TPM’s Zachary Roth (a former CJR contributor) attempted to contact Will by phone and e-mail to ask him about the distortions in his column, but Will never responded. At a certain point, as Grist’s David Roberts noted on Sunday, it seems “futile” to keep refuting the same arguments. So what do we do? For starters, it would be nice to see opinion pages be more discerning about what they publish (and that goes for environmentalist screeds as well as those from deniers). But we might also consider the possibility that journalists are doing a fairly good job covering this story. As American University professor Matthew Nisbet suggested in a recent article for the Skeptical Inquirer:
The continued perceptual gridlock on climate change has little to do with science literacy, a lack of respect for science, poor reporting on the part of journalists, or a decline in the science beat at major news organizations such as CNN. Indeed, it is time to stop blaming the public, journalists, and media conglomerates. The communication burden instead rests with political leaders, scientists, advocates, and policy experts.
I still believe that journalists must continue to shoulder some of that burden, however, and one cannot ignore the undue influence of the “mainstream” media’s few remaining global-warming deniers.
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From what I've read about computer modeling techniques, climate models will give significantly different results, depending on the data inputs used, the programer's instructions, and the many underlying assumptions being modeled. We all can comprehend the fact that using different assumptions will have an affect on the outcome. Similarly, we can easily see how the validity of the data and the way it is manipulated can also affect the results.
Why do we only hear of outcomes that support the hypothesis of man made warming? Is it because that's all that the media is told, and thus what's put out for general consumption? Is it because the media doesn't care to investigate the subject in any greater depth? Is it because scientists are paid only to deliver research suppoting the AGW hypothesis?
There are many respected scientists who offer compelling reasons for either doubting the "consensus" or urging not to rush to judgement until more is known about the climate system. There are many respected scientists who acknowledge the genuine limitations of climate models, yet these very models seem to be the basis for "calls to action".
Why do so many scientists, governments, and environmental groups seemly WANT for man (not Mother Nature) to be the cause of global warming? Why are they so quick to silence contrarian ideas on this subject? Why is it that other hypothesized causes of global warming receive no government funding for research?
Considering the seriousness of the matter, and the cost for changing to alternative energy sources, and the effect this will have on our way of life, why hasn't our government formulated and published a step-by-step plan for reaching the final goal. Exactly, what is the final goal? It seems that we are just adopting knee jerk reactions to the problem: diluting gasoline with corn-based ethanol, switching to LED light bulbs, cap and trade schemes to penalize everything that hasn't switched to some form of as-yet-to-be-invented form of energy, and development of windmill farms and rooftop solar cells. Where are we going with all of this? Is it only to move society "in the right direction"? Is all of this just to buy more time to invent a better energy source? Or is all of this part of some master plan to take us to a final, as-yet-to-determined goal?
Posted by Jeff on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 08:25 PM
I've been delving into this issue lately myself, as a science journalist who got worried that I had jumped aboard a bandwagon. I've seen a lot of sentiment like what Jeff is expressing (above), as well as a lot of acknowledgment that there's room for doubt in models, and that some aspects of natural causes of climate change are difficult to quantify. I've gone back to square one on my own understanding, and until I re-review trustworthy studies, I'm no longer going to allow myself to buy into what has become, in some ways, a party line. The Earth is warming, yes - it's a sure and steady trend over time. Polar ice caps are melting, yes. Glaciers are melting, yes. But the relative contributions of human emissions and natural variation ... I haven't reviewed that yet. And the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases that are directly attributable to people ... haven't reassured myself on those numbers either. The ability of solutions currently on the table to address human emissions, or global warming as a whole? Definitely not sure about that. I have a lot of re-researching to do! Meanwhile, I'm trying to live without consuming too much, avoid red meat and plant more trees.
Posted by Anne on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 09:15 PM
The proponents of this ruse are not altruistic. Their total involvement is for self agrandizement and personal enrichment. Follow the money and you will see all of the conmen, scoundrels, liars, flim-flamers, lawyered up promoters and Nobel laureat sellouts. If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes a movement and then the movement becomes a tool for the unscrupulous to use for their religious experience. Now congress and government has taken up the drumbeat with the aid of the purposely misinformed media. Many people sense that this is bovine excrement and the shills for the movement are squirming because they are being exposed for what they truly are - the self involved who think that they have a foot in the door of a giant sale (scam) and are losing their ability to close said sale. Everything is a crisis on the news or in Washington these days. Get a grip America, these men and women who would try to take away your freedom and control your every thought are not that smart, but they are that morally bankrupt.
