Category Archives: Media and the Public

A Well-Documented Strategy

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Exhibit A:

“There is no experimental data to support the hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, or chronic bronchitis………any number of things can influence the onset of a disease. The list includes genetics, diet, workplace environment, and stress…….we understand public anxiety about smoking causing disease, but are concerned that many of these much-publicized associations are ill-informed and misleading……….the media continue to uncritically accept and vigorously promote an anti-smoking agenda…….after hundreds of millions of dollars spent on clinical research, and decades of screaming headlines, we have no more certainty today about smoking causing disease than we did decades ago……….if even a small part of the time and money spent trying to link smoking to cancer were spent instead on studying the other causes of cancer, millions of lives could be saved.”

Exhibit B:

“The claim that human activities cause climate change has not been scientifically proven……….it is a reductionist error and not keeping with the current theories of climate science to attempt  to assign each temperature change to an exclusive single cause………..the use of results from flawed computer models to frighten people by attributing catastrophic future change to current human activities may be misleading and is highly regrettable……..that emotionalism can override objective analysis is illustrated by the headlines………..despite millions of dollars spent by the government on climate modeling and research, many questions about the relationship between human activities and global temperature change remain unanswered……….indeed, many scientists are becoming concerned that preoccupation with anthropogenic global warming may be both unfounded and dangerous – unfounded because evidence on many critical points is conflicting, dangerous because it diverts attention from other suspected hazards.”

Now read the originals.

Exhibit A

“There is no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavourable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape…….any number of things can influence earth’s temperature. The list includes volcanic eruptions, variations in the amount of energy received from the sun, El Niños, and La Niñas – all of which are natural………we understand public anxiety about climate change, but are concerned that many of these much publicized predictions are ill-informed and misleading……….the media continue to uncritically accept and vigorously promote shrill global warming alarmism………after hundreds of millions of dollars spent on climate modeling, and decades of screaming headlines, we have no more certainty today about global warming prediction than we did decades ago………..if even a small part of the money spent trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions were spent instead on fighting hunger or disease in Third World countries, millions of lives could be saved.”

-from the various articles on the Heartland Institute’s global warming page

Exhibit B

“The claim that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer has not been scientifically proven………..it is a reductionist error and not keeping with the current theories of cancer causation to attempt to assign each cancer to an exclusive single cause…………the use of results from flawed population studies to frighten people by attributing large numbers of death yearly to smoking may be misleading and is most regrettable……….that emotionalism can override objective analysis is illustrated by the headlines………despite millions of dollars spent by the government on smoking and health-related research, many questions about the relationship between smoking and disease remain unanswered…………indeed, many scientists are becoming concerned that preoccupation with smoking may be both unfounded and dangerous – unfounded because evidence on many critical points is conflicting, dangerous because it diverts attention from other suspected hazards.”

-from Smoking and Health: 1964-1979: The Continuing Controversy, published in 1979 by the Tobacco Institute

If I hadn’t told you which set of quotes was unchanged, and which I had replaced words like “smoking” and “cancer” with “human activities” and “climate change”, or vice versa, would you even have known the difference?

By Your Own Logic

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The typical conservative holds opinions on issues such as health care, government economics, and international relations that I may or may not agree with, but I respect as their own political beliefs.

Except one. Since when did rejecting the science of climate change become a trademark of the typical conservative? Why is science – and not just the implications of the science, the actual analysing of the graphs – such a political subject?

Think about it. Science is designed to remove political biases and follow an approved method so that repeating the same process will produce the same result. If it doesn’t, the hypothesis is proved erroneous or incomplete.

So why should political opinions influence the honest interpretation of a physical event? As Greg Craven says in his video Why There is Still Debate,

Now, you probably don’t find it surprising that more Democrats than Republicans believe in global warming, and ordinarily I wouldn’t either. But I’d been steeping myself in this question of how do you go about deciding what to believe about what’s going on with the physical world, and this split along political party lines about a physical reality just sort of blew me away. Why the heck should political belief influence one’s assessment of what is physical reality? I just got this ridiculous picture in my head of a Democrat and a Republican standing and looking out the same window—the Democrat saying “Gee, it’s pouring rain out there,” and the Republican saying “No, it’s a sunny blue day.”

