Drought, Wildfires Haven’t Changed Perry’s Climate-Change Views : It’s All Politics : NPR
Last week, I drove to College Station to talk with Andy Dessler about the renewed firestorm over global warming. This was the week before actual firestorms roared across Central Texas, killing four people, burning 1,000 homes, and forcing thousands to evacuate. The punishing drought played a major role in the wildfire outbreak, the worst in Texas history, and Dessler says there’s an unmistakable connection between the drought and climate change.
“We can’t say climate change is causing the extreme weather Texas is having right now. On the other hand, we can say humans have increased the temperature of the base climate state pretty much everywhere. And what that means is it makes the heat more extreme and increases evaporation from the soil. We can be confident we’ve made this hellish summer worse than it would have been.”
…
Dessler is not surprised anymore by the vehemence of the emails he receives from people who believe he is perpetrating a fraud.
“People who discount the science of climate change don’t do it because they’ve read the science,” he says. “The science of climate change is a proxy for views on the role of government. From what I understand, Perry’s position is that he doesn’t want government to interfere in private lives or industry. That means climate change — which calls for a government solution; there’s no way for the free market to address climate change by itself — that doesn’t fit anywhere with his political values. So he shoots the messenger.”
The messenger is Andy Dessler and the great majority of other climate scientists who believe human activity is warming the planet.
h/t to Tom Nelson
Two things that happen at the same time does not mean one causes the other.
1) people want government to stay out of their lives and stop taxing taxes that are stupidly spent and not reduce their personal freedoms.
2) many people find the evidence that CO2 is not the culprit behind the global rise in temperatures to be unique to CO2 or compelling.
Dressler is a smart man. But he errs in this simple temporal coincidence of a socio-political concern and a practical technical acceptance of worry.
It’s pretty hard to argue with this position.
REPLY: Given some of the comments you make here, I’d say the same applies to you, that you don’t read the science – Anthony
Never interrupt the enemy while he’s making a mistake.
“People who discount the science of climate change don’t do it because they’ve read the science”
No more than people who SUPPORT the science of climate change do it because they have read the science.
The science of climate change is a proxy for views on the role of government.
Yes, but unfortunately that applies to many on BOTH sides of the debate.
I have been doing stats for the last two weeks, when I make a plot I quote the r2, rho and the 95% confidence levels of the slope.
Global warmists think weather and climate history began in 1979. The “wild” weather that they and the MSM use as examples of AGW, has happened in the past, will happen in the future and GHG’s have little to do with it.
Strange, because I’ve said pretty much the same thing about most climate scientists. Very few climate scientists have actually read the relevant model diagnostic literature, or the model independent attempts to estimate climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing. With climate science being a multi-disciplinary field most “climate scientists” are just relying upon and parroting the opinion of a small sub-community of their colleagues. Go to most university earth day forums and the local “experts” will almost always be unfamiliar with and surprised by the magnitude of the correlated model errors.
Poor fella doesn’t understand that the free market is the most efficient mechanism to adapt to climate change. He’s as nitwitty as his naughty null.
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LOL,
He has not read past history of Texas heatwaves and droughts.There a number of them just as bad or worse.
It is not that hard to look it up either.
and a day or so before that, npr had susan solomon on making the same story.
they just provide such a cushy platform for the postnormal.
From my view, Perry is not shooting the messenger, but revealing that CAGW has always been a political tool for international control of the use of fossil fuel. He is banking on the general public to get that message so he will get elected. Defenders of CAGW are on the defensive with messanger attacks and are backed up by those other politicians.
If we are causing significant global warming and then if that marginal warming causes some fantastic level of death and destruction capable of reducing our capacity to emit CO2, some amount of CO2 reduction will be reached to bring the temperature back down and the problem is solved. That obviously isn’t an attractive solution but it nonetheless IS a free market solution.. one with two BIG if’s. I don’t believe there’s evidence of either of them.
I spent a whole lot more time on the science behind “climate science” than I ever wanted to. It doesn’t paint a convincing picture for AGW and the political circus and handwaving AGW proponents create to further their “consensus” leads me to believe that their hypothesis is much weaker than I already think.
I’m not sure how much one has to read to be able to claim they’ve “read the science,” but I’d guess that I’ve read quite a bit more of it than the average American citizen. Given my background in general science and an undergraduate geology degree, I can understand quite a bit of it; but admittedly some of it is beyond my level of expertise.
