The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Media madness: blaming climate confusion on the fourth estate > Comments

Media madness: blaming climate confusion on the fourth estate : Comments

By Mark S. Lawson, published 7/6/2011

Some in the global warming camp construct elaborate, even clever explanations involving psychology or sociology. There is a problem when the media report this as evidence.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All
Sorry, but the media do have a lot to answer for. Right now, the builders at my house are playing Alan Jones on the radio loud and clear, where he's disputing climate science yet again. His arguments are nonsensical but nevertheless he sounds so convinced of his position it is no wonder people are confused. It was the same in the laundromat the other day, with Alan Jones being played so loudly you couldn't talk, let alone think. In addition, the tabloid press is read widely and Andrew Bolt is touted as the most popular columnist in the country. With his taking his anti-science attitude to extremes, again, no wonder the public are turning off the issue. Add to that the press that Tony Abbott gets as he runs around the country spruiking his anti-carbon tax message. Any self-respecting journalist should be giving him short shrift. Any journalist reporting on climate change should have some rudimentary science but unfortunately they're a rare beast. Twenty years ago, it was common for journalists to confuse the hole in the ozone layer with climate change. They're not much better now.
I'm not sure what the significance of these sea-level graphs are but even if they lead to "only" 0.8metre sea-level rise by 2100, then we still have a major problem, not least with our own coastal properties, but with the probable influx of environmental refugees.
Finally, don't dredge up the East Anglia 'Climategate' issue again. The scientists have been exonerated over and over again. Why don't you address the theft of these emails just prior to the Copenhagen conference? There ARE criminals out there but they sure ain't the scientists.
Posted by popnperish, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 12:15:55 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
oh great another Journo thinking he can do science by Google and asking a few friends. Can't wait for Mark to tell us how to unify gravity and QED, perhaps then after lunch he can tell us the meaning of life the universe and everything else. That’s just a soon as the talking points are posted on some right wing blog.

Editors of OLO seems to find plently of theese types, seems to me it proves the point very well. If 99% of people who have studied the problem in a scientific way think it's happening then that should be reflented in what Jurnos say but that is not the case. Then again journo's stopped reporting facts in the press a long time ago.
Posted by Kenny, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 12:16:23 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Try as I might, I find it hard to discern Mark’s key message here. He presents two interesting sets of sea level data. The satellite measurements show a rise of 3.1 mm a year over 18 years from 1992. Tidal gauge data over a whole century show a rise averaging around 2 mm a year. Yes, the two sets do seem to disagree. And the tidal set is not on a straight line, clearly shown in the lower ‘rate’ section of the graph (essentially the first differential of the upper graph). What’s more, if sea level continued to rise linearly at these rates it would fall short of the 0.8 metre rise by the end of this century ‘backed’ by the Climate Commission.

Mark says that these facts, while interesting to him and to me, are ignored by or unknown to the media.

And this is evidence for some kind of conspiracy to hide the truth? Give me a break.

As for oversold claims, people do exaggerate. I enjoyed reading Future Babble. It reinforced my innate scepticism. But it hardly proves that every projection must be wrong. Sceptics need to be discriminating. It’s actually not too hard.
Posted by Tombee, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 12:42:00 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
First, thanks Mark / Curm for the information (graphs) about sea level rise, reference (Jevrejeyva). This is positive because it contributes to informed debate.

But your sceptic bias comes out loud and clear and contrary to the evidence you have presented. Those graphs alarm me; I dont see them as cause for complacency or scepticism. The 'up and down one' refers for varying rates of SL increase from 0-4 mm over the last 100 years. That's not surprising to me as a scientist; things are never constant in nature as there are so many factors acting. The alarming thing is that it's a net steady increase in SL, accelerating somewhat after about 1920's. And that's without the possible Greenland ice shelf collapse and release of tundra and seabed methane/ clathrates. (which you fail to address).

I think we all have bias; I certainly have as you know towards you so-called 'global warming camp'. Maybe it's becasue I spent some of my formative years pumping fossil fuels into machines that cleared scrub and put in crops at an alarming rate and now barely 30 years later we see the spread of salinity. It's the alarming rate of our (man's) impact that is alarming.

