Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Is Climatology Pseudoscience?

11 Comments

Some thoughts from Judith Curry (and indirectly, Gary Taubes).

I think that it’s become pretty clear that regardless of the status of climatology per se, many of its leading practitioners, or at least, most-public proponents, have shown themselves to be pseudoscientists. And specifically, I mean Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and James Hansen among others (not to mention the disgraceful and disgraced Peter Gleick).

11 thoughts on “Is Climatology Pseudoscience?”

    1. How? In the 1920 Bad Nauheim debate between Einstein and Lenard, Lenard never questioned the theory of relativity on scientific grounds, namely, that either there was a mismatch with current observation or that the theory was not falsifiable. According to Wikipedia:

      In the “Bad Nauheim Debate” (1920) between Einstein and Philipp Lenard, the latter stated the following objections: He criticized the lack of “illustrativeness” of relativity, a condition that allegedly can only be met by an aether theory. Einstein responded that the content of “illustrativeness” or “common sense” has changed in time, so it cannot be used as a criterion for the validity of a theory. Lenard also argued, that Einstein reintroduced the aether in general relativity. This was refuted by Hermann Weyl – although Einstein used that expression in 1920, he simply referred to the fact that in general relativity, space possesses properties that influences matter and vice versa. However, no “substance” with a state motion (as the aether in the older sense) exists in general relativity. Lenard also argued, that general relativity admits of the existence of superluminal velocities. For example, in a reference frame in which the Earth is at rest, the distant points of the whole universe are rotating around Earth with superluminal velocities. However, as been pointed out by Weyl, it’s not possible to handle a rotating extended system as a rigid body (neither in special nor in general relativity) – so the signal velocity of an object never exceeds the speed of light. Another issue (that was raised by both Lenard and Gustav Mie) concerns the existence of “fictitious” gravitational fields, which were introduced by Einstein within accelerated frames to guarantee their equivalence to frames in which gravitational fields exist. Lenard and Mie argued, that only forces can exist that are proportional to real existing masses, while the gravitational field in an accelerating frame of reference has no physical meaning, i.e. the relativity principle can only be valid for mass proportional forces. Einstein responded, that based on Mach’s principle one can think of these gravitational fields as induced by the distant masses. In this respect the criticism of Lenard and Mie was partly justified – Mach’s principle is not fulfilled in general relativity, as already mentioned above.

      So to summarize, Lenard’s objections were that the theory didn’t make sense, that it predicted an aether, and that it involved (at the time) the use of auxiliary “fictitious” fields without justification. These are all criticisms of the model that are independent of observation.

      While relativity didn’t have good observational evidence backing it up at the time of the early criticism, it was able to obtain substantial supporting evidence over following decades. So another point to make is that as of 1920, it was not at all unreasonable to question the validity of the general relativity theory.

      According to Wikipedia, Lenard continued to dispute the theory for the rest of his life (he died shortly after the Second World War) and did so in strongly anti-Semitic terms, the theory of relativity was apparently the “Jewish fraud”, for example. This led apparently to his elevation to the post of “Chief of Aryan physics” under Hitler.

      In comparison, current criticism of climatology is based on its tenuous relation to reality. To be blunt, there is roughly 30-40 years of good satellite data, a century and a half of rather questionable ground temperature data, and hundreds of thousands of years of very weak temperature sensitive data. We have extremely poor estimates of solar output past a few decades ago.

      In addition, we have a massive systemic bias among developed world societies and politics towards anthropogenic global warming, including advocating for mitigation measures from such. No such circumstance existed for relativity.

      While there probably is an ideological component to the criticism of anthropogenic global warming, it’s worth noting that the theory has valid problems that aren’t addressed by comparing such criticism to defeated critiques of unrelated scientific debates (especially comparisons to a critic with a particularly notorious bigotry).

    1. Likewise, there is probably an ideological component to the advocacy of anthropogenic global warming…

        1. If Andrew had a coherent rebuttal to Karl’s argument, he would have made it.

          I should have been more respectful towards Karl, he made a reasonable comment, my reply was flippant and I apologize to him.

          As for rebuttal of Karl’s comment, I don’t think there’s too much to argue over, I’d say the debate over AGW theory is about where the debate over relativity was in the late ’30’s

          Lenard continued to dispute the theory for the rest of his life (he died shortly after the Second World War) and did so in strongly anti-Semitic terms, the theory of relativity was apparently the “Jewish fraud”, for example.

          “Jewish fraud” becomes “leftist scam” and the ideological attacks on Einstein then are mirrored by the “pseudoscientists” and other attacks on climate scientists integrity we see now.

          In comparison, current criticism of climatology is based on its tenuous relation to reality. To be blunt, there is roughly 30-40 years of good satellite data, a century and a half of rather questionable ground temperature data, and hundreds of thousands of years of very weak temperature sensitive data.

          Is not something I agree with. The science is sound, it’s the claims beyond the science I’m skeptical of.

          In addition, we have a massive systemic bias among developed world societies and politics towards anthropogenic global warming, including advocating for mitigation measures from such. No such circumstance existed for relativity.

          Is a valid point in itself, but my comment was that “All reminds me of Philipp Lenard’s criticisms of relativity” not “that the arguments supporting AGW theory remind me of the arguments supporting relativity”.

          While there probably is an ideological component to the criticism of anthropogenic global warming, it’s worth noting that the theory has valid problems that aren’t addressed by comparing such criticism to defeated critiques of unrelated scientific debates (especially comparisons to a critic with a particularly notorious bigotry).

          Analogies always have their limitations, arguments over their validity quickly end up with people arguing past each other.

          1. “Jewish fraud” becomes “leftist scam” and the ideological attacks on Einstein then are mirrored by the “pseudoscientists” and other attacks on climate scientists integrity we see now.

            The difference is that in the case of AGW, actual fraud and pseudoscientific behavior has been shown to have occurred.

          2. Analogies always have their limitations, arguments over their validity quickly end up with people arguing past each other.

            Appropriate analogies take much longer to reach that point than inappropriate ones.

            In comparison, current criticism of climatology is based on its tenuous relation to reality. To be blunt, there is roughly 30-40 years of good satellite data, a century and a half of rather questionable ground temperature data, and hundreds of thousands of years of very weak temperature sensitive data.

            Is not something I agree with. The science is sound, it’s the claims beyond the science I’m skeptical of.

            So what is the “science” and what is the “claims beyond science”? My take as above is that there’s a lot of confusion in climatology on that point in large part because of the weakness of the data upon which climate models and predictions are made and the biases of the researchers making those models and predictions.

  3. The difference is that in the case of AGW, actual fraud and pseudoscientific behavior has been shown to have occurred.

    Agreed, actual fraud and pseudoscientific behavior has been perpetrated by AGW denialists today, and Lenard’s excursion into anti-sematism and applying ideology to the way he conducted his science means he practiced pseudoscience at the very least.

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