However, as Tim Allen’s character in the movie “Galaxy Quest” said to the evil alien, “You don’t have to be a great actor to recognize a bad one. And YOU’RE SWEATING!”
Similarly, I don’t have to be a great scientist to see when bad science is being done. When a guy like Dessler will meet with his critics to discuss his paper, I’m encouraged. When I see guys like Jones say he won’t let his critics see his work because… well, because they’ll criticize it, I know there’s bad science involved.
I also know that correlation does not imply causality, that models are not data, and that manipulating raw data to “cleanse” it and then dumping the raw data is also bad science.
Mr. Dessler should perhaps amend that remark as well as his paper.
Weather extremes of any kind, taken individually, do not lend support to, nor “prove”, climate change is happening. Applies to hurricanes, floods, blizzards, droughts, tornadoes, etc.
Trends in all diferent kinds of weather variables are what it takes to determine that climate change is happening. There can be trends in more (or less) extreme events. So I am sick of those who try to use a single prodigous, tragic, catastrophic, headline-grabbing weather event to say one thing or the other about climate change.
Climate change science takes data and time. Lot of data and enouhg time.
Based on my own personal experiences I would have to disagree with Dessler. I have been working in fusion energy sciences for the past 20+ years. I have found that my fellow scientists that take time to do some investigating and study up on global warming all come to the same conclusion…. the majority of the warming that has occurred is more likely the result of natural processes and probably not a result of fossil fuel use. Those that only get their information from stories in the news and accept the 97% of scientists claim are the ones that believe the science is settled and we have to take drastic action.
I think Perry’s strong stance against CAGW is going to be very instrumental in bringing this delusion down. The liberal press will have to put more nuts on the screen or in print. The more these people talk, the worse the public opinionn gets. Plus there will be a few legitimately inquiring journalists that will feel more inclined to actually cover the sceptic science.
A politician couldn’t conceive of making these comments just a few years ago, now they its nearly mainstream opinion. Truth will win.
People who deride climate skeptics don’t do it because they have actually read what the skeptics have to say.
Perhaps Dessler should look at the temp. records for Texes befor he credits climate change for this years weather.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=7&year=2010&filter=12&state=41&div=0
Maybe Texans are doing somthing right.
“People who discount the science of climate change don’t do it because they’ve read the science”
Hugh Pepper says:
September 10, 2011 at 8:56 am
“It’s pretty hard to argue with this position.”
If you’ve ‘read the science’ presented by Trenbreth, Mann, Dressler, etc., it becomes relatively straightforward to discount their needlessly inflammatory assertions, based on their flawed analysis.
When they attempt to discredit and dismiss their opposition by making false statements like Dressler’s quote above, it becomes simplicity itself to refute ‘this position’. They are not being honest. Accepting their inflammatory assertions is a Hugh mistake made by many useful tools, however….
“It’s pretty hard to argue with this position.”
for those with inferior reasoning skills. pretty much why those same folks believe CAGW.
[snip – off topic political baiting- not going there – Anthony]
In my case, being a democrat, I believed in AGW _until_ I finally looked at the science, and was amazed/disgusted at how flimsy it is. But I think Dessler’s mostly right that one’s view of climate change is a proxy for views on the role of government, since most people haven’t looked at the science or don’t understand it, so it’s just a question of whether AGW conforms to their worldview.
Dessler says “People who discount the science of climate change don’t do it because they’ve read the science.”
Really? Andy, you don’t think Roy Spencer is skeptical because he read the science? Or Roger Pielke Sr? Or John Christy? Or Richard Lindzen? Or Nir Shaviv? Or Nicolas Scafetta? You don’t think Steve McIntyre is skeptical of paleoclimate science because he has read the science? Scientists are supposed to be skeptical.
So then, what is motivating the actions of these people, Andy? Are you that good at reading their minds and knowing their motivations? Or perhaps you are saying these people are all ignorant of the science? Is that it?
I am skeptical because i have read the science. I am not paid by Big Oil or Big Coal, and neither are the names above. I will admit that I cannot always follow the math, but I can follow the logical arguments and I can understand the statistics once explained to me. I understand the scientific debate and your side is losing.
Andy, you owe an apology to every skeptical climate scientist.