Revkin of NYT takes back his statement that skeptics are more knowledgeable about the science
From “the Hockey Schtick”
Tom Nelson featured a surprising quote from warmist/alarmist Andrew Revkin of the New York Times in the article Climate, Communication and the ‘Nerd Loop’:
The last link is particularly important, given that it shows, among other things, that those dismissing human-driven global warming tend to have a more accurate picture of the basic science than those alarmed by it.
The quote has since disappeared, now replaced by:
10:46 p.m. | Updated I’ve removed a line I’d tacked on here that gave too simplistic a summary of the Six Amercias [sic] study.
The Yale University Six Americas study in fact states in the Executive Summary on page 4:
…this study also found that for some knowledge questions the Doubtful and Dissmissive [skeptics of man-made global warming] have as good an understanding, and in some cases better, than the Alarmed and Concerned.
see the report for specific examples.
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I’ll add that Mr. Revkin has always been fair with me, but surely he must have known that this would be noticed, particularly when it paints skeptics in a positive light?
There’s an old Chinese proverb:
Do not remove a fly from your friend’s forehead with a hatchet.
I think it applies equally well to removing things from websites. Nobody really noticed the “fly” i.e. the sentence on Dot Earth until we were presented with a gaping hole of where it used to be. – Anthony
Slightly altering the words of one with great wisdom “it’s nice to be called smarter than the average bear”
James Bull.
Hahahahahaha! This has gotta be the dumbest study ever done. It’s almost as if the authors don’t understand what the meaning of the labels “Alarmed”, “Concerned”, Cautious”, “Disengaged”, “Doubtful” and “Dismissive” mean.
Andrew30 says:
April 18, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Love it! (Apart from the small x y swap) Logic is a wonderful tool.
JRR Canada
You might be amused at the following crie de coeur from an exasperated Australian economist lamenting the economic fundamentalism that was taking over back in the 90s:
“Most economic commentary is unmitigated blather. It would be impossible to overestimate the extent of absurdity in contemporary economic culture. Black is white. Rubbish is good sense. … The economics profession has contributed to one of the great intellectual scandals of the 20th century. The centre of gravity of the economics discipline is a gigantic hoax. It involves an intellectual travesty and a social disaster of the first order. A respectable, rigorous training in economics is a cretinising process. It involves constant deskilling which leads to losing touch with the much maligned ‘common sense’.” [“Down With Economics”, The Bulletin, 8 / 10 / 91]
“You can’t “unpublish” ink on paper….” Unless Sandy Berger removes it from the archives in his socks.
@ur momisugly Amino Acids in Meteorites
April 18, 2011 at 10:26 pm
China coal truck traffic jam covered in the links.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article592015.ece
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11168622
The real problem is that Revkin wrote the statement in the first place. As pointed out in the study there were *some* questions where the “dismissive” had a better score, but also many where they did much worse, even issues that tend to be repeated a lot by the “skeptics” on blogs like this.
For example “In the past, rising global temperatures have caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to increase”. How many times haven’t “skeptics” brought up this point in relation to the correlation between CO2 and temperature in ice cores, claiming that this is just because CO2 follows the temperature, not that it changes it. Yet, most of those dismissive of AGW believe this statement to be false and the alarmed do much better.
Looking at questions about past and current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere the alarmed also did considerably better, to pick some questions that are fairly neutral and agreed on by the better informed on both sides of the camp.
The dismissive also are more prone to a logical error like agreeing with the statement “The Earth’s climate has changed naturally in the past, therefore humans are not the cause of global warming”, a statement that you don’t need to know anything about the climate to realize is false.
It seems to me that people on both sides know a lot less than they think and guess based on their general belief about AGW, which sometimes favor the alarmed and sometimes the dismissive. The alarmed get the right answer that a temperature increase in the oceans will rise sea level, but the wrong one when they think melting sea ice in the Arctic will do it as well, and vice versa for the dismissive.
i’m passing this article along…thoughts? please discredit
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-nearing-greenhouse-gas-tipping-point
It is not the act, but the cover up. Every time there is a cover up related to needing to maintain a pro-AGW stance, including toning down praise of sceptics as Andy did now, it is going to be noticed and criticised. Proponents of AGW have lost the benefit of doubt to be afforded to any of their actions, due to numerous transgressions.
@ur momisugly@ Amino Acids in Meteorites
April 18, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Coal truck traffic jam (Hey, great name for a band?)
http://dontai.com/wp/2010/09/29/torstar-asia-correspondent-hassled-in-china/
Antonia……
just substitute “global warming” for “economics’ in that extract, then read on……
Revkin is a “mood” based journalist. What he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in following the crowd mentality. With very little scientific understanding he depends on which way an argument is being won or lost at the moment. He “adjusts” accordingly.
Chuck Dolci says:
April 18, 2011 at 10:15 pm
For some reason I had always thought that people at Yale were supposed to be a little smarter than the average bear. But now, it would appear not to be so.
Take a look at the Yale report. On page two the report states:
“In general, the Alarmed and the Concerned better understand how the climate system works and the causes, consequences, and solutions of climate change than the Disengaged, the Doubtful and the Dismissive. For example: 98% of the Alarmed and 91% of the Concerned say that global warming is happening, compared to 12% of the Dismissive.”