I sincerely hope that as with the millennium bug we are are wrong and the sky wont fall in after all. But for every such comparison I could give contrary one - try onset of WW2 - Chamberlain - 'if at first we dont succeed.....'(let's keep hoping and doing nothing but negotiating) and then the unthinkable happened Poland was invaded....

What makes 'climate/ fossil fuel action' a no brainer is that even if global warming is a complete furphy (which most and I think even you don't believe) then there is still the issue of peak oil / peak coal. Perhaps it comes down to 'do we care about furure generations or don't we?'

PS comment about Jones' rabid scpeticism resonates. This is not reporting or journalism, it's opinion gone mad and unchallenged; unfortuantely much of the mainstream media has this bias.
Posted by Roses1, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 12:49:54 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark, it is interesting that you should blame the media for such confusion in the climate debate. Huge amounts of money and reports by tame scientific writers or spin Doctors, on behalf of major industrial polluters, would have to be the biggest contributors to uncertainty. There is no debate, or at least there should not be. The science is quite clear, even in the Critical Decade.

“There is no credible evidence that changes in incoming solar radiation can be the cause of the current warming trend.”

“Neither multi-decadal or century-scale patterns of natural variability, such as the Medieval Warm Period, nor shorter term patterns of variability, such as ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) or the North Atlantic Oscillation, can explain the globally coherent warming trend observed since the middle of the 20th century.”

“There is a very large body of internally consistent observations, experiments, analyses, and physical theory that points to the increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide (CO2) the most important, as the ultimate cause for the observed warming.”

Those three quotes come from The Critical Decade and are not in the lease confusing. Of the Human emissions of CO2 debate:

“The Global Financial Crisis led to a drop in 2009 of 1.3% in the global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, in sharp contrast to the average annual rise in fossil fuel CO2 emissions of 3.2% for the 2000-2008 period” (Friedlingstein et al. 2010).

The figures I have seen in the IPCC report, the Garnaut Report and the recent Garnaut Review, all agree with The Critical Decade report that Climate change exists, is man made and is now accelerating. The climate’s position on the Hocky Stick Curve is well advanced and the next ten years are critical for our survival. If we in the “climate camp” are wrong we will celebrate. If we are right and governments continue to procrastinate it will be too late to argue.
Posted by David Leigh, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 1:04:50 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson here.

Several posters want to refight the climate debate. I really wasn't going to get into it except to point out that the climate commission report added nothing new. A few have tried to claim that because the experts agree (and mostly they do) that there can be no question, and that therefore the media should not report the mavricks. This is the very point the article refutes.

I have been there, done that and the arguement doesn't work. The fact that experts agree is, in itself, completely meaningless. The Dan Gardner book I cite points to long running research in which experts were asked to make forecasts in their own areas. The result: forecasts by experts are no better than those of laymen. Those who research forecasting as a subject in its own right have long known this to be case.

So the question is not what credentials the experts have, but what proven, demonstrable track record does the theory have? Answer: none. However, the point is that the media is not set up to exclude viewpoints but to include them, even if these are viewpoints that "the experts" don't think it is valid. It may exclude mavricks if the theory has an established track record - vaccination or evolution, or quantum dynamics, say - but not otherwise. The media is not set up to adjudicate but to report.

Roses1 mentions sea heights but seems to be anxious to explain away what I wrote. the point is that it is not really possible to tell anything much at all from the figures to date. My very brief review of the literature indicates that the 0.2 mm a year the commission report cites hides big variations. There is research indicating that we are at the top of one such variation. So to just cite the 2mm a year figure and then the 3.1 mm a year figure is clearly misleading. If Roses1 has an explanation for why it shouldn't be called misleading then lets hear it.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 1:54:13 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson is following in the footsteps of the other astro turfers who frequently infest the cyber world and try to push their version of denial onto the great unwashed.
He even has the temerity to differentiate the “greenhouse crowd, from the general public, as if they are a breed apart.
He comes of course from that well know refuge of journalistic integrity, the Murdoch group.
He is also invested with all the scientific know how of an accountant because of his long affinity with financial publications.
He drags out all the old well-worn clichés about “Climate gate”, even though that has been put to bed as a false beat up.
He produces readings that are purported to be untrue and graphs that show how it really is and expects us to be taken in by his pseudo scientific jargon.
Give up Mark. The jury has returned and the verdict is in.
Global warming/Climate Change is real.
It is caused by what humans are doing to the planet.
Posted by sarnian, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 2:41:39 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson here
Sarian - this sort of abuse in place of arguement has become quite old. If, for example, you think the graphs support a case for any supposed acceleration in sea levels due to emissions, as you assert, then lets hear why. As the graphs show, nothing much has happened in the last 20 year or so, and sea level increases vary by quite a bit naturally.

