Fair and Balanced Science
Evading the challenges of climate change—and the human responsibility to save the planet—is simple enough even for the laziest citizen. Pay attention only to the theories that support the comforting skepticism of the oil industry. Focus on a set of purloined emails that prove nothing except that scientists can be as unpleasant to each other as any other group of people. Get the “facts” from Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Moonie-controlled Washington Times and all the other conservative outlets that are as fair and balanced as an Exxon press release.
And be sure to ignore the mounting evidence, most notably the actual temperature studies released by the United Nations this week, that proves beyond a doubt that the earth is warming as car-bon-based industrialization spreads across the developing nations.
It is hardly surprising that Fox News would emphasize the use of terms like “trick” in a stolen message from the University of East Anglia without mentioning that the word has an innocent mean-ing when used by scientists. It is even less surprising that in their zeal to exploit those emails and influence public opinion, the Fox News crew would concoct their own stupid deception.
As the email controversy unfolded, pollsters at Rasmussen Reports asked respondents the following question: “In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?” According to their survey, 35 percent believed that it was “very likely,” 24 percent thought it was “somewhat likely,” 21 percent thought it was “not very likely,” 5 percent thought it was “not likely at all” and 15 percent were unsure. But those results weren’t damning enough for Fox, which displayed a full-screen graphic on the poll claiming that 59 percent considered scientific deception to be “somewhat likely” and 35 percent considered it to be “very likely,” with only 26 percent feeling it was not very likely. Add up those numbers and the total comes to 120 percent (with the uncertain 15 percent discarded).
Should we trust the science reporting of a network that is so challenged by basic arithmetic? Perhaps that question is unfair—or it would be if Fox and the propagandists of climate skepticism had not indulged in so many earlier episodes of fakery.
Consider the career of Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the leading skeptic and former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who has vowed to travel to the Copenhagen Climate Conference as a one-man “truth squad.” Back when he still chaired that Senate panel, Mr. Inhofe sent out a press release with the following bold headline in huge typeface: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007.” Described as a U.S. Senate report, this release claimed to debunk the scientific consensus on climate change.
When examined more closely, however, the Inhofe report was an amateurish fraud. Those 400 prominent scientists included more than 80 who had received funding either directly or indirectly from the oil and coal industries and more than 90 who had no scientific expertise in climate science, along with 49 retired scientists and 44 television weathermen.
The Oklahoma senator’s attempt to obscure the verdict of actual scientists reflected the advice of Frank Luntz, the G.O.P. public-relations adviser and pollster who authored a notorious 2002 memo telling Republicans that they could only “win” the global warming debate by doing exactly that. Over the past several years, the Republicans and their allies in the fossil fuel business have funneled millions of dollars into that effort, often concealing the real sources of funding behind the studies that question either warming or its causes.
Meanwhile, the consensus remains unshaken and profound. From the thousands of scientists who participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the National Academy of Scientists, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Royal Society and the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies published over the past 15 years, the findings are plain enough. Global warming is real, with serious consequences for humanity. Hiding from the truth won’t change it.
jconason@observer.com
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Skeptical can be fair
Mr Conason,
I am one of those skeptical scientists. I have a PhD from Cornell, am on the American Meteorological Society's Probability & Statistics Committee, and have published in, among other places, the Journal of Climate. Peer-reviewed papers, that is. My specialty is on the accuracy of forecasts, like those made by climate models.
I have a pretty good grasp of the science involved, and its uncertainties, and have written about it extensively. Yet I find myself much less convinced than you do.
Why is that?
Curiously, you intimate that scientists whose names appear on Senator's Inhofe's list are part of an "amateurish fraud." I find this odd, too. Now, I am not political, but I do recognize that many (such as yourself) tend to overstate their cases when making political points. But I still stick on this word "amateurish." I've worked pretty hard in this area and, though my views don't agree with the gentlemen you cite, it is an unfair criticism to call my work amateurish.
But, like politics, I figure that's just journalism.
