About climatesight

Kaitlin Naughten is an ocean-ice modeller at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Mistakes

Posted on Jan 24, 2010 by climatesight

I have watched with interest the coverage of the IPCC’s screw-up over the Himalayan glaciers.

“Screw-up” is really the best way to describe it. It really shouldn’t have happened. WG2 cited a secondary source that cited something else that cited something else that turned out to be an erroneous New Scientist article. The reviewers of WG2 did realize that something was wrong with the citation, but the editor didn’t bother to take the statement out while they investigated it, and then their deadline passed. Long story short, the Himalayan glaciers are definitely not going to disappear by 2035.

However, what the mainstream media considers “the IPCC report” is generally only WG1, and more specifically the WG1 Summary for Policymakers. This Himalayan glacier claim was in the lower-profile WG2, and it didn’t even make it into any of the WG2 summaries. If it had, the chances of it slipping through would have decreased dramatically. As it was, the mistake was present in one paragraph of the 938-page WG2 which is one of three sections of the fourth edition of the IPCC report. Not very high-profile, as these things go.

It’s strange, though, to watch the media coverage of this screw-up. It ended up in my BBC News feed, and according to one of my teachers, in the Globe and Mail as well as the local newspaper I just gave up on. That’s fine, as I didn’t see the kind of blatant misquotes and jumps in logic as during the CRU reporting. However, it makes me wonder – why weren’t all the other IPCC mistakes reported?

The IPCC tries to be centrist, and to report the median opinion of the climate science community. The more extreme claims on either end of the spectrum are given minimal attention. Therefore, the IPCC is bound to make some mistakes. However, with the exception of this screw-up, virtually all the mistakes have been on the side of “oops, it’s going to be worse than we thought”.

Take the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a 2009 report written by a dozen or so top climate scientists around the world. Its purpose was to update policymakers, in time for Copenhagen, on what had been learned since the AR4. Here are the major discrepancies they found:

From 2007-2009, there was about 40% less Arctic summer sea ice than the IPCC predicted, far exceeding its worst-case scenarios.
Recent global average sea-level rise is about 80% more than the IPCC predicted.
By 2100, global sea level is expected to rise at least twice as much as the IPCC predicted.
Global CO2 emissions are around the highest scenarios considered by the IPCC.

Hmmm, these areas of discrepancy – emissions, Arctic ice, sea level rise – are a lot higher-profile than one paragraph about the Himalayan glaciers in WG2. But I don’t remember reading about the Copenhagen Diagnosis anywhere other than the climate science blogs I follow. None of the mainstream media outlets I follow covered it. Did anyone else see it somewhere?

I encourage the reporting of scientific mistakes, as long as the journalism is accurate. Doesn’t it seem strange, though, that the findings of the Copenhagen Diagnosis went virtually unnoticed – while the Himalayan glacier screw-up was covered in every major newspaper in the world? Who is choosing to frame the IPCC as alarmist – rather than its true centrist position – and why?

Manufacturing Doubt

Posted on Jan 17, 2010 by climatesight

I recently wrote this term paper for my world issues course. Enjoy.

There are many questions which remain controversial among scientists, but the existence of human-caused climate change is not one of them. Over 97% of publishing climatologists (Doran and Zimmerman, 2009), virtually 100% of peer-reviewed studies (Oreskes, 2004), and every scientific organization in the world (Logical Science, 2006) agree that humans are causing the Earth to warm. As Donald Kennedy, former editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Science, says, “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science.”

However, this consensus does not extend to the general public. On a particularly cold day, the cashier at the grocery store will say to you, “So much for global warming.” Over Thanksgiving dinner, your uncle will openly wonder if the warming in the Arctic is just part of a natural cycle. Your local newspaper will print letters to the editor almost daily claiming that, as CO2 is natural and essential to life, we shouldn’t worry about climate change.

What is the reason for this disconnection between scientific opinion and public opinion? There are obviously many factors involved, but it is probable that this discrepancy exists partly because of the widespread media coverage of scientists who do not accept anthropogenic climate change. Anyone with an Internet connection or a newspaper subscription will be able to tell you that many scientists think global warming is natural or nonexistent. As we know, these scientists are in the vast minority, and they have been unable to support their views in the peer-reviewed literature. The key question, therefore, is this: Why are so many of them still publicizing their beliefs so prominently?