Doesn’t that strike anyone as being a little odd? What the writers are, in effect, saying is that “If you believe, as WE do, that global warming is real and caused by human activity, then you are smart. If you don’t believe as we do then you are just plain dumb.” The writers are presupposing that global warming is real and that it is caused by human activity. If there is no global warming then the Dismissive are the smart ones (i.e. have a better undestanding of how the climate system works). Similarly, if there is global warming but it is just part of natural cyles, then the Dismissive would still be the better informed.
They are simply making a circular argument. Global warming is real because smart people agree that it is real. And they are smart because they believe in global warming.
Wouldn’t you expect a little better from an Ivy League college?
What you say is rubbish. This is not at all a circular argument, unless you don’t know that two independent polls of scientists who regularly publish papers in climatology have shown that 97% of those scientists believe that global warming is happening.
For someone who is not an expert, and not capable of sorting out the evidence for himself, accepting the near unanimous opinion of experts is valid. Ignoring the opinions of experts in a field when they are in agreement is ignorant.
Revkin removed the following line from his web page:
The last link is particularly important, given that it shows, among other things, that those dismissing human-driven global warming tend to have a more accurate picture of the basic science than those alarmed by it.
He says:
I’ve removed a line I’d tacked on here that gave too simplistic a summary of the Six Amercias [sic] study.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with total removal of a line or leaving it on the page with a line drawn through it, and a disclaimer is an open question. Doing the latter tends to create more personal trust of the blogger by the public.
That is distinct from the question, did the line give too simplistic a summary of the Six Americas study? If you read the report the answer is yes. Some skeptics who disagree with the conclusions of the report may believe that the original sentence Revkin had is correct, but it certainly doesn’t provide a summary of the report. In fact the “alarmists” got overall the best grade on the factual questions asked in the survey, according to the report, but it says the truth is more complicated than that.
chip says:
April 18, 2011 at 8:31 pm
“If you click through to the report it’s interesting to see that those classified as most concerned about AGW (called Alarmed in the report) are the least knowledgeable about AGW. For example, 24% of the Alarmed think the greenhouse effect refers to the hole in the ozone layer.“
Or, rather than scanning it only looking only for that which supports your view, you could read the report in its entirety and not be so wildly misinformed about things:
“Each respondent was given a percentage score based on their total number of correct answers and graded on a straight scale (scores 90% and above = A, 80-90% = B, 70-79% = C, 60-69% = D and scores 59% and below = F). On this scale, 49 percent of the Alarmed received a passing grade (A, B, or C), compared to 33 percent of the Concerned, 16 percent of the Cautions, 17 percent of the Doubtful, 4 Percent of the Dismissive and 5 percent of the Disengaged”
So, whilst there are areas where, to use Anthony’s phrase, “the Doubtful and Dissmissive [skeptics of man-made global warming]” have equal, or even better knowledge, there are far more where it is poorer.
Is Gary Neville moonlighting as a warmist?
Hide the(ir) decline?!!
Antonia says: (April 18, 2011 at 11:30 pm) to JRR Canada
You might be amused at the following crie de coeur from an exasperated Australian economist…
Sweet!
Thanks, Antonia (from an Australian).
Mr Revkin has always been fair with my posts and answered me directly whenever I asked him a question on his blog site.
In this case, he made a change to his blog after realizing, for whatever reason, that a link did not add to discussion. He then annotated the blog to record the editing.
What is wrong with that?
Especially compared to say, Tamino’s or RC’s approach to truthiness.
I have little sympathy or regard for people like Revkin who think that it’s morally acceptable to be devious and expunge their own statements that they view with hindsight and regret for whatever reason.
.Morally grown-up people accept that saying stuff one might regret later is a part of life.
It’s a bit of a worry that whoever wrote that can’t spell “dismissive”.
@Thomas says: April 19, 2011 at 12:25 am
I am agreeing with you there, there are a lot of logical errors across the board, from both sides. I think a lot of people seem to forget that we (sceptics and warmist) are not a majority in the population. Most of the people i speak with talk more about lybia or something simular then about global warming.
@ur momisugly Thomas
Nice summary. I wonder what the results would be if the study’s authors hadn’t begged the question and stuck to ONLY facts that were agreed upon and/or indisputable.
Where can I find the deconstruction of that Six Americas [sic] study Willis is (I hope) writing?
@Thomas:
Are you claiming that the temperature increase did not precede the CO2 rise? The analysis of those ice cores clearly showed that the temps lead the CO2 — but the argument I’ve always heard from the alarmists is that “something” started the warming, and then once it released the CO2, that took over and amplified the warming, until “something” stopped it and started a cooling cycle. This contradicts the alarmists’ position that CO2 is the main climate driver: if the “something” that started the warming wasn’t CO2, what was it? If the CO2 is supposedly the main driver, what was the “something” that overrode it and started to a cooling cycle? One can’t have it both ways — either the CO2 is the driver, which means that the Earth should have gone greenhouse max by now, or it it isn’t, which is why the Earth has not.
It also seems to me that the alarmists are just as prone to logical errors, e.g. “The Earth’s climate is changing at the moment, therefore humans are the cause of global warming.” The correct question is “The Earth’s climate changes constantly over time; is it possible to determine if humans are the cause?”
Increased CO2 = increased global temps could very well be a post hoc fallacy — and appears to be so, given the flat, or even slightly decreasing global temps since 1998. If CO2 is the main driver, how can something else be overriding it these past 13 years? If CO2 is the main driver, how is it that global temps have been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age, long before humans were pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
The very first thing that must be determined objectively before any judgment as to human involvement in climate change is this: are the changes we’ve measured so far outside the normal climate variation we’ve observed in geologic time? Right now the answer is “no.”