The truth lies in confirmation bias. As we explain in the post Science, it is scientifically immoral – but very possible, especially with the Internet – to start with a conclusion that seems politically or socially acceptable and then build a scientific argument around it. To eliminate personal bias, scientists always start with evidence, and then choose a conclusion which seems logical.

Liberals tend to be okay with the idea of fighting climate change, because they don’t really mind regulation, and believe that the government should spend money to help as many people as possible. Preventing future natural disasters and food and water shortages seems like a good way to help people.

Conservatives, however, tend to be very opposed to regulation. Climate change is inconvenient for all of us, but especially for those on the right, as fixing the problem seems to require action that sharply contradicts their ideological beliefs.

The solution to this dilemma, of course, seems to be to decide not to believe in the problem so they won’t have to face the solutions.

Many conservatives take this quite lightly, and don’t think about the issue very much. The people whose views they support also claim that humans are not causing climate change. It seems convenient. So they accept it.

But some of the more hardcore skeptics of anthropogenic climate change make quite an amazing effort to create scientific arguments which support the conclusion they like. As Michael Tobis explains on his blog Only in it for the Gold,

The denialists are now trumpeting a very silly argument that El Nino (a quasiperiodic oscillation with energy in the 2-10 year band) is dominating secular trends in global temperature by an argument that I summarized in seven steps recently.

I would like to start the day with a shorter summary:

1) El Nino dominates interannual variability.
2) Frantic armwaving, accompanied by sciencey-looking charts and graphs.
3) Therefore, warming is predominantly due to El Nino.
4) Therefore, very not the IPCC.

Of course conclusion 4 will resonate with the Not the IPCC crowd. It is the conclusion they want, er, I mean, the conclusion that their serious thought has led them to in the past, right?

The trouble is, their argument goes like this

1) The sun is the source of atmospheric energy
2) Frantic armwaving, accompanied by sciencey-looking charts and graphs.
3) Therefore, warming is predominantly due to solar changes.
4) Therefore, very not the IPCC.

As we explained on the post All Over the Map, skeptics can’t seem to agree on a consistent explanation for why humans aren’t causing the Earth to warm. In fact, each of them seems to have a different theory. They all contradict each other, but they all support the same ultimate conclusion (“very not the IPCC”) so they all endorse each other.

Does this not show blatant confirmation bias?

So I’ll make it easy for the conservatives who refuse to accept the problem of climate change because they don’t like the solutions.

Firstly, they seem to oppose action on climate change because they don’t want to be subjected to economic costs and government regulations unless it’s absolutely necessary. They don’t want to take that chance.

(I’m leaving out the part about how action on climate change could actually help the economy and jumpstart some new industries, as well as how, if we had carbon-free energy, regulation wouldn’t be necessary. Let’s not overcomplicate things here.)

However, how would the government act in the times of a crisis, such as a natural disaster or an invasion? Would they be sure to be democratic and preserve everyone’s civil liberties? Or might they compromise these for the sake of natural security? Might they ration food? Impose a curfew? Call in the army to restrain any looters? Make quick decisions without a formal vote?

How did events such as Hurricane Katrina, World War II, or 9-11 affect people’s freedoms? What can we learn from history here? There’s nothing like a disaster to bring out the draconian side of any government.

Also recall how disasters can impact the global economy. For example, Hurricane Katrina affected the transport of oil and caused the first-ever gas prices above $1/L here in Canada. We can be pretty sure that the economy won’t handle disasters well.

Even the most die-hard conservative skeptics have to admit that they might be wrong. There might be a chance, however small it seems to them, that global warming is worth fighting. And this only covers costs for the economy and civil liberties. It doesn’t go into food security, water security, disease, refugees, continuous sea level rise, droughts and floods, or prolonged heat waves.