Two plausible outcomes exist. Firstly, a scientist who could not prove a hypothesis could still feel that it was an idea worth consideration, and would want to capture the imagination of other scientists so it would be studied more closely. Alternatively, a scientist might be willing to keep the public confused about climate change. For example, scientists employed by the fossil fuel industry, or by organizations with strong laissez-faire agendas, could be motivated to spread rumours about weaknesses in the anthropogenic climate change theory. So, do these skeptics honestly doubt the integrity of climate science? Or are they being paid to manufacture doubt?

To distinguish between these two motives, it is important to understand a distinct difference in the formation of scientific opinions and political opinions. In science, one should examine all the evidence and then develop a logical conclusion. However, it is all too common in politics, lobbying, and the media for one to choose a convenient conclusion, then build evidence around it. This process is akin to an “ends justify the means” approach. The means (evidence and methods) are justified as long as they support the ends (a preconceived conclusion). In contrast, science, which is continually striving for a hypothetical physical truth, works the other way around – the means justify the ends. The conclusion is less important than the evidence and analysis used to reach it. Therefore, to tell the difference between an honest scientific argument and one that was constructed for political means, one simply has to distinguish between the ends and the means, and decide which is more central to the structure of the argument.

Let us now apply this strategy to the arguments of three of the skeptics who are most visible in the media. In articles from the popular press and news segments from major television stations, the names of these skeptics appear more than any others. Firstly, S. Fred Singer is an atmospheric physicist and retired environmental science professor. He has rarely published in scientific journals since the 1960s, but he is very visible in the media. In the past five years, he has claimed that the Earth has been cooling since 1998 (Avery, 2006), that the Earth is warming, but it is natural and unstoppable (Avery and Singer, 2007), and that the warming is artificial and due to the urban heat island effect (Singer, 2005).

Richard Lindzen, also an atmospheric physicist, is far more active in the scientific community than Singer. However, most of his publications, including the prestigious IPCC report to which he contributed, conclude that climate change is real and caused by humans. His only published theory that disputed climate change was met with vigorous criticism, and he has publicly retracted it, referring to it as “an old view” (Seed Magazine, 2006). Therefore, in his academic life, Lindzen appears to be a mainstream climate scientist – contributing to assessment reports, abandoning theories that are disproved, and publishing work that affirms the theory of anthropogenic climate change. However, when Lindzen talks to the media, his statements change. He has implied that the world is not warming by calling attention to the lack of warming in the Antarctic (Bailey, 2004) and the thickening of some parts of the Greenland ice sheet (Beam, 2006), without explaining that both of these apparent contradictions are well understood by scientists and in no way disprove warming. He has also claimed that the observed warming is minimal and natural (Fox News, 2006).

Finally, Patrick Michaels is an ecological climatologist who occasionally publishes peer-reviewed studies, but none that support his more outlandish claims. In statements to the media, Michaels has said that the observed warming is below what computer models predicted (Chatterjee, 2009), that natural variations in oceanic cycles such as El Niño explain most of the warming (Knappenberger and Michaels, 2009), and that human activity explains most of the warming but it’s nothing to worry about because technology will save us (Miller, 2009).

While examining these arguments from skeptical scientists, something quickly becomes apparent: many of the arguments are contradictory. For example, how can the world be cooling if it is also warming naturally? Not only do the skeptics as a group seem unable to agree on a consistent explanation, some of the individuals either change their mind every year or believe two contradictory theories at the same time. Additionally, none of these arguments are supported by the peer-reviewed literature. They are all elementary misconceptions which were proven erroneous long ago.

With a little bit of research, the claims of these skeptics quickly fall apart. It does not seem possible that they are attempting to capture the attention of other researchers, as their arguments are so weak and inconsistent. However, their pattern of arguments does work as a media strategy, as most people will trust what a scientist says in the newspaper, and not research his reputation or remember his name. Over time, the public will start to remember dozens of so-called problems with the anthropogenic climate change theory. From this perspective, it certainly seems that prominent skeptics are focusing on the ends, rather than the means. They are simply collecting as many arguments as they can to denounce global warming, and publicizing them vigorously. But why?