If you also look at the article you will find I don't say all that much about climate but I do say the general public is switching off the issue, which has nothing to do with the truth or otherwise of the various crises which are meant to be occuring.

Much of your aubse, in fact, show that you misunderstood the article
Posted by Curmudgeon, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 5:06:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"The figures I have seen in the IPCC report, the Garnaut Report and the recent Garnaut Review, all agree with The Critical Decade report that Climate change exists, is man made and is now accelerating."

Well, of course they do: they are all based on the same models. The question is, are the models accurate, and the answer, based on their retrodictions and current success rate, is a resounding No.

"The climate’s position on the Hocky Stick Curve is well advanced and the next ten years are critical for our survival."

The Hockey Stick is nonsense and has been shown to be nonsense again and again: it was based on a bizarre algorithm which would have (and did) produce a hockey stick shape even when random data was fed in. Your attempt to appeal to it here just shows how ill-informed you are about the evidence against AGW.

"If we in the “climate camp” are wrong we will celebrate. If we are right and governments continue to procrastinate it will be too late to argue."

The trouble with your final sentence is that if you are right then it is already too late: other nations are backing out of the AGW hypothesis and Australia can do nothing of value on its own. It is far better for our own future and that of our children to work towards our own growth and prosperity rather than squandering our resources on futile gestures like the Carbon Tax.

And if you AREN'T right, then what? Will you give us our money back?
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 5:46:00 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson/curmug,
I wonder how you can condemn “personal abuse” after your diatribe about the scientist involved in “climate-gate”?
My abuse is actually a comment on the fact that the denial industry has a far bigger place in the worlds press than it deserves for a small segment of the community that has an axe to grid and is aided and financed by the handful of big corporations and individuals who have large fortunes to buy all the press coverage they need to get their warped ideas out.
It is a proven fact that companies such as Exxon are paying large dollars to any authors that manage to get articles published that refute global warming.
In your case it is a question of, do you really believe in the nonsense you spout or are you in it for the money
Posted by sarnian, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 10:04:10 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I am trying to get around the fact that Mark Lawson, a member of the Fourth Estate whose writings have done than most to create the confusion on climate change, has written an article on "don't blame the media for the confusion".

Mark, we do blame the media, and you are part of that small rump that should shoulder most of the blame.

The irony is breathtaking.
Posted by rstuart, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 10:32:44 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark, I won’t comment on climate change because it is not my area of expertise. What I do have some first hand experience with is the Millenium Bug (Y2K). This is relevant because I think you may be confusing who the “experts” are.
In 1975, I was a computer programmer in the IT shop of a large mainframe user. When we wrote mainframe programs that involved date manipulation we were required to use a special subroutine because it contained an algorithm to properly handle time related data over the end of the century. I have no doubt that many IT shops did not have the foresight in the mid 70s or even the mid 80s that their systems might still be in use at the end of the century. They would have seen no need for such an algorithm.
By 1982, I was running an IT company supplying products and services to large IT users. We made a significant amount of business between 1990 and 1998 out of Y2K, helping companies make sure they would not be impacted, as did many other IT suppliers. To my knowledge, no Y2K “experts” seriously considered that there would be any catastrophe because of all the remedial work that was performed over that 10 year period to software systems everywhere, including personal computers.
There were certainly Y2K alarmists, made up of those who like doomsday scenarios and those that wanted to keep the gravy train going as long as possible. In my opinion these were not Y2K experts but opportunists.
In the climate debate the experts are the ones warning of pending problems – now considered to be alarmists. This is the exact reverse of the Y2K situation were the experts were the ones trying to calm down the alarmists not the other way round. Continued ...
Posted by Martin N, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 10:46:14 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Climate change could potentially have a far larger impact on society than Y2K ever would. Even if us Y2K “experts” were wrong and we hadn’t adequately addressed the issue the worst that was likely to happen was a few program crashes with loss of some services but minimal impact on society.
Where the Y2K analogy works is that both experts (Y2K and climate scientists) were (are) calling for remedial action. If we had been ignored in the 1980s and 90s Y2K might have been very serious indeed. It was that remedial work over a decade or more that made it no longer a serious problem. I realise that the cost of the climate change remedial work will be orders of magnitude higher than for Y2K. But the potential cost of the outcome is also orders of magnitude higher for climate change. We have to decide if it is worth the risk – either way.
Posted by Martin N, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 10:48:47 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It's not clear to me just where Mark Curmudgeon is going, but I certainly blame the media, him included, for a large part of the climate confusion in the Australian community. Firstly, as others have pointed out, there are the rabid commentators like Bolt, Jones, Akerman, with zero climate credibility and a following apparently based on their sheer nastiness.

