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.
================================================================
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
What exactly is wrong with replacing a paraphrase with the exact quotes?
Everyone is acting like Revkin has removed some gigantic truth and replaced it with propaganda.
Yes, that has happened elsewhere, and we’ve seen it in the Climategate emails. Kudos to everyone that has had a hand in dissecting those indictments of the “scientists” who wrote them. That was and is a despicable, non scientific process.
But simply deciding your paraphrase was a tad simplistic, and replacing it with the real quote? That’s not a scandal, that’s nothing.
JamesS says:
April 19, 2011 at 5:58 am
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?
Main doesn’t mean exclusive. Hope that solves that little dilemma for you.
BenfromMo @ur momisugly 10:30
Elegantly put.
For Andy: now if you’d only hired different sociologists to dissect your mammoth AGU thread.
======
er, Ben, it’s a bit inelegant of me to put the time wrong for your comment. At 10:30 PM last night, Ben from the Show Me State, has shown us his cri de coeur, one that ought to grace Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog.
I don’t agree with everything single thing he says, but the sentiment, oh, I’d defend ’til the end of time the hope of man springing in that heart.
==================
That echo chamber those guys are in must be really loud if it is successfully drowning out everyone outside of it pointing out their own hypocrisy. I’m thinking we need to revert to sign-language to get their attention.
Yikes, it was 10:40 PM! How mundane does error get?
====================
JamesS says:
April 19, 2011 at 5:58 am
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.”
You think constructing a straw man fallacy demonstrates someone else’s error?
The physical properties of CO² have been known for over a hundred years and the greenhouse effect was predicted in the 19th century as a consequence of this. In the 1950’s we started to measure CO² levels in the atmosphere and found they were rising. Isotopic analysis showed us that these changes were consistent with fossil fuel consumption. Later observations showed changes in LW radiation being emitted into space and downward backscatter radiation consistent with CO²’s absorption bands. This explained an already observed imbalance in the planets energy budget.
At the same time increasing numbers of metrics were showing a change in the planets climate; temperature, ice mass budget, sea level, migration patterns, tree lines, etc, all showed a clear warming trend. Of course correlation is not causation, but what we now have is a known mechanism that has a high likelihood of causing the majority of the warming in the last 50 years. This is not a conclusion reached in the asinine way you suggest, it has been achieved through over a century of scientific endeavour and to misrepresent it as you have is insulting to say the least.
Science being science, we must always accept that there might be a better explanation for what has been observed, but none of the known natural causes explain the current trend and where others will invoke unknown natural causes I turn to Occam: the argument that requires the most new assumptions will tend to be wrong.
I would say that the clipped paragraph is not a fair summary of the document.
The second paragraph of the Executive Summary (which I can’t quote because cut ‘n paste from that PDF results in gibberish) clearly shows that the alarmed and concerned are better informed, but that no group smothers itself in laurels when it comes to knowledge about climate change.
Kevin MacDonald says:
“…At the same time increasing numbers of metrics were showing a change in the planets climate; temperature, ice mass budget, sea level, migration patterns, tree lines, etc, all showed a clear warming trend. Of course correlation is not causation, but what we now have is a known mechanism that has a high likelihood of causing the majority of the warming in the last 50 years. This is not a conclusion reached in the asinine way you suggest…”
It’s clear that logical thinking isn’t Mr MacDonald’s strong suit. The rising temperature trend line since the LIA is essentially unchanged over the past 50 years compared with the previous 150 years, therefore the ≈40% rise in CO2 is inconsequential, as it makes no difference to the naturally rising trend.
MacDonald can call that reasoning ‘asinine,’ but that’s a typical response when the alarmist crowd is unable to adequately respond to the reality of the situation: CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature, and it is not the cause of the slowly rising trend line. It may have a small effect, but the effect is so insignificant that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
,BenfromMO says:
April 18, 2011 at 10:40 pm
The problem with the alarmist position to begin with is that most of us sceptics started out as alarmists and moved into the luke-warm category or the sceptic camp due to self-education in this field.
