Despite the findings of a new report, I wouldn’t bet on it
UPDATE 10/16/10: I’ve added some comments from Judith Curry, a scientist at Georgia Tech and author of a new blog, at the end of this post. As I get more comments from scientists, journalists and others, I’ll post them there as well. Also, see the comments section for thoughts from Bud Ward, editor of the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, and Randy Olson, a scientist turned filmmaker.
Update 10/18/10: See the bottom for some comments from Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press.
A new study has found that just 10 percent of the journalistic coverage of the Copenhagen climate negotiations last winter actually focused on science. And the author, James Painter, doesn’t seem terribly happy about it.
In the report he argues that as the frequency and severity of extreme weather events increases, there is “a pressing need for more public understanding of the science.” The task of educating the public largely falls largely to journalists, he says, but we’re not doing our jobs adequately.
“The fact that the world’s media spent vast amounts of money and time concentrating on the drama of climate change negotiations at Copenhagen and under-reporting the science is yet more proof of how difficult a challenge this is going to be,” Painter writes.
The report, titled “Summoned by Science: Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and Beyond” and published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, runs some 148 pages. There’s a huge amount of useful material here, and I look forward to reading the entire report in detail. But from what I’ve read so far, it seems clear that Painter somehow believes that if only we could get more and better journalistic coverage of the science of climate change, international negotiations to cut carbon emissions would stand a greater chance of success.
I’ll be curious to hear what readers have to say about this. I believe this is a naive view that ignores the reality of why COP15 failed, and why future negotiations stand a high chance of failing as well.
Science journalism (or the lack thereof) had very little to do with with the collapse of the Copenhagen talks, and more of it in the future is exceedingly unlikely to lead to a different outcome
As Der Spiegel reported back in May:
Secret recordings obtained by SPIEGEL reveal how China and India prevented an agreement on tackling climate change at the crucial meeting. The powerless Europeans were forced to look on as the agreement failed.
Writing in the Guardian, Mark Lynas told a similar story:
The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.
No amount of science reporting from the COP would have altered that outcome — not even if climate change science had comprised 90 percent of the stories written at the meeting.
I also fail to see how more science reporting about climate change is going to alter the underlying geopolitics. Developing countries have contributed the least to the climate change problem so far and yet are the most vulnerable. This has not exactly made them eager to sign off on a treaty.
Moreover, both China and India face huge increases in demand for energy as their populations seek a higher standard of living. Will more science journalism in those countries modify this reality? Somehow, I doubt it.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not at all arguing that reporting on the science of climate change is irrelevant. I believe that more and better coverage is certainly in the public interest. But that alone is not going to change policy outcomes.
What do you think?
Judith Curry responds:
Well, in my engagement with the denizens of the climate blogosphere (the more technical threads), you have a bunch of very educated people with graduate degrees in science and engineering plus lawyers and medical doctors becoming interested in the issue of climate change, and after investigating, they land on the skeptical side. So I am not sure what “well educated” is going to accomplish in terms of pushing this particular agenda.
The problem doesn’t seem to be a fundamental lack of education. It is the oversimplificattion of a very complex issue (climate change) with a magical silver bullet solution (no more fossil fuels) that isn’t technically feasible in the medium term, let alone politically feasible. Trying to “communicate” and bemoaning the lack of education won’t make it past the major structural problems with the overall argument (problem and solution). The uneducated people on the fringes pick up on the dissent and then just lose trust in scientists when something like climategate comes along. Its the wicked problem syndrome, rather than lack of education, as far as I can tell.
Roger Pielke, Jr. finds a mixed message in the report:
On the one hand the report says: ”It is worth stressing that this publication has not been about the best way of communicating science in order to change people’s minds or behaviour.”
And yet, the report is shot through with exactly that message — that it wants to change people’s minds, and specifically to defeat the skeptics and other voices of unreason. For instance, it explains: ”Print media have a strong agenda-setting influence on policy-makers and other elites”
And this:
“Editors and journalists often admit that climate change gets pigeon-holed or dismissed as an ‘environment story’, when it has huge implications for energy policy, food security, water supplies, economic development, poverty alleviation, health spending, international relations, technological initiatives, internal and foreign migration, and security issues – to name but a few”
It cannot be both ways — if reporting has “huge implications” for policy, then it cannot at the same time be claimed to be blind to those implications while expressing a preference for certain political outcomes. This is the old fallacy . . . that “better” coverage of science (whatever that means) will lead to certain, predictable outcomes in policy.