Posted by PAUL on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 09:29 AM
I'm astounded by the sheer number of comments on this topic that follow the lines of what PAUL, above, says. PAUL and the others that claim scientists have invented the idea of man-made global warming in order to enrich themselves clearly have never spent a minute with a real working climate scientist. They are not a rich group. Government scientists spend 10-15 years in school and start at $50k-$60k/year, sometimes less. University science professors top out in the low $100s/year, and that's after decades of work. Please, get a grip.
Posted by Brian on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 03:55 PM
This piece typifies the very worst in so-called journalism. Quoting Media Matters, demonizing Fox News and labeling anyone who disagrees with you a "denier." Is there any wonder that people don't trust the media?
I have completed graduate work in environmental economics at Harvard, so forgive me if I'm not impressed by quotes from the Huffington Post. I think I have better scientific credentials than 99% of the so-called science reporters out there.
Reading crap like this just underscores my suspicion about the media and their agendas. People are not stupid, and calling people names is not the same as offering objective analysis. If there is indeed global warming, you are doing your cause a grave disservice.
Posted by JLD on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 05:58 PM
The shear naivete of Brian is stunning. There is a huge list of noted and devoted scientists that have debunked man-made global warming (now conveniently global "climate change"). One example: I can remember back to the college days and the first Earth Day and we were all told that by the next millenium (2000 AD) the world would be bereft of energy and hundreds of millions would be starving. And so it is with the exagerated claims of today. Quote the Washington Post "The End Is Near!" because of melting ice caps and glaciers. Now the ice in your beverage doesn't make your glass overflow does it? So they moved on to carbon dioxide that is going to put us over the edge, but Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas says added carbon dioxide may actually benefit the world because plants may grow better and warm winters would give farmers a longer harvest season and possibly end the droughts in the Sahara desert.
So we go back to the money. The Federal government has spent $30,000,000,000.00 to research global warming since 1990. If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it. The scientists are the key because it is a self fulfilling prophesy.Now that Al Gore and his crowd are seeing the money, well, it's like the old saying, "figures don't lie but liars do figure".
What kind of money is available if everyone on the planet has to buy carbon offsets. CHEATS AND LIARS, Brian, WOLVES IN SHEEPS CLOTHING. MEN WHO HAVE SOLD THEIR SOULS TO THE DEVIL and in the process are selling us out.
Posted by PAUL on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 06:38 PM
Paul is quite worked up, isn't he? I think Anne will find out, in her admirable quest to find things out on her own, that the "huge list of noted scientists" who have "debunked" human-triggered climate change is neither huge nor noted, and that few of them are actually experts in climate. I think she'll also find that, despite what Jeff things, nobody particularly wants humans to be the cause of global warming. They've reached an overwhelming consensus based on the evidence and on the significant agreement by virtually every climate model. The reason you don't hear about legitimate climate models that significantly disagree, Jeff, is that they don't exist.
You and Paul might also explain how adding CO2 to the atmosphere, as we've done, could NOT warm the planet. The heat-trapping properties of CO2 have been well known for more than a century, and nobody doubts them.
Posted by Mike on Sat 21 Feb 2009 at 07:42 PM
Hmmm...
Was that the title of the article or the title of the comments?
Bottom line folks - the climate IS changing and it's doing it faster than the models predict, but in the same ways that the models predict. It doesn't really matter who or what is causing it.
Posted by Jon on Sun 22 Feb 2009 at 04:32 PM
You may criticize the climate models and scenarios developed by scientists, but none, not one describes a cooler future.
Time to separate the science - which is delivering bad news - from the economics which presents painful solutions.
Posted by Richard on Sun 22 Feb 2009 at 06:14 PM
jeff
You are spouting recycled denier talking points that are nonsense and already debunked, much of it ten years ago.
"There are many respected scientists who offer compelling reasons for either doubting the 'consensus' or urging not to rush to judgement until more is known about the climate system. There are many respected scientists who acknowledge the genuine limitations of climate models, yet these very models seem to be the basis for calls to action"
The many respected scientists- are not many -and it's questionable whether they are respected. And all the ones you have heard of are paid by energy interests and their propanda fronts. Every single list of skeptic scientists you have heard of, whether it is Senator Inhofe's list of 650, or the Oregon Petition etc are all bogus, padded lists with very few climate scientists.
