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Q. The debate over climate science has involved very complex physical models and rarefied areas of scientific knowledge. What role do you think social scientists have to play, given the complexity of the actual physical science?

A. We have to think about the process by which something, an idea, develops scientific consensus and a second process by which is developed a social and political consensus. The first part is the domain of data and models and physical science. The second is very much a social and political process. And that brings to the fore a whole host of value-based, worldview-based, cognitive and cultural dimensions that need to be addressed.

Social scientists, beyond economists, have a lot to say on cognition, perceptions, values, social movements and political processes that are very important for understanding whether the public accepts the conclusions of a scientific body.

The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center -- that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.

Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists who believe man is causing global warming to exclude contrary views from important scientific publications.

"This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn't questionable practice, this is unethical."

I had the chance to sift through TIME's decades of environment coverage. I came to two conclusions: First, we were writing stories about virtually the same subjects 40 years ago as we do now. (Air pollution, endangered species, the polluted oceans, dwindling natural resources.) Second, our coverage of climate change has been really scary — by which I mean, we've emphasized the catastrophic threats of global warming in dire language.

Scientists were telling us that global warming really had the potential to wreck the future of the planet, and we wanted to get that message across to readers — even if it meant scaring the hell out of them.

According to forthcoming research by the Berkeley psychologists Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg, when people are shown scientific evidence or news stories on climate change that emphasize the most negative aspects of warming — extinguished species, melting ice caps, serial natural disasters — they are actually more likely to dismiss or deny what they're seeing. Far from scaring people into taking action on climate change, such messages seem to scare them straight into denial.

wrote a piece about James Delingpole's unfortunate appearance on the BBC program Horizon on Monday. In that piece I refered to one of his own Telegraph articles in which he criticizes renowned sceptic Dr Ben Goldacre for betraying the principles of scepticism in his regard of the climate change debate. That article turns out to be rather instructional as it highlights perfectly the difference between real scepticism and the false scepticism commonly described as denialism.

It appears that James has tremendous respect for Ben Goldacre, who is a qualified medical doctor and has written a best-selling book about science scepticism called Bad Science and continues to write a popular Guardian science column. Here's what Delingpole has to say about Dr Goldacre: Many of Goldacre’s campaigns I support. I like and admire what he does. But where I don’t respect him one jot is in his views on ‘Climate Change,’ for they jar so very obviously with supposed stance of determined scepticism in the face of establishment lies.

Scepticism is not some sort of rebellion against the establishment as Delingpole claims. It is not in itself an ideology. It is merely an approach to evaluating new information. There are varying definitions of scepticism, but Goldacre's variety goes like this: A sceptic does not support or promote any new theory until it is proven to his or her satisfaction that the new theory is the best available. Evidence is examined and accepted or discarded depending on its persuasiveness and reliability. Sceptics like Ben Goldacre have a deep appreciation for the scientific method of testing a hypothesis through experimentation and are generally happy to change their minds when the evidence supports the opposing view. Sceptics are not true believers, but they search for the truth. Far from challenging the established scientific consensus, Goldacre in Bad Science typcially defends the scientific consensus against alternative medical views that fall back on untestable positions. In science the consensus is sometimes proven wrong, and while this process is imperfect it eventually results in the old consensus being replaced with a new one.

hundreds of books about climate change have been published, but not that many of them lay out the basics of the problem in a clear, understandable way. Still fewer provide any rich sense of the history of how the science came to exist in its present form.

many of us want to flee the Web and curl up with a good book. So I was enthused recently when “The Warming Papers” came to my attention.

It is far from accurate to refer to “science” as a single entity (as I just have). Many arguments that dispute the consensus about climate change being the result of man made activity talk about “scientists” as though they are “all in it together” and “supporting each other”. This implies some grand conspiracy. But science is a competition, not a collusion. If anything they are all against each other. No given person or research team has the whole picture of climate science. The range of scientific disciplines that work in this area is vast. Indeed there are few areas of science which do not potentially have something to contribute to the area. But put a geologist and a geneticist in a room together and they can barely speak the same language. Far from some great conspiracy, the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change has come to a consensus about climate change is truly extraordinary.

So the report is recommending that journalists do what they should always have done – investigate and verify. By all means ask another expert’s point of view, determine whether the latest finding is in fact good science or what its implications are. But we need to move away from the idea of “balance” between those who believe it is all a big conspiracy and those who have done some work and looked at the actual evidence. The report concludes that in particular the BBC must take special care to continue efforts to ensure viewers are able to distinguish well-established fact from opinion on scientific issues, and to communicate this distinction clearly to the audience. In other words, to remember that the plural of anecdote is not data.

One part of Matthew Nisbet's recent report that has received very little attention is its comparative analysis of ideological and partisan perspectives of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nisbet shows that AAAS members are extremely partisan and ideological.  The word "extremely" is mine, and what do I mean by it?  Look at the figure above:  AAAS members are more partisan than MSNBC viewers and even Tea Party members.  AAAS members are more ideological than evangelical churchgoers but less so than Fox News viewers.  In both cases AAAS members are very different than the public as a whole.