I would argue that the economic costs and government regulations that would be necessary for even a mid-range climate change scenario would be much worse than those from mitigating the problem and reducing our emissions. This hypothesis has been quantified in the Stern Review, which suggests that action on climate change would cost about 1% of GDP, while the consequences of inaction would cost about 20% of GDP.

And that’s only GDP. Let’s not forget that not everything in our world can be measured in dollar value. What does the life of a person cost? What is the monetary value of the oceans?

So conservatives don’t want to take action on climate change because they don’t want to run the risk of economic harm or a draconian government.

However, if they accept that they might be wrong, a picture appears of much more economic harm and a much more draconian government.

Isn’t it a better bet to take action, and avoid the much greater damage to civil liberties and the economy, rather than clinging to a strategy that will only be beneficial if all the scientific organizations in the world are totally wrong?

Falling Short

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I recently created a multi-genre document which explores discrepancies in the way the media reports on climate change.

Falling Short

Apologies that the visual quality isn’t too great. I conveniently lost my digital copy of this file and all I had was a hard copy, which I scanned, losing some of the quality in the process.

Enjoy!

Context

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Most long-time readers are familiar with the story of Stephen Schneider’s misquoting, which I discussed in one of my earliest posts. Read that post if you haven’t already, otherwise the rest of this post won’t make a lot of sense.

So imagine my surprise and disgust when I received a “pingback” (a message that someone else on WordPress has linked to your site) from a post entitled “Environmental Hoax Proof”. The post on WordPress looked like it was republished from somewhere else, and I believe this is the original.

The part of the post which links to me is as follows:

“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

https://climatesight.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/the-schneider-quote/

The author must have read my post before linking to me. Yet they printed the widely-circulated, out-of-context quote anyway.

A lot of people use that particular quote without knowing the backstory. But the author of this post must have known the backstory (unless they didn’t even bother to read what they were providing as a source), and chose to print the seemingly scandolous quote anwyay.

Dishonesty. Fundamental dishonesty. And a real strong faith in the readers that they won’t actually click on the links.

The rest of the post included a lot of similar quotes from climatologists and environmentalists. I could tell without even looking further into any of them that they were similarly out of context.

What does this say about the credibility of some of our opponents?

Skepticism and Denial

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Skepticism and denial are two words that many climate change activists throw around. What is the difference between them? What is the appropriate usage for each? And which camp do most of so-called “global warming skeptics” fall into?

A skeptic is someone in doubt. The key word here is “doubt”. They are willing to listen to evidence from all sides because they haven’t formed an opinion yet. However, it will take very strong evidence for them to accept a theory or belief.

All scientists are taught to be skeptical – to never make assumptions, jump to conclusions, or accept a theory without asking further questions. Skepticism is scientific nature. It is a way of saying, “I don’t know enough about the topic to make a decision.” Skepticism shows inherent objectivity.

A denialist will adamantly reject something, no matter how much evidence supports it. They will only listen to evidence from the side of the debate they support. Unlike a skeptic, who will accept a theory when strong evidence arises, a denialist will never accept a theory. Denial shows inherent bias.

Applying these definitions

In the context of climate change, I feel that denial, in a way, is opposite to skepticism. All over the Internet there are people claiming that climate change is nonexistent/natural/a global conspiracy. They say that they are “skeptical” of the evidence that humans are causing the Earth to warm. Let’s look at a rather tragic story and see if it sheds some light on whether they are actually skeptical, or if they are, in fact, in denial.

