Pat Michaels theorises climate conspiracies, at Judith Curry's place

Judith Curry has posted an article by Patrick J. Michaels from the Cato Institute (archived here).  He is wearing his conspiratorial tendencies on his sleeve, and wants Donald Trump to prevent the publication of a report mandated by the US 1990 Global Change Research Act, the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4). The chapter headings of the new report are listed here.

Pat describes his conspiracy theory in the second paragraph, where he believes that US civil servants "portray global warming as alarming" for money. He wrote:

The Assessment Report will be produced by civil servants in the federal government (mainly unfireable GS15’s reporting to Obama Administration bosses), many of whom handle large amounts of climate research money. It has always been in their interest to portray global warming as alarming, and therefore in need of even more federal research dollars.

I call this projection. Would Pat Michaels retain his own job for the Cato Institute if he started to write about climate science in an objective, factual manner? It seems to me he managed to get a job with them because he was a science disinformer.

Pat also made a claim that the 2000 report "used climate models that performed worse than a table of random numbers when simulating simple ten year running averages of coterminous U.S. temperatures". Two things here. Pat provides no evidence of his claim. No link to his analysis, nothing. Secondly, Pat seems to have taken no notice of the response to his complaint about his "favored" test, which is likely what he was referring to (my bold):

Thus, the analyses indicate that the test favored by Dr. Michaels, when applied in a manner consistent with the intended use of the model results (that is to look at long-term trends), does indicate that the models pass the test. By contrast, the failure of the models to pass the test as formulated by Dr. Michaels is a result of a fundamental misunderstanding on his part of how the models were to be used -- namely to provide plausible scenarios for how the long-term climate might change rather than predictions of how the climate is expected to change over the next decade or two.

Pat's bias is shown here, too, when he decides that a report provided as a key deliverable to President Obama's Climate Action Plan must be "political", not scientific. Again, he provides no evidence that the science was biased. Unsubstantiated innuendo is a favourite tactic of disinformers.

Pat is claiming that the next report "promises to be as bad or worse than its predecessors unless the Trump Administration intervenes." He doesn't say why he thinks either this next one or previous ones were "bad". Instead he explains that the report preparation is an interagency effort, involving 13 federal agencies. He mentions the number of authors and scientists involved in the previous report, as if he thinks that's a bad thing.

Deniers are scared of change and scared of being scared

The root of his complaint appears to be that climate change is "scary". Pat is probably scared of being scared. He wrote:

It featured this scary introduction: “Evidence of climate change appears in every region and impacts are visible in every state. Explore how climate is already affecting and will continue to affect your region.”

You'll notice that nowhere in the two sentences he quoted is there a scare to be seen. That is, not unless the mere thought of change is "scary".

Unsubstantiated claims

According to Pat, climate change impacts in the USA are "small" and "largely beneficial". He further claims that bad weather "is not climate change". He doesn't want to think about extreme weather which is an outcome of climate change, he only wants to push the meme of "CO2 is plant food". Like most disinformers, Pat makes sweeping statements that he doesn't back up with any evidence.

Forget risk mitigation

Interestingly, and not surprisingly for someone who is scared of change, and particularly scared of being scared, Pat quote-mines from the National Climate Assessment website. Here is the passage he quotes from, with his quote in italics:

It will be especially critical for authors to consider low-probability, high-consequence, climate futures, as these “fat tail” outcomes will often pose the greatest risks and thus must be considered in any comprehensive risk assessment. Therefore, in framing their findings, authors should not only ask themselves, “What is most likely to happen?” (e.g., with future climate, given assumptions about RCPs), but also “How bad could things get?” (e.g., as a result of uncertainty in climate sensitivity and the climate system response), and assess the degree to which the available literature addresses both.

It's obvious that Pat Michaels is not an actuary, and wants to ignore the risks to the American public. He added this comment to his quote-mine, as if to emphasise just how scared he is of climate change: "Thus the National Assessment promises to be nothing but a big book of scares."

Replacing scientific experts with deniers?

Then Pat points out that Donald Trump has been lax in making appointments to key positions, specifically that of the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. (There were calls for this starting way back in February.) Pat believes that climate scientist David Reidmiller, who has solid experience in climate policy, is a "profoundly bad fit with Trump's administration".  I can understand his concern. With Donald Trump and his key appointees rejecting climate science outright, they wouldn't want a knowledgeable person being in charge of the preparation of a climate report.