The report, however well intended, is a recipe for a further politicization of science and the media.”
Charlie Petit of the Knight Science Journalism Tracker has this to say about the report:
If it implies that 10 percent is too low a figure for the share of coverage given explicitly to scientific data and theory, then I’d reply that’s about right. Sports writers at the World Series don’t devote much of their copy to the history and rules of baseball, they report what happened in the game. No new science came up at Copenhagen, ergo not much of a story there. Aside from that, the meeting’s outcome seems to have been driven internally, not by press coverage. It may have been an educational opportunity for reporters to take advantage of readers who had never bothered previously to pay much attention to climate science, but the delegates had heard it all. The job of a reporter is not education per se, but to report the news. The news was political.
From Seth Borenstein, a reporter with the Associated Press, adds this:
The study missed that there were science journalists in Copenhagen — and I was one of them. So was Cheryl Hogue of Chemical and Engineering News, Andy Revkin of the New York Times, and many others. Perhaps the study wasn’t comprehensive enough. For example, The Associated Press had one of the largest media contingents there, yet was only mentioned twice in the report, one of them in a footnote and the other in a paragraph about methodology. Further, this was a policy summit that had science underpinnings. But it wasn’t a meeting of scientists. It was a meeting of policy people. Witness the more than 100 political leaders who met there. It wouldn’t have been news had it been more than 100 science advisors.
This thing has 41 Comments
Truth is that Copenhagen was not the place for climate science, wasn’t intended to be, and couldn’t have been. It’s all the climate science leading up to Copenhagen that hasn’t been adequately covered, and Copenhagen itself was properly a political and international affairs story. It’s like saying spring training was poorly covered during the World Series. Yes…but was could it have been covered better during the spring too? Probably.
There’s a rather stunning article in the Atlantic Magazine this month titled, “Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Science,” which opens by saying, “Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat out wrong.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
I read it on my way to an epidemiology conference I was invited to speak at titled, “Mixed Messages: No wonder the public is confused.” In reading it I felt like it was written by a climate skeptic — it’s so bold in portraying the field of medical research as a clown show of bad science.
But at the meeting, all the best speakers ground truthed the article for me, agreeing paints an accurate picture and that the central character, John Ioannidis is in fact the superman he’s made out to be (they know and admire him). And of course the conference itself was all about the same thing — the mass confusion surrounding so much research on diseases and toxins — and echoed the same concerns I listened to in my visit to CDC in August.
We are living in an era where the grand facade of the science establishment is showing some major signs of wear and tear. It’s more than just the occasional human failings that historians of science like Steve Gould liked to point out. It’s a profession that has some significant design flaws, like the innate human tendency to be drawn to positive findings (which I witnessed repeatedly in colleagues during my career as a scientist). This doesn’t say the profession is fatally flawed, only that the noise level is non-trivial.
Overall, I think climate science has to be viewed in the current bigger picture of all sciences.
Judith Curry is spending her time on the wrong blogs (Watts Up With That
comes to mind).
Bill: What constitutes a “right” and a “wrong” blog? And why do you think it is a bad thing to engage in reasoned dialogue with people of diverse views?
I think the question left unaddressed is what percentage of coverage at a political meeting on climate change should be devoted to climate science? 10% 25% 50%? We don’t have a clear standard by which to evaluate the 10% finding.
There’s also the compared to what question relative to past coverage of the climate debate and compared to similar complex policy issues. At the Rio or Kyoto meetings, what percentage of the coverage focused on climate or environmental science?
Looking to draw comparisons to other complex policy issues discussed at international political summits, during the G20 meetings what percentage of the coverage focused on economics research relative to the causes and remedies of the recession? What percentage of the coverage featured the voices of university-based economists?
I also agree with Tom that the report’s news release and executive summary seems to imply that if there had been more coverage of climate science that the policy outcome would have been different.
If we look no further than the issue of nuclear power, we can see that the public political debate far outweighs the scientific concerns. Russia and China are both building power reactors, and this after Chernobyl’s horrendous explosion. Climate change science will not sway the political positions of most of the world’s population; both India and China have, within their own boundaries, populations equal to the size of the US population, that are living up to the same standards as Americans. Nearly a billion people are living well using fossil fuels for energy and transportation; why would they want to give that up? Americans, especially, are people triggered to act cooperatively and harmoniously during extreme crises. When climate change really begins to dramatically affect large masses of the US (think 1-3 meter sea level rise in 2070), then the people will act; until then, nada.