By which you mean you swallowed a buch of contrarian nonsense, to wit:
“If AGW was happening … we would have seen a very distinct troposphere hot spot”
The tropospheric hotspot is an artefact of any warming, irrespective of source, and you do concede it has been warming:
“In any regard, I think anyone who studies the science to a certain extent comes to the same conclusion that the effects of CO2 are over-stated and that just because we can not explain the warming does not mean its not natural until proven otherwise.”
In effect, in the space of a few paragraphs, you have falsified your own understanding of what global warming is. I suggest a better educator in future.
jc in ak says:
April 19, 2011 at 1:24 am
i’m passing this article along…thoughts? please discredit
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-nearing-greenhouse-gas-tipping-point
————————————————————-
Not really “on topic”, but since you brought it up:
I recall we discussed Tripati’s study here, some time ago. Extremely Good News!
No tipping point.
No runaway Global Warming.
No destruction of life on earth.
No irreversible trend.
In fact, conditions observed in that study (allegedly what rising CO2 promises for our future) led, in the long run, to… our present climate (whatever it may be).
Best,
Frank
What? You mean sceptics are not crazed lunatics or conspiracy theorists? We have neither a monetary agenda nor damaged grey matter? I am so confused! I don’t know where to belong. Ahhh… The cognitive dissonance! I need to find an environmentalist to disparage me and return me to my place of lowly existence, ASAP!
Smokey says:
April 19, 2011 at 8:26 am
It’s clear that logical thinking isn’t Mr MacDonald’s strong suit. The rising temperature trend line since the LIA is essentially unchanged over the past 50 years
As ever, you are wrong. The rate of warming has increased from 0.2°C in the hundred years to 1960 to more than 0.7°C in the hundred years to 2010. I have plotted trends for the decades between 1960 and 1970 to show that this is persistent, decade on dacade rise in the rate of warming and not the result of simply cherry picking two periods that suit my own belief.
eadler says:
‘”two independent polls of scientists who regularly publish papers in climatology have shown that 97% of those scientists believe that global warming is happening.”
Which is a totally different statement from the statement that you are critiquing: “that global warming is real and caused by human activity, then you are smart.”
Most people and scientists agree global warming is happening, not all agree that it is mainly anthropogenic in nature.
One of those great studies was a master’s thesis that had to torture the data to come up with that 97% such that the 97% was based on either 79 or 77 respondents out of 3,146. How a question is asked, who is asked the question, and who is excluded when calculating percentages will all bias a study. And no, in this study it wasn’t “scientists who regularly publish papers in climatology”, it was “those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change”
JamesS, during the ice age cycles the primary driver is generally considered to be orbital variations that cause snow to remain over the summer in the northern hemisphere. Snow reflects sunlight which causes cooling. CO2 acts as an amplifier and to synchronize glaciation of the hemispheres. But that was then, today our emissions of CO2 are the primary driver. There is no reason to assume that climate change is always caused in the same way.
As Kevin MacDonald has already pointed out, your “logical fallacy” is itself a fallacy. It would have been relevant if we first noted the warming and then tried to find a cause, but that’s not how it happened. Global warming is a prediction based on understanding on how the climate works which was later confirmed by observations.
If you think Revkin is a lukewarmer or any kind of skeptic, you haven’t been paying attention. Revkin has been a leading AGW activist for a couple of decades now. The only time he steps back from the apocalyptic hair-on-fire edge is when he sees someone else saying something that’s bad for the cause. Then, he becomes the ‘voice of reason’ as a matter of strategy. Andy Revkin believes that the modern industrial world has be be made over into a typical leftist ‘small-is-beautiful’ commune. His post today is about the corporations that fund global warming skeptics, and how they fool the stupid Republicans. I’m not even a Republican, and I’m offended. His first post after the collapse of Cap and Trade was a psychiatrist explaining how global warming denialists were mentally defective. And you think that’s a ‘lukewarmer?’
MarkB says:
April 19, 2011 at 9:07 am
“His first post after the collapse of Cap and Trade was a psychiatrist explaining how global warming denialists were mentally defective. And you think that’s a ‘lukewarmer?’”
Maybe a lukesoviet.
We were at war with East Asia. We had always been at war with East Asia.
