Tag Archives: politics

Artificial Balance

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All issues have two (or more) sides. We can probably all agree on that. But are they always two equal sides?

Journalists are trained to always present both sides of an issue with equal weight. This works well for matters of politics. Got the Conservative? Get the Liberal. (That’s Republican and Democrat, respectively, for our American friends.) It works for policy – reporting the pros and cons of building a new bridge vs not building a new bridge. Journalistic balance is appropriate for matters which concern personal opinion, where everyone’s view is as credible as anyone else’s, and you don’t need a PhD to understand the stuff.

But what about matters of science?

Remember high school science class? Did they present both sides of absolutely every topic with equal weight? Did they say to you, “This is the evidence for and against the existence of photosynthesis. You can form your own personal opinion”? Did they do the same with Newton’s Laws, chemical reactions, or the idea of a heliocentric universe? Of course not. It would just confuse you further, and it was unnecessary as the ideas being taught were widely accepted in the scientific community.

So why should climate change be any different?

“Climate change is still being debated,” you might say. “Scientists are split over whether or not it’s happening, and whether or not we’re causing it.”

And that, my friends, is where the media comes back into the story.

Let’s hear what Ross Gelbspan has to say in his book The Heat is On.

“The professional canon of journalistic fairness requires reporters who write about a controversy to present points of view. When the issue is of a political of social nature, fairness – presenting the most compelling arguments of both sides with equal weight – is a fundamental check on biased reporting. But this canon causes problems when it is applied to the issue of science. It seems to demand that journalists present competing points of view on a scientific question as though they had equal weight, when actually they do not.”

We’ve previously discussed how there is wide agreement over the existence of anthropogenic climate change among individual scientists. Among professional scientific organizations, the numbers are even higher. As soon as you tune into the discussions of scientists, instead of only what you hear in the media, it’s clear that climate change was accepted long ago. Right now, they’re debating technicalities such as when the Arctic will be free of summer ice, how quickly feedback mechanisms will work, and how much emission reduction is necessary.

But the media hasn’t caught onto this. The media likes a controversy, and they don’t want to be accused of only presenting one side. So they present the opinions of climate scientists as 50-50, instead of the 97-3 that Doran and Zimmerman determined.

What kind of balance is this, when the fringe opinions are hugely over-represented, and the vast majority are hugely under-represented? Does that not cause more bias than we were trying to avoid?

*Further reading: Misguided “Balance” in Science Journalism by Chris Mooney*

The Importance of Error Statements

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Scientific error is unavoidable. There is a very good chance that whatever measurements we take will be slightly off. There is even a small chance that our conclusions are completely wrong. We accept that we don’t know everything. We live with it. We do the best we can.

Stating error and uncertainty is required in peer-reviewed science. Quite simply, it increases the author’s credibility. When you admit that you might be wrong, people feel more inclined to trust you. You seem like the kind of person that would admit to mistakes, and continually revise your findings to improve them as much as possible.

Something you hear a lot from climate change skeptics is something along the lines of, “We’re not completely sure if humans are changing the climate. Therefore, we shouldn’t waste money on reducing our emissions.” To me, it often seems like the people making these statements are exploiting the natural uncertainty of science, doing everything they can to make the uncertainty of climatology seem unusual. My favourite example of this can be read here.

If you go and read a peer-reviewed scientific report on any topic at all, you’ll see that the uncertainty over anthropogenic climate change isn’t really that unusual. We’re not completely sure about how gravity works. We’re not sure if light is a particle or a wave (or a particle that’s a wave, or a wave that’s a particle, etc). In fact, there are no conclusions in scientific articles that claim to be infallible.

This doesn’t mean there are two equal sides fighting over every topic you can imagine. In a lot of the cases, scientists have pretty much made up their mind. But they must, and always do, remain open to the possibility that they could be completely wrong.

Let’s look at the quantitative explanation of some terms of likelihood used by the IPCC. Extremely unlikely refers to a <5% chance. Virtually certain refers to a >99% chance. The numbers 0% and 100% are non-existent. They never say that something will definitely happen, or definitely not happen.

Check out the claims from the scientific organizations at the top of our credibility spectrum. Read the statements on climate change from the national academies of science of every major industrialized nation. Read what the folks at NASA have to say. Watch for the error measurements, and uncertain words like “evidence for” or “reason to believe”.

The important part

And then, more often than not, a lot of the people who said “Climate change is too uncertain” then turn around and make claims with no acknowledgement that they could be wrong. Let’s find some of the most extreme examples of this phenomenon….anonymous YouTube comments.

“The Earth has been heating up for thousands of years at a steady rate and it has nothing to do with people.”

“If these findings were anywhere near accurate, then I would see changes on at least a weekly basis. But nothing.”

“Nothing is significantly wrong that Mother Nature cannot put right.”