I was just reading the following, and thinking about the post here on science in journalism. The two may never meet:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/
Better discussion of the science is always a good thing.
What Copenhagen really missed was a good old fashioned reporter asking all the top diplomats why they came on their own private jets instead of using good old fashioned WebEx.
Copenhagen turned into a farce, not because of Climategate but because of corruption, elitism, and the constant denial of it from the people that would normally be outraged over it.
Seriously, how could Copenhagen have ever gone right when all of these concerned environmentalists and diplomats engaged in a very public two week binge of incredibly smug self-promoting feel good partying that create more waste and and hard a larger climate footprint than many small towns.
Climate science, however valid it may be, is correctly seen as get rich quick schemes, and the rich get richer schemes.
Address that if you’re worried about sea level rise.
Mr. Yulsman, if you think that what goes on on a blog like WUWT is “reasoned dialogue,” then I wonder what you would think of as “unreasoned” dialogue.
I do think that the public has done the classic shift in thinking that happens during an economic downturn. It is thinking about money now, and that the Tea Party’s wholesale dismissal of climate change has gotten to a large enough percentage of people who might have been just vaguely on the fence about climate change before. Many intelligent people are worried about the pace of climate change.
One big problem I see for the general public is the difficulty of finding facts in one place. I think that the IPCC’s website could be a good resource and it’s impenetrable.
I still think that good reporting can, eventually, but only as an accumulation over several years, influence the public to start thinking more in terms of: “We all have a problem here, and we ought to work together to solve it.”
Finally, I take issue with Judith Curry’s comment about replacing fossil fuel with renewables. Of course we aren’t pollyannas here. No one who uses renewables thinks that you can replace our current consumption of fossil fuels with renewables.
Tenney: Here is the definition of “reason” (as an intransitive verb), according to my desktop dictionary (I use a Mac):
“think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.”
Cimate change blogs clearly come with a good dose of “unreason.” That’s just as true of many climate activists blogs as it is of Watt’s Up With That.” But there is usually a core of people who use reason, as defined above, in what they write. You or I may disagree with it, or it may even be incorrect. But that doesn’t automatically make it “unreasoned.”
That said, forgive me if I unfairly jump to the conclusion that what you are really implying in your comment is that people with whom you disagree, like Judith Curry, should just shut up. So tell us Tenney: Do you think that Curry should just shut up? If so, why? Please be specific as to why she should not speak her mind.
I’m a journalist dedicated to shining a light on things, not turning the lights off. So that mode of thinking is simply alien to me. I’d rather have more discussion, not less. We might be surprised where it gets us.
Christine: But COP15 collapsed in failure not because of public opinion — and no amount of rising public support for climate policy action in the United States, if it could be engineered, is going to change the dynamic that was at work there.
The COP15 talks collapsed because China sabotaged them, period. If you don’t believe me, see the links I included in my post. And the reasons why China did that (with India’s help) have nothing to do with public opinion in the United States or Europe. The only public opinion that the Chinese rulers pay attention to, I reckon, is the clear desire by the Chinese populace to gain a higher standard of living. So there was no way that China was going to sign on to the policy being pursued at COP15.
This suggests a truly rich avenue for journalistic enterprise: What policies might China, India, et al agree to? With a dramatic change of policy direction, might it be possible to do something effective that both the developed and developing world could agree to?
Unfortunately, the focus in this new report on the lack of science journalism at the COP is totally beside that point. Too bad. We’re still stuck in the same old tired discourse.
Tom, I normally just lurk here, but I’m dumbfounded by your comment to Tenney Naumer – first you equate WUWT (which commonly features a number of true tinfoil hat comments) with unnamed “activist blogs”, and then you ascribe to Tenney something that her comment didn’t even hint at – that Judith Curry should just shut up – and then proceed to interrogate her over why she thinks Judith Curry should shut up. That you preface your comment by “unfairly jump to the conclusion” does NOT mean that you then in fact get a pass when you do in fact “unfairly jump to a conclusion” about a topic not raised by Tenney. Where I come from, you’d owe Tenney an apology.