However, I am still curious how an intelligent person like yourself can develop convictions far stronger than I can, when I am infinitely more familiar with the guts of the science. Pointing to the number of studies actually doesn't work as evidence, mostly for the reason that the majority make statements about what might happen if disastrous global warming is true. And, logically, those can't be used to prove that that warming is true. I can explain this more if you are interested.
Still, help me out. I honestly want to understand why you believe as deeply as you do. Would you mind having a conversation about this?
Thanks very much.
Joe Conason logic IS faulty, but is his position wrong?
Mr Briggs. . .I read your fair comment. I must admit I am a little bewildered in the midst of all this media confusion. You, being a trained, impartial scientist having a vantage point we ordinary citizens just do not. Some say Global Warming itself is a hoax. Others say it's real, but not from industrial CO2 emissions. The organization 350.org claims that the Earth is at 385ppm and rising. Although the Earth has naturally produced CO2, that alone is not the cause of increase to danger levels. It's the ceaseless and voluminous pumping of CO2 by man-made sources that is is cause. What is really happening?
Is climate warming a hoax?
As a user of climatology and paleoclimatology data, I can answer your questions directly.
1. Is climate warming a "hoax"? Not in the sense that the word is commonly used. True "hoax" is exemplified byas in the Piltdown Man, where someone consciously concocted data (by combining ape and human bones) with the intent to deceive. The temperatures delivered from recording stations, some established in the 1800's are real enough.
2. Is climate warming "real". This question is hard to answer directly, as there is a difference between the individual temperatures measured by specific recording stations (these are, in science, "the primary data", and as such we treat them with special reverence) and the question that is most interesting to you (unless you live next to one of those stations): Is the temperature of the planet as a whole rising? That second question requires that you average specific measurements in some way, make allowances for the fact that some of the stations have been discontinued, new stations have been added, and the urban environment around some stations has grown. Choices are made in how you convert "primary data" into an answer to the interesting question, and here is the rub. If those choices are honestly made, fine. But if the person making those choices has an agenda, and he/she wants a particular answer, those choices will be biased to get the answer one wants. Often that bias is unconscious. But here is the best answer from someone who is not biased. Over the past 120 years or so, stations in urban areas have shown temperature increases of about 1 degree Celsius (about 1.7 Fahrenheit). Rural stations show essentially no temperature increase at all in this period. Depending on whether you believe in urban heat islands (and there is a fight over this), it is possible that temperature has risen by less than one degree Fahrenheit. There is no dispute that this temperature rise has been small relative to natural variation.
3. Has CO2 caused the rise in temperature? Assuming that the rise reported by urban stations is not due to local heat sources, we can ask about its origin. There is no consensus. As you note, the majority of atmospheric CO2 does not come from human activity. On the other hand, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, humans do generate it. and it is rising. The simplest way to try to identify a cause is by plotting CO2 and temperature versus the calendar year. If one does this for the past century, CO2 is rising continuously, while temperature is going up and down. This rules out CO2 as the only cause of temperature, but more sophisticated models suggest that the CO2 is producing a rise, as you say, "ceaselessly", and adding always a positive drift to temperature that is superimposed on natural variation. Again, if honestly done, models can help us understand multivariable problems. Again, however, if you have a desired "answer" based on your sociopolitical agenda, you can get the models to produce anything. the IPCC models are so corrupted by politics at this time (something that serious climate scientists have long known, but is now clear from Climategate emails) that we cannot use them to decide anything. So this question is open. Historically, however, CO2 has not been causative, as it appears in the atmosphere as a product of natural warming, and has not caused it.
4. Are there danger levels? We do not know. It is clear that the allegations that we are near a "tipping point" and that catastrophe will ensue if the temperature rises "two degrees more" is simple propaganda without any scientific support at all. Clearly, over the past 4000 years, the temperature has gone up and down more than in the last century without catastrophe. It is possible, however, that by doing other things (changing land use, water use, and so on) human activity will change the effect that CO2 has in the atmosphere, or cause catastrophe in other ways.
