Why Zimmerman and Integral Ecology Disagree with Global Warming Science

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Barbi, thanks for your thoughtful and nuanced reply.

 You're very welcome.

For ten years, people have been asking for a simple thing:  when scientists publish a paper, they should also publish the data used to make the paper. Usually that's just a few computer files, which are already to hand because they were being used for the research to make the paper. They can be put on a disk, put online, whatever.  Imagine, these scientists now have lost some of their own original data -- they can't reproduce even their own work. That's a problem for everyone. Even for people in the field. Students can't go see how it was done.  Publish the paper, publish the data. In some fields this is already standard. Very simple. No need for FOI requests. We would not be left trying to second-guess motivations. Anybody competent could make competent criticisms, when the data is already published as a matter of course.

What specific example(s) (outside of the claims of skeptics/deniers from so-called "Climategate") can you cite of people repeatedly requesting "data" from scientists for ten years and not getting it?

With the one notable exception of recent requests made by amateur skeptics/deniers pertaining to "Climategate" (such as an amateur skeptic's request to CRU for the location of a weather station in China that is for whatever reason currently unavailable yet was included as part of a data set in a study published to a scientific publication (apparently--so that he can go to China for himself to fact-check the validity of a single data source, weather event, a study, or the entire global warming theory), we are aware of no such cases or claims.

Typically speaking, a person who is unfamiliar with climate science does not know what kind of "data" to even ask for by name let alone be familiar with the study or studies from which the data was found to have the ability to put this data into the wider context of global climate change, which is based on numerous different data sources. 

What you are referring to as "requests for data by people" appears to be questions or concerns regarding issues which were already raised, debated, and settled by science several decades ago and their arguments discarded by due scientific process yet continue to be asked by deniers/skeptics. Should this be the case, the "data" has been freely available and open to the public for decades in the vast body of scientific literature and/or can be found in abundance in the numerous reputable scientific websites devoted to climate change for laypersons which offer this data in simple Q&A form.. 

You are already right about the need to question the source of any "fact". You are already right that it is wise to beware of, and uncover hidden agendas, and misinformation. We are suggesting that you merely extend that enquiry further and widen your gaze

In what way do you suppose that I am unable widen and extend my own perspectival gaze?  Please elaborate.

Even so, freak accidents do occur from time to time to make humanly possible for the IPCC in 2007 to warn as "very likely" ("over 90% probability") that the mountains of Himalayas would be completely melted by 2035; or for a few well-known scientists to claim (without the scientific community's "seal of approval" as the consensus position) that the Arctic would be ice-free by the year 2015.  In both instances, the scientific claim had to be retracted as unsubstantiated due to lack of sufficient data from formal (peer-reviewed) research.. Later, the IPCC's warning that the Himalayan mountains would melt by 2035 was found to originate from a non-peer reviewed report, "An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China", in 2005 by the World Wildlife fund (a non peer-reviewed source) who had evidently based their claim on a news story from 8 years ago on a popular science magazine, New Scientist (a non-peer reviewed source).  How such an unsubstantiated, non-peer reviewed claim as this survive the process of elimination by due scientific process of the scientific method and peer-review to wind up on the pages of the most widely-accepted and most rigorously and meticulously peer-reviewed paper ever published in the world (the IPCC report) does confound me yet is not entirely implausible statistically, given the narrow margin of scientific uncertainty or error that always exists in science and, as such, is expected to be found in the IPCC report (under 10%). 

That the Universe, God, or Eternity or whatever had acausally cau me commit a similar "obviously ridiculous" error of oversight via my own embarrassing slip-up and retraction following my reading your full comment (or so I thought) without even noticing your quotations from "Climategate" until you pointed it out to me (after my initially assuming your argument was an "appeal to authority") and then erroneously referring to your tutors, "the Vales," as "the Dales," and as your "friends" (more than once or twice, methinks--but within the same post) is provided as an examples for the sake of verition and confirmation of this truth arationally.  arational manifestation when we consider that the errors that I had committed honestly (but unknowingly) were of the kind that could be described as stupid, collosal, absurdly ridiculous, and easily avoidable mistakes given the nature of these errors we take as a sign from the Universe to prompt you to point them out to me right away (which we appreciate that you did). 