Secondly, there are the hostile but slightly better-informed journalists such as Lawson himself, who have been keeping up a steady pressure of disinformation, attempting to discredit the climate researchers who have been studying the subject for decades - notably in Australia, where climate is so important to our rural industries. (Remember for example Dr Graeme Pearman using QANTAS pilots to collect upper-air samples of CO2 - in the 1970s.)

And thirdly, there are the editors, who either think that controversy sells papers, or (wrongly but more honourably) seem to believe that "balance" means opposing each scientist with an equal and opposite denialist, despite any difference in the merits of their argument.

Media madness indeed.
Posted by nicco, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 11:12:18 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson here.
rstuart and nicco - fellas, you've completely missed the point of the article. The confusion is there because the subject is confused, and the media simply reflects that. The media is not there to report a single viewpoint, whether its yours or a "consensus" of experts. There are those who would accord climate theory the same status as Newtonian mechanics, Relativity or Quantum Dynamics - that is, no room for arguement - which is absurd. The theory has no track record of any kind.

Sarian - another silly, abusive post with wild-eyed, invented nonsense, namely "It is a proven fact that companies such as Exxon are paying large dollars to any authors that manage to get articles published that refute global warming." This is straight out of green activist imaginations. Stop abusing and start debating.

Martin N - while I accept that you do have some expertise in IT, I also have distinct recollections of the Y2K "crisis" from the media's point of view - and it bears alarming similarities to climate change. But, in any case, you still have the problem of whether the opinion of experts is useful when dealing with an unproven forecasting system. This point has been measured and assessed several times in the past few decades. The Dan Gardner book I cite in the article refers to a large scale project where the forecasts of experts of all types are assessed against reality. Sorry, they are no better than laymen, and the results of those trials are always the same.
The question you need to ask your self is no what the experts say - its irrelevent - but what track record does the forecasting system have? For the climate models the answer is none, or highly questionable at best. So why are we paying any attention at all to these forecasts?
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 11:54:03 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark,

I agree and evidence the psychological methods being used by proponents of AGW debate, some of these are mentioned in the following post and the full analysis has been discussed OLO previously.

Posted by spindoc, Sunday, 5 June 2011 9:16:10 AM

I hotly contest that the MSM are not at fault, unless you believe that both sides of the debate have received a full airing. But to show that we would need to see the media covering the thousands of papers critical of the data, methods, people and modeling that we now accept as settled science, consensus and peer reviewed proof. We know that none of this are either true or possible.

The MSM are part of the “advocacy block” with few exceptions. An entity relationship analysis clearly highlights the composition of the organic advocacy block which comprises informal political advocacy, media advocacy, academia, advocacy science, celebrity advocacy, public advocacy, commercial opportunist advocacy and NGO advocacy.

The media is fully aware of its role in this phenomenon, how can it not be when it publishes the very psychological methods to which you refer? The media has the potential to bring down the “house of carbon” in a matter of weeks and, collectively it knows this.

You can’t on the one hand say we recognize the psychological trickery, whilst on the other claim no fault in publishing it. Unless of course acknowledging that the media is also captive to that trickery.

I recently posted a summary of the research published by Armstrong/Green in relation to “Public Alarm Phenomena”, of which Y2K was one of 26 identified.

Posted by spindoc, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 11:10:26 AM

I have long suspected that the inevitable decay in the AGW phenomena will see many advocates seeking a bob each way or an exit plan and there is evidence of this happening, even amongst IPCC scientists. The media has been “had” along with many high profile advocates.