Earlier, we identified that organizations with a laissez-faire agenda would have reason to spread doubt on climate change, as the most effective form of mitigation would involve government regulation of fossil fuels. Many of these organizations, known as conservative think tanks, exist. Think tanks are supposed to be centres of independent, policy-related research, but conservative think tanks have migrated into an entirely new category. Over the past forty years, they have evolved into lobby groups that denounce any threat to the free market or laissez-faire economics. This objective often leads to the denial of established science, such as the relationship between smoking and cancer (which, if accepted, would lead to government regulation of tobacco and controls on where people could smoke), the destructive effects of CFCs on ozone (which could ban the products of an entire chemical industry), and, most recently, the climatic forcing of fossil fuel combustion, and the attribution of late-20^th-century warming to this forcing.

The tactics that conservative think tanks (CTTs) use to manufacture doubt on climate change are often questionable and dishonest. On the rare occasion that their citations are peer-reviewed, they are discredited, cherry-picked, or misrepresented. For example, CTTs repeatedly cite data that shows slight cooling of the Earth – but only from before mechanical flaws in the satellites were corrected and the data began to show warming. They also cite a 2003 study by Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, claiming that the recent warming is attributable to sunspots. What CTTs don’t say is that, following the publication of this paper, 13 of the authors of data sets it incorporated refuted Baliunas’ interpretation of their work, and half of the editorial board resigned in protest against failure of the peer-review process. Additionally, CTTs argue that the wavelength band of CO2 absorption is already saturated, so adding more CO2 to the atmosphere wouldn’t cause any more warming – a theory that scientists proved wrong when spectroscopes improved in the 1950s.

Again, note the inconsistency of these statements, all of which were present at the same time on the Heartland Institute’s website. This CTT simultaneously claims that the world is cooling, that the world is warming naturally, and that the world is warming anthropogenically, but has maximized its potential. Evidently, these arguments were chosen because they fit with a preconceived conclusion, not with our understanding of science.

When their arguments are so similar, it should come as no surprise that most skeptics have ties to CTTs. Many of the most prominent skeptics write books – S. Fred Singer has written at least eight books skeptical of climate change, and Patrick Michaels has written at least five (Amazon). In 2008, a survey was conducted of books skeptical of climate change or other environmental issues, and found that an incredible 92% of the authors were affiliated with a CTT (Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman, 2008). Additionally, some of the authors had connections to more than one CTT. For example, S. Fred Singer has been a part of ten different CTTs throughout his career. Patrick Michaels has been part of two, and Richard Lindzen has been part of three (Greenpeace USA).

It is obvious that CTTs want “experts” on their staff, because they want to sound scientific and credible. Additionally, the CTTs are willing to pay generous sums of money for expertise with a convenient conclusion. In 2006, the American Enterprise Institute offered ten thousand dollars plus expenses to any scientist who wrote a critique of the IPCC (Hoggan and Littlemore, 2009). Sure enough, a handful of scientists responded, and with good reason – they wouldn’t get a ten-thousand-dollar bonus for publishing a regular old peer-reviewed study.

What do these ties with CTTs tell us about skeptics? Have they decided to switch careers from researchers to PR representatives, trading in their scientific integrity for the promise of monetary gain? After all, if they work for a CTT, their arguments don’t have to be accurate – they just have to be effective in manufacturing doubt.

Another interesting fact about publicized skepticism is that it did not appear until governments started promising action on climate change – George HW Bush in 1988 (Hoggan and Littlemore, 2009), Margaret Thatcher in 1990 (Thatcher, 1990), and Brian Mulroney in 1992 (United Nations). In fact, 87% of the books from the Jacques, Dunlap, and Freeman survey were published in or before 1988. Those published before likely did not even mention climate change – many of their titles suggested skepticism about toxic chemicals, the environmental concern of the 1970s. Therefore, it is very easy to pinpoint a short period of years and political events that sparked mass PR coverage of skeptical viewpoints. This trigger provides yet more evidence that skeptics are publicizing their views not to further scientific knowledge, but to manufacture public doubt and delay action.

So, when skepticism started in response to political promises, where were its roots? Unsurprisingly, the manufacture of doubt started with fossil fuel companies. In 1991, the Western Fuel Association, the National Coal Association, and the Edison Electric Institute formed a PR coalition named, ironically, the Information Council on the Environment (ICE). ICE launched a major advertising campaign denouncing the idea of anthropogenic global warming. The campaign’s objective, in ICE’s own words, was “to reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)” and “to supply alternative facts that suggest global warming will be good” (Hoggan and Littlemore, 2009). These objectives are a blatant example of manufacturing doubt, because they are based on the ends, not the means. ICE chose a conclusion that was convenient for their industry, and cherry-picked “alternative facts” to support it.