However, for someone to go "fact-checking" behind me and selectively highlight only errors and oversights that were pointed out already by you and I promptly corrected for and retracted and took responsibility for and apologized for while they ignored everything else that I wrote that is true so as to imply that I am unreliable, downright bogus, or part of a wider conspiracy of a network of dry academics who are out to manipulate the world by calling your tutors, the Vales, "the Dales," (and so on) is not only ridiculous but is highly irresponsible and non-scientific (let alone, "integral"), should the same tactic be employed on the scale of wider global issues affecting all of humanity.  We see no difference between this hypothetical situation and the current disinformation campaign to call into question scientific certainty of global warming and casting doubt on the peer-review process by cherry-picking only the few scientific errors that were ever in need of retraction by the scientific community.  To use such anomalies as evidence for the lack of scientific certainty or flaws in the peer-review process by non-peer reviewed folk such as Zimmerman et al are doing while failing to point out that on the whole, the vast body of scientific evidence is not only peer-reviewed, but irrefutable and overwhelmingly in support of the mainstream scientific view on human-caused climate change, we find unethical.

As for whether an authority is in the field, paleoclimatologists use statistics. Does that mean statisticians are in the field? Naturally if a statistician sees something wrong with a statistics method, the statistician should be heard, no? Climate models are based on basic physics. Does this mean physicists are in the field? What if a

climate model

appears to break the laws of thermodynamics? Do physicists get to question that? Climatologists make scenario forecasts. Do forecasters get to comment if those forecasts break the rules of forecasting?

All climatologists (including paleoclimatologists) use statistics to build models to reconstruct past and present climate and to predict future trends in climate.  This is becau climate change is based on long-term global averages and not on a single or short-term weather or temperature event(s) as noted bya meteorologist.  When we consider that climate is the study of averages in weather and not on single weather events, naturally there is a place for statisticians to weigh in on the issue of climate science from a certain limited perspective.  The statistician's expertise will be confined to his area of specialization.

So ultimately, a statistician can weigh in o a portion of climate science but not all, since taking "averages" and creating graphs cannot replace having a detailed scientific knowledge of the variety of different climate variables and interactions in the earth system which must be accounted for in addition to long-term averages concerning statisticians so as to make sense between the signal (actual data) to noise ratio.  Without inclusion of these variables and a detailed knowledge of previous studies, we can wind up being redundant and/or thinking that no correlation exists between CO2 and temperature rise merely because they saw or created a graph that plotted a timeline of temperature changes with CO2 levels (only two variables) from the Cambrian period to prior to the Industrial period (Anthropocene) to show how when CO2 levels were at 7,000 ppm (we still have to fact-check on the temperature part bit but will accept as provisionally true for now)--that it is O.K. to go ahead and raise the CO2 level of earth to 7,000 ppm.  As if to suggest that what is good enough for shell-based organisms and microbial crud is just dandy for human beings as well (never mind that the sea level was 70 meters higher than today and the land was a barren desert with no land plants so prolly a different oxygen level, too, from the Cambrian period--what without photosynthesis to convert the CO2 to oxygen..

The basic physics of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, the law of themodynamics, and the boiling point of water and so on have been well-known to physicists for over 150 years.   In many respects, climate studies does appear to be amenable to evaluation by physicists to some degree pertaining to physics.  Does this automatically make the physicist well-versed in all the studies done on climate change and mean that the physicist is also trained in all of the techniques used by climatologist to be an authority on climate change?  No.  The point is, unless the astronomer, astrologer, geologist, physicist and so on has training in the specific techniques employed by climate scientists and is also familiar and current with all the details of the scientific literature concerning climate change, the scientist will be unable to repeat the experiments to prove or disprove the science of global warming.  At any rate, there does not appear to be anything in science from other fields that are in disagreement with the current thinking on climate change.  Over 90% of all scientists from every field support the IPCC's conclusion on human-caused climate change and what action to take to address it.  

Or to put another way--would you take your sick child to a pediatrican or to a mechanic?  Would you trust an optomitrist, geologist, or to an orthopedic surgeon to do surgery on your back?  I don't know about you, but I prefer going to a specialist more relevant to the field of medicine and scoliosis when I am in need of surgery than to a mechanic or geologist to perform such surgery.