By the way, I am very perplexed by what Ms. Curry is up to – but my complaint is not that she shouldn’t be speaking, but precisely that a number of her statements seem to lack “reason” as you just defined it – “think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.” To give but one example, on RC she vigorously defended Montfort’s book, chastising a critic by telling him to at least read the book – then, when challenged, she admitted that she hadn’t read the book. In regard to her comment above, she notes that climate skeptics include many well-educated people, and notes that “something” besides education appears to be going on – that “something” pretty clearly appears to be the psychological process of filtering scientific information in which existing cultural and political commitments actually determine one’s perception (or outright dismissal) of the science. See, e.g., http://preview.tinyurl.com/2uw64pq
Tom Yulsman, thanks for your kind note over at DotEarth. I think you should take a good look at Tenney’s admittedly snarky blog, which includes vast quantities of real scientific information. Being an amateur follower of RealClimate, I saw the original argument between Dr. Curry and Dr. Schmidt, and was in my amateurish way kind of surprised that Dr. Curry didn’t seem to want to answer some fairly straightforward questions and began after a while to attack the questioner. The main reason I respect her is that later on Dr. Schmidt praised her in his response, and that people like you also seem to respect her. I also liked her snap about not wanting approval but real information.
Not being able to truly judge for myself, I have to try kicking the tires a bit. Her blanket statement above, and the hero worship she gets from a group whose information seems a little off to me, make me suspicious that somehow she’s not really facing the questions, and she appears to be buying a load of goods that doesn’t quite add up. I think after a while she will begin to see that the piling on is just that and take a harder look, but who am I to judge?
I do know an awful lot of top scientists, through no fault of my own, and not one of them buys into the WUWT, CA, Marc Morano, Hal Lewis (and poor Bob Laughlin (sp?) is miserable about being misquoted), Monckton flavor (of course, it’s hardly fair to include him, as he is such a laughing stock, but there are a lot more where he came from).
I will respond about your art question (in fact, I do have something) but it’s rather late and I needed to say something about the wealth of material to be found in this treasure trove, along with the opinion, which you might not agree with but that does not detract from the vast scientific resources available (in fact, you’ve been cited there a good few times recently). I agree that the piling on to Dr. Curry and others might tend to reduce objectivity, but in the end that’s not a good excuse:
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/
The public is and has been pummeled with climate change claims of doom for years. This is but one tongue in cheek handy reference:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Certainly the ongoing claims of doom and the national geographic and discovery climate porn shows — not to mention the around the clock barrage for we more educated types in SciAm or politcally oriented types in Time or Newsweek — haven’t made much of the dent some have hoped for.
You seem to be asking if you need to turn the knob to 11, making the assumption, as Dr Curry so eloquently points out, that skeptics sorely need education and somehow this educational message just isn’t being heard. It *is* being heard, and it has been heard loud and clear by the educated classes that were aimed for. It’s simply been rejected.
As for L.Carey’s SciAm link… this is part of the same problem, thinking that skeptics by and large are either uneducated or knuckle dragging far right wingnuts (or both.) Right-thinking people (which conservatives aren’t, according to this) would immediately buy into the narrative if only they weren’t being given their marching orders by their evil corporate overlords (or church, or whatever.)
SciAm obviously reckons that the knob needs to go to 11.
It won’t work. And it’s not because the public is stupid. It’s because the public is fed with a daily barrage of utter garbage which has continued unabated for years on any subject remotely connected to science and technology: Coffee bad. Whoops. Nope. Coffee good. Eggs bad. Oh wait. Eggs good. Carbs bad. Meat bad. Oh wait. Atkins good, all meat. Rinse, lather, and repeat (endlessly.) Everything is all doom or all nonsense. And then of course the same public who has to deal with that is then told they’re enemies of the earth: your SUV is killing the planet. Oh my, the seas are turning into acid. And the only way to solve this is to “work together” which means we;re all going to pay a lot more tax.
In short, turning the knob to 11 also invokes the scariest words in the English language: “we’re from the government and we’re here to help you.”
Dear Tom,
No, I do not think that you should jump to any conclusion about what I think or do not think. This sort of jumping to conclusions is what passes for journalism in many quarters these days, and I would not expect it from you.
Judith Curry has hung herself so many times (demonstrably so at Real Climate where she was unable to answer the most basic questions concerning the science that Gavin Schmidt put to her) that I would rather that she continue than shut up.
If WUWT had something productive to add to the science or the discussion, then I would have nothing against the site. But, in fact, it has not. It has however served to waste the valuable time of real scientists while they debunk the nonsense spewed over there.
