No Se Nada

If you'll excuse my quiet few days (traveling and without a real computer), I'll get back to the Hansen bidness.

The reason I got into this blogging business in the first place is to throw ideas out there, hear other ones, reform my own based on new information, reject the new information when appropriate, etc. I'm not the kind of guy to get defensive when being told I'm wrong (I actually kind of like it). I'm not the kind of person who falls on my own sword rather than say 'I was wrong,' as I consider correction to be part of learning.

But that's not going to happen here, because although I appreciate the dialogue, I think you're all wrong on James Hansen.

First though, I need to say that attempting to silence Hansen, as reported by Revkin is in nobody's interest. I agree fully with this comment and this letter and nothing further need be said here.

So let's focus on the SciAm blog post that highlighted my thoughts on Hansen. John Rennie takes me to task a bit for being critical about Hansen throwing a related-but-irrelevant political passage in a science release:

Roger Pielke, Jr., frequently makes this point over at his Prometheusblog and in his other writings, and argues that scientists should therefore avoid making political pronouncements. I broadly agree with that principle.

And yet, periodically there are reminders that this seemingly sound advice can be pushed too far, with consequences that are frankly against the best interests of both science and society. Two stories in today's newspapers about global warming hammered home that point, which I'd already been mulling because of some recent postings on the No Se Nada blog.

Hereand here, Kevin Vranes has been faulting climate researcher James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, for issuing a press release that included this passage:

"Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations. The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions."

To Vranes, Hansen stepped over the line by saying that the findings lent "urgency" to those discussions, because he was thereby promoting a policy response to the observed warming ("slow greenhouse gas emissions"). But in my opinion, this is a ridiculous criticism--Vranes is setting the bar for acceptable statements by scientists much too high.

Wait a second, John! Roger and I aren't at odds here and I'm not saying that Hansen should stay out of policy. Hell, I did an oceanography/climatology Ph.D. and went straight into policy and now am back in academia doing both, so I'll be the last one telling scientists to stick to the science.

What I am saying is that Hansen needs to lay off the political policy statements in his science releases. And I don't string together "political policy statements" accidentally here, as Hansen is politicizing a policy option. Be a scientist AND tell decision makers about policy options, fine. But as soon as Hansen says, "The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions," he is guilty of limiting policy options based on his preferences. Here he is advocating slowing GHG emissions, which is certainly only one of many policy options that could be developed in response to unnaturally high atmospheric temperatures. But clearly Hansen is picking and advocating one response - and thus choosing winners and losers - in the midst of trying to be an honest broker of science information. For me, Hansen diminishes his credibility in being an honest broker of the science if he engages in a policy-limiting exercise in the midst of a scientific discussion.

More from Rennie:

Hansen didn't call for slash-CO2-at-all-costs measures. He didn't stump for the Kyoto protocol. He didn't dismiss suggestions to plant new forests or fertilize the oceans to increase the rates at which CO2 might be pulled out of the atmosphere. He didn't say that reducing CO2 levels should take priority over reducing methane. He didn't argue against a strategy of remediating damage from climate change rather than preventing it. He didn't blame the Bush administration or the U.S. for not doing more to engage constructively with the climate change problem.

You're making my point for me. If he would have done all those things - - expanded the options available instead of limiting them - - I would have much less problem with his statement. Although I will say that I would still have a problem with it, as I will continue to hold that Hansen should write about pure scientific results independently of writings on mitigation options. I don't care if two articles on the two subjects appear side-by-side in the same issue of the USA Today, as long as Hansen makes it a point to separate his science from his policy advocacy. Every time he advocates a limited set of policy options simultaneously with presenting research results, it taints his research results as being presented in support of his policy views.

(Hansen, by the way, wrote a terrifically comprehensive article for SciAm on the evidence for global warming and what can be done about it: "Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb," March 2004. And I'm not arguing that Hansen hasn't ever made overly political public statements. But the sentence in this press release surely isn't one of them.)

Finally, at the risk of bringing in an issue far too tangential to the current debate, but doing so because I think it is relevant, Scientific American, as much as I love it, is the magazine that printed a product placement piece masquerading as a legit science article in the June 2002 issue by the chairman of IllyCaffe. In "The Complexity of Coffee," written by Dr. Ernesto Illy, the author mentions his own coffee company three times:

"Premium producers, such as illycaffè, based in Trieste, Italy, use many sophisticated process-control techniques..."

"At illycaffè, a dichromatic sorting system developed..."

"In the laboratories of illycaffè, technicians focus on..."

which I conflate with being shown ads before a movie for which I paid $10 for, and then watching egregious promotions of the same product throughout the movie. [Bolds added by me.] Hollywood has one standard, but SciAm should have another. Is this relevant? Well, yes. Without intending in any way to question Rennie's or Hansen's integrity, when Rennie highlights Hansen's writings for the magazine in the context of this debate, I can't help but wonder what the behind-the-scenes angle is and if there's any non-transparent comings and goings as clearly existed with the Illy article (which I read with great interest, FWIW I, and my family happily drinks Illy coffee, FWIW II).

In other words, if SciAm has been willing in the past to let a CEO of a corporation write an article about his own product, how can it be trusted to provide fully honest information on other subjects? Again, I am honestly not going after John Rennie's integrity here or suggesting any untowardness with their carriage of Hansen's article, but I am saying that with the Illy article, to me SciAm has proven itself willing to stretch the bounds of conflict of interest.