The Pros From Dover Once More

So recently Reiner Grundmann is playing the Roger Pielke Jr. Pros from Dover bit about how physical scientists need leave the hard work of getting anything done on climate change to the social scientists because the physical scientists are so bad at it.  The origin of the phrase, although made famous in the movie M*A*S*H comes from the book

"Hawkeye would walk confidently into a pro shop, smile, comment upon the nice condition of the course, explain that he was just passing through and that he was Joe, Dave or Jack Somebody, the pro from Dover. This resulted, about eight times out of ten, in an invitation to play for free. If forced into conversation, he became the pro from Dover, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, England, Ohio, Delaware, Tennessee, or Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, whichever seemed safest."

Frankly, this ploy has been long used by social scientists (not all, but enough) and policy types (lots and lots) who have not the least idea about how to handle problems based on physical and biological reality but would like to cut themselves a piece of the pie, as large a piece as possible. 

It would, at least for Eli, not be a bad thing if the ones playing it actually knew what they were doing and might save the Congressman's kid, but the Rabett is exceedingly unimpressed by the players of this ploy who at least to his jaundiced eyes are mostly trying to control the debate.

Of course there were tweets, and several people, including Eli were a bit miffed, but Eli was at least nice enough to invite Reiner to the party.  Oliver Bothe had a winner

Interesting how the Grundmann-vs-RaptorClan-discussion appears to base largely on previous animosities instead of dealing with content

— Oliver Bothe（￣□￣；） (@geschichtenpost) August 14, 2016

As soon as Eli finds a good bass player RaptorClan will definitely go on tour but till then on to the blogs, including ATTP and of course Klimazweibel

The Rabett finds this pretty boring, has other stuff to do, note the lack of posts, and really has not contributed much.  If anybunny wants to know, Eli just pointed out, rather obliquely, that Grundman, like Pielke Jr and Kahan only seems to look at one side without really considering what makes (climate, ozone, tobacco, acid rain, etc) for a hard problem is the well organized and financed opposition to action and that what has/is being done to try and find solutions must be evaluated against that mark, not in isolation, but whatever.  Still in the middle of this Hans v. Storch came out with the amazing:

In other words: physicists (and other natural scientists), back into your baracks! If you individually want to be part of the social processes of choosing among options and of deciding, come back without the attiitude of knowing better than others of what is an appropriate response to the problem. The same applies for social scientists, even if their field of knowledge is different from that of natural scientists but also important.

As Eli remarked there are half a dozen ways of Godwinizing that one, but, never fear gentle readers, what better way than what Sherry Rowland said in 1998 in a White House meeting on climate change

"Is it enough for a scientist simply to publish a paper? Isn’t it a responsibility of scientists, if you believe that you have found something that can affect the environment, isn’t it your responsibility to actually do something about it, enough so that action actually takes place?… If not us, who? If not now, when?"

Eli knew of that quote a long, time, but when the Bunny went looking for a source, lo and behold, what popped up was another Klimazweibel post, an appreciation of Rowland written by, you guessed it, Reiner Grundmann.  Even within the Grundmann's context, v. Storch is scorched

His advocacy probably serves as role model for some activist climate scientists. There is one big difference. Rowland operated as individual scientist, not as part of a wider institutionalized body (such as the IPCC). He was an open advocate for CFC controls and did not hide behind 'the science'. He knew that there was controversy about the science and that his research was not shared by many, for quite some time. This did not deter him from making his case patiently, without trying to demolish his adversaries. And adversaries he had many, both inside and outside academia. 

and further in the comments

you are welcome to post Rowland's engagement with regard to climate change.

He did not strike me as a main protagonist in climate change debates, neither was climate change his main area of research. He was very much interested in questions of air pollution, examples are Mexico City and methane leaks from pipelines. In all these cases he made policy proposals that were practical. And he did the same the CFC case.

 which is just utter nonsense.  First of all, and a minor point, it is Luisa and Mario Molina who have been key to both investigating and helping control air pollution in Mexico City, not Sherry.  Second, Sherry Rowland's research on methane leaks was in the context of their contribution to climate change

Since methane accounts for up to 25% of the gases causing the so-called greenhouse effect, plugging leaky pipes in Eastern bloc nations could make an important dent in efforts to forestall global warming, the UCI scientists reported today in the scientific journal Nature.

"Methane is different," said research team director F. Sherwood Rowland, the UCI chemist who discovered in the mid-1970s that the Earth's protective ozone layer is being destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons, another variety of chemicals also implicated in global warming. "Because its lifetime is about 10 years, if we take away just 10% of (the world's methane) emissions, we can get methane in the atmosphere back in balance."

Rowland was concerned greatly with greenhouse gas driven climate change in 1990, but also Rowland was actively engaged, as is Molina today, in trying to both delineate and solve the problems.  Eli would refer Reiner to the summary of the 1997 White House meeting and Rowland's comments endorsing the IPCC as authoritative and calling to action

And as far as Rowland not being a part of wider institutionalized bodies, one only has to read the National Academy press release memorializing him

Rowland was elected to the NAS in 1978 and served as foreign secretary from 1994-2002. The Institute of Medicine elected Rowland in 1994. In 1995, he was a key figure in the creation of the InterAcademy Panel, an international organization of national science academies that has since grown to include the academies of more than 80 countries.

Sherry Rowland was a very nice guy, but he also was a strong advocate for policy based on science and not the paper cutout that Grundmann has sitting in his office.  Kind of reminds Eli of the Republican version of Martin Luther King.