Must finish the remainder of my comments later.  I've just had surgery on my back and it still hurts very much to sit in one position for more than 5 minutes and my mother is about to come home and doesn't like to see me on the computer because of my recent back surgery.  Will pick up where we left off later.  We apologize for any delays in response.

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Here is the source on which your news story based:

http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/03/GISS-says-CRU-Better0001.pdf

Here are the allegations from your news item:

1.  "Climategate Stunner: NASA heads knew NASA data was poor, ..."

2.  "...then used data from CRU."

3.  "These emails, obtained by Christopher Horner, show that NASA dataset is not independent of the CRU data set.."

4.  "There are only four climate datasets available. All global warming study, such as the reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), must be based on these four."

Whereas "climate datasets" can refer generically to any thousands of different "datasets" available from studies on climate change that are used by the UN IPCC in assessing global warming, There are only four temperature data sets available (not "only four climate datasets"). Not clarifying this difference could potentially lead to all kinds confusions, wild speculations, and conspiracy theories by global warming skeptics/deniers (which was likely the intent of the author of the story at any rate).

5.  "But the emails reveal that at least three of the four datasets were not independent, that NASA GISS was not considered to be accurate, and that these quality issues were known to both top climate scientists and to the mainstream press."

http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/03/GISS-says-CRU-Better0001.pdf

This is why it is so very important to check the sources of the popular media and not simply take their "word" for it on blind faith, Brian.  The emails revealed no such thing.

6. "Two implications of these emails: The data to which Phil Jones referred to as “independent” was not — it was being “corrected” and reused among various climate science groups, and the independence of the results was no longer assured; and the NASA GISS data was of lower quality than Jones’ embattled CRU data."

This is why it is so very important to check the sources of the popular media and not simply take their "word" for it on blind faith, Brian.  The emails revealed no such thing.  

The data under question by your news story item refers to an email response from James Hansen and from another scientist of NASA-GISS in reply to a reporter from USA Today.   The reporter inquired whether NASA's temperature data was "better" than NCDC's data since NASA's included "more data," explaining that USA Today preferred to work with "just one" authoritative source rather than two or more.  The responses offered by both NASA-GISS scientists (separately) gave no indications of implications as alleged above in items #1-#6 whatsoever (and the link to the emails is above is for you to check for you own self to draw your own conclusions rather than depend on some sensationalist news item/story).  Rather, both scientists affirmed that they use both Hadley and CRU data depending on the type of data that is needed (i.e., regional vs. global mean temperatures, for example) for evaluation purposes in order to assess NASA-GISS climate model results.

NASA-GISS is not a weather station but is a modeling group; after all (among other things).  A model is a representation or replical of a thing based upon all available data (not just "best" data) to form the most accurate or comprehensive model of whateva.  Much like that of Ken Wilber's developmental model to form a "meta-theory" over everything of development.  It's really no different.  For the news story above to "not get it" and assume that NASA's use of other data sources meant that they do not have any original data or that none of data sets are "independent" or that their data is "poor" by comparison is just plain preposterous.  You will have to argue the same thing for KW as well if this is what you contend.

Notice how Ken Wilber uses data sets from different developmental theorists and incorporates them into his overall model. Arguing that these various independent data sets are not "independent" sources simply because Ken Wilber includes them all in his overall developmental model does not mean that suddenly, Wilber himself in addition to Gebser, Loevinger, Graves, Piaget, Maslow, and whever else he uses is no longer "independent" or reliable.  Without their inclusion, the model is no longer comprehensive or inclusive.

About NASA-GISS

Current research, under the direction of Dr. James Hansen, emphasizes a broad study of Global Change, which is an interdisciplinary initiative addressing natural and man-made changes in our environment that occur on various time scales — from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal/annual effects such as El Niño, and on up to the millennia of ice ages — and that affect the habitability of our planet. Program areas at GISS may be roughly divided into the categories of climate forcings, climate impacts, model development, Earth observations, planetary atmospheres, paleoclimate, radiation, atmospheric chemistry, and astrophysics and other disciplines. However, due to the interconnections between these topics, most GISS personnel are engaged in research in several of these areas.

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 Is that so?  Then I gave him more credit than he deserved.  Please pardon me.

My back is not well enough to sit though a 45-minute discussion although I do plan to get to it.  My understanding of Zimmerman's position thus far was based on the discussion with his co-author of Integral Ecology, Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, and assuming that he spoke for Zimmerman as well.