Global warming
If President Obama and other liberal politicians in Washington really believe global warming is a serious problem why did they send us money to buy cars and build/fix highways? How about sending us money to plant trees? I would do it.
SeanConasson
I am a scientist who works with paleoclimatolgoical data. Hence, I know the skeletons in the climatology closet. I also know how science should operate.
First, Joe's factual comments about the science are false, all of them.
1. The "actual temperatures released by the United Nations" do not "prove beyond a doubt that the earth is warming as carbon-based industrialization spreads across the planet." Measuring the temperature of an entire planet is difficult, and temperatures go up and down. Nevertheless, peer reviewed science establishes that today's temperatures are not exceptionally high; the Earth's temperature was higher in the Middle Ages, in the Roman Warm Period, in the Minoan Warm Period, and in the Pliocene (google these). All without "carbon-based industrialization". The "hockey stick" that was featured in Gore's movie has been retracted (Science (2009) 326, 1256). Further, these warm periods were followed by ice ages, little and big, all without "cap and trade". The claim that today's temperatures will cause a runaway greenhouse (by melting white ice or causing greenhouse methane to be released from the permafrost, for example) is unsupported; ice and permafrost melted in all of these earlier times, and the planet's temperature still corrected itself. There is no reason to believe that industrialization drives present temperatures, or will prevent temperatures from dropping futher, as they have lately.
2. The causality implied in Joe's allegation (high CO2 causes high temperatures) is unsupported by the history of the past 650,000 years. CO2 rises after temperatures rise, not before (Petit et al. (1999) Nature 399, 429).
3. No, scientists do not have an "innocent meaning" for the word "trick". The UEA modelers knew that their models were failing to predict current climate trends (which in the last decade are below the temperatures that their models predicted), they were trying "tricks" to "tune" their computer models to get them to fit the current data without abandoning the hypothesis that they wanted to believe (that CO2 causes global warming) and that the political class is fully invested in. Further, they were attempting to suppress opposing views, blackball editors who published opposing views, and game the peer review system. This happens more often than we respectable scientists would like, but the fact remains. The UEA scientists, the IPCC, and their "peer reviewed" models are corrupt. This was well known among climate scientists for years; now the public knows it.
4. There is no "consensus" of "thousands of scientists" contradicting any of the statements above. Nor is there consensus that human-generated CO2 has caused the modest rise in temperature over the past century, or that "cap in trade" is an appropriate fix. There is a consensus that the computerized models that the IPCC use to advise on policy have failed to predict anything better than random. We agree that we not understand clouds, the biosphere, or the Sun. On the other side, we agree with the model-independent statement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, a distant second in importance to water on Earth.
Al Gore intervened a decade ago in a scientific debate to declare a winner, asserting that "the science is settled". Those whose political ideology favors "command and control" government (as the EPA described it yesterday) found this declaration to their liking. Like a creation "scientist" who will not renounce the Bible no matter how may times its statements are shown to be inconsistent with fact, Joe will believe in the "hockey stick" until the day he dies. As a result, he and the rest of the "political class" continue to corrupt the self-correcting mechanisms that science has that eventually discard false models and better approximate the truth. The UEA emails show that climatology has lost the ability to self-correct through internal peer review. The resulting mess has been a distraction from real environmental problems (land use, water use, habitat destruction, for example), and has resulted in a debate focused on politicians, none of whom know what they are talking about. It will take outside peer review to clean this mess up. The irony is that after it is, we might decide that CO2 is a problem.
Is climate warming a hoax?
As a user of climatology and paleoclimatology data, I can answer your questions directly.
1. Is climate warming a "hoax"? Not in the sense that the word is commonly used. True "hoax" is exemplified byas in the Piltdown Man, where someone consciously concocted data (by combining ape and human bones) with the intent to deceive. The temperatures delivered from recording stations, some established in the 1800's are real enough.