Dan Sarewitz has discussed the problems with the ideological and partisan likemindedness of our scientific community, which has been exploited and reenforced in political debates: During the Bush administration, Democrats discovered that they could score political points by accusing Bush of being anti-science. In the process, they seem to have convinced themselves that they are the keepers of the Enlightenment spirit, and that those who disagree with them on issues like climate change are fundamentally irrational. Meanwhile, many Republicans have come to believe that mainstream science is corrupted by ideology and amounts to no more than politics by another name. Attracted to fringe scientists like the small and vocal group of climate skeptics, Republicans appear to be alienated from a mainstream scientific community that by and large doesn't share their political beliefs. The climate debacle is only the most conspicuous example of these debilitating tendencies, which play out in issues as diverse as nuclear waste disposal, protection of endangered species, and regulation of pharmaceuticals. How would a more politically diverse scientific community improve this situation? First, it could foster greater confidence among Republican politicians about the legitimacy of mainstream science. Second, it would cultivate more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge. This could help keep difficult problems like climate change from getting prematurely straitjacketed by ideology. A more politically diverse scientific community would, overall, support a healthier relationship between science and politics.

It should come as no surprise that the increasing politicization of science has come to make science more political rather than politics more scientific.  At the same time, the more partisan and/or and ideological that you are, the more welcome and comfortable that you will find the politicization of science, as it reenforces your preconceptions.

I have a paper in this week’s issue of Science on the cloud feedback

clouds are important regulators of the amount of energy in and out of the climate system. Clouds both reflect sunlight back to space and trap infrared radiation and keep it from escaping to space. Changes in clouds can therefore have profound impacts on our climate.

A positive cloud feedback loop posits a scenario whereby an initial warming of the planet, caused, for example, by increases in greenhouse gases, causes clouds to trap more energy and lead to further warming. Such a process amplifies the direct heating by greenhouse gases. Models have been long predicted this, but testing the models has proved difficult.

Controversy about the current state and future evolution of Himalayan glaciers has been stirred up by erroneous statements in the fourth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1, 2.

Variable retreat rates3, 4, 5, 6 and a paucity of glacial mass-balance data7, 8 make it difficult to develop a coherent picture of regional climate-change impacts in the region.

we report remotely-sensed frontal changes and surface velocities from glaciers in the greater Himalaya between 2000 and 2008 that provide evidence for strong spatial variations in glacier behaviour which are linked to topography and climate.

The inquiry, by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, focused on e-mail messages between climate scientists that were stolen and circulated on the Internet in late 2009 (NOAA is part of the Commerce Department). Some of the e-mails involved scientists from NOAA.

Climate change skeptics contended that the correspondence showed that scientists were manipulating or withholding information to advance the theory that the earth is warming as a result of human activity.

In a report dated Feb. 18 and circulated by the Obama administration on Thursday, the inspector general said, “We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data.”

, the rejection of proposals that suggest starting with a low carbon price is thus a pretty good guarantee against any carbon pricing at all.  It is rather remarkable to see advocates for climate action arguing against a policy that recommends implementing a carbon price, simply because it does not start high enough for their tastes.  For some, idealism trumps pragmatism, even if it means no action at all.

Ward writes: . . . climate change is the result of a number of market failures, the largest of which arises from the fact that the prices of products and services involving emissions of greenhouse gases do not reflect the true costs of the damage caused through impacts on the climate. . . All serious economic analyses of how to tackle climate change identify the need to correct this market failure through a carbon price, which can be implemented, for instance, through cap and trade schemes or carbon taxes. . . A carbon price can be usefully supplemented by improvements in innovation policies, but it needs to be at the core of action on climate change, as this paper by Carolyn Fischer and Richard Newell points out.

First, the criticism is off target. A low and rising carbon price is in fact a central element to the policy recommendations advanced by the Hartwell Group in Climate Pragmatism, the Hartwell Paper, and as well, in my book The Climate Fix.  In Climate Pragmatism, we approvingly cite Japan's low-but-rising fossil fuels tax and discuss a range of possible fees or taxes on fossil fuels, implemented, not to penalize energy use or price fossil fuels out of the market, but rather to ensure that as we benefit from today’s energy resources we are setting aside the funds necessary to accelerate energy innovation and secure the nation’s energy future.

The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones. More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.

Mojib Latif denies his research supports theory that current cold weather undermines scientific consensus on global warming

A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.

Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he "cannot understand" reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.He told the Guardian: "It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming."

according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the cooling effect of white particles may counteract as much as about half of the warming effect of carbon dioxide. So, if all white particles were removed from the atmosphere, global warming would increase considerably.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe dilemma is that all particles, whether white or black, constitute a serious problem for human health. Every year, an estimated two million people worldwide die prematurely, owing to the effects of breathing polluted air. Furthermore, sulfur-rich white particles contribute to the acidification of soil and water.