Many aren't even scientists.
This is a fact.
The cost of changing to alternative energy is negligible according to most legitimate studies. Like 1/10 of 1% of GDP over 20 years.
The cost of doing nothing is the end of civilization, most likely. Yes it's that bad. if not in this century, in the following few. 5-6 degree centigrade temp. rise, which is what we will get if nothing is done, will melt all the ice on the planet and raise sea levels by 250 feet.
Desertification of a third of the planet, no water for a billion people. Half the worlds food production under water, or with no water.
The science has overwhelming evidence and just keeps getting stronger, despite whatever BS you have been listening to. Do you think you are smarter than the 97%- 99% of climate scientists who agree on AGW? If you think that, you are not smarter than a fifth grader.
And what the media does and puts out for public consumption is the opposite of what you are saying. They are playing right into the denier propaganda hands. The media, in misguided attempt to be balanced, thinks they always have to have two sides to every subject they cover, no matter how ridiculous and fictitous one side is.
If the media really wanted to be fair and balanced, you would have a thousand climate scientists who agree on AGW, onstage with 1 or 2 skeptics, all given equal time. Because that would reflect the truth.
The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report has been called the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific paper in history. That's pretty good consensus.
As climate scientist Andrew Dressler says:
"A journalist friend recently sent me this:
"I just got my 'Journalist's Guide to Global Warming Experts' from The Heartland Institute in the mail. They list four 'experts' in Texas. It's an awesome list. ...
Robert Bradley, energy expert.
H.Sterling Burnett, policy analyst
Dr. John Dale Dunn, emergency physician
Michael Economides, petroleum engineer"
"As you probably know, the Heartland Institute is one of the world's premier climate denialist organizations, so you can be pretty sure these guys reject the mainstream scientific view.
Notice anything odd about the list? Despite the fact that there are dozens if not hundreds of reputable climate scientists working in Texas, the Heartland Institute is unable to get a single one of them onto their list. Apparently expertise is not required to be an expert for Heartland. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you can repeat the following phrase -- "the climate stopped warming in 1998!" -- you qualify.
This reinforces a point I've been making for a while: there are a few credible scientists who dispute the basic message of the IPCC. But not many. You can probably count them on your fingers and toes: Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer, Christy ..."
And as NASA's Gavin Schmitt says:
"Regardless of these spats, the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting (the biggest conference in the US on this topic) that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."
Posted by Richard Mercer on Sun 22 Feb 2009 at 11:13 PM
I think the large number of the foregoing posts heatedly contesting the validity, robustness and even honesty of the massive number of peer-reviewed scientific papers supporting the conclusion of accelerating climate disruption from anthropogenic climate change due to greenhouse emissions effectively makes Mr. Brainard's point about the swirling disinformation for various pundits (and a certain segment of the blogosphere). In fact, I think that Mr. Brainard is in fact far too kind to the mainstream news -- to me it appears that there is a very noticeable tendency in the MSM to underplay what would appear obvious connections between numerous climate related events and the projected increase in the probability of such events under the climate models (e.g., multi-year Australian drought, massive tree losses over a vast area of the west over the past decade, California year round wildfire season, serious droughts in important agricultural areas in China, California, Argentina and parts of the Southwest, etc.). See e.g., discussion of flawed NYT climate reporting at http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/22/is-the-new-york-times-coverage-of-global-warming-fatally-flawed/#more-4931
Posted by L. Carey on Mon 23 Feb 2009 at 12:17 PM
" In it, he rightly criticized Energy Secretary Steven Chu for telling the Los Angeles Times that if 90 percent of the snowpack were to melt, a worst case development, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California … I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.” That is certainly an overstatement. California’s $30 billion agriculture industry is incredibly vulnerable to increased drought and decreased water supply, and severe, nearly complete melting of the Sierra snowpack is a real possibility. But even in that extreme case, there doesn’t seem to be any scientific basis for Chu’s prediction of complete agricultural and urban collapse."
No? Tell it to the scientists ...
"The world's pre-eminent climate scientists produced a blunt assessment of the impact of global warming on the US yesterday, warning of droughts that could reduce the American south-west to a wasteland and heatwaves that could make life impossible even in northern cities."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/26/drought-us-climate-change
Posted by Hmmmmm on Fri 27 Feb 2009 at 07:26 PM