2. Is climate warming "real". This question is hard to answer directly, as there is a difference between the individual temperatures measured by specific recording stations (these are, in science, "the primary data", and as such we treat them with special reverence) and the question that is most interesting to you (unless you live next to one of those stations): Is the temperature of the planet as a whole rising? That second question requires that you average specific measurements in some way, make allowances for the fact that some of the stations have been discontinued, new stations have been added, and the urban environment around some stations has grown. Choices are made in how you convert "primary data" into an answer to the interesting question, and here is the rub. If those choices are honestly made, fine. But if the person making those choices has an agenda, and he/she wants a particular answer, those choices will be biased to get the answer one wants. Often that bias is unconscious. But here is the best answer from someone who is not biased. Over the past 120 years or so, stations in urban areas have shown temperature increases of about 1 degree Celsius (about 1.7 Fahrenheit). Rural stations show essentially no temperature increase at all in this period. Depending on whether you believe in urban heat islands (and there is a fight over this), it is possible that temperature has risen by less than one degree Fahrenheit. There is no dispute that this temperature rise has been small relative to natural variation.
3. Has CO2 caused the rise in temperature? Assuming that the rise reported by urban stations is not due to local heat sources, we can ask about its origin. There is no consensus. As you note, the majority of atmospheric CO2 does not come from human activity. On the other hand, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, humans do generate it. and it is rising. The simplest way to try to identify a cause is by plotting CO2 and temperature versus the calendar year. If one does this for the past century, CO2 is rising continuously, while temperature is going up and down. This rules out CO2 as the only cause of temperature, but more sophisticated models suggest that the CO2 is producing a rise, as you say, "ceaselessly", and adding always a positive drift to temperature that is superimposed on natural variation. Again, if honestly done, models can help us understand multivariable problems. Again, however, if you have a desired "answer" based on your sociopolitical agenda, you can get the models to produce anything. the IPCC models are so corrupted by politics at this time (something that serious climate scientists have long known, but is now clear from Climategate emails) that we cannot use them to decide anything. So this question is open. Historically, however, CO2 has not been causative, as it appears in the atmosphere as a product of natural warming, and has not caused it.
4. Are there danger levels? We do not know. It is clear that the allegations that we are near a "tipping point" and that catastrophe will ensue if the temperature rises "two degrees more" is simple propaganda without any scientific support at all. Clearly, over the past 4000 years, the temperature has gone up and down more than in the last century without catastrophe. It is possible, however, that by doing other things (changing land use, water use, and so on) human activity will change the effect that CO2 has in the atmosphere, or cause catastrophe in other ways.
Examining qualifications
"When examined more closely, however, the Inhofe report was an amateurish fraud. Those 400 prominent scientists included more than 80 who had received funding either directly or indirectly from the oil and coal industries and more than 90 who had no scientific expertise in climate science, along with 49 retired scientists and 44 television weathermen."
You know, it really doesn't pay to get too snarky about the qualifications of your opponents before you look at the qualifications of your supporters. Let's look at the academic and business backgrounds of a few warmists:
Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the EPA -- Graduated summa cum laude from Tulane in chemical engineering, then worked for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Excellent qualifications in chemistry and pollution cleanup. In climatology, meteorology, dendrochronology -- not so much. But she knows enough to assert that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant and that the EPA must take control of it.
Al Gore -- Got a BA cum laude in government from Harvard, went to Vietnam, didn't like it (neither did I), came back, did some newspaper reporting, went to Vanderbilt Divinity School for a year (!), ran for the House and won, ran for the Senate and won, ran for VP and won, ran for President and didn't. Developed sudden interest in the environment, won Oscar, won Nobel Peace Prize. Very impressive. Evidence of actual scientific knowledge of climate? None. But opinions? Many, firm and noisy.
Now for the piece d'resistance. I'm going to defer his name to the end.
Educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar.
Began his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi.
Awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974.
Served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 - May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business at NC State.
On the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003); Board of Directors of GAIL (India) Ltd. (April 2003 to October 2004); National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (August 2002 to August 2005); the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979-81).
See anything indicating that this person has any qualifications in climate science? No?
Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the high authority on AGW. Notice especially the membership of the board of directors of the Indian Oil Corporation and the National Thermal Power Corporation. That alone should place his authority well below that of 44 television weathermen.
Since there is no preview facility, I don't know if the HTML will look elegant or annoying -- but at least you can look up the Wikipedia articles if you want to.
Examining qualifications
"When examined more closely, however, the Inhofe report was an amateurish fraud. Those 400 prominent scientists included more than 80 who had received funding either directly or indirectly from the oil and coal industries and more than 90 who had no scientific expertise in climate science, along with 49 retired scientists and 44 television weathermen."
You know, it really doesn't pay to get too snarky about the qualifications of your opponents before you look at the qualifications of your supporters. Let's look at the academic and business backgrounds of a few warmists:
Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the EPA -- Graduated summa cum laude from Tulane in chemical engineering, then worked for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Excellent qualifications in chemistry and pollution cleanup. In climatology, meteorology, dendrochronology -- not so much. But she knows enough to assert that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant and that the EPA must take control of it.
Al Gore -- Got a BA cum laude in government from Harvard, went to Vietnam, didn't like it (neither did I), came back, did some newspaper reporting, went to Vanderbilt Divinity School for a year (!), ran for the House and won, ran for the Senate and won, ran for VP and won, ran for President and didn't. Developed sudden interest in the environment, won Oscar, won Nobel Peace Prize. Very impressive. Evidence of actual scientific knowledge of climate? None. But opinions? Many, firm and noisy.
Now for the piece d'resistance. I'm going to defer his name to the end.
Educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar.
Began his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi.
Awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974.
Served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 - May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business at NC State.
On the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003); Board of Directors of GAIL (India) Ltd. (April 2003 to October 2004); National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (August 2002 to August 2005); the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979-81).
See anything indicating that this person has any qualifications in climate science? No?
Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the high authority on AGW. Notice especially the membership of the board of directors of the Indian Oil Corporation and the National Thermal Power Corporation. That alone should place his authority well below that of 44 television weathermen.
Since there is no preview facility, I don't know if the HTML will look elegant or annoying -- but at least you can look up the Wikipedia articles if you want to.
Examining qualifications
"When examined more closely, however, the Inhofe report was an amateurish fraud. Those 400 prominent scientists included more than 80 who had received funding either directly or indirectly from the oil and coal industries and more than 90 who had no scientific expertise in climate science, along with 49 retired scientists and 44 television weathermen."
You know, it really doesn't pay to get too snarky about the qualifications of your opponents before you look at the qualifications of your supporters. Let's look at the academic and business backgrounds of a few warmists:
Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the EPA -- Graduated summa cum laude from Tulane in chemical engineering, then worked for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Excellent qualifications in chemistry and pollution cleanup. In climatology, meteorology, dendrochronology -- not so much. But she knows enough to assert that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant and that the EPA must take control of it.
Al Gore -- Got a BA cum laude in government from Harvard, went to Vietnam, didn't like it (neither did I), came back, did some newspaper reporting, went to Vanderbilt Divinity School for a year (!), ran for the House and won, ran for the Senate and won, ran for VP and won, ran for President and didn't. Developed sudden interest in the environment, won Oscar, won Nobel Peace Prize. Very impressive. Evidence of actual scientific knowledge of climate? None. But opinions? Many, firm and noisy.
Now for the piece d'resistance. I'm going to defer his name to the end.
Educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar.
Began his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi.
Awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974.
Served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 - May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business at NC State.
On the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003); Board of Directors of GAIL (India) Ltd. (April 2003 to October 2004); National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (August 2002 to August 2005); the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979-81).
See anything indicating that this person has any qualifications in climate science? No?
Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the high authority on AGW. Notice especially the membership of the board of directors of the Indian Oil Corporation and the National Thermal Power Corporation. That alone should place his authority well below that of 44 television weathermen.
Since there is no preview facility, I don't know if the HTML will look elegant or annoying -- but at least you can look up the Wikipedia articles if you want to.