Ex-HEP climate scientist urged to get arrested, hesitates

This article in the Guardian offers us quite an amusing combination of climate science and particle physics:

Climate scientists must not advocate particular policies

That's the main message we hear from Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist in Bristol. She reminds us of something you've heard many times on this blog: science cannot answer moral questions. It can't even tell you whether you should have a carbon tax or fight for a wetter atmosphere, among many other things. Scientists who violate this rule inevitably reduce the credibility of science in general, especially if and when there are sensible concerns that the political considerations and goals could have determined the scientist's manipulation with the data. Right.

A scientist is also a human with her human rights so she can think and say whatever she wants about many political and other issues – at least, in the genuinely free world, she can – but she just shouldn't sell her political opinions as conclusions of scientific research (or as "scientific consensus" as these political statements are often called). This interpretation is an abuse of science.

If you were ever denying that the climate scientists are being politically pressured, well, she reminds us that she and her colleagues are repeatedly urged to be persuasive, be brave, and get arrested ;-), whenever necessary. She apparently doesn't want to get arrested. By the way, you may learn several other embarrassing things about the climate pressure groups and their pathological interactions with the climatological community from her essay. So far, researchers such as herself aren't being collected in special AGW Kamikaze units.




At the same moment, she says that many people began to appreciate her – a self-evident lukewarmer (who often identifies herself with Roger Pielke Jr) – as an honest broker even though her opinions are "completely mainstream". Well, are her opinions completely mainstream? Surely not according to those activists who are overwhelming us with the meme that 97% of the climate scientists want (and must verbally support) a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system and who will probably flood her mailbox with some hate mail once they read her essay and learn that it was positively mentioned at the denialist ;-) blogs such as The Reference Frame.

I apologize in advance for my contribution to the hate mail but I also kindly emphasize that this contribution is zero – 100 percent should be blamed on the authors of the e-mails and their agenda.




According to the actual present composition of the climate science community, especially the loud and media-savvy part of it, she is not mainstream in any sense. Such people wouldn't dare to name their blogs "All Models Are Wrong". This is almost the ultimate heresy, isn't it?

She considers herself completely mainstream, pro-science, and feels confident that she is in charge of her research. Yet, she clearly contradicts the climate orthodoxy. Where could such a researcher come from? Try to guess! ;-) This is not a rhetorical question. It's a real question with a very interesting answer. If you look at her page at academia.edu or one in Bristol, you will find out what she used to be in her previous life. You will notice articles such as her PhD thesis,

Diffractively produced Z-bosons in the muon decay channel in \(pp\)-collisions at \(\sqrt s={1.96}\TeV\), and the measurement of the efficiency of the DØ Run II Luminosity Monitor

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen: her PhD (2006) is from experimental particle physics and she has worked for the Fermilab. In her essay in the Guardian, we can't learn about that but what we can learn is that she switched to climatology because she cared about the environment. (Not getting a job in high-energy physics could have encouraged her to pursue a new career, too.)

Even some of the most impartial and independent climate scientists – those imported to the discipline from the Fermilab – were motivated by political or ideological goals when they were deciding whether they would start to do the research of climatology. Just to be sure, if climatology were a full-fledged science, people would study it not because they care about the environment but because they want to understand how the climate system has worked, is working, and will work.

Be sure that your humble correspondent cares about clean Nature at least as much as she does. I have spent weeks by the work helping the trees in the Bohemian Forests, for example. I have virtually no emissions of harmful gases and even no emissions of the gases that are beneficial but are being slung mud at (carbon dioxide). But I do care about science and its integrity and it seems that so does she.

It's hard to imagine that Dr Edwards won't learn how distorted her new discipline has become. She will and even if she does believe – for irrational reasons – that CO2 is dangerous in any sense, she is bound to become a skeptic of her own sort. You can't avoid becoming a skeptic of a sort after you publish a hardcore blasphemy in the Guardian and she hasn't done anything less than that.

I learned about her article from Real Climate. So far, the Real Climate comments about her text seem to be favorable and that's also true for the comments under the Guardian article. However, you will see that she's been attacked over there by some predictable suspects, e.g. Greg Laden.