Everything that is needed to recognize the con is out there and I cannot accept that media professionals are unaware of it, that’s just impossible.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 12:07:23 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson/Curmudgeon
You may not have personally received funds from Exxon-Mobil to sprout your sceptical/denialist views but there is plenty of evidence that others have received funds from them.
As for forecasts, if a graph is going up and you know what the rate of increase is, you can make pretty good forecasts. The issue with climate science is, of course, that these graphs are not necessarily linear, so in one sense you're right. Arrival at a tipping point may make the graph change from its linear direction, for instance, once the Arctic region reaches a certain temperature, methane will be released from the tundra causing temperature to increase at an even faster rate and the temperature graph will curve upwards. But the uncertainty of these forecasts is no reason for complacency, indeed, the very opposite. We should be adopting the precautionary principle and acting to mitigate climate change as a matter of urgency.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 12:07:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson/Curmudgeon
Further to my previous post, I just came upon this:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm
which shows that carbon emissions are linked to global warming in a simple linear relationship. That being the case, you can make forecasts.
But to back up what I also said about tipping points and the graph going non-linear, we can look to what happened 55.9 million years ago: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110607121525htm
This is about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum where temperatures were five degrees warmer "initially triggered by an event such as the baking of organic-rich sediments by igneous activity that released the potent greenhouse gas, methane. This initial temperature increase warmed ocean bottom waters which allowed the break down of gas hydrates (clathrates), which are found under deep ocean sediments: this would have greatly amplified the initial warming by releasing even more vast volumes of methane." Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that oxidises in air to become carbon dioxide, a less potent but longer living greenhouse gas.
Whether we cause tundra methane or deep sea methane to be released, it will lead to runaway warming, and that we must avoid at all costs.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 12:52:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Curmudgeon says "The confusion is there because the subject is confused, and the media simply reflects that. The media is not there to report a single viewpoint, whether its yours or a 'consensus' of experts."

This is not the case. In the first instance, as I tried to make clear in my earlier post, "the media" cannot be treated as a single bloc. The rabid opinion-shapers (Jones et al) are clearly not reflecting a confused or confusing subject: they are attempting to shape community opinion, and are presumably paid to do just that.

Many would also dispute that the subject is confused. It is certainly highly complex, and non-scientists may find it confusing; but large numbers of researchers are quite confident that the science is sound. It is this confidence in the science that some sections of the media are attempting to shake.

Media madness indeed.
Posted by nicco, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 1:16:28 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
popnperish,

Venting your spleen at the big end of town places you are the wrong end of the reality spectrum. "Commercial Opportunist Advocacy" is just part of the overall advocacy block. The big end of town is represented on both sides of the debate, which is why they are called commercial opportunists.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 1:21:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Spindoc
I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you be more specific? Are you suggesting that climate scientists are taking money from the Big End of Town? That they use this money to tout a particular line of argument? That they benefit from doing so? Come on, be specific - otherwise don't use libellous innuendo.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 1:53:32 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Spindoc - um, MSM? Lost me on that one. But yes, there have been numerous attempts to shift blame for the public losing interest

popnperish
I was sufficiently interested by your reference to the CO2 link article to check out at least the abstract in Nature. That scientist is not actually saying that he has established a rigorous link, as such - difficult to see how he could given recent climate history - instead he says he has established a figure for the climate response to carbon input FROM MODELS. He then seems to have adjusted that figure using actual numbers of some sort from the real system. Its completely worthless as any sort of proof, in other words.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/abs/nature08047.html

As for the business about receiving funds, I ackowledge that at least you've excluded me. (But if they do ever hand out funds to journos let me know.) What actually happens is that companies like Exxon-Mobil grant funds to public organisations that may then, as part of a larger brief, say something about global warming. Scientists may be associated with that organisation, perhaps tenuously. This is where this complete nonsense about funds flowing to scientists has come from.

I have seen one count by the greenhouse side which managed to add up those hand outs to public bodies to $20 million, but even that probably inflated amount is utterly trivial compared to the vast sums flowing to the greenhouse side. We are talking multi billions for research, and many billions more for large organisations dedicated to fighting the greenhouse fight, as well as those that are just eco-crazy, namely Greenpeace (global annual turnover, 400 million euros, I think..) Then there are the government departments - $80 million a year for the Aus Department of Climate Change alone.

