That’s a disappointing idea. It acknowledges that empirical rigor can be sacrificed for advocate ends. And further, it suggests that such a trade is necessary to achieve those advocate ends. Is climate science, cold, stoic, and without a bit of advocacy, actually insufficient to reach those ends? Said another way, doesn’t that mean that the advocate is exceeding the empirically-based truth?

I have a problem when people exceed empirically-based truth. The reason I am motivated to do climate policy is because I recognize that the empirically-based evidence compels action. The action is only justified because it is empirically based. If empirical evidence has no meaning–if it can be exceeded or discarded because we want to–we should have a toast for the last four centuries of mistaken belief. Maybe we could do it on a nice beach and watch the sea rise as we helplessly accept our fate, having thrown away the only tools we have to stop it.

Its like tearing off a ship’s rudder to hoist it like a sail. Cool, you’re moving faster now, but just adrift, subject to the whims of the wind. Empiricism says you must have the rudder at all times, even if it slows you down, because ultimately that steering is the only thing letting you control your direction, i.e., keeping you from being a climate skeptic. Remember why you got in the climate ship in the first place (empirical evidence), and ask whether you would have bothered if you knew it was just one of many rudderless ships adrift at sea, indistinguishable its submission to arbitrary local winds.

Now, no one suggests that we tear off the whole rudder, or abandon all pretense of empirical thought. George Hoberg and Bill McKibben just suggesting it’s okay to exceed the empirical evidence from time to time. But where do you draw the line? That’s not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know. I recognize that you probably _can_ exceed the evidence to spur people into action without wholesale setting yourself adrift. I just wonder how you can do so safely. How do you leash yourself to a foundation of empirical rationality while allowing any deliberate (as opposed to the inherent subjectivity scientists strive to minimize) deviation from it, even for a bit? How can you be sure 10 years from now you won’t find yourself astonishingly far from that empirical foundation, similar to the the inscrutable, fact-choosing skeptic you battle today?

Did any anyone get in the boat because he or she heard a report that they knew wasn’t based on empirical evidence? I’d wager no. No one is persuaded by the purposeful fact choosing of another, at least insofar as they are educated. So we all understand that we wouldn’t be climate advocates, analysts, or skeptics if we did not feel there was a rational/empirical basis for our position. No one is satisfied with just making stuff up and believing in it. So how can there be any leeway with presenting empirical evidence, which is fact choosing? Advocacy is fact choosing for another. I grant that given the amounts of empirical evidence and the difficulty in analyzing it there will always be a filter on information. Scientists will always have to make value choices but we should lament that, not celebrate it.

I think the empirical case for climate change is strong enough that we don’t need to sex it up. I understand the urge to do so, but know that credibility is what got us all here, and if we start trading it in for advocacy ends we lose the ability to discern truth–something more threatening to me than even climate change. What are you saving your credibility for? So that the next generation can discern truth as I have been able to.

2) You quote Hansen as claiming that the pipeline represents a “carbon bomb”. Not so small problem: the link from your quote does not contain the phrase. Now, a quick search confirms that Hansen has called the pipeline the *fuse* to a large carbon bomb. Conclusion: you distorted Hansen’s words to fit your exaggerated distinction between analysts and advocates, whereas Hansen’s actual metaphor is more thoughtful than you give him credit for, and deftly combines the analytic and activist sides you are at pains to separate.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Evans_(Australian_skeptic)

http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/the_australians_war_on_science_16.php

If you seriously wish to understand the logic, read David Evans (if his link doesn’t work you can find it on google). Read Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog (though it took me a year of hard work to understand the issues). Read The Hockey Stick Illusion. Read the climategate emails.

You should also be aware that one of the reasons for the growth of skepticism is the tendency of some academics to start behaving like political activists.

If it was an issue the politicians took seriously, the solution would be a worldwide independent push for nuclear power. But instead, international negotiations get hung up on how the developing world is not required to take any action, and how much the richer counties are to pay the poorer ones. If you was cynical, you might suspect that was the main point. Byrd-Hagel: it’s been the policy of every US government since ’97, left or right.

Climate sceptics are easy to understand. They’re the ones who think comments like “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” aren’t very scientific. Neither is “What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have.” Others disagree, of course, and I do understand why, but beyond that we get into complicated technical arguments for which most people have to trust the experts. They simply disagree on which people are really experts.