Several years later, a leaked document from another fossil fuel company, the American Petroleum Institute, gave away the organization’s entire game plan. The document laid out an ideal scenario in which the media reflected climate change as an equal-sided, unsettled debate, citizens began to accept this framing, and public support for the Kyoto Protocol fell apart. To achieve this utopia, API planned to “produce, distribute via syndicate and directly to newspapers nationwide a steady stream of op-ed columns and letters to the editor authored by scientists” (Walker, 1998). By manipulating how the media framed climate change, API could push public opinion in a predetermined direction. This document shows that fossil fuel companies such as the API have stopped caring about science anymore, otherwise the objectives would be “to publish our latest discovery that invalidates global warming in a prestigious journal”. Rather, their efforts are focused on the media, the public, and policymakers. They are consistently promoting ends that don’t have means to support them.

Over the last decade, however, fossil fuels have gradually shifted away from creating their own propaganda, choosing to fund CTTs instead. ExxonMobil, for example, has spent $20 million since 1998 funding CTTs that express climate change skepticism (Hoggan and Littlemore, 2009), and it releases annual breakdowns of its funding. Let’s look at some of the CTTs that our three major skeptics are a part of. Firstly, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, of which S. Fred Singer is president, has received $20 000 from Exxon since 1998. The Cato Institute, which has Patrick Michaels as a senior fellow, Richard Lindzen as a contributing expert, and S. Fred Singer as an advisory board member, has received $125 000. The Heartland Institute, which lists all three as “HeartlandGlobalWarming.org experts”, has received $676 500. (Greenpeace USA). At times, Exxon specifically notes that this funding is for “climate change efforts”, so it’s pretty obvious what kind of message they’re pushing.

Fossil fuel companies are some of the largest businesses in the world, and they are using their money and power to promote messages that are convenient for their further domination. Conservative think tanks – and, therefore, the experts they employ – are being paid, by vested interests, to say that global warming isn’t real. It provides yet another motive for skeptics to give more weight to the ends, rather than the means.

It seems quite obvious that these skeptics should not be trusted, as their arguments are inconsistent and unsupported, and they have potential fortunes resting on what they say, not how they prove it. However, the vested interests of CTTs and fossil fuel companies have been wildly successful in using these skeptics as their spokespeople. For example, the majority of articles from well-respected newspapers present the issue as an equal-sided debate, giving equal time to arguments for and against the idea of human-caused climate change (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004). This framing has permeated to the public, as 39% of American adults think humans are not changing the climate (Gallup, 2007), and 42% think scientists disagree a lot about the issue (Newsweek, 2007). The constant presence of manufactured doubt in the media has taken its toll.

Additionally, since the skeptical view exploded following the near-action in the late 1980s, our society has spent 20 years without any significant plans for mitigation. The Kyoto Protocol failed in both Canada and the US. The Copenhagen summit did not lead to any politically binding targets. US President Barack Obama is finding it difficult to pass even the most meagre cap-and-trade legislation through the Senate, and the position of the Canadian government is to wait and see what the Americans do.

A democracy cannot function without an electorate that is accurately informed. We see an example of this scenario with regards to climate change legislation. Even though the scientific community is, essentially, as sure as it can get about the existence of human-caused climate change, the manufacture of doubt has prevented the public opinion from following suit, and prevented voters from demanding necessary political action. A well-funded campaign has led us astray from the ideals of democracy.

It’s not over yet, though. Climate change action is not a question of all or nothing. Even if we fail to keep the warming at a tolerable level, there is still a wide range of outcomes. Three degrees of warming is better than five, and five degrees is better than eight. We should never throw up our hands and say that all is lost, because we can always prevent the situation from getting worse.

To pull our society together in order to minimize global warming, we need the public to be better informed about climate change. This does not require everyone to know climate science – rather, all that is needed is for the public to be able to recognize whether or not they can trust an argument. Everyone needs to understand the importance of peer-review and the difference between the ends and the means. People do not need to know science – they just need to know how the system of scientific opinion works. Once this literacy becomes widespread, people will understand the urgency of action, and they will stop listening to those skeptical scientists on the news.