In The Great Global Warming Swindle – as well as countless other sources – a graph is presented which shows the Medeival Warm Period to be slightly warmer than the present day.

ipcc1This graph is from the first IPCC report, dated 1990. The film is adamant that this graph is correct. However, in the years following 1990, the IPCC did more research on the Medeival Warm Period, as almost all of their historical temperature data was from Europe. They looked at data from other parts of the world and discovered that the warming was confined to Europe. The Earth, as a whole, hardly warmed at all. By the third IPCC report, the graph had advanced dramatically, to what is known as “the hockey stick”.

ipcc2

This graph prompted a lot of yelling and screaming, and a lot of claims that the IPCC was forging data. But, in actuality, their data set had just improved. And it was continuing to improve. By its fourth report, the IPCC had not just a hockey stick, but a whole hockey team.

ipcc4

This graph, the most recent, was created by the same source as the first graph, which showed the Medeival Warming Period to be warmer than today. It was 17 years more recent. It had advanced dramatically. However, the Great Global Warming Swindle et al continued to use the graph from 1990 and claim that it was credible. Do they hold valid scientific concerns regarding the stastical methods used to create the more recent graphs? Or are they simply cherry-picking data?

There are other, similar, stories. Many skeptics put incredible faith on the idea that other planets might be warming – a dubious area of research we’re just starting to explore – and then turn around and say that the Earth’s temperature record, which has been going strong for a century, is flawed. They say that the 1970s theory of an impending ice age – which was mentioned by a single, discredited paper – held complete consensus in the scientific community, whereas there is apparently “no agreement” over the idea of human-caused warming.

They call themselves “skeptics”. But how can they really be of skeptical nature when they are clinging to certain pieces of evidence in a way that’s not skeptical at all? How can they claim that they hold logic, rationality, and common sense when they are advocating – without analysis, investigation, or statements of uncertainty – for all evidence which supports their pre-conceived conclusion?

Does this show inherent objectivity – skepticism?

Or does it show inherent bias – denial?

In All Honesty

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An interesting theory as to why so many people reject climate change is that they don’t want to take action. Whether they work in the fossil fuel industry or are vehemently opposed to government regulation, they feel that the consequences of taking action will be worse than not taking action.

This is a legitimate opinion, even though I disagree with it. It involves policy (what we should do about the problem) instead of science (deciding if there even is a problem). Stating that we shouldn’t take action at all is, in a way, deciding what action we should take. It’s a personal opinion. You don’t need a PhD for it to be respected.

However, it’s fairly obvious that accepting the problem of climate change but refusing to take any action would make the public very angry. Here in Canada, many environmental advocates aren’t too happy with Stephen Harper (our prime minister) as he’s scrapped yet another emissions legislation plan – the third one, I believe. He’s now decided to not take any action against climate change until the American legislation is completely implemented. If Harper gets his way, it’ll be about 2016 before Canada starts regulating emissions. I’ve never seen David Suzuki so mad.

The aforementioned theory goes on to say that, instead of accepting the problem but refusing action, the regulation-wary people deliberately create confusion around the science supporting the idea of climate change. Their purpose is not to win the debate, but to prolong the debate. The longer they can keep the public wondering if climate change is a problem or not, the longer it will take for action to begin. This goal is mainly achieved by opinion editorials, credible-looking websites, and interviews with the media, all of which contradict as much of the prevailing scientific opinion as possible.

This strategy is not new, or exclusive to climate change. Suspicion has arised that it has been used before when products such as tobacco or CFCs began to be regulated. Some great sources dealing with this theory are this lecture by scientific historian Naomi Oreskes and this documentary by a Canadian televison network (sorry if it’s not available to American viewers). I say “suspicion” because there is no solid way to prove this theory, it is only speculation.

If there is anyone reading this who is using the strategy of confusing the public on the science in effort to delay action, please reconsider your actions. If you’re worried about the potential costs of action against climate change, tell us your worries. We may be able to find a way around them. We’ll work as hard as necessary to avoid excessive regulation and counteract economic harm. The economy is a human-created system; we can manipulate it to fit our needs. The sooner we start working to fix this problem, the easier it will be.

Please don’t try to delay action by debating the science. If you’re open and honest about your worries, we may be able to solve them – no deception, confusion, or aggression necessary.

The Source of the Ice Age Claim

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An all-too-common claim people use to justify ignoring the widespread scientific agreement on climate change is, “The scientists were all predicting an ice age in the 70s, and that didn’t happen.”

Last year, a publishing climatologist, the highest category for an individual on our credibility spectrum, decided to investigate just how valid this claim was.

