Is This An Accurate Synopsis of the GW Media Problem?

Question

People who regularly read/write the actual scientific literature understand the ambiguities and subtleties of scientific research. But those who get most of their information from the media or personal blogs, seem to get a very contorted understanding.

What do you think of this article ("Climate Experts Tussle Over Details. Public Gets Whiplash"):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/science/earth/29clim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Two quotes that stood out to me were:

"the focus by the public and media on the stream of evolving climate science could distract from the need for policies now that made sense regardless of uncertainties."

"many studies had shown that people tended to sift sources of information to reinforce existing views."

Answer 1

Yep. Science a;lmost always gets manipulated by politics and spin.

"we are certain that humans are causing global warming and it will have overwhelmingly negative effects".

How much and when is the answer that escapes certainty.

Just more liberal alarmist hogwash.......

It's simple....AGW is the trojan horse for global socialism.

Answer 2

Yeah that really was a great article - ironically from one of your standard media outlets!  I liked this part in particular:

"Discordant findings have come in quick succession. How fast is Greenland shedding ice? Did human-caused warming wipe out frogs in the American tropics? Has warming strengthened hurricanes? Have the oceans stopped warming? These questions endure even as the basic theory of a rising human influence on climate has steadily solidified: accumulating greenhouse gases will warm the world, erode ice sheets, raise seas and have big impacts on biology and human affairs."

People tend to focus in on these areas where there is uncertainty.  How often do we see the skeptics say something like "Alarmists said there would be more hurricanes.  Now they're saying there will be fewer hurricanes.  They don't know what they're talking about!"?

What the 'skeptics' don't seem to realize is that while these sorts of details get ironed out through the evolution of scientific studies, the backbone of AGW is extremely strong and unchanging because it's based on fundamental physics.  While we're not certain whether there will be more or fewer hurricanes in the future, we are certain that humans are causing global warming and it will have overwhelmingly negative effects.

Focusing on the details and ignoring the strong fundamental science is like losing sight of the forest while looking at a couple of trees.  And the point that people look for information to confirm what they want to believe is another key issue.  People who want to believe AGW is a massive hoax get their information from right-wing blogs which try to prove this is the case.  That's why it's important to seek scientific information from unbiased scientific sources rather than politically biased media outlets.

*edit* Randall's answer is a great example of the sort of thing I'm talking about (and the article as well).  Plus coincidentally, in that massively long answer I don't think a single one of his comments was correct.

*edit2* Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate briefly discussed this article today.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Answer 3

No.  The policies they are advocating are WRONG.

Dana - comparing "climate science" to fundamental physics is like comparing the U.S. Tax code to your checkbook.  Are you really ignorant enough to classify the IPCC as an UNBIASED SCIENTIFIC SOURCE??  

Climate scientists are the new philosophers.  Useless & brimming with undeserved self-importance.

Answer 4

O U R O P I N I O N

An alarmist’s solution to criticism

    Unless you’re among those who follow the global warming controvery with considerably more intensity than the average citizen, the name James Hansen probably doesn’t ring any bells. But it should.

    Hansen is the original global warming alarmist. He is currently the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Twenty years ago, in an appearance before several Congressional committees, Hansen warned that increasing human-generated CO2 content in the earth’s atmosphere was pushing up global temperatures, and that if generation of CO2 wasn’t cut back, we would face a “tipping point” from which there could be no return, and that the result of warming would doom life on earth as we know it.

    He was called to testify in the early ’80s because in 1981 he and a team of scientists at Goddard had concluded that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than previously predicted. While other climatologists had already predicted that a trend would be apparent by 2020, Hansen predicted, in a paper published in Science, that the change was already occurring and that there would be record high temperatures as early as 1990.

    In June of this year Hansen again testified before a Congressional committee, on the anniversary of his first alarmist appearance. And what has happened to global temperatures in the intervening 20 years? According to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, global satellite temperature data show that earth’s temperature has indeed changed; it’s gone down by half a degree (Fahrenheit). So much for Hansen’s prediction about tipping points, and carbon dioxide dangers, etc., etc.