Works Cited

Amazon. “Patrick Michaels.” Amazon.com. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.

Amazon. “S. Fred Singer.” Amazon.com. Web. 7 Jan. 2010.

Bailey, Ronald. “Two Sides to Global Warming.” Weblog post. Reason.com. 10 Nov. 2004. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://reason.com/archives/2004/11/10/two-sides-to-global-warming>.

Beam, Alex. “MIT’s Inconvenient Scientist.” Boston Globe. 30 Aug. 2006. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/08/30/mits_inconvenient_scientist>.

Boykoff, Maxwell, and Jules Boykoff. “Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press.” Global Environmental Change 14 (2004): 125-36. Print.

Chatterjee, Neera. “Prof. says climate change exaggerated.” The Dartmouth. 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Dec. 2009. <http://thedartmouth.com/2009/02/24/news/climate>.

Dennis, Avery. “Global Cooling?” Web log post. Free Republic. 30 June 2006. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1658580/posts>.

Doran, Peter, and Maggie Zimmerman. “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” EOS 90.3 (2009): 22-23. Print.

Exxon Secrets. Greenpeace USA. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. <http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php>.

Fox News. “Global Warming: Climate of Fear?” Fox News. 25 May 2006. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195551,00.html>.

Gallup. Environment Poll. 2007. Raw data.

Heartland Institute. Heartland Institute. Web. 13 Dec. 2009. <http://heartland.org>.

Hoggan, James, and Richard Littlemore. Climate Cover-Up. Vancouver: Greystone, 2009. Print.

Jacques, Peter, Riley Dunlap, and Mark Freeman. “The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism.” Environmental Politics 17.3 (2008): 349-85. Print.

Kennedy, Donald. “An Unfortunate U-Turn on Carbon.” Science 291.5513 (2001): 2515. Print.

Logical Science. “The Consensus on Global Warming/Climate Change: From Science to Industry & Religion.” Logical Science. 2006. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Luntz, Frank. “Straight Talk: The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America.” Letter to Republican Party. 2002. Political Strategy. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. <http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/001330.php>.

Miller, Dan. “Look Who’s Talking.” Heartland Institute. 28 May 2009. Web. 10 Dec. 2009.

Newsweek. Environment Poll. 2007. Raw data.

Oreskes, Naomi. “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science 306.5702 (2004): 1686. Print.

Oreskes, Naomi. “You CAN Argue with the Facts.” Stanford University. Apr. 2008. Lecture.

Paul, Knappenberger C., and Michaels J. Patrick. “Scientific Shortcomings in the EPA’s Endangerment Finding from Greenhouse Gases.” Cato Journal. Cato Institute, 2009. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj29n3/cj29n3-8.pdf>.

Revkin, Andrew. “Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate.” New York Times. 23 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html>.

Seed Magazine. “The Contrarian.” SeedMagazine.com. 24 Aug. 2006. Web. 3 Jan. 2010. <http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_contrarian/?page=all>.

Singer, S. Fred, and Dennis Avery. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,, 2007. Print.

Singer, S. Fred. “British Documentary Counters Gore Movie.” Heartland Institute. 1 June 2005. Web. 9 Dec. 2009.

SourceWatch. “Global Climate Coalition.” SourceWatch. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Climate_Coalition>.

Thatcher, Margaret. “Speech at 2nd World Climate Conference.” Speech. 2nd World Climate Conference. Geneva. 1990. Margaret Thatcher Foundation. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108237>.

United Nations. “Country Profile – Canada.” United Nations. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://www.un.org/esa/earthsummit/cnda-cp.htm>.

Walker, Joe. “Draft Global Climate Science Communications plan.” Letter to Global Climate Science Team. Apr. 1998. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html>.

Weart, Spencer. The Discovery of Global Warming. Harvard UP, 2004. Print.

NASA Speaks on 2009

Posted on Jan 17, 2010 by climatesight

I’d been watching the GISS page closely, to no avail, but it turns out that the annual summation for 2009 global temperatures was posted on James Hansen’s Columbia page.

(Click on the graph for a better resolution in the Columbia document.)

2009 is the second warmest on record, “but it is so close to 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 that we must declare these years as being in a virtual tie as the second warmest year,” says Dr Hansen. 2009 is probably the warmest among those years, and 2006 is probably the coolest.

2009, especially the spring and summer, was quite chilly in my area, so this is a perfect example of the difference between regional and global temperature. Global temperature reflects the amount of infrared radiation in the atmosphere; regional temperature reflects how that energy is distributed.

NCDC’s preliminary calculations, however, show 2009 as the fifth warmest on record. What are the reasons for this discrepancy? Do they monitor Arctic temperatures differently than NASA, like the British Met Office does?

Hopefully, this will be the end of “global warming stopped in 1998” comments. But maybe the usual suspects will keep saying it and hope nobody notices, or say “global warming stopped in 2005” instead.

Partisan

Posted on Jan 11, 2010 by climatesight

How did objectivity itself become partisan?

I’m not quite sure how this thought came into my mind. I was angry about what Mark Steyn is regularly allowed to write in Maclean’s (Peter Sinclair, if you’re reading, you should really use his columns as case studies for your videos – this is the most popular news magazine in Canada). Then I read his Wikipedia page and discovered that he regularly appears on Rush Limbaugh, writes for the National Post, and gets awards from Fox News. Somehow that made my anger diminish, as I started to look at his articles as case studies rather than as a reporter from a magazine I’ve grown up with. His climatology arguments are easily invalidated by the cooling stratosphere as well as tracking the warming over decades rather than years – just like S. Fred Singer. Singer’s writing doesn’t make me mad anymore, because it’s a case study, not a source.

Then I got distracted wondering what would happen to the temperature of the stratosphere if the planet was experiencing an aerosol-induced cooling. That sort of energy balance mechanism fascinates me, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Eventually I got back to politics and the media, and I started wondering how climate science became a partisan issue. It’s math and physics when you boil it all down, just like any other physical science – the very subjects which are, ideally, the pinnacles of objectivity. At what point did the public perception of the objectivity of climatology fall apart?

I trust scientists, and I trust science more than any other field to guide my decisions, so maybe I’m expecting that everyone else would feel the same way. But if I was confused about the link between the ozone hole and Antarctic temperatures, my first reaction would not be to declare that both ozone depletion and climate change were “religion, not science”. My first reaction would be to assume that I did not fully understand, and that the scientists had covered all of my misconceptions long ago. Then I would go to Google Scholar, rather than writing an erroneous editorial in a major national magazine.

However, when one frames their own scientific misconceptions as a conservative viewpoint of climate science, the more informed message of those who work in the field and keep up to date with the literature is cast as “liberal”. Then the artificial balance complex of the mainstream media kicks in. Equal time is given to contrasting conclusions, rather than to the most accurate and conscientious arguments. Space is allocated based on the ends (conclusions) rather than the means (methods and analysis).

Science is so fundamentally different from everything else the media reports. In politics and religion and musical tastes, there is no right and wrong. But in science, there is a right and wrong – at least hypothetically. We know there’s a physical truth out there, and we’re always striving to come closer to it.

The fallacies of the mainstream media make it incredibly easy to create a controversy where there is none. You can get away with misconceptions or outright lies (any guesses on how Steyn finished the phrase “hide the decline in….”?), as long as you frame it as a partisan opinion.

ClimateSight/CCC Movies!

Posted on Jan 10, 2010 by climatesight

Here is a re-upload of some public education videos (aimed at students) I created in the summer, in association with Climate Change Connection.

Read the citations, and take the survey if you’re feeling brave.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Our Readers

Posted on Jan 4, 2010 by climatesight

A happy 2010 to everyone. I thought that the start of a new year would be an appropriate time to thank the many people who have made this blog possible.

First and foremost, thanks to the ever-patient and computer-savvy reader who set me up with a blog after months of listening to my rambles about climate change….and who continues to listen, even though I now have an outlet for my thoughts.

I never would have become interested in climate change if it weren’t for a certain geography teacher and a certain climatology prof (you both know who you are!), as well as the great folks from Climate Change Connection.

I have taken a great deal of inspiration from the work of Greg Craven, and many of my posts trace back to ideas that his videos sparked. More recently, I have relied on at least a dozen great blogs for climate change news – thanks to all of you.

Tamino and Mychaylo are each responsible for about a third of my regular readers – it’s amazing how much an influential person can help to spread the word.

And now we reach the regular readers and commenters, who are the heart of this blog. I have turned to these conscientious people for resources, answers to scientific questions, moral support, presentation editing, career advice, insights…..and they have never let me down.