I have no problem with Pat Michaels calling for a "hard look" at the draft report. The more robust it is, the better. Pat wrote:

The Draft NCA4 chapters are about to go out to agencies for review. Here the Trump people are in charge and they need make the National Assessment realistic and in line with the best and newest data. EPA in particular should take a hard look at these draft chapters, since risk assessment is a big part of their mission.

The main difficulty the EPA will probably have is the lack of resources, and the disdain the head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has for anything science.

Red team blue team vs peer review

While Pat Michaels' preferred position seems to be no report, Judith Curry argues the opposite. Both she and Pat Michaels are pushing for a "red team blue team".

I've looked up this "red team blue team" process. It derives from military strategy. The proposed application to climate science is perplexing. It could be a useful tool to help develop climate policy, but seems not that useful for climate science.

The way it works is for one group of experts, the red team, to "attack" something, while an opposing group, the blue team, "defends" it.

Science already has built in processes for testing hypotheses and reviewing itself. It's called "peer review". It works by having scientists do research, publish it, and having it available for other experts to confirm, reject or build upon and enhance. That's how the body of knowledge about climate science has been built up today.

Red team tactics so far

Professional disinformers like Pat Michaels attack science, but their attacks are insubstantial. They have no bite, no substance. That's because their attacks consist of bad science, innuendo, and logical fallacies. If they really wanted to attack science, they'd do the science, or get a scientist to do science. John Cook summarised the five main techniques of science deniers as:

• Fake experts (e.g. Pat Michaels putting himself forward as an expert on climate models)
• Logical fallacies (e.g. straw men)
• Impossible expectations (expecting that short term internal variability will show up in climate models at the same time as it happens on Earth)
• Cherry picking (I'd argue this includes quote mining, leaving out important parts)
• Conspiracy theory (e.g. civil servants exaggerate global warming for money).

These sort of techniques are probably what Pat Michaels hopes to draw on if he decides to be part of a "red team". It's what he's relied on for the last few years, without putting any dent in the body of knowledge about climate science. So I cannot imagine what he would hope to achieve by applying it to this new report.

Now, the "red team blue team" approach could work quite well if it were applied to climate policy. Provided policy experts were involved on both teams, it would be one way of testing different policies and their likely impacts, and success or failure.

For example, in Australia the government wants to subsidise new coal plants. This approach could test that idea, as well as other ideas such as subsidising new wind and solar installations instead. The pros and cons of a carbon tax could be assessed with the help of red and blue teams. This would not only help evaluate the merits or otherwise of a carbon tax, it could help refine the policy so that if implemented it would be successful.

The thing is, Judith and Pat have had decades to act as a "red team", as have all science deniers and disinformers. They may have had some impact. Climate science is now probably the most transparent of all sciences, with data being readily available to the general public. I don't know how much, if any, credit for that goes to deniers, though. A lot of it is technology-enabled, and driven by the real concern of real scientists to inform the public of the risks of climate change. Deniers can take no credit for the major synthesis reports being prepared from time to time, however, they might have helped make them more robust, if they submitted meaningful critiques during the review phases. (Most of them didn't, but there were probably some useful comments.)

As for the "red team" adding knowledge, well I don't know of any major contribution to climate science from a denier. Most of the "red team" activities take place on denier blogs, and in government committee hearings and are not backed up by published science.

Invitation to be on the red team for the Fourth National Climate Assessment

The NCA4 team issued an open invitation to be on both the "blue team" and the "red team" for this upcoming report. It will be interesting to see if Pat Michaels or Judith Curry took up the invitation. 

A footnote

One final thought. Pat's article was at Judith Curry's blog. Does that mean he's abandoned WUWT as having lurched too far into crazy-land even for the Cato Institute?

From the comments

George Devries Klein doesn't want any more science:

June 21, 2017 at 7:27 pm
What can and should be done is for everyone reading this post to email President Trump, Secretary (EPA) Pruitt, Secretary (Interior) Zinke and Secretary (Energy) Perry, for openers, telling them to can the whole exercise. Links to do so are available on WH and agency websites.
George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA

Patrick J. Michaels (@CatoMichaels) agrees.

June 21, 2017 at 10:30 pm
An excellent idea!