    But Hansen also did something else at in June. At an informal media event hosted by Worldwatch Institute, an environmental activist group, he called for criminal trials against scientists, corporate executives, and public policy advocates who disagree with him. He said skeptics are guilty of “crimes against humanity.” If you oppose his theories, in other words, you’re no better than Hitler, Stalin, Robert Mugabe, Papa Doc Duvalier, and the rest of history’s mass murderers, and ought to be sent to jail — or worse — for holding such views.

    Much of the above is from the August issue of Environment & Climate News, a Heartland Institue publication. The Heartland Institute, you may not know, is a non-profit environmental organization that challenges global warming theories. Two letters to the editor today take note of a story published in the Sunday Press Dispatch (albeit buried on D7) that some 31,072 American scientists have signed a petition rejecting Hansen’s — among others — assertions that global warming has reached a crisis stage that is caused by human activity. The story about the petition originated with the Heartland Institute.

    The petition puts the lie to claims such as the one by Al Gore (“The debate is over”) that there’s any sort of general agreement among the world’s scientific community about global warming, either as to what is causing it, that it’s in fact happening, or that there’s anything humanity can do about it.

    Hansen, you might also want to know, is indeed a scientist. He’s an astronomer. But stifling dissent of his theories by shouting, “Off with their heads” does not exactly comport with scientific method. So it’s no surprise to also learn he’s Al Gore’s adviser on science. Uh huh.

    Steve Williams

Victorville Daily Press

7-29-08

Answer 5

No,

In 2006 I believe I heard the IPCC's findings in the media and said to myself getty up lets go see what they have and do something about it.  I have always been through reducing emissions, but did not worry about CO2 with other things.

When I looked at the evidence, what has changed since 2001 or the late 90's to up stakes.  I did not find the information I was looking for.  I searched the laws of thermodynamics global warming.  I figured the information should be everywhere.  I found very little.  I found skeptical websites that for the most part had the math correct.  Most capped the change at 1 deg C.  

Man warms the earth is easily proven.  How much we are know where near, and what is the max we do not know.  

1.  I am also looking for the maximum temperature.  This is a typical practice in complicated thermodynamic systems to start at the max or min and work backwards.  I do not think anyone has tried to calculate the max.

Answer 6

Its all p**p that the left has shoveled onto our plates. Be cautious of what you listen to in the media, most of the information is tainted with demo-c**p.

Answer 7

I'd say the lack of consensus within the scientific community is the source of your media problem.  From your link:

“Each new paper negates or repudiates something emphatically asserted in a previous paper,” Dr. Pfeffer said. “The public is obviously picking up on this not as an evolution of objective scientific understanding but as a proliferation of contradictory opinions.”

Answer 8

"many studies had shown that people tended to sift sources of information to reinforce existing views."

That is certainly applicable to alarmists.  It is less applicable to true skeptics since their existing "views" are skeptical and thus open minded.  Those with views such as yours are not open for change or interpretation.  Alarmist tend to sift through various sources until they find information taht reinforces their existing views

Answer 9

No, it's not.

The key phrase is "competing research teams."    Another key quote is "many studies had shown that people tended to sift sources of information to reinforce existing views."   Yeah, that's not just the readers of the reports - it's the authors too!

Usually you have eight or ten discrete groups of scientists, with minimal funding, all with slightly different pet sub-issues and very different views - competing views - on the final answer.

It's natural to have an idea of the conclusion you want to reach and then do your research - very infrequently is science actually an endeavor involving a search for knowledge for its own sake - a review of the facts to see where they lead, if anywhere.

But the competitive aspect is supposed to cure this - the idea is that one group with theory X as to question Y writes a paper, and it's reviewd by peers - two other scientists, with theories A and B, about questions Y1 and Y2 - and if the guy with the competing theory says your science is good, that's a rigorous test.

With global warming we have hundreds of scientists, mostly government-funded, in a race to provide support for the AGW theory, and a handful of scientists, mostly industry-funded, trying to find holes in the theory.

Nobody from the one side peer reviews the papers of anyone on the other side.