Not only is the assertion obviously wrong, but the exact opposite is the case.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 1:58:55 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson/Curmudgeon
I appreciate you have an ideological opposition to models but, as far as I can ascertain, the assumptions drawn in that study are perfectly valid. Perhaps I can suggest the precautionary principle once again.
Assuming that scientists do receive grants from the Big End of Town, what distinguishes them from ideologues who also receive money is that they have a professional obligation to seek out the truth, not to push a particular barrow. It's called 'professional ethics' in case you're unfamiliar with the term.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 2:36:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
popnperish
you are leaping far ahead of what I actually wrote.

I have no ideological opposition to models. I merely pointed out that the paper you cite does not establish a link, but puts forward a figure for climate response to carbon. Scienitsts have been arguing over just how sensitive climate is to CO2 emissions for years now. The paper settles nothing.

Second, I also merely pointed out that all the money is flooding into the greenhouse side, and the skeptics are getting virtually nothing, and this is blindingly obvious from the merest glance at the public record. I didn't say anything about the motives of the scientists who receive the multi-billions in greenhouse funds. You seem to think that grant money corrupts, so what do you think the effect would be?
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 5:06:57 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson's article is intellectual mutton dressed up as lamb--he puts himself forward as an unprejudiced voice of reason in this "debate"--what debate!--but the minimifidianisn shines through. The "debate" is a euphemism for the manipulation of the eagerly-credulous, by sundry naysayers and vested interests, to disbelieve mountains of scientific evidence. AGW perfectly instances why popular democracy is and absolute failure when it comes to issues that transcend domestic smugness.
Certainly a very sly move, Mark, going on about Y2K initially, as if there's any comparison between that and AGW, or the analogy is even reasonable--Y2K turned out to be "alarmism" and so will AGW, he says implicitly.
Sadly, this sort of silly syllogistic reasoning is compelling for those who desperately "want" to be convinced and reassured (many of whom have no trouble believing in divine fairy tales, so no problem), and for the weak-minded fence-sitters who hang on popular opinion as if it ever proved anything but that ignorance rules!
But for those who see ignorant denialism for what it is, hysterical conservatism, the scientific literature and renowned bodies like the Royal Society and the IPCC are going to be much more plausible and compelling. Sadly, the latter are probably the minority, and the democratic majority's always right, even when they vote to keep the collective head in the oven!
It's not the media's fault either; the popular media, like our politicians, is a flawless mirror held up to the masses.
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 6:29:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
@Curmudgeon: The confusion is there because the subject is confused, and the media simply reflects that.

No, the subject is not confused. It is a pretty simple story:

1. Climate scientists cooked up some models 30 years ago that said the world would warm due to CO2 increases.

2. Their predictions came true. Contrary to your claims, the vast majority of their predictions to date have been correct. For example, see: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003800/a003817/ It's pretty dammed compelling. The world has gotten warmer and the trend is accelerating.

3. Scientists who study climate full time are, almost to the man, now convinced these models are correct.

4. Despite the recent success of the models, some people still doubt their predictive capacity. This is reasonable, but none of the people doing the objecting have spent much time studying the climate.

It's a pretty simple story really. You, among many, haven't been reporting it.

For example even in this story you refer to climate gate. When I first saw climate gate, my gut reaction as some off colour remarks made in the heat of the moment during a personal conversation conducted via private emails had become public. Once the authors had got their frustrations off their chest, in the cold light of day they perused more sober courses of action. In hindsight, after many inquires all coming to that same conclusion, that gut feeling was right.

I am not a genius Mark. The import, or otherwise of climate gate was plain for everybody to see. So did you, or many of your journalist friends report the facts and their most likely interpretation?

Nope. You beat the incident up within an inch of its life, giving what should have been a footnote in the gossip columns feet of newsprint. Anybody reading those pieces would likely be confused into thining something important had happened. In fact the only noteworthy part of that incident (which was hardly mentioned) is that a University was hacked and private emails released right before Copenhagen.