Deep thanks to all of you who keep the discussion flowing and the message moving. It isn’t always easy to spend so much time on such a depressing issue, but you make it worth it.

On Media

Posted on Jan 4, 2010 by climatesight

I have given up on my local newspaper.

It’s been a long time coming. I’m tired of letters to the editor that talk about how carbon dioxide is good for the environment because it makes plants grow. I’m tired of editorials that conclude with, “So-and-so is a senior fellow at (insert name of suspiciously-funded conservative lobby group here).” I’m tired of the skeptical editor who gets an entire page on Saturdays and one or two columns during the week, often to talk about “Al Gore’s eco-horror film” and “scientists who have exaggerated data and silenced critics”. And I’m tired of the paper’s notion that any story even remotely related to global warming has to include a picture of a polar bear. If there’s one thing that the public needs to know about climate change, it’s that it’s not just a problem for the polar bears.

I’ve been reading my local newspaper every day for years, but now I have decided two things. Firstly, this isn’t a paper that I want to support. But more importantly, when the paper is making such a muddle out of their climate change reporting, it’s not a source that I trust to inform me accurately on other issues.

In terms of alternatives, I’ve subscribed to RSS feeds from the CBC for national and world politics, and the BBC for science and technology. I’ll read the Globe and Mail when I can get my hands on it, as it’s a very good paper that does a good job (at least comparatively) of climate change reporting.

I can always use my local paper, or any paper in the world for that matter (yay Internet) as a case study for how the media reports climate change. However, I’d like to rely on something else for my personal knowledge about the world. And it’s very nice not to feel that sense of doom as I turn to the editorial page.

Remind You of Anything?

Posted on Dec 31, 2009 by climatesight

The BBC reports that the Russian government is working to divert an asteroid that has a 1 in 250 000 chance of hitting the Earth in 2036.

“People’s lives are at stake,” Mr Perminov reportedly told the radio service Golos Rossii (Voice of Russia).

“We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

Remind you at all of Daniel Gilbert’s analysis of climate change psychology?

“Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician they could get their hands on.

Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In fact, it isn’t happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he’d return to the present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the problem.”

What Comes Next?

Posted on Dec 31, 2009 by climatesight

I’m not really sure how I feel about Copenhagen.

In a way, I was pleasantly surprised that anything happened at all. I had been following the feeds from DeSmogBlog and U of T throughout the conference, and it was after midnight on the last evening before any agreements were actually made.

Obviously, Copenhagen didn’t progress to the stage it was supposed to. However, I feel that the stage that was reached was successful. For unsubstantiated, unexplained goals to simply “take note of”, they’re certainly very good goals.

I’m also pleased that it was China and the US who finally sat down to get something done. As the the largest emitters and largest economies in the world, all the other countries are going to follow whatever they do. And I’m glad that the senior leadership (if not the legislative assemblies) from both countries seems to be pushing in the right direction.

It ended up better than I expected. But it still isn’t enough. We really should have reached this stage 20 years ago. We’re far behind schedule, and we don’t seem willing to catch up.

Michael Tobis Takes Part 3

Posted on Dec 24, 2009 by climatesight

I was going to write a Science and Communication, Part 3 post that examined what ClimateGate actually tells us vs what the popular press says about it, and why this chasm between the two exists.

Then Michael Tobis wrote a brilliant post discussing that very topic:

What Was Actually Revealed

a rehash of a well-known controversy about how to present tree-ring data

frustration about too much attention to substandard scientific papers slipped into the literature by marginally qualified people with nonscientific agendas, and discussions about how to handle that

frustration about opposition by filibuster via freedom of information requests

a single suggestion about “deleting emails”, without any context, which plausibly does not refer to deleting emails from a server (scientists are probably aware that end users cannot really do this) but rather to deleting them from a response to one of many FOIA requests

some sloppy code and a pretty sad but perfectly typical lack of understanding of the advantages of dynamic programming languages

a couple of fudge factors explicitly labeled as such probably used in testing, commented out

some older data for which CRU is not the originator or primary repository is not in any known dataset at CRU

about 985 emails and 1995 other files of no apparent interest to anyone

In other words, (withe the possible exception of the email deletion incident, which I imagine the lawyers are fretting about) the only things remotely unusual here are a direct consequence of the existence of a politically rather than scientifically motivated opposition.

Read the whole post here.

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