by Judith Curry

Put the ‘consensus’ to a test, and improve public understanding, though an open and adversarial process. – Steve Koonin

Steve Koonin has an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal: A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science [link]. Annotated text of the op-ed is provided below:

Tomorrow’s March for Science will draw many thousands in support of evidence-based policy making and against the politicization of science. A concrete step toward those worthy goals would be to convene a “Red Team/Blue Team” process for climate science, one of the most important and contentious issues of our age.

The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand— uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations. It is very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science. At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability. At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent—and unexpected—slowing of global sea level rise over the past two decades.

Summaries of scientific assessments meant to inform decision makers, such as the United Nations’ Summary for Policy Makers, largely fail to capture this vibrant and developing science. Consensus statements necessarily conceal judgment calls and debates and so feed the “settled,” “hoax” and “don’t know” memes that plague the political dialogue around climate change. We scientists must better portray not only our certainties but also our uncertainties, and even things we may never know. Not doing so is an advisory malpractice that usurps society’s right to make choices fully informed by risk, economics and values.[i] Moving from oracular consensus statements to an open adversarial process would shine much-needed light on the scientific debates.

Given the importance of climate projections to policy, it is remarkable that they have not been subject to a Red Team exercise. Here’s how it might work: The focus would be a published scientific report meant to inform policy such as the U.N.’s Summary for Policymakers or the U.S. Government’s National Climate Assessment. A Red Team of scientists would write a critique of that document and a Blue Team would rebut that critique. Further exchanges of documents would ensue to the point of diminishing returns. A commission would coordinate and moderate the process and then hold hearings to highlight points of agreement and disagreement, as well as steps that might resolve the latter. The process would unfold in full public view: the initial report, the exchanged documents and the hearings.

A Red/Blue exercise would have many benefits. It would produce a traceable public record that would allow the public and decision makers a better understanding of certainties and uncertainties. It would more firmly establish points of agreement and identify urgent research needs. Most important, it would put science front and center in policy discussions, while publicly demonstrating scientific reasoning and argument.

The inherent tension of a professional adversarial process would enhance public interest, offering many opportunities to show laymen how science actually works. (In 2014 I conducted a workshop along these lines for the American Physical Society.)

Congress or the executive branch should convene a climate science Red/Blue exercise as a step toward resolving, or at least illuminating, differing perceptions of climate science. While the Red and Blue Teams should be knowledgeable and avowedly opinionated scientists, the commission should have a balanced membership of prominent individuals with technical credentials, led by co-chairmen who are forceful, knowledgeable and independent of the climate-science community. The Rogers Commission for the Challenger disaster in 1986, the Energy Department’s Huizenga/Ramsey Review of Cold Fusion in 1989, and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission of the late 1990s are models for the kind of fact-based rigor and transparency needed.

The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable. It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively, the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively. But whatever the outcome, we scientists would have better fulfilled our responsibilities to society, and climate policy discussions would be better informed. For those reasons, all who march to advocate policy making based upon transparent apolitical science should support a climate science Red Team exercise.

Mr. Koonin, a theoretical physicist, is director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He served as undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term.

[i] As just one example, Key Message 8 on pg. 41 of the 2014 National Climate Assessment is

The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.

The first ominous sentence is literally correct but misleads by not mentioning comparable decreases in the decades prior to 1980, as discussed in one of the NCA’s principal references (Knutson et al., 2010: Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nature Geoscience, 3, 157-163, doi:10.1038/ngeo779). Somehow this survived the NCA’s extensive pre-publication reviews, but would have been flagged by a red team. [Curiously, an online version of this Key Message omits the second sentence about uncertainties.]

The first summary point of the most recent NOAA review of hurricane changes provides reinforcement:

It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

However, it seems inappropriately wistful for an objective scientific statement. Something like “There has been no detectable human influence on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity over the past 70 years” would have been more neutral.

Here are links to related WSJ video clips:

JC comments

At the recent House Science Committee Hearing, both John Christy and myself argued for a Red Team approach to climate change science assessments. Some additional posts at Climate Etc. relevant to this topic:

Steve Koonin’s op-ed provides heft and a new rationale for a climate ‘red team’ exercise, in context of the March for Science. If scientists are truly marching for SCIENCE (rather than for funding and political power), then they should celebrate the opportunity for a climate science Blue Team – Red Team exercise. Such an exercise, as pointed out by Koonin, would strengthen climate science, improve public understanding of science, better inform the policy process, and would publicly demonstrate scientific reasoning and argument.

If the ‘consensus’ is really as strong as they think it is, then the ‘consensus’ scientists have nothing to lose in such an exercise — the consensus would emerge as strengthened. However, if the ‘consensus’ scientists are real scientists rather than consensus enforcers for the sake of policy advocacy, they will probably feel threatened by such an exercise. It will be interested to see how they react to such a proposal.

Based on my experiences with the APS Workshop to review their climate policy statement (which was organized by Steve Koonin), I can think of no one who is better qualified and suited to organize such a Blue Team – Red Team exercise.

I also think that the National Security Agency is the right organization to coordinate this. The NSA has the experience and expertise in organizing Blue Team – Red Team exercises. Further, they don’t appear to have a dog in this fight (they just need to understand the risks). And finally, climate change — and particularly the proposed climate change policies — are arguably a national security risk. Having the USGCRP or the National Academies organize this would be pointless, given their entrenched and institutional biases on this subject.

Let’s get on with it and act on Steve Koonin’s proposal. I hope that this will come to the attention of the Trump administration and the NSA.