And now you come along, saying "Hey, don't blame me for all the confusion!". Get real.
Posted by rstuart, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 8:24:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mark Lawson here
rstuart - again you want to refight the climate arguement which is essentialy irrelvent to the article. Your post is a more extreme version of the climate commission report which contained nothing new. Even the link you cite essentially confirms the basic point made by the sceptics that nothing much has happened since 1998. The warmest year claim is arguable but in essence the difference between last year and 1998 is tiny, and temperatures have since fallen. We know perfectly well that we are in the warm part of the climate cycle, but if CO2 is supposed to be so important why no movement? Forecasting systems should be verified properly. There has been no effort at verification of the climate models worthy of the name.

You would do better to acknowledge that there is some doubt and the media is reflecting that doubt. It is not there to reflect the views of activists.

Squeers
The style of ranting in your post is getting old. Stop abusing and start debating. The Y2K incident is simply the most handy example of experts being completely, collectively wrong in their own field. What about recent efforts to forecast the sunspot cycle? In March 2006 NASA put out press releases saying that new computer models forecast that the next solar cycle (I hope you know what a solar cycle is) would be 30 to 50 per cent stronger than the previous one, and up to one year late. In fact the sun's succession of solar cycles promptly broke down entirely. The forecast was totally wrong. Forecasts by experts that are completely wrong are very common.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 8 June 2011 11:41:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I'm sorry Mark but the vast majority of true Y2K experts were not wrong they called it almost perfectly - it wasn't a real problem at all. A few experts may have disagreed (clearly the ones you talked to) but they were very much in the minority.

The opposite is true for climate change. The vast majority of experts believe it is a serious problem and a few don't. I believe in going with the vast majority.
Posted by Martin N, Thursday, 9 June 2011 1:11:23 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mart N - if you believe that on Y2K you are in a tiny minority, which includes the experts who believed in Y2K at the time. It is often cited as a case where the experts were completely wrong.. in any case its just one example of experts being wrong.

Incidentally - did you see this bit in the original article.. I just looked now and realised a huge piece was missing..
"New Year’s Day dawned with computer systems everywhere working as they had. Even the ancient, clunking PC 286s of the time did not turn a hair. Proponents of the Millenium Bug crisis have since tried to claim that the lack of reaction was due to all the work that had been put into system, but as Canadian journalist Dan Gardner points out in his recent book Future Babble (McClelland & Stewart, 2011), corporations and companies that did nothing about the crisis fared just as well as those which replaced whole systems."

If you want to know about experts failing at forecasting, then Dan Gardner's book is for you. The issue of the use and otherwise of forecasts has also been explored in some depth by those who study fercasting as a subject. Check out the site www.forecastingprinciples.com run by a couple of academics..

Relying on experts in foecasting is a waste of time - what track record does the theory they are using have..
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 9 June 2011 2:06:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Curmudgeon,
my post wasn't abusive; I choose words for their precision and used the word ignorance to describe the democratic impasse at which we've arrived on climate change.
The science of AGW is no more comparable to Y2K than it is to the science of solar cycles. As you well know, the science of AGW is myriad in its range of data, and vastly complex, especially given our tiny contingent perspective--in medias res--on the geological-time frame of natural climate cycles. Given the myriad influences on climate, including no doubt the ones scientists are not aware of, it would be an extraordinary concerted-effort to say anything unequivocal on the subject. I doubt there's any individual in the world qualified to profess such concerted knowledge And this is exactly what you and the other minimifidianists thrive on--equivocation.
AGW exemplifies the limitations of specialisation and empiricism in general; they are unequal to the task of conceiving of the problem holistically. This is the province of human reason uninhibited by missing data, able to proceed without all the pieces, based on a composite idea of the salient influences. Of course empirical science is seen as the least fallible way to process experience, but in this case it lends itself to endless equivocation.
But AGW is only part of the anthropogenic devastation of the planet, we may infer its likelihood from the fact that we are simultaneous degrading oceans, soils, fauna and flora. There is no question but that humanity has become a formidable geological force, we don't need every piece of the jigsaw in place before we can plainly see the finished picture.
The reason I denounce minimifidianism as "hysterical conservatism", is because its cohort are the "alarmists"--alarmed at any notion that their smug world-view might be subject to criticism, or, heaven forbid, that they might have to embrace change.
Minifidianists are the most profoundly ignorant of all; they have neither science nor reason.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 9 June 2011 2:31:24 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
squeers - if you seriously believe that your earlier post was not a silly, abusive rant then your world view is indeed odd. As for minimifidianists that was a new term of abuse. I had to look it up. I'll keep that for my scrap book.