The real essence of the problem is that on our current emissions path we are heading ever more rapidly over a cliff. There is no falling half way. There is no Planet B.
There only real uncertainty concerns how fast we are approaching the cliff. Models are in error only in so far as they do not include many of the positive feedbacks (many of which are either still unknown or are poorly understood), and for this reason, they underestimate the severity and rapidity of the problem.
Permafrost containing millions of cubic meters of methane is warming up all over Siberia and even under the Arctic Sea. And we have not experienced even half of the warming that is already built into the system right now and that is irreversible for thousands of years. There is a very real possibility that we will not be able to turn this thing around, and the methane will come out in such a short time that the entire climate system will be turned on its head and us with it.
WUWT is a sideshow that distracts from the real problem — what to do. When journalists give time and space to fringe sites like WUWT, they are wasting valuable time.
If Tenney is still here and reading this, I apologize for my snarky response. As I’ll reiterate below, sometimes I miss the mark and I did with that comment.
So let’s see if I can get back on the right path . . .
I originally responded to Bill Walker, who said this: “Judith Curry is spending her time on the wrong blogs (Watts Up With That comes to mind).”
That concept of a “right” and “wrong” blog really bugged me, as it should bother every person who cares about freedom of expression, and the idea that through a diversity of views and messy public debate, democracy is renewed.
That concept of “right” and “wrong” blogs also carries a faint whiff of mind control, and the noxious attitude that our smart and reasonable tribe gets to decide for others, including a respected scientist, what they should read, say and think. One can argue that this is NOT your implication. But one cannot escape the fact that many others are reacting in that way. Thus, one is faced with a choice: try a more effective form of communication, or simply retreat to the comfort of one’s own tribe.
I admire Judith Curry for trying to take a different path.
Please don’t get me wrong. I very strongly believe that some people are out to poison the public well. But my defense is MORE speech. Not less.
With this in mind, I asked Bill Walker: “What constitutes a “right” and a “wrong” blog? And why do you think it is a bad thing to engage in reasoned dialogue with people of diverse views?”
He never answered. And neither did Tenney, who instead answered my question with a question.
As a result. my original question still remains. Bill Walker started this line of discussion when he said that Curry is spending time at the “wrong” blogs. The clear implication is that she should stop speaking her mind at places like Watts Up With That — or in plainer words, that she should just shut up.
So L. Carey: Are you saying that Judith Curry should refrain from making comments on Web sites dominated by people who question or reject anthropogenic global warming? Perhaps more important, are you saying that anyone with those attitudes is “unreasonable”?
Concerning what constitutes “reason,” and how Judith Curry has allegedly missed the mark: Yes, we are all flawed. Every one of us misses the mark from time to time, as I have here in this thread of discussion. But
L. Carey, I vehemently disagree with your implication that overall, Judith Curry fails to use reason in her arguments. And I am left with the impression that you find her unreasonable simply because she doesn’t agree with you.
Lastly, concerning the “psychological process of filtering scientific information in which existing cultural and political commitments actually determine one’s perception (or outright dismissal) of the science”: Wouldn’t you say that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?”
Susan: Thanks for your comments. As I said above, it’s obvious that all of us miss the mark. And if I were in Curry’s shoes, I’m sure I’d have a lot more to apologize for than she does.
By way of full disclosure, for a short period of time, I was a colleague of Curry’s when she was a member of the faculty of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado. (This was before she left for Georgia Tech.) I was impressed by her intelligence and acuity, as well as by something I couldn’t put my finger on then. Now I can see that it was her independent streak. So if I’m more forgiving of her lapses than others on this thread, it is probably because of that experience.
Since the discussion here seems to have focused in part on judging actions, here’s how I think we should be judged: With all due consideration to our lapses in logic and temperament, are we acting in good faith to accomplish what any reasonable person would say is a worthy goal?
In Judith Curry’s case, I think the answer is ‘yes.’ (And I would not be so presumptuous to tell her which blogs she should and should not participate in.)
Dear Tom,
Let me go back to the title of the present post: “Would more science reporting lead to better climate policy?”
IMNSHO, this is simply the wrong question to ask at this point in time.
The fact is that it is the manner in which the science is reported in the MSM that has gone astray. Much has already been written on this subject, and honestly, right now, I have to do other things, like follow the congressional hearing this afternoon, so I will pass on this vast topic.