“I don’t think CO2 causes global warming, not at all.”

When I see comments like these – which are, sadly, extremely common – I wish I could say to every one of them, “What if you were wrong?”

I realize I could be wrong. It’s something I came to terms with long ago. I could be totally wrong about all this climate change stuff (in fact, I’d love to be). That’s why I support multi-benefit policies, that will help areas like the economy or health. If climate change turns out to be nonexistent/natural/a global conspiracy, at least our action will have brought us some good.

But what if all these anonymous YouTubers were wrong?

All those people who are so certain that we’re causing no change in the climate.

What if they were wrong? Can you imagine what the consequences could be?

Is this really something worth questioning, when there is so much agreement, and the stakes are so high?

Is this really a gamble worth taking?

How it All Ends

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For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of these video series –

Greg Craven is a high school teacher from the States who put together six hours of video explaining why we should act on climate change. Don’t be scared by the “six hour” thing – all his arguments are condensed into the first, 10-minute long video.

Still skeptical? Chances are, whatever you’re thinking of is covered in the other five hours and fifty minutes. Check out the rest of the videos here.

The Credibility Spectrum

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Let’s face it, there’s a lot of “climate science” out there that’s absolute rubbish.

Whichever side of the debate you’re on. Whether you believe global warming is a political hoax or that all skeptics are funded by Exxon. No matter what your opinions are, chances are that you’ve seen or read claims that you dismiss as outlandish.

Type “climate change” into Google. Within seconds you can find statements that the Earth is warming or that its temperatue is stable (or cooling since 1998!). You can find “proof” that the warming is caused by the sun, volcanoes, flaws in the temperature data, or fossil fuel burning. You can read that the Hockey Stick graph is broadly accurate, or that it was manipulated by the IPCC to agree with a predetermined conclusion.

Whatever you read about climate change, chances are that there’s another source saying the opposite thing. It’s not like we’re all climatologists who can see straight through misinformation. So how do you possibly sort out what to believe?

When people ask me this question, I invariably respond with, “Assess the credibility.”

The “climate change analysis” you read could be from a national academy of science, or from a blogger. It could be from an atmospheric physicist or a economist. It could be from a scientific journal or a political think-tank. If we calculate credibility to be “expertise + objectivity”, it’s obvious that some sources merit more weight than others.

I’ve put together a climate change credibility spectrum, inspired by Greg Craven from the Manpollo Project. This is a basic way to assess credibility and assign weight to a source. Keep in mind that this is only a guideline. The sources in the middle, especially, could be shuffled around based on the situation. The spectrum is also only used for scientific statements, such as “the Arctic is losing sea ice”. Matters of policy, such as “cap-and-trade is our best bet”, are much more a personal opinion.  

  • At the bottom of the spectrum we have the individual. This is someone with no formal education in the field of climate science. Bloggers generally fall into this category, which is why I plan to refrain from creating my own “expert analysis” of data on this blog.
  • Above that we have the professional. This is someone who is not a scientist, but is in an occupation that requires them to keep up to date with science. High school teachers are a good example, as well as politicians or CEOs.
  • Then we have the non-publishing scientist. Someone with a scientific background, but who is not currently publishing peer-reviewed literature, does not necessarily follow methods which are accepted by the scientific community. They have a good knowledge of science, but lack the “peer-reviewed” credential.
  • Above that is the publishing scientist in any area, such as medicine, physics, or chemistry. Even if they do not study climate change, they have the basic scientific background to understand it, as well as the “peer-reviewed” check on their scientific methods.
  • The publishing Earth scientist specializes in areas closer to climate science, such as geography, geology, or environmental science. They have a more in-depth knowledge of the way the biogeochemical systems of the Earth work.
  • The publishing climatologist (or atmospheric physicist/radiative physicist/any other area that’s so relevant to climatology that we can basically classify it as climatology) is the best you can get in terms of the individual professional. They understand more about climate change, and have more widely approved methods, than any other scientist.
  • Above the individuals come groups. Universities are generally quite up-to-date in their scientific knowledge, as they are training scientists-to-be, and have a large number of scientific professors behind their statements.
  • Peer-reviewed scientific articles are often written by more than one scientist, and have undergone an extensive review process. These articles minimize bias or misconceptions as much as science possibly can.
  • Finally, professional scientific organizations employ thousands of publishing scientists, have massive reputations to uphold, and often publish their own peer-reviewed journals. Their statements carry more weight than any others.

This isn’t to say that the NAS is infallible, or that the blogger is always wrong. The credibility spectrum is simply a tool used to decide how much weight to give a statement.

So go do some reading. Do some searching and reading and watching. See what individuals, professionals, groups and scientific bodies are saying about climate change. Assess their credentials. Decide who you’re going to believe.