But now you've confused an insistance that scientists have to produce some sort of proof for their assertions, with denial that humans are affecting fishing grounds and land use pattens. No so. It is, in fact, the other way round. The obsession with greenhouse has blinded its believers to those dangers.

Take fisheries.. there is is research to suggest that all the world's fisheries will close within decades, but not due to nonsense about acid ocean but due to over fishing. Dump the acid ocean nonsense and concentrate on over fishing as an issue.. vastly more important..
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 9 June 2011 5:12:17 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Characteristic of Mark Curmudgeon to simply dismiss reputable scientific research - dealing with ocean pH - as "nonsense". Curmudgeon has never understood the concept of a scientific theory, and the nature of probability, and this enables him to airily disregard any evidence which doesn't suit his ideological position. Many studies have been done which have shown that small ocean dwellers such as the foraminifera depend on a particular level of calcium carbonate dissolved in the ocean, in order to make their shells. If the ocean changes, as it has in the past, they evolve - but if it changes quickly, as it is doing now, they will probably be unable to adapt. This matters: they are at or near the bottom of the food chain, and Curmudgeon is at the top. Here's just one reference: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ancient-ocean-acidification-intimates-long-recovery-from-climate-change
Posted by nicco, Friday, 10 June 2011 8:53:54 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Nicco
the point of your earlier post was that you were accusing me and others of overlooking other human effects on the environment, and I pointed out the exact opposite was the case. Even if you accepted the acid ocean argument in all its glory detail, other human effects far outweigh it and are more immeidate, as I explained.

In fact I have looked in some detail at the ocean acidification scare, and this reputable research you talk about basically doesn't exist, or not in the way you think it does. Take a closer look at it. What they've done is conduct laboratory tests for sea creatures at very high levels of CO2 and found that there were problems. However, they also had to admit that the creatures will adapt. So the arguement has shifted to the RATE OF CHANGE in CO2 being too fast for them to adapt, which is too hard for laboratory tests.
There is some field work suggesting that there have been changes to date, but all the rest is straight speculation in a very complex environment.

Now its time to move on.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Friday, 10 June 2011 11:27:26 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Curmudgeon
Of course there are complexities but the answer is not to "move on" - I assume from that you mean business-as-usual and further degrade the land and seas - but to adopt the precautionary principle. If scientists warn on the basis of evidence (you may use the pejorative term 'speculation' but I would rather call it 'serious extrapolation from the evidence') that acidification may wipe out the near-bottom of the food chain, then surely the response should be to slow the acidification of the oceans by reducing the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I really find your position gravely irresponsible.
Posted by popnperish, Friday, 10 June 2011 11:49:27 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Extraordinary twists and contortions being performed by Mark Curmudgeon, so as to avoid conceding that the scientists (overpaid conspirators as they are) might just have got it right. Curmudgeon's caricature of marine researchers is simply that - a caricature. It contains a tiny morsel of truth (yes, researchers have examined the effect on small calcareous beings under high CO2 conditions) which is used to prop up the rather dishonest suggestion that no other research has been done. Surely Curmudgeon doesn't believe that Australia's marine scientists, taking ship from Hobart and Townsville, are unaware of the urgent questions which atmospheric and marine CO2 present? That they have not been sampling the surface, the deeps, the reefs, the undersea ridges? Surely he has some understanding (he claims to have been a science journalist) of the pace of evolution, the rate of adaptation? Once again, ideology triumphs over scientific enquiry.
Posted by nicco, Friday, 10 June 2011 2:11:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Curmug.
“Stop abusing and start debating”, you say.

There is nothing to debate; the debate has been finished for some time. You are stirring up an argument to use the ensuing comment to put your point of view across. To muddy the waters
I know that the idea is to repeat the propaganda as often as possible the way Joseph Goebbels taught and then most people who do not do a lot of thinking will believe it.

So to refute your article completely, it is the right wing owned “news” (at least 70% at last count) media that keeps on throwing red herrings out and confusing the issue.

You say “what actually happens is that companies like Exxon-Mobil grant funds to public organizations that may then, as part of a larger brief, say something about global warming”.

Any think, tank is owned and directed by the source of its funds
Posted by sarnian, Saturday, 11 June 2011 12:49:59 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy