawful excuse” argument and confronting it will perhaps require a deliberate change in the law. The A-G may lose his appeal to a higher court. That would only leave a Parliamentary decision – an overt display of will by the government which might be unpopular.

The original stories:
Hot Debate
Financial Times Climate Change series
FT.com
3 December 2008

Summary of the stories:
The FT has been running a magazine series (available online) on the science, politics and business of climate change. It mostly re-iterates the “Something Urgent Must Be Done” school of analysis.

In one very interesting panel debate (“The Hot Debate”, in print and in audio), the more sceptical voice of David Henderson was heard. He argues that the effects of climate change and the costs and effectiveness of doing anything about it are much less known than is often supposed. It follows, he says, that we need to be careful of incuring too much cost to “solve” the problem. But that was not the tone of many of the stories in the series.

livingissues comment:
Nearly all mainstream voices now insist they care about climate change and accept that urgent action is needed to deal with it. Fans of action sometimes say it will not be very expensive to deal with it and that government investment in low energy technology could be an ideal boost in a recession. Lord Stern is famously in this position (as you can see from the FT’s survey). 

It is worth noting that some very vocal radical and environmentalist critics say that the scale of action will have to be enormous or it may be completely useless. (George Monbiot is in this position.)

Politically, this is the real crunch. There is no sign that the voters of the rich or poor worlds will tolerate much dent in their economic prospects to deal with this problem. It is very unclear that the timid policy they will tolerate will make much difference to the problem. So we may well not avoid the “tipping points” the “alarmist” “catastrophists” may be quite right in identifying. 

None of this sort of analysis emerged in the worthy FT series. 

The original story:
Not guilty: the Greenpeace activists who used climate change as a legal defence
John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian, 
11 September 2008

The story in brief
Six Greenpeace activists have been cleared of causing criminal damage during protest over coal-fired power. The activists were charged with causing £30,000 of damage after they scaled Kingsnorth power station in Hoo, Kent.

One of the cleared activists described the verdict as “a tipping point for the climate change movement”.

He said: “When 12 normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet then where does that leave government energy policy?”

This, as the Guardian usefully points out, follows a spate of other such cases in which activists  - with diverse causes – were cleared of what would normally be classified as illegal acts.

livingissues comment:
Nobody wants to take away the right of defendants to claim that an illegal act had a lawful excuse. However the question is, is that right and the interpretation of what constitutes a lawful cause being abused? There is a strong argument to be made that is precisely what is happening. Take the latest case of the six Greenpeace protesters.

They caused damage worth £30 000.  Their aim, they said, was to prevent damaging emissions that cause global warming. The plant’s owner claimed lives were put at risk, and there was no dispute between the parties that costly damage was caused to a chimney stack.  In normal circumstances a guilty verdict was inevitable.  The sentence might well have – and should have – reflected that the protesters were not mindless vandals and had no real criminal intent in the normal sense of the term.

In contrast, the logical consequence of this verdict is that other protesters can take the law into their own hands with relative impunity to occupy, disrupt and damage any facility that legally emits global warming gases. That represents a challenge to democracy. It is an outcome that must be interrogated closely.

If, as the protesters claimed, they were saving the planet and that this one coal-fired power station alone threatened the existence of 400 species, then they should be able to persuade the public to force lawmakers to change the law. But their protest suggests that they are not so confident of their arguments.  Otherwise why take the law into their own hands? In the words of the coal-fired spokesperson: “That’s a debate that shouldn’t be taking place at the top of a chimney stack.” Moreover, it is not for juries to help protesters circumvent the democratic process.  

Given the frequency of such cases there is a case to had for strengthening and clarifying the legal definition of what constitutes a lawful cause to break the law.

The original stories:
England to be most crowded in Europe
“The population of England will increase by a third over the next 50 years as it becomes the most crowded major nation in Europe, official forecasts suggest.”
by Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Editor
The Daily Telegraph
6 May 2008

Race chief wants integration push
BBC Online
3 April 2004

80 million Britons, and no one you can trust…
“A future I’m glad to miss….”
By Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail
30 August 2008

Summary of the stories:
Britain will overtake Germany and France to become the most populated major country in the EU in 50 years’ time with 77 million residents, according Eurostat, the statistical service of the European commission. Naturally, as our stories show, there is a mixed response.

livingissues comment:
Just to focus on economic well-being, there is no correlation between population density and standard of living. Chad, Sudan and Botswana have extremely low population densities and a very low standard of living (though Bostwana’s is improving). Australia has a low population density but a high standard of living. The Netherlands is densely populated and has a high standard of living. Bangladesh has a high population density, and a low living standard.

So the preference Malthus seemed to show for a small population receives very mixed support from history.

The experience in the UK has been consistent in the anti-Malthus direction. For hundreds of years as the population has grown so has the standard of living.

However, eighty percent of the UK’s population increase between now and 2060 is predicted to be from direct or indirect immigration and economics hasn’t been the real controversy, at least until recently. The cultural integrity of the UK has seemed to matter more as an anxiety (for those who were worried at all).

There is intense argument as to whether the UK has mishandled the integration of existing immigrants. Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality and an impeccable liberal has labeled multiculturalism a disaster which had caused racial isolation. He has called for it to be scrapped. Ken Livingstone, the former Labour mayor of London, strongly disagreed, and cited London as a rainbow triumph.

Of course “multiculturalism” is a weird word: it can mean a “melting pot” culture, or the right of each of us to indulge in “identity politics”.

For sure, without social integration based on a common identity, tensions and conflict among competing communities – particularly between new and old ones – are costly. The few British-born Muslims planting bombs on our streets in protest at western values are but an extreme manifestation of the threats posed (even if an unrepresentative one even among Muslims).

It would appear logical that unless there is social integration more immigration will pose more of the problems that Trevor Phillips fears multiculturalism has caused (social breakdown in inner cities etc.). His solution – which appears sensible – calls for integration, common values and identity. British Muslims, should be viewed and see themselves as British, he believes, just as Jews are and do.

There might be cause to regret the extent and failures of past immigration policies. But we have to accept that the UK population will grow still further until 2060. More workers, a larger market and influx of educated trained talent could be a major bonus for the UK. But it would be a tragedy not to learn the lessons of past mistakes and then to repeat them on an even greater scale.

The original stories:
Climate change catastrophe by degrees

Summary of the story:
The press widely reported and discussed the views of Bob Watson, the environment department’s chief scientific adviser and a veteran campaigner for action on climate change. His fresh message was that whilst it is important to fight for “mitigation” (that is, avoidance) of man-made climate change, we need to prepare for “adaptation” to quite severe change. In particular, we should fight to try to limit climate change to a 2 degree warming (over pre-industrial norms), but we should prepare for 4 degrees of change.   

livingissues comment:
There is very little official recognition that it is unlikely that climate change policy will be sufficiently rigorous to make a big difference. Indeed, one could argue that there is chronic denial – even dishonesty – from politicians and officials. After all, they routinely discuss their policy suggestions as though they will (a) happen and (b) “save the planet”.

It is interesting that Mark Lynas’ piece in response discusses how we “must” hold the line at 2 degrees, and even aim for zero emissions by 2050 and carbon-mopping up thereafter.

It seems far more likely that at least for a generation or so, we have to face that climate change will not be hugely dented by mitigation policies (unless energy shortages force massive uncertainty and price increases). So we’ll be adapting, not mitigating. It may not want to admit it, but DEFRA seems to be getting the message.