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Wednesday, April 26, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Red-Teaming the
climate question
Recently, thousands of
people, and even a few pen-
guins, peacefully turned out
to protest against the politi-
cization of science. The
protestors insist that policy
making in government cir-
cles should be evidence-
based, and that heavyweight
decisions on issues such as
climate change should be
made by reference to scien-
tific fact, rather than deep
state politics. On the sur-
face, that’s hard to argue
with.
But not every scientist
believes in climate change,
and even amongst those who
do, arguments rage on end-
lessly about the cause. Is it
human-caused? Are ice ages
and warming trends part of
the natural ebb and flow of
the planet? Are scientific
groups fudging the num-
bers to boost their research
dollars?
For the average citizen,
following the arguments,
trying to form an educated
opinion on the topic, and
choosing where to put our
loyalties, can be difficult,
particularly if one is trying
to keep an open mind and
avoid being swept overboard
by a rogue wave of fad sci-
ence. Truly, I’m no scientist,
and the only contribution I
can make to the conversa-
tion is anecdotal: It used to
snow more, didn’t it? Didn’t
that lake have more water in
it, once?
So, like most of us, I’m
dependent on the integrity of
scientists and their research
to help me form an intelli-
gent opinion.
Enter Steven Koonin,
a theoretical physicist and
former undersecretary
of energy in the Obama
Administration. Writing
in the Wall Street Journal,
Koonin recently offered a
terrific idea: Red-Team it.
If you aren’t familiar
with the term, here’s a short
course: Red Teams were
probably first brought to the
general public’s conscious-
ness by the notorious frog-
man Dick Marcinko, whose
Red Cell unit terrorized
and embarrassed the U.S.
security apparatus by, among
other capers, breaking into
submarine bases, planting
bombs near Air Force One,
and kidnapping flag officers.
They actually did all of
those things. The point was
to expose weaknesses in the
security arrangements, both
the obvious ones and the
obscure ones, with an eye
toward improving them.
The embarrassment
Red Cell created among
the top brass probably cost
Marcinko his job, but the
point remained and, as
Koonin writes: “The pro-
cess is now considered a
best practice in high-con-
sequence situations… It
is very different and more
rigorous than traditional
peer review, which is usu-
ally confidential and always
adjudicated, rather than pub-
lic and moderated.”
What could be of more
consequence than a the-
ory suggesting that cli-
mate change is going to
destroy the planet we live
on? Koonin writes that he
recently attended a meeting
involving over a hundred
government and university
researchers, who challenged
each other vociferously in
an effort to “separate human
impacts from the climate’s
natural variability.” In other
words, climate change is far
from “settled science,” if
such a thing is even possible.
Koonin also points out
that documents purporting
to be a kind of final word,
such as the United Nations’
Summary for Policymakers,
“largely fail to capture this
vibrant and developing sci-
ence. Consensus statements
necessarily conceal judg-
ment calls and debates and
so feed the ‘settled,’ ‘hoax’
and ‘don’t know’ memes that
plague the political dialogue
around climate change.”
Koonin goes on to sug-
gest an innovative idea:
Take a published report used
to help policymakers, such
as the U.S. Government’s
“National
Climate
Assessment.” Form a Red
Team of scientists to critique
the document. Form a Blue
Team to “rebut the critique.”
Do it again. And again. And
do it in full public view, so
that average Joes, like you
and me, might form a better
understanding of the “cer-
tainties and uncertainties” in
climate science.
Koonin writes that Red-
Teaming the discussion in
such a manner would “more
firmly establish points
of agreement … identify
urgent research needs …
and put science front and
center in policy discussions,
while publicly demonstrat-
ing scientific reasoning and
argument.”
It’s hard not to like
Koonin’s idea. Every single
one of us has a dog in this
fight, for obvious reasons,
but with so much hair and
spit flying around the dis-
cussion it can be very chal-
lenging to see what is actu-
ally going on — what the
actual state of the science
is. Koonin’s notion, whose
outcome is so wonderfully
unknown, could only result
in making us better informed
so that we might then weigh
our opinions beyond the
realm of Facebook memes,
fuzzy anecdote, and pure
emotion.
So, why not Red-Team
it? In keeping with Dick
Marcinko’s tradition — his
team made videotapes of
their missions so that there
could be no doubt of their
success — I might even
watch Climate Change
debates on television. In fact,
if I were a producer, I would
pilot a program called “The
Real Scientists of Climate
Change,” sell some ad time
for soap and soda pop, then
sit back and pray for ratings.
Thursday nights could
get a lot more interest-
ing if edgy scientists were
allowed to openly debate
their positions, and so
inform the world, on what
is probably one of the more
important questions of our
time.
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