But again, honestly, you should already know why it is the wrong question to ask.
Tenney, if you have spent any time here, you know that I have devoted an enormous amount of time and energy documenting what’s happening to the planet. (If my posts had actual time stamps on them, you’d see that many of them would be marked after 12 a.m….) And I continue to do it, despite my dawning realization that better policy is unlikely to come simply from better communication of the science.
We’ve basically known about the problem for 30 years. Yet despite all the work of people like Andy Revkin and Elizabeth Kolbert, do we have an effective policy yet?
So I think it is reasonable to ask whether another approach is needed. Whatever her faults might be, Judith Curry has tried to take a different approach, and I admire her for it.
Just one more thing. There are quite a few people who are mystified by Judith Curry’s recent academic self-sepukai. I followed it for many days. Without going too deep into the matter, she is so consistently befuddled and seemingly incapable of answering basic scientific questions that something seems not quite right with her thought processes these days. This seems to be a departure from her capabilities in years past. If you have not followed the many discussions in detail, you will have likely overlooked this. No one I know thinks she is doing what she is doing these days for money or self-aggrandizement. She has embarked on a path of academic suicide because she has not established any scientific basis for the things she says these days. Promoting the Montford book is a case in point.
Tenney: You seem to be saying that we don’t have an effective policy in large measure because of the failure of the mainstream media to report the science adequately. I agree that coverage of science generally and climate science in particular often leaves much to be desired — and I have blogged about that extensively.
But let’s go back to the subject of my original post: Are you really saying that COP15 failed not because of the divide between developed and developing nations — and China’s deliberate action to sabotage the negotiations — but because of journalists?
Well, Tom, I did not see your rapid reply. Mr. Revkin’s work in the past 3 years is not what I would call real journalism. I do not have time to get into that right now. I work on my own blog many hours per day and it is completely non-commercial, and I receive nothing for the work I do.
Tom, Tom, what is wrong with you!?! I said nothing whatsoever about the failure of Copenhagen! I think you need to look at your own writing and apply some critical thinking about it. Please!
China’s present government has an extremely long-term outlook. This in and of itself will cause it to dismiss the U.S. since the U.S. has shown over and over again that it cannot get past short-term politics.
Well, as I said before I followed the argument carefully because I like RealClimate even if it is largely over my head. And for persistent dissemination of modified information, WUWT is good at its job, but that’s not about truth, it’s about popularity with a certain kind of bias.
I had trouble with this:
“you have a bunch of very educated people with graduate degrees in science and engineering plus lawyers and medical doctors becoming interested in the issue of climate change, and after investigating, they land on the skeptical side. So I am not sure what “well educated” is going to accomplish in terms of pushing this particular agenda.”
I can see now that I took it a bit out of context. But as Dr. Curry is testifying in Congress today (starting today?) she carries a lot of weight. She also seems to buy in to a description of commentary over at RC that does not match the reality. It’s a very polite place, but they don’t allow the discussion to go off the rails into politics and religion, and if the same “canard” (scare quotes because some people think whether it is a canard is open to debate, though I don’t see it) is repeated and expanded without supporting material, that gets pointed out. The whole discussion at Collide-a-Scape was larded with people claiming it RC was political and their science was suspect, and that they are rude to boot. Doesn’t, didn’t, won’t compute, sorry.
She was quite insistent that people read Montford’s book, but when I have time I have a pile of stuff that seems more knowledgeable and AFAIK that kind of opinion is off the mark and does not substitute for facts.
I like Tenney’s blog, because if you skip over the political stuff, you will find reams of technical material and climate observations, as the evidence mounts up. For example, she has often posted your material.
One thing that concerns me is that people with the technical qualifications to really work on this material are being diverted into argumentation by massive repetitive attacks. I try as an amateur to provide some balance by pointing back at the material, but as time has gone on the argument, not the truth, is winning. That’s enough to put us on a catastrophic do-nothing course IMNHSO.
Our fake skeptic community so unquestioningly laps up anything they agree with and so unquestioningly attacks, on every level (including personal attacks and misquotations), anyone who attempts to get people to think for themselves and use primary material. I’ve been on the front lines of this for a good few years, and I know. I cannot always be there to say, “that’s not what I said, please look at the original …” but the consistent bias in these twisted arguments is revealing.