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 Stefano,

If I-integral is to "give to science what is science and give to meditation what is meditation and give to integral that which is integral..." (and so on), a more scientific way (and hence, more integral) way of going about this is to check the source of a graph to verify that it is from an authoritative peer-reviewed scientific publication.  Not merely accept the claims of a graph or statement simply because it agrees with you or your neighbor's or friend's position.  Following this step ensures quality assurance and adherence to a crucial step of the scientific method (confirmation and proof via repetition by a body of peers).

I am not aware of such graph as you speak of that would vindicate your position from any peer-reviewed, credible scientific source.  The burden of proof is on you to furnish that; and it is naive to suppose hypothetically that such a graph may exist (whether now or in the future) simply because you want or hope it to exist and without going to the scientific literature to back up your opinion.

The basic question is whether any graph or study from a reputable and peer-reviewed scientific source can be found to be in agreement with your belief or uncertainty that human activity is not a significant contributing factor in the current global climate change--i.e., mean average global temperature and so on.

According to Doran 2009, 97.5% of the actively-publishing climate scientists and 90% of active publishers on climate change issues polled out of 3,147 agree that

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, mean global temperatures have generally risen; and
2. That human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean average temperatures. 

Here is the graph and break-down of all people polled:

Of course, this still leaves you with 2.5% of actively-publishing climate scientists and 10% of active publishers on climate change issues who were polled who disagree with the above and are sympathetic with your view; but this in and of itself does not justify us to conclude that any of them have ever published a peer-reviewed study to refute the current scientific opinion.  The burden of proof is on you to cite the peer-reviewed study.

A 2004 study by Naomi Oreskes examines your question more specifically and methodically.  Upon examining the abstracts of 928 peer-reviewed, scientific articles from the ISI database between 1993-2003, she found that none of them rejected the consensus view that the climate is currently changing and that the cause is predominantly anthropogenic.  A later paper by Benny Peisner that attempted to refute the Oreskes study claimed that 34 papers rejected the consensus view.  An inspection of these 34 papers cited by Peisner found that none of the abstracts rejected the consensus view; and that the remaining sources cited by Peisner consisted only of letters and editorials; forcing Peisner to retract his criticism on the Oreskes survey.  The same argument was repeated by the Viscount Monckton of Benchley (and plagiarised by Schulte); but cannot be accepted as valid scientific refutations because they merely repeated Peisner's original argument which had already been eliminated by due scientific process and he himself was forced to later retract.

Leaving us with no acceptable scientific source to date containing graphs or any other research or data to back up your opinion.  We must conclude that your (and Zimmerman's) opinion is shaped and informed not by science, but by public attitudes.  A 2009 World Bank report finds that there is high unawareness of the achieved consensus among the public.  Ultimately, we find that Zimmerman's attitude reflects not a genuine commitment to scientific integrity--but a mob mentality.

It has taken science 100 years of research and debating to arrive at a consensus on anthropogenic climate change.  Never in the history of science has a dissenting position overturned a consensus view   Newer studies continue to confirm and strengthen the consensus position: not refute it; and the majority of scientists in the past who have disagreed with the consensus on climate change have since changed their dissenting viewpoint to adopt the consensus position.  In the face of all this overwhelming and irrefutable scientific evidence, we find that the idea of a graph or a study possibly "coming into existence" and materializing at some point in time in the future to vindicate your current position that it may "materialize" if only we "wait and see" is highly unrealistic given the current data and reality.  Even if one does "materialize," only one or even 10 graphs supporting the dissenting view and accepted into the scientific literature vs. thousands of others that support the consensus doesn't really amount to anything. 

Denial is a rejection of what is real and what is true and what is given for that which is false or unreal or ungiven.  It is essentially the embracing of nonreality or falsehood and a rejection of reality and truth.  In that regard, an argument supposing that a graph may "come into existence" in the future to agree with your current position of uncertainty that humans are changing the climate is a form of denial in that you are rejecting what is currently available in the vast body of scientific literature as true that humans are already changing the climate for that which is highly unlikely to occur and therefore unrealistic, given that humans are already changing the climate, should there be a continuation of the current "business as usual" approach to climate action of inaction by making false claims to scientific uncertainty.