Dr Andrew Weaver is a Canadian climatology professor at the University of Victoria, the chief editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Climate, a lead author on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th IPCC reports,and the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis. I think we can establish strong credibility for Dr Weaver’s statements.

In a 2008 article in the Ottawa Citizen, Dr Weaver explains how he searched through the enormous ISI Web of Science database for peer-reviewed studies claiming the world was heading into an ice age. He discovered that “there is not a single peer-reviewed original scientific study that argued this to be the case.” Only one paper mentioned the idea at all.

“The only paper that came close was one written by NASA scientists Ichtiaque Rasool and Stephen Schneider in 1971. A throwaway sentence at the end of their abstract noted:  “An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” Of course this statement is riddled with weasel words, assumptions and the hypothetical. Nevertheless, its scientific shelf life was only a few months before the assumptions underpinning the study were shown to be questionable.”

The peer-review process worked. The insufficient study was retracted. The idea of an ice age held hardly any agreement whatsoever in the scientific community, compared to the widespread agreement regarding the current climate change. Read the rest of Dr Weaver’s article if you’re interested in how scientists determined the cause of the slight drop in global temperatures post-WWII, despite the increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

Sadly, sources such as Time magazine, Newsweek, and the Globe and Mail (a major Canadian newspaper) got a hold of the recently discredited study. They liked the idea of controversial, attention-grabbing headlines that would engage their readers and, ultimately, bring money and attention to their writers. They published stories with titles such as, “Does man trigger trouble in the world’s climate cycle?” and “Another Ice Age?”

The public ate it right up. And now, 30 years later, this media-induced theory still persists.

At the same time that climatologists were studying the drop in temperatures, many of them were worried that the positive forcing of greenhouse gases would eventually outweigh the negative forcing of aerosols, volcanoes, and the solar minimum. Sources such as the National Academy of Sciences and science advisory committees to the President of the United States held this opinion. Check out this video by Peter Sinclair to see their exact statements (as well as a great clip from a 1958 Bill Nye-esque science show!). Dr Weaver’s article also mentions a 1975 article in the journal Science by Wally Broecker of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

With the ISI search tool, Dr Weaver was able to find one discredited study that mentioned an aerosol-induced ice age. When he searched the phrases “climate change” and “global warming”, he found 30 913 studies from the period 1965-2008. He speculates,

“That’s a lot of science and you can bet that if there were an Achilles heel to the theory of global warming it would have been discovered long ago.”

The 70s theory of an ice age simply cannot be compared to the current theory of anthropogenic warming. Their levels of support are completely opposite. The ice age theory was held by the extreme minority of publishing climatologists; the current climate change theory is held by the extreme majority.

In the 70s, the media misrepresented the science by overstating an almost non-existent theory. Currently, they are misrepresenting the science by suppressing an overwhelming theory and overplaying the opposition to it.

Personally, I’m going to refrain from basing my knowledge of climate change on the popular press. I suggest you do the same.

The Third Side of the Debate

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We know about the majority of scientists  who have stated that 1) the Earth has been warming since post-industrial times, 2) the driving force is human activity, 3) it’s going to have major consequences for human civilization, and 4) action is necessary as soon as possible to fix it.

We also know about the minority group that gets a disproportional amount of air time and, at least in part, appear to be actively trying to disprove every conclusion the scientists come to. This minority group has been able to publish little to no peer-reviewed science supporting their theories. Their ideas have not been accepted in the scientific community, so they spend their time in the media instead.

But there are also some people, with more noble motives, who simply know “climate change is a problem and we need to fix it” and don’t really know much about the science behind it. That much is fine. But then they go around telling people oversimplified or totally wrong pieces of data that they make up on the spot. That CO2 levels are now around 600 ppm. That the warming will lead us into another ice age. That the world will end.

Or then there’s the Al Gore phenomenon, where their scientific explanation, even if largely correct, is so grossly oversimplified that they are shot down by the first critic and the observers go back to disregarding the problem. (Keep your eyes open for a post all about the Al Gore phenomenon – I’m just waiting until I can find a copy of An Inconvenient Truth.)