Naturally, measures targeting soot and other short-lived particles must not undermine efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. In the long term, emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases constitute the main problem. But a reduction in emissions of soot (and other short-lived climate pollutants) could alleviate the pressures on the climate in the coming decades.

what do we do about white particles? How do we weigh improved health and reduced mortality rates for hundreds of thousands of people against the serious consequences of global warming?CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphIt is difficult to imagine that any country’s officials would knowingly submit their population to higher health risks by not acting to reduce white particles solely because they counteract global warming. On the contrary, sulfur emissions have been reduced over the last few decades in both Europe and North America, owing to a desire to promote health and counter acidification; and China, too, seems to be taking measures to reduce sulfur emissions and improve the country’s terrible air quality. But, in other parts of the world where industrialization is accelerating, sulfur emissions continue to increase.

For some campaigners, such as Naomi Klein, Gleick was an unalloyed hero, who should be sent some "Twitter love", she wrote on Tuesday."Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years," wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. "They also subvert the education of our schoolchildren by trying to 'teach the controversy' where none exists."Mandia went on: "Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist, just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him."

Others acknowledged Gleick's wrongdoing, but said it should be viewed in the context of the work of Heartland and other entities devoted to spreading disinformation about science."What Peter Gleick did was unethical. He acknowledges that from a point of view of professional ethics there is no defending those actions," said Dale Jamieson, an expert on ethics who heads the environmental studies programme at New York University. "But relative to what has been going on on the climate denial side this is a fairly small breach of ethics."He also rejected the suggestion that Gleick's wrongdoing could hurt the cause of climate change, or undermine the credibility of scientists."Whatever moral high ground there is in science comes from doing science," he said. "The failing that Peter Gleick engaged in is not a scientific failing. It is just a personal failure."

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.

When I use the term denial industry, I'm referring to those who are paid to say that man-made global warming isn't happening. The great majority of people who believe this have not been paid: they have been duped. Reading Climate Cover-Up, you keep stumbling across familiar phrases and concepts which you can see every day on the comment threads. The book shows that these memes were planted by PR companies and hired experts.

The second case study reveals how Dr Patrick Michaels, one of a handful of climate change deniers with a qualification in climate science, has been lavishly paid by companies seeking to protect their profits from burning coal.

none of the media outlets who use him as a commentator – including the Guardian – has disclosed this interest at the time of his appearance. Michaels is one of many people commenting on climate change who presents himself as an independent expert while being secretly paid for his services by fossil fuel companies.

one of the big arguments that environmentalists have used about the need to stop climate change is that those who will suffer most are the little brown poor people in far-off lands who will, for instance, experience increased incidence of malaria and exposure to floods and other disasters. (Of course the fact that they are already burdened by such things in huge disproportion to the privileged minority doesn’t seem to enter into the argument).

But I raise this point because when it comes to climate survivalism, the little brown folks are nowhere to be seen, and apparently it’s every relatively affluent white guy (and his nuclear family, of course) for himself.

Dan Sarewitz takes the Washington Post to task for publishing a bizarre commentary on the coming climate apocalypse: Check out the article by a climate survivalist from the February 27, 2011 Washington Post. (I’m going to go out on a limb and treat the article as if it’s not a satire or hoax, but maybe the joke’s on me.) The author describes how he’s buying solar panels and generators and laying in food and supplies and putting extra locks on his doors and windows in anticipation of the coming climate apocalypse, much in the way that in the 1960s certain nuts were digging shelters in their backyard to provide protection against hydrogen bombs, and in the ‘80s (and probably to this day) right-wing crazies were building up small arsenals to protect themselves against the time when the government tried to take away their right to be bigots.

To the global warming deniers, Muller had been an important scientific figure with good credentials who had expressed doubt about the temperature data used to track the last few decades of global warming. Muller was influenced by Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman (not a trained climate scientist) and blogger who has argued that the data set is mostly from large cities, where the “urban heat island” effect might bias the overall pool of worldwide temperature data. climate scientists have pointed out that they have accounted for this possible effect already, but Watts and Muller were unconvinced. With $150,000 (25% of their funding) from the Koch brothers (the nation’s largest supporters of climate denial research), as well as the Getty Foundation (their wealth largely based on oil money) and other funding sources, Muller set out to reanalyze all the temperature data by setting up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project.

Although only 2% of the data were analyzed by last month, the Republican climate deniers in Congress called him to testify in their March 31 hearing to attack global warming science, expecting him to give them scientific data supporting their biases. To their dismay, Muller behaved like a real scientist and not an ideologue—he followed his data and told them the truth, not what they wanted to hear. Muller pointed out that his analysis of the data set almost exactly tracked what the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS), and the Hadley climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK had already published (see figure).

Muller testified before the House Committee that: The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was created to make the best possible estimate of global temperature change using as complete a record of measurements as possible and by applying novel methods for the estimation and elimination of systematic biases. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups. The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine global temperature trends. Despite potential biases in the data, methods of analysis can be used to reduce bias effects well enough to enable us to measure long-term Earth temperature changes. Data integrity is adequate. Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.