Guest post by John Goetz
A story appeared briefly yesterday on the CNN homepage titled Ruthless drought in West Timor puts children in crisis. There is no doubt that this particular drought – like so many throughout history – is causing a significant amount of human suffering, much of it being shouldered by children. Having children of my own, including one very young one presently occupying my home, I feel torn inside when I read about or see kids living and dying in such conditions.
Before I clicked on the article to read it in full, a “story highlight” saying the drought was due to climate change caught my eye. I immediately knew the article would not only be heart-wrenching, it would be controversial as well. Seeing that it was posted under the CNN Planet in Peril banner sealed the deal.
The CNN article was one that allowed readers to post comments, and as expected a number of them took CNN to task for claiming this particular drought was caused by Climate Change. A roughly equal number of commenters countered with charges of insensitivity and the turning of blind eyes. Part of me considered commenting that, assuming drought was not a normal condition in West Timor, then the drought was in fact due to a climate that had changed. But of course I am also aware that “Climate Change” is the rebranding of “Global Warming”, not unlike “Death Tax” is the rebranding of “Estate Tax”. The commenters obviously knew this as well, freely substituting global warming for climate change.
One comment in particular caught my eye. The writer was someone who went by the handle of “Marc”, and his response is typical of the type of ad-hominem attacks I’ve seen in a number of other related, but less widely read blogs:
Hmm, so it seems the less-than-stellar scholars on this board disparaging the existence of human caused climate change must also be card carrying members of the Flat Earth Society. How truly noble of you and your tiny-brained ideas.
Other than successfully proving your vast and utter ignorance of science, you’ve achieved little else. Of course you all know more than the dedicated scientists who’ve spent their entire careers studying the history of global climate and the overwhelming volumes of data that now conclusively point to humans as the root cause of impending global climate change.
I bet you also know more than the doctors treating your grandparents’ cancer, the physicists smashing atoms and the biochemists advancing gene therapies to prevent your child’s birth defects. The point is, climate scientists are EXPERTS in their chosen field, just as the experts I’ve listed in the prior sentence. To argue you know more than they, without a shred of contradictory evidence, is sheer lunacy on your part.
Now please get to back to your job and take the customer’s food order, your lunch break is about over.
The reason I fixated on this comment was because I had actually read the article. My guess is that nearly all of the commenters, regardless of opinion, did not read the article but instead read the headline, story highlights, and looked at the pictures. Marc included.
You see, no scientist that I can find has claimed a tie between human caused climate change and the drought in West Timor. Furthermore, CNN did not say a scientist made that claim either. Paragraph four starts with
Maria is fighting to live, wasting away in her remote village where aid officials say climate change has brought on a severe drought in recent years.
That’s right, aid officials made the claim, not scientists. Of course, I am assuming the aid officials are not climate scientists, but I think it is a reasonable assumption.
Marc’s smackdown is one I have seen time and time again. It is a popular tactic of certain posters who regularly bully their way around dotearth and a handful of other, minor blogs (I love dotearth, by the way, and visit it as much as I visit this blog and ClimateAudit). Unless one is a card-carrying board-certified climate scientist then one has no right to dispute the tie between Weather That Causes Suffering and Human Influence On Climate. The rule however, does not seem to work in reverse.
Go figure.
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This is the perspective of someone with an engineering degree:
If you were to ask how well we understand electromagmetics, or quantum mechanics, or other science, there would really be no purely quantitative answer, because to give it requires an assessment of what we don’t yet know. What you can say, however, is that we understand electromagnetics well enough to build reliable power grids, we understand electronics well enough to make computers, etc. In other words, it is the practical application of a science that becomes the objective measure of our understanding of that science. If there is no practical application of a science, it’s pure theory – nothing more than educated conjecture.
As noted above, many comments on climate related articles bow to the so-called “experts” on climate science, almost always scientists or mathemeticians who rarely, if ever, have to deal with applying their presumed understanding of climate in a way that definitively tests that knowledge. Thus, I would object to the use of the term “expert” in conjunction with climate science or climate prediction. The word “expert” implies some objectively measured skill in a practical discipline, e.g. a handwriting expert presumably has evidenced some actual track record of accurately identifying a person from their handwriting (in a controlled test), a chess expert has demonstrated skill relative to competitors, etc.
Assuming that there is no actual device that can control climate, and won’t be anytime soon (likely ever), the only conceivable practical, demonstrable application of climate science is prediction. But given that climate change can only be observed or measured over the course of decades at the earliest, then how exactly can someone (or a computer model for that matter) demonstrate expertise at predicting climate change in anything less than a century? Even if, for example, the current climate models are able to accurately “predict” the climate change in the following decade or two, the sample size is too small to tell whether it is actual skill at work, or random chance. Moreover, even if the model accurately projects future climate variables like temperature, moisture, etc. you don’t know whether there are other possible models with little anthropogenic forcing that also are able to accurately simulate climate. The only way to definitively rule out one of the two models is to start playing around with the input (CO2) in a controlled manner. This isn’t going to happen.
I also think that this principle is true with respect to those who insist that the present changes in climate are driven by natural forces, like the sun. You can speculate all you want about it, but there never really will be a day of reckoning by which you measure whether you are right or wrong.
Therefore, why would we even spend one dollar fighting “climate change” when we will never know whether we get any return on that dollar. It’s like asking someone to buy a ticket in a lottery on the promise that “if” you win, something good “might” happen to you down the road, and even if it does, you will never know for sure whether any particular “good thing” in your life was a result of your buying the ticket.
Kilimanjaro could be ‘ice free’ in a few years.
THAT old thing.
Sure, it could be. Deforestation at its base has seriously reduced precipitation. The temperatures up there, however, are the same as always.
FB: Yes, I have also noticed that the “change your ways” is the one unchanging thing in the equation. Ever since, oh, around 1968, no matter what the gripe. (Population “explosion”, resource “depletion”, oil and much other nonsense.)
Always a different problem. Always the same solution. Like a 9-year old kid who has all kinds of problems that could be solved and all sorts of potentials that could be realized, all seemingly unrelated, IF ONLY (s)he were allowed to stay up until 11:30.
(I don’t argue AGW on that basis, but I will note that we have names for that in the history biz.)
Kurt: Very good. And look at how unutterably lousy those climate predictions have been so far even with wide error bars and over a much shorter interval!
Paul: I have also wondered about that.
Castro told the Soviets to make their predictions far enough in the future that they wouldn’t be around to explain why they didn’t happen.
Similar story about how Nostradamus explained the story of his great success.
I have noticed that the politicians set the CO2 reduction goals for 25 or 30 years in the future. It seems to me, they do not have the snow balls to take the heat for destroying their nation’s economies on their watch.
No, don’t blame them. they are being crafty, but they are also being wise. If temps are down over the next couple of decades, those measures will never be enacted.
If temps DO go up as predicted (though I bet they don’t), then maybe something SHOULD be done–but with tomorrow’s much greater wealth by means of tomorrow’s much greater technology. Probably far more cheaply (in % terms) and far more effective.
For what it is worth, I agree with Mr Goetz’s observation about blog bullies.
I follow debate on AGW and other energy related blogs to try and learn something about critical issues to society.
Try as I might to let it slip, I find it absolutely infuriating to have to regularly plough through posts such as that he highlights where the writer pours scorn, sarcasm and venom on an opposing, and usually sceptical, contributor.
In essence, by criticising the opponents’ age, mental faculties and mooting likely other derogatory viewpoints of the opponent, such as creationism, without a shred of evidence seems consistent with a trend of such writers to seek to de-humanise critical opponents. Much like the label ‘denier’.
And the fear, for anyone with a scrap of historical knowledge of 20th century totalitarianism, is that once someone has de-humanised another person or group – it becomes very easy to rationalise inflicting much worse outcomes on that group. Which is where I fear this political debate will land when I read of Hansen’s calls for show trials for dissenting energy company executives. A well tried and proven method to crush dissent and probably a loud greek chorus of support on the blogosphere from persons such as Mr Goetz has highlighted.
I would love to know whether this crass and threatening behaviour by people with education levels to know better is a function of the growth of cyber debate on the internet – or is just what was always there but could not be seen in a world of snail-mail exchanges ? A Phd thesis there for someone.
But it is probably just as well that these clashes are fought in cyber-space. If someone spoke to me that way in person, I would be looking for the nearest heavy object to wrap around his head and deal with his squeals afterwards.
You would think if CNN was doing a story on drought in Timor, just maybe they would have googled: Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)?
It seems that global warming zealots are censoring wikipedia…
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-wrong-with-wikipedia.html
From above:
“One very difficult canard to nail is the suggestion that the Earth is “warming up”. As I understand it, the mythological “global temperature” is the average temperature, not the maximum.”
As I understand it, it’s not even an average temperature of the earth, at least not in a meaningful sense. What they do is calculate a crude local average daily temperature as the midpoint between the daily max and daily mimumum temperatures and then average that spatially across the globe. Would you, for example, take the average temperature of a high rise in this fashion, if you wanted to estimate the heat loss from the high-rise? Record the daily max and min on each floor divided by 2, then sum the averages and divide by the number of floors? I don’t think so. You would probably take a number of simultaneous measurements – one on each floor, each simultaneous measurement averaged spatially over the building and then integrate or average over time.
The real question is whether the average temperature, however it is measured, is meaningfully related to the net radiative heat transfer into/out of the earth. Using the temperature anomoly method currently employed, I don’t think this is necessarily the case. Assume, for example, that the daily min and max at a location stay the same, but the profile over the day changes so that it spends longer at the peak or less at the minimum. That location will still radiate more heat, indicating that it has warmed. The reverse is also true; you could have a change in the average daily anomoly at a location, but the net heat flux out of the surface at that location hasn’t actually changed. How likely is this? I don’t know.
More importantly, radiative heat transfer out of a surface is proportional to the fourth power of the surface, meaning that to expel an extra increment of heat entering through the surface, that surface has to warm less at the maximum daily temperature than it does at the minimum daily temperature, and also that hot areas of the earth need to heat up less than do cool areas of the earth to counterbalance any additional increment of back-radiation from greenhouse gasses. Thus, and this is just my opinion, weighting the maximum daily temperature the same as the minimum, and weighting all regions of the earth equally as they do with respect to the so-called average temperature of the earth doesn’t really produce an accurate measure to judge whether, and to what extent, the earth is absorbing more radiation than it emits.
And on the subject of replying to the venom spitters, here is IMHO a fantastic reply from one of the regular troll battlers on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog that well deserves a wider audience.
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003238.html
“KT, Luke, Gavin, Louis and Eyrie:
My personal bias: We are in a late interglacial and the climate is warming naturally. Some level of AGW has occurred in the last century and perhaps more will follow this century. Divining the natural from the human induced is an invitation to a game of hyperlink ping-pong. For instance, the MWP was as warm or warmer than today.
Surface temperature is the noisiest and most variable component of climate, i.e. an elastic yardstick. And finally, the whole debate has serious basic epistemological problems, which undermine all propositions for direct radical human intervention at this time based upon the AGW or CC premise. There is a calm, rational approach to address our dependence on fossil fuels, which has little to do with fear driven assaults on reason.
In my risk assessment the balance of evidence is that climate sensitivity to CO2 doesn’t exceed 2c. That’s not enough to cause climate disasters larger than the one we face by allowing irrational fear to coercively deny the economic aspirations of humanity’s billions living in poverty, speciously based on a phantom of our collective consciousness.
No matter how fashionable the trope of “green” energy is to wealthy and free bourgeois, to impose it in a kind of collectivist pseudo-ritualistic frenzy has deep socio-psychological motives that have yet to be exposed in the debate.
Ultimately, a polity driven by a kind of civic madness will come to challenge of the basic principles of our civilization: reason, democratic due process, inalienable rights, freedom of speech, property and movement, scientific progress (ie, integrity of method and freedom of research.) More on this later.