It is also tragic that the hardworking Phil Jones has been so thoroughly traduced. The scientists I know do not suffer foods gladly, and the whole ‘gate attack mechanism is so fishy in timing and source. I find it difficult to dismiss the notion that the Russians are involved, for example, in the hacking.
Tenney, some of Andy Revkin’s recent responses to “deniers” are excellent. Please don’t lump all of his work into one basket.
Susan, you are correct. Andy’s recent work (the last 3 or 4 months) has been a good bit better.
Those wishing to follow the congressional hearings live today can go to this link:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/11/live-coverage-house-climate-hear.html
Live feed now: http://science.edgeboss.net/wmedia-live/science/59565/300_science-gordon_091020.asx
Thanks Tenney. One can find many examples of excellent work interlarded with other stuff throughout. I’d agree he’s shifted to more aggressively identifying error in the comments lately, but who has time for all this stuff?
Case in point from DE this morning; Andy’s response:
“Here’s a useful reader’s guide from a critic of that account:
[*] … Useful to have some context” – here’s the link he provides.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/
This is also useful because it carefully deconstructs the Montford book which is such a favorite with our fake skeptics.
Sorry guys, I have to bow out for a bit. I’m going to a meeting at which a university administrator will be telling us that our program (the J-school) at the University of Colorado is being discontinued.
Details at 7…
TY, that is so sad and symptomatic. Suggest any other present go to the links Tenney provided and watch the hearing and commentary.
Tom, I’m really sorry to hear that – as if journalism wasn’t in enough trouble. Aside from getting in an argument with you on my earlier post, I have appreciated your blog and your thoughtful reporting for some time now. Best wishes for the future. BTW – do I wish Judith Curry agreed with me? Well, of course – everyone should agree with me, it would make life so much easier.
L. Carey: Thanks for the kind comments and support. Here is the Twitter summary of the meeting:
“Committee recommends J-school be discontinued but j-education continue. It also recommends big reduction in teaching of journalism skills.”
Yes, I know, I know. How do you teach journalism without teaching journalism skills? I have absolutely no idea.
In any case, no matter what, CEJournal is not going away. And I will either become part of a new and possibly very cool and innovative unit, or I’ll go to Environmental Studies. Bottom line: No one is going to shut me up!
OK, time to move on, or back, with particular reference to the arts. I had the privilege recently to attend a forum on sea level rise in Boston, hosted by The Boston Harbor Association. They’ve promised to put it up on the web, at TBHA.org, but it’s not up yet. It included a remarkable presentation that had been mounted at MOMA (and something at the Venice Biennale, excuse my vagueness as to whether it was part of the same show or modified) called “Rising Currents”. I’ve been told MOMA web material is a bit stingy, but here’s a link:
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/rising-currents
And this is pretty good
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/04/21/rising-currents-the-impact-of-glocal/
Actually, you did me a favor by asking for arts input; I’ve just be trawling these and found them interesting.
I’m sure like me you regularly check Earth Observatory and follow some of those lines as well; every time I remember to do this I find fascinating stuff.
Another organization that is now doing excellent work on presentation is Climate Central.
Also, water vapor maps are wonderful. I’d love a tutorial on what is evolving there. Tenney has been my source there, so if you can overcome a distaste for the earlier hotheaded communications, she’d be good. I understand that streams are developing in the Pacific extreme south, meandering across the Pacific and Mexico, and ending up as nasty weather on the eastern seaboard and Europe. That trough in the Atlantic is said to be a new phenomenon as well.
Of course, I’m just a parrot here so pointing out my errors would be welcome.
Susan, the water vapor streams are generated at the Equator and either go north or south from there. By this means the temperature of the planet is kept at an average since the streams carry heat energy from the Equator towards the poles.
Lately, some pretty odd, enormous and rapidly moving lows have been pushing across the Pacific, pouring over the Rockies and hence across the Midwest and into New England.
But this pattern could not have lasted forever and has disappeared after having generated one of the lowest pressure systems ever recorded over the continental U.S.
Tom, I am glad to know you will be continuing your work.
Tom, re Curry, you really need to read the posts on her by Michael Tobis and James Annan.