I admire the cause of these lobbyists. But, as they are calling for action just like the scientific community is, the weakness of their scientific arguements ends up hurting their cause.

We can’t afford any more confusion on this topic. We can’t afford public distrust towards the organizations at the top of the credibility spectrum.

Leave the science to the scientists. As citizens and voters, let’s use our efforts to look at action and risk management instead, which you don’t need a PhD to understand.

Making Up Your Own Science

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Why do so many people believe they’re more qualified on the topic of climate change than the climatologists themselves?

Visit Youtube, the editorial page of a newspaper, or even the blogosphere. All over places like these, where opinions can be expressed freely, there are countless people who

1) have little to no scientific training,

2) rely solely on the popular media for information on climate change,

3) are obviously unfamiliar with elementary principles of climatology, such as the Milankovitch cycles, El Nino and La Nina, or the importance of long trend lines in graphical measurements. (Sorry, not all of these sources are that high up on our credibility spectrum, but their citations are great.)

But, most importantly,

4) They seem to believe that their opinion of the forcings and mechanisms of a complex system such as climate, as well as its basis in physics and chemistry, is more noteworthy than the opinions of the professional scientific organizations at the top of our credibility spectrum.

In simpler terms, “It doesn’t matter what the scientists say. I’m smarter than all of them put together.”

Why you need science

Climatology is not as simple as you might expect after watching An Inconvenient Truth. The folks at NASA don’t just look at two graphs that are both going up and automatically assume that they’re correlated.

Climatology is every bit as complicated, thorough, and dry as any other area of science. In fact, it is deeply entrenched in the physical sciences. As an over-eager student who is trying to understand more aspects of climatology than I have the scientific foundation for, I continually run into this entrenchment.

For example, the exact process of how a CO2 or CH4 molecule absorbs infrared energy and thus acts as a greenhouse gas involves quantum chemistry that I haven’t learned yet. I’m still puzzling over the difference between the direct cooling effect of aerosols versus the cloud albedo effect. I hear all the time that climate change is based on the Laws of Thermodynamics, but I have yet to find out what those laws are.

It’s not easy stuff. It’s not something just anyone could grasp entirely in an afternoon. It’s something that requires years of study.

If I told you that parts of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets were thickening, chances are that you’d think, “More ice = cooling, therefore the world is not warming.”

In fact, these thickening ice sheets are a sign of warming. The thickening areas were previously so cold that the air could not hold enough moisture for significant precipitation. With warming, the air has more capacity for humidity, and precipitation falls in the form of snow. But it’s still too cold for that snow to melt, so it builds up and thickens the ice sheet.

It’s not as simple as temperature = climate. You have to look at changes in humidity and precipitation over time. You have to use a lot of maps. You have to factor in wind and ocean currents.

You have to know what you’re doing to make an accurate analysis of climate data. If you haven’t studied physical geography, atmospheric physics, or climate modelling at the post-secondary level, chances are that you hold misconceptions and assumptions that are skewing your interpretation.

I know this is true for me. I don’t pretend to know everything about climate change. I have an awfully long way to go. I’m just a student.

The more I learn about climatology, the more I realize how little I know.

So please, have some humility. Realize that it might be wiser to trust the experts than to try to analyze it all yourself. Don’t automatically assume that NASA, IPCC, the 32 national academies of science that endorsed the IPCC, and every other professional scientific organization on the planet are completely wrong just because somebody said they were.

Chances are, there are satisfactory explanations for whatever objections you may hold to their methods. Yes, they are making sure the sun is not responsible. No, they weren’t all saying an ice age was coming in the 70s. Yes, they are aware carbon dioxide is plant food. These are smart people. Accept that they might know more about climate change than you do. It’s not such a terrible thing.

To conclude, there are many things in life, such as fashion, political beliefs, and spirituality, where all opinions are equal, and nobody is justified to tell anybody what they should believe.

Science isn’t one of them.