Kevin MacDonald probably can’t understand why the planet contradicts his belief system. The slow, steady rise since the LIA can not be due to CO2, because despite a major 40% increase in that harmless, beneficial trace gas, there has been no corresponding or unusual temperature rise. Therefore, CO2 cannot be the cause. QED
I don’t know what to make of the “Six Americas” concept introduced in the original *) Yale/Mason 2009 study that the authors used for the classification of their sample.
All my friends know that last time my kids did a social science global warming study they counted exactly 9 (Nine) Americas. Or were the authors just distancing themselves from John Edwards and his basic Two Americas thesis? I abhor such uncertainty. This is exact science we are talking about here.
*) http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/GlobalWarmingsSixAmericas2009c.pdf
Andrew30 says:
April 18, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Good one Andrew. The bible also does not mention 2012 even once. So it gets points just for that!
Chuck Dolci says:
April 18, 2011 at 10:15 pm
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.
Dolci makes an excellent point, but he could have used better examples. Everyone should read the actual report to appreciate his comments. Here’s an example of results showing the Alarmed and Concerned to be much more knowledgeable than the Doubtful and Dismissive:
• 89% of the Alarmed and 64% of the Concerned understand that a transition to renewable energy sources is an important solution compared to 12% of the Disengaged, 13% of the Doubtful and 7% of the Dismissive
The authors treat the statement that renewable energy sources are an important solution to global warming as a fact instead of the opinion it is. Therefore, the Doubtful and Dismissive, who probably know more about the limitations of renewable energy sources than the Alarmed, appear to be idiots.
On the other hand, on questions based on sound scientific facts the Doubtful and Dismissive shine:
• 79% of the Dismissive and 74% of the Doubtful correctly understand that the greenhouse effect refers to gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, compared to 66% of the Alarmed and 64% of the Concerned;
• The Dismissive are significantly less likely to incorrectly say that “the greenhouse effect”refers to the Earth’s protective ozone layer than all other groups, including the Alarmed (13% vs. 24% respectively);
• 50% of the Dismissive and 57% of the Doubtful understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Earth’s surface, compared to 59% of the Alarmed, and 45% of the Concerned.
I agree with Dolci, Yale should be embarrassed by this report.
Kevin MacDonald and Thomas should study this graph of temps over the past 10,000 years, derived from the GISP2 ice core data, to understand why the current gentle warming trend is neither unprecedented nor dangerous. “Things were different then” is not a scientific hypothesis, either.
lol, that like the original press release from U of Delaware regarding the huge iceberg that broke off of the Petermann glacier on August 5/6 2010.
You can’t find the original version of the story anywhere. I’ve tried all the cach sites and turned up blanks. In his original statements, Dr Andreas Muenchow, lead researcher said things such as: This is normal for this glacier. The reason this piece is so big is because it has been so long since the last piece broke off. The Petermann glacier actually shows no sign of shrinking over the past 100 years. etc.
They scrubbed all of that stuff so that the page seems more alarming now. I wish I had directly quoted the original somewhere, but I just paraphrased it, so I don’t have any exact quotes. Oh well.
Shame on me for not grabbing it, and shame on U of Del for the gratuitous editorial bias. I think the original version was up for about a week, until I commented about it on Physorg and then the story magically changed, along with every site that I can find who quoted it.
Dr. Andreas Muenchow made some statements independently on more than one occasion stating that the event certainly wasn’t linked to global warming, but on places like NPR where they quote him, they leave that part out. lol.
Smokey says:
April 19, 2011 at 10:41 am
Kevin MacDonald probably can’t understand why the planet contradicts his belief system.
If you think my beliefs preclude interannual variability you are even more ignorant that I thought.
Smokey says:
April 19, 2011 at 10:41 am
The slow, steady rise since the LIA can not be due to CO2, because despite a major 40% increase in that harmless, beneficial trace gas, there has been no corresponding or unusual temperature rise.
As I have already shown, there has not been a “slow, steady rise since the LIA”, the centennial rate of warming has increased by half a degree in the last 50 years. The graphics you keep linking to are useless for this purpose, a single OLS fit over the full period can tell us nothing about changing rates within that period.