Not too long ago over at Kloor’s I made an attempt to pin her down on her claim of low sensitivity, pointing out paleo studies precluded anything below 2C. She answered by referring me to Knutti & Hegerl (2008), which she said supported her point of view, presumably either directly or by refuting the idea that paleoclimate provides such a constraint. Well, wrong. K&H does neither thing. Not willing to leave this to my own amateur judgement, I checked with James Annan (a subject matter expert), and he agreed that she was in error. But really, since Judy has never done any work even faintly related to climate sensitivity (she’s an “obs” specialist, part of an empirical tradition as Michael Tobis discusses), I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
A lot of people have had similar experiences with her, leading to the widely-held conclusion that she’s spouting off about things she knows little about. Perhaps she should just shut up.
As a scientist myself, rather than see her ‘shut up’ I’d rather see Dr. Curry engage fellow climate scientists; but by her own admission she is not interested in engaging blogs that adhere to the mainstream’ view of climate science, including those run by climate scientists. Her few forays onto RealClimate and her rare online exchanges with other climate scientsts have been interesting, to say the least.
I have comparatively little interest in watching her play the role of former ivory tower academic now become a newbie discovering the hoary old ‘skeptical’ memes promulgated on McIntyre’s or Watt’s sites. If you knew her in the old days, Tom, and followed her online career and the last year or so, I think you might be a little embarrassed at her one-sided willingness to accommodate and forgive ‘skeptical’ rhetoric while condemning what the IPCC and climate scientists say, in sometimes profligate terms.
The Anatomy of Earth, and Global Warming.
The real reason for global warming is the earth’s orbit around the sun is slowly decaying, and the earth is being pulled closer to the sun. People take the earth’s magnetic field for granted, because it’s invisible, and silent, but the earth’s magnetic field keeps the earth at a safe distance from the sun, and the moon. The high temperatures in the earth’s core (the earth’s engine) generates earth’s magnetic field. The earth’s fuel system is referred to as crude oil, and natural gas wells. They are actually self pressurizing fuel cells, and crude oil, and natural gas are the earth’s fuel. The oil company’s crude oil extraction process compromises the earth’s fuel system, and shut off fuel to the earth’s outer core, by releasing pressure out of these oil, and gas wells.
Under normal conditions the outer core stays at a constant temperature between 5000 to 7000 degrees celsius, and the pressure in the outer core, lower mantle, and a oil well stays at tens of thousands of pounds per square inch. The pressure in an oil well forces the oil, and natural gas into the outer core, and is ignited long before it reaches the outer core, and enters the lower mantle, and outer core as flames, and heat.
The earth’s core is being fuel starved, and the core is slowly cooling. As the core cools the earth’s magnetic field will weakens, and the earth will be pulled closer to the sun. The high temperature in the earth’s core is not sustained by decaying nuclear material, or by a dynamo process. The radiation would escape during volcanic eruptions. No radiation has ever been detected during, or after a volcanic episode. Only crude oil, and natural gas by-products, such as the great pressures, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide gases, etc. Reference: Kenneth A. McGee, and Terrence M. Gerlach 1995/ Volcanic Gas: USGS Open files report -95-85,2p.
The only way to reverse global warming is for the oil companies to re-pressurize the earth’s fuel systems. One way this can be accomplished is by igniting the methane gas in the fuel system. The ignited gas will expand, and create the pressure need to force the remaining crude oil, and natural gas into the outer core. Crude oil, and methane gas was not created to fuel our industries, or automobiles. It was created to fuel this planet. Crude oil is the life blood of this planet. The green house gas theory has nothing to do with global warming, and tens of thousands of scientist believe the theory is false. Something is going wrong with the earth’s orbit. These are not separate events they are all part of earth’s orbital decay. The events below were reported by NASA, NOAA, USGS, and the American Astronomical Society, etc.
1. The earth is moving away from the moon.
2. The rotation of the earth is slowing down.
3. The earth is shifting on its axis.
1 of 2
4. Twelve o’clock noon use to be the hot part of the day, now three o’clock is the hottest part of the day.
5. The earth is wobbling on it axis.
6. The earth is developing a breach in its magnetic field.
7. Both polar ice caps are being melted, one at a time, during each polar ice cap’s summer season, and the oceans are rising.
As the earth moves closer to the sun, the sun’s heat, and rays will continue to spread, and warm areas of the planet that are in their winter season. Areas near the equator will be affected first during the winter season. Areas near latitudes 29 degrees North, and South will experience higher, than normal temperature during the winter seasons, and it will began to get cool later into the season. As the earth moves closer to the sun, more areas of this planet will have higher, than normal temperatures in winter.
Written by: Willie McDonald (July-1983)
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