Who is Dennis Ambler?

Continuing on (a bit) from my [intlink id=”1426″ type=”post”]last post[/intlink], I’m going to examine another of Dennis Ambler’s articles for the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI). This one is mostly a long rambling swipe at lots of different and very accomplished individuals, and not (as in the other case) an outright attempt to reinvent the laws of mathematics and statistics.

Here, Ambler focuses on a report written for the American National Academies, called Advancing the Science of Climate Change. He is apparently responding to an article in the Washington Post by Sherwood Boehlert, who quotes a key line from the report’s summary:

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.

This is the official, considered position of the American National Academies, and closely resembles a Q&A document released by the Australian Academy of Science:

The Earth’s climate has changed. The global average surface temperature has increased over the last century and many other associated changes have been observed. The available evidence implies that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause. It is expected that, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual rates, global temperatures will further increase significantly over the coming century and beyond.

Ambler doesn’t (here, at least) address the Australian statement, or any of the other statements issued by other national science academies and other scientific organisations around the world. We’ll set that aside for now.

His point appears to be that the Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change (presumably responsible for the first quote) is stacked with advocates* of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). He goes into great detail about the nefarious activities of various board members, such as being IPCC authors, members of NGOs, members of advisory boards, having links to the United Nations and being either corporate- or government-funded. Scandalous, I know.

However, Ambler’s entire argument rests on the notion that the aforementioned organisations have already somehow been discredited. That may be true in his head, because the IPCC says all the things he doesn’t like to hear. However, there is no objective reason to think that the IPCC is not essentially fulfilling its intended function: the careful, objective assessment of the science behind climate change and its implications. His argument also relies on the assumption from the outset that the AGW consensus does not exist. If consensus is real, then it’s hard to imagine what could be wrong with having such a panel “stacked” with those who’ve poured their energies into addressing the problem.

Ambler’s other complaint is one I’ve heard repeated for other advocates of climate action – that they’re not climate scientists:

I doubt a dissenting voice on “the science” is ever heard in their deliberations. As can be seen, climate scientists are very much in the minority. It seems that a mix of economists, social scientists, engineers, NGO’s and corporations in receipt of government funding, form the main strength of these particular committees.

I doubt a dissenting voice on “the science” would ever be heard no matter how many climate scientists you added (Ambler has tried to argue against the existence of the consensus, but [intlink id=”1426″ type=”post”]not too successfully[/intlink].) Nevertheless, at first glance, it might seem common sense that climate change panels ought to be populated entirely by climate scientists, until you realise that climate science only identifies the existence of the problem. Climate science says nothing about the humanitarian, economic, or even environmental effects of climate change, and it certainly does not say what we might do, as a society, to prevent or mitigate them. This is not a problem with climate science – it simply reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of climate change.

Climate change denialism does not appear to recognise the distinction between all these facets. It does not accept, for instance, that someone can be qualified to talk about reducing CO₂ emissions unless they can also convincingly explain the data used to establish the effects of CO₂ in the first place. To an armchair “sceptic”, these two discussions belong in the same discipline. Except they don’t. There is a very good reason why the Stern and Garnaut Reviews, for instance, were written by economists rather than climate scientists. Modeling economic costs just isn’t part of climate science; the issue transcends disciplines.

In setting out to undermine all work on climate change**, climate denialists become Jacks of all trades and masters of none. They perceive the entire concept of climate change as being the domain of a single discipline (climate science), because they don’t realise the depth of analysis that underlies each part of that picture. Analysing the effects of greenhouse gases on temperature could be a life’s work, for instance. Analysing the effects of temperature increases on agricultural practices is another life’s work, as is modelling the economic costs and benefits of reducing CO₂ emissions, and so on. The true experts each spend their time on a relatively small part of the problem, but paying enormous attention to detail. They rely on other experts to fill in the gaps where needed, because no single person can be an expert in everything. Meanwhile, denialists skip lazily across the entire scope of the problem and engage only in shallow commentary and nitpicking. It would be difficult to comprehend just how many different disciplines are crossed when you naïvely believe that you (and/or those you follow) possess the entire range of necessary expertise.

Thus, the many genuine scientific, humanitarian, political and economic debates regarding climate change are, in denialist circles, mashed crudely into just one big issue, adjudicated solely by climate scientists (except for all the ones who write those terrible papers about hockey stick graphs; they don’t count).

Just for fun, let’s examine the scientific credentials of some SPPI contributors, starting with Dennis Ambler himself. Ambler puts his name to 14 of the last 100 articles (at the time of writing), and thus appears to be the most prolific recent contributor to the SPPI collection. However, try as I might, I cannot find any biographical information on the man at all. Even SPPI’s own Personnel page neglects to mention him. There are no details of his history, qualifications, accomplishments, collaborations, involvements with other organisations, or even interests. “Dennis Ambler” might as well be a pseudonym for all I can tell.***

Next in line is Christopher Monckton, named as the author of 10 of the last 100 articles. Fortunately he is mentioned in the Personnel page, as being an expert on virtually everything, despite not possessing any qualifications at all on anything remotely resembling science or economics. It’s worth a read.

Then there’s Ross McKitrick, with 4 out of 100 articles. He’s an economist, which I hope doesn’t put him offside with Ambler.

The remaining articles were contributed by a slew of authors with (I presume) only a tangential relationship to SPPI itself. I won’t discuss them, except to note that the current President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus is among them. Doubtless he too specialises in climate science. It’s all about expertise, you understand.

* It’s hard to maintain the correct wording here, since it can be a little unwieldy. Nobody advocates climate change – that’s precisely what we don’t advocate.

** Climate denialism, in aggregate form, opposes every facet of the science on climate change – virtually every finding of every paper – which would be quite a remarkable occurrence if we held it to be intellectually honest. Individuals may accept certain parts of the science to varying extents, and often claim that “nobody” seriously disputes those parts (e.g. that the Earth is currently warming), but in reality every single detail is disputed in some corner or other. (The only exceptions to this are the occasional papers written by denialist champions like Steve McIntyre.)

*** To be fair, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest that all this information is a pre-requisite for making public comments. However, I’m just a pseudo-anonymous blogger, while Dennis Ambler is backed by an “Institute”, conferring a facade of expert credibility.