Why They Don’t Debate on TV

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I read an interesting article not long ago that claimed that scientists were not debating climate change enough. It said that they were refusing to debate skeptics on television and in the media, as they “knew they would lose”. Examples of “believers” who apparently refused such debates were Al Gore, David Suzuki, and well-known climatologists such as Hansen and Weaver.

Could it be that these advocates are refusing debates not because they “know they will lose”, but because they know that such a media-ravaged spectacle will have no scientific value?

If you look at these people, two – Gore and Suzuki – do not specialize in climatology. They are purely lobbyists and media figures (Suzuki is also a geneticist). For the purpose of determining how much debate goes into creating working conclusions on climate change, we should look at  the top of the credibility spectrum. Let’s exclude An Inconvenient Truth, editorials, films, and narrative non-fiction (such as Keeping Our Cool by Dr Weaver). These have not been peer-reviewed. They are (hopefully) based upon scientific conclusions, but would not be acceptable to cite in a research paper about climate change. They were created purely to reach the general public and to relay a certain political or ethical message.

What we will include are the documents which drive government policy, which have been peer-reviewed (or are peer-reviewed compilations of peer-reviewed science, such as the IPCC reports) and which have been created by sources at the top of our credibility spectrum. NASA is a good source. So is the IPCC. So are the 32 national academies of science that have approved the IPCC. Peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Nature, Science, or EOS are also credible.

This is where it all starts. This is where climate change theory began. It wasn’t cooked up by the government, the media, or someone like Al Gore. These are the people that objectively study details of global warming that you or I can’t even understand.

Back to the debate thing

There would be no point in Al Gore facing down a skeptical journalist in a “scientific debate” on prime-time TV. One of two scenarios would occur:

1) The debate would be of a true scientific nature (which would be surprising as neither of the sources are even climatologists). They would be talking about things like Dansgaard-Oeschger events, Milankovitch cycles, and the solubility of carbonic acid in water as a function of temperature. To the average viewer, it would be really boring. They wouldn’t understand a word of it. Nobody would watch. The television station would declare it a failure.

2) The debate would resort to name-calling and ridiculous claims. The journalist would go on about it all being a liberal conspiracy. Al Gore would go on about ethical responsibilities. The journalist would take advantage of the audience’s lack of scientific knowledge and claim that, as CO2 levels often lag behind temperature, climate change wasn’t real at all. Al Gore would take advantage of the audience’s lack of scientific knowledge and claim that Hurricane Katrina could be directly attributed to a warming planet. Scientists all over the world would shake their heads. The public would get even more confused.

You can have a scientific discussion. You can have a debate that becomes a media spectacle. It’s much harder to do both at once.

Scientists aren’t lawyers. They don’t each try to prove opposing arguments. Scientists aren’t politicians. They don’t try to make their ideas interesting for the general public. Scientists are seekers of truth, or the closest to truth humans can get, regarding the physical world.

Getting closer to that truth requires a lot of second-guessing, a lot of checking and revising and admitting that you’re wrong. It requires looking at every possible outcome and deciding which is the most probable. It requires inspecting new evidence whenever it comes up. It is “debating” in a gentler, more objective, more dry sense of the word.

So yes, scientists do debate in their own way. It’s called peer-review. It involves all that second-guessing, checking, and revising we just mentioned. It involves considering every objection. It involves addressing every objection that is deemed relevant. The sources we listed above – NAS, IPCC, Nature – peer-review all of their publications.

If this skeptical journalist had a new idea about climate change, he or she should get a degree, study their idea meticulously, write it up in the form of an article and submit it to a peer-review institution. That’s the normal scientific practice. Spreading their scientific hypotheses around the media without first passing their work through a peer-review process shows that they’re trying to influence the public, not educate them.

Go do some reading about how claims like “climate change is caused by the sun” or “it’s a natural cycle” have stood up to peer-review. Go see what the qualified, credible, objective scientific theories have found. Go see just how much research the scientific community has done about solar activity or natural cycles.

Yes, scientists do debate about climate change.

They just don’t do it on TV.