The results are as shoddy as you'd expect.

I think the problem may be that when you pull away all the contradictions, exaggerations, hyperbole, you end up with an interesting but unproven theory, and because the media as well as interest groups like UCS, Greenpeace, PIRG, Sierra Club, etc.... push the alarmist approach, the public hears the alarmism, then it turns out that many of the alarmist talking points are not valid, and then they dismiss the whole theory.

The AGW side of this - and environmentalism in general - has a big "boy who cried wolf" problem.

There are genuine scientists with legitimate though unproven concerns.

There's also for want of a better way to phrase it a lot of "p**p that the left throws on our plates" - the scientists didn't kick the p**p-throwing lefties out of the tent as long as they thought they were scaring people into doing the "right" thing, even if for the wrong reasons.    They let the Noble Lies be told.

Then when they were exposed, you got a lot of cynicism and a big credibility problem.

You need to acknowledge and solve the boy who cried wolf problem.

And you need to acknowledge the uncertainties - it makes no sense that "policies now make sense regardless of uncertainties" - - - you make it sound like the defendant stabbed the victim and then shot him and the only uncertainty is whether he died of the stabbing or the shooting and that's just not accurate.

The problem with the "backbone" argument is that it was these "side issues" that were among the primary scare tactics, and then when they were no longer useful, or turned out to be inaccurate, you dumped them.     People living on the coast came over to your side because you convinced them that there'd be eight or nine hurricanes every year.    Then when that turns out not to be the case you drop it and insist that it was never a core argument.

It IS a political question - do you get to impose the limits you seek to impose.    You need a majority of people to support that.   You've sought to build that majority with appeals to the emotion - polar bears, hurricanes, etc.....    Then when some of those turn out to be bogus, you try to disown them.

It's not like your case was "CO2 will trap head and we don't know exactly what will happen but it will be bad" and then skeptics just made up arguments about hurricanes and polar bears.    

The inconsistency goes to credibility as well as the severity of the damages alleged.

If you brought a tort suit against me and claimed not only that some action of mine caused you to fall but that because of the fall you'd developed all kinds of complications, and there never was direct evidence that I caused your fall, and it also turned out that half of your alleged complications were bogus, that would be valid for me to cross-examine you on, and to point out in my closing, and you'd lose.

And that's why popular support for AGW has hit and passed its high water mark.

Answer 10

Global "whatever" People,

"Blah, blah, end of world, blah, blah, 10 years, blah blah"

10 years later:

"Blah, blah, end of world, blah, 10 years, blah blah"

10 years later:

"Blah, blah, end of world, blah, blah 10 years, blah"

Warmers need a new theme song.  This one has been going on for decades.  Always wrong, always the same old song.

Answer 11

I am amazed that certain groups fill the need to push policies based upon uncertainties.   What other policies should governments adopt and tax people, based upon uncertainties?  Not only is that a reckless approach it only solidifies the opponents view, this is nothing but another scheme to tax the people and take away our basic freedoms.    

Randal E.  answer is right on and I applaud him.

Good question

Answer 12

not looking at the article but more of what Ive been taught ( i'm a student in Singapore) i believe that it is more of the unchanging mindset that leads to the GW problem because the media is profit oriented and therefore they will capitalize on what they think will lead ppl to consume more of their good a.k.a. newspaper, tabloid etc. Ppl are unwilling to erase what they've been taught and therefore this is the main cause that is leading to thr GW problem being hyped to a large extent.

Answer 13

Great article. This is the "eggs were good for you last year but not this year" problem. The populace distrusts science because the media gives them the impression that their field is just a bunch of shifty opinion making. And due to the fact that scientists don't speak in absolutes, or for dramatic impact, a very solid statement as to the near certainty of AGW in a research paper may come across to joe public as tinged with a solid dose of doubt and confusion. As can easily be seen by reading the comments here, people aren't particularly interested in getting to the core meaning of the data, only debunking it before they understand it. All we have to do is look at the continuing rift between scientific and public belief in evolution to realize that this is probably not going to change. We can only be glad that the people who really matter are in agreement.