That said: If a preponderance of new research eventually reveals the climate sensitive to CO2 is above 4c. (Bob Brown believes its 6c or more.) Then I would reasonably change my position on the dangers of AGW. I have an open mind to the science and look for new information to update my position all the time.
We should all approach this debate with humility and compassionate reason foremost in our minds, ready to receive and adapt to new information.
I know Luke is capable of compassionate reason should he put his heart in the right place. Personally, I bore of duelling trolls and hereby swear off engaging in ad hominem. (Hope I can resist temptation, beside I always win. ;0) So boring. Personal attacks push us into ideological corners more extreme than we would otherwise chose to defend.
I did not come to this debate with an agenda. I came to it as a young environmentalist in the 1980’s fighting on the ground in the forest to save Redwoods. I first heard of the “Greenhouse Effect” in a lecture given by James Lovelock in the early 1980’s. Today, as an old conservationist, I love nothing better than to sleep out in forest listening to the koalas talk. I live on a large remote property backed up to a national park. Most of it is primary forest. My wife and I planned to bequeath the property to the national park when we depart. So if I am a shill for anyone it would be for rational thought, perspective, Gaia and my favourite “faith”: Evolution.
Posted by: wes george at July 10, 2008 11:19 AM”
I wish I could have ‘penned’ these words, instead of just fantasising about reaching for a troll whacker.
“1) Inadequate education
2) Poor manners
3) The internet as a moron amplifier”
I agree with all three of the above.
Difference between weather and climate? When it is unusually cold, it is weather, when it is unusually warm, it is climate! Remember this simple rule and you will never shake your head in disbelief at any news story again. It has correlaries.
If you like what is goin on, good growing season, pleasant spring and fall temps, for example, it is weather, if you dont like it, hurricane hits a vulnerable spot (vulnerable spots inordinately correlate with places with dysfunctional politics) such as New Orleans or Burma, then it is climate.
“Hey, I dont need a brain, I’ve got a concenus instead”
Didn’t Rand refer to that as “The Aristocracy of Pull?”
Marc believes the std Kos assumption #21 that the Left is educated and the right is not.
Hmmm. I wonder if they are sophisticated enough to have heard of the term “educated incapacity”?
re: Eve and dailyplanetmedia.com
It is truly a study in fooling people. This website uses the basic “sky is falling” rhetoric to spread consternation and ultimately unscientific political agendas. However, I think the site is also done with good intentions and complete belief (as in fooled) in AGW. For example, it hysterically states that the South Pole will melt and soon, even though a child could simply google that issue and learn readily that the South Pole is gaining ice. The fooled mob political mentality mixed with genuine concern for planet Earth demonstrated at this website will lead us to silly and wasteful economic programs that benefit few and rob many.
a child could simply google that issue and learn readily that the South Pole is gaining ice.
True, Pam. (But evidently this seems to be quite beyond the capacity of a considerable majority of college-educated adults.)
For that matter, look at Sea Levels:
2005-2008
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/university-of-colorado-global-sea-level.html
1993-2008
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.pdf
I think the Rev should run a feature on that!
Evan, here is another for your list sea level list!
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/MornerInterview.pdf
Why, Paul, it’s the “Axe”, himself! Good old Pappy Sea-Witch!
He FINALLY got himself a decent forum, huh? I am going to enjoy this.
Before I assume the forum is decent . . .
Does anyone know the pedigree of this “21stcenturysciencetech”? I haven’t heard of them before. It’s very hard to get mainstream anything to do anti-GW stuff and you never know what the cat dragged in.
Something needs to be done with the Global Warming Episode !
I did wonder about that myself, but I figure no news is good news.
“We should all approach this debate with humility and compassionate reason foremost in our minds, ready to receive and adapt to new information.” That is a great sentiment of Wes’s. But, unfortunately, the AGWers have made up their minds already. To them, “the debate is over”, and we skeptics are all just a bunch of flat-earth creationist, SUV-loving science-hating Deniers.
So, hand me my troll-whacker, thank you.
Why is it that we have to suffer through the rantings of James Hanson when he is not a climate scientist?