WUWT reader Jim asks:
I am the reluctant presenter of Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert to our book group and I am a skeptic. Any advice?
I’ve not read the book, so I could not help him, other than to say that Hurricane Katrina, a class 3 Hurricane has not been repeated and the USA is currently experiencing a record drought of major hurricanes. Note that Sandy was not even a hurricane when it made landfall, having been downgraded to an extratropical cyclone. Here’s the book synopsis:
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change is a 2006 non-fiction book by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book attempts to bring attention to the causes and effects of global climate change. Kolbert travels around the world where climate change is affecting the environment in significant ways. These locations include Alaska, Greenland, the Netherlands, and Iceland. The environmental effects that are apparent consist of rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, diminishing ice shelves, changes in migratory patterns, and increasingly devastating forest fires due to loss of precipitation. She also speaks with many leading scientists about their individual research and findings. Kolbert brings to attention the attempts of large corporations such as Exxon Mobil and General Motors to influence politicians and discrediting scientists. She also writes about America’s reluctance in the global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Leading this resistance, she explains, is the Bush administration which has been opposed to the Kyoto protocol since it was ratified in 2005. Kolbert concludes the book by examining the events surrounding the events of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and arguing that governments have the knowledge and technologies to prepare for such disasters but choose to ignore the signs until it is too late.
More at Wikipedia
1. Present your opponent’s case as well as it can be presented, and let the audience see that you are not reluctant to do so. They now grasp his case well and trust that you have not hidden its best arguments from them.
2. Then carefully demolish his case and bounce the rubble. The audience now sees that even on its best footing your opponent’s case is unsound.
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best advice.
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I would add to that, you can’t possibly cover everything so pick the top 3 or 4 issues (preferably those that are THE biggest issues and most global.
consider covering the big picture stuff that most people don’t know:
1. @0.8 degrees warming in 150 years
2. Emerging from the Little Ice Age so that some warming is to be expected
3. Compare warming from 1902-1940 with that from 1975-2013 to show that the slopes are near identical for the two warming periods of the last Century: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1900/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1902/to:1940/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1940/to:1975/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1975/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2003/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1957/normalise
4. Talk about GOOD environmentalism and the aspects you agree with and suggest that the attempt to battle CO2 has been a massive distraction.
Another approach from “demolishing” the opinions of the other side:
One of the most moderate voices over the last decade in this matter has been that of Steve McIntyre. If your book club members don’t know him, link to his website and tell them about his story of steadfast skepticism. His treatment of the entire issue has been a model of skepticism, questioning the claims and biased assertions of AGW adherents, and looking at statistical flaws in their arguments. Behind every one of his replies to these arguments was a supremely confident objectivity. He is respected for that.
http://climateaudit.org/
In a recent video interview (forget where) he makes one of his typically cautious remarks, concluding that mankind has actually been better off in recent decades than ever before. I consider this argument to be worth fleshing out as convincing evidence that we shouldn’t be quite so fearful of the future. And I think the tone of moderation can be more damaging to the greens than all the bashing and trashing of their argument (which it surely deserves) – and which McIntyre delivers in clean, statistical presentations.
A frequent contributor to WUWT who has over the years delved into these “we’re better off now” arguments in numerous, fact-based essays is Indur Goklany. (Search for his articles in WUWT search window, or link his web site http://goklany.org/ ). He makes use of numerous actuarial tables, so if club members find that off-putting, well… just highlight his main points. Here, for example, is a brief discussion of North Korea’s admirable carbon footprint.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/21/the-two-koreas-19502008-an-unplanned-experiment-in-economic-systems-the-carbon-footprint-and-human-well-being/
Point is, the modern world is better off by far dealing with secondary “ailments” of carbon than with no fossil fuels at all.
Plenty to chew on.
My take …
Caveat: I have not read the book.
As this is a book club event then I think you should discuss the book and minimise any skeptical thoughts. Concentrate on what evidence was presented to make the case and particularly how cause and effect were assigned. In my view, cause and effect are generally the weak points of any warmist argument. Watch out for any assertions not backed by facts.
Guessing (see caveat), the book will claim that man is changing the climate and that sea levels, for instance, are now rising. Often, no link between one event and the other is offered. It is not a done deal – evidence is required. Does the book produce any?
Does the book make the point that the climate has always changed? If not, why not, if so why is the change now man made when before man it obviously could not have been?
Does the book show any bias. Exxon funding is mentioned. Is World Wild Life funding or Greenpeace funding mentioned as a counterpoint. Are the Koch brothers mentioned? If so does Jeremy Grantham get a mention?
How do any funding amounts square with the $68.4 billion spent by the federal government between 2008 and 2012? See: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/17/federal-government-spent-nearly-70-billion-on-climate-change-activities-since-2008/
Or the EU’s proposed Euro 200 billion? See: http://www.europaeum.org/europaeum/?q=node/1633
Glacier Bay Bay National Park in Alaska, USA is the correct location, not the BC location.
See http://www.glacierbay.org/geography.html
Also, if you can down load the map it shows quite clearly the ice retreat from the 1760s up to the 1950s. It’s quite dramatic.
Be careful to sort out the difference between these four subjects: global warming effects, the modeled climate projections, the projected effects of further warming, and the attribution of global warming to anthro vs. natural causes. Climate change is real, the actual observed effects are real, the projected climate and its effects (If this trend continues for a century…) are bogus, and the causes are unknown.
It’s difficult to know where to start. There are so many disputed claims in the piece but I don’t have the time to go into each one.
Try doing a site search by going to the Google search box and entering
site:wattsupwiththat.com “search term” eg “hurricanes”
site:http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com “search term”
You should find plenty of rebuttals, you just have to do the sifting. ;-(
See also the extreme weather page on WUWT which shows nothing unusual is going on.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/
I have seen it mentioned and read about the thawing of the permafrost, but not seen any information whether this is true or not. Can anyone enlighten me and the apparent contention in this book?
“Field Notes” is not an unusual book. Whenver a popular belief gains great traction, books are written in support of the movement. Climaate catastrophism is no different. The author focuses in on the alleged evidence of claimte catastrophe by tkaing things out out of context, ignoring hitorical comaprisons and making each vignette as dramatic as possible. That in reality nothing in the book shows unusual or historically unprecedented events is not important in this sort of literature.The point of this genre is to sell an idea, not tell facts.
I am a big believer in visual aids. They can convey a point much better than a long, dry verbal explanation. For example, Jim could go to Kinko’s and have a 20″ X 30″ poster made of this:
http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png
And this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
And this:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg
It’s hard to argue with empirical evidence.
In refuting propaganda, it might be useful to show explicitly what propaganda technique or logical fallacy was employed to present each argument you refute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
http://mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Propaganda%20Techniques.html
Jim:
I am sure your book group has some basic rules on what should be in a book presentation to the group and reluctantly, I doubt emotional diatribes will be tolerated.
So follow the format of the expected presentation. Identify and elucidate on writing style, captivation of the audience, logic of the format and so on.
As you go through the book; take note of any bold statements that are irresponsible, lack substance or proven false. Just in case, also note any that might still hold validity.
when you sum up the book as a whole; then state that the book is pure environmental PR that always tries to find the bad in climate change and put that blame on mankind. As as such; instead of the book being a book about heroes or heroism it is a book of doom, gloom and utter reliance on the chosen few to decide our futures. Then tick off every fact that you came across that is misleading, overstated or just plain wrong. Then you can state any accuracies you found, whether you enjoyed the book or not and whether you recommend the book.
Good Luck! I suspect that the choice of this book by someone is intentional. Given that possibility it is not unreasonable to assume they might be laying an ambush, for you in particular.
Pick up some books before your presentation; Donna Laframboise’s “The Delinquent Teenager”, Bob Tisdale’s “Who turned on the heat” as good companions though there are plenty more books out there. Keep focused on how Einstein said one experiment could prove his theory wrong but CAGW ignores their lack of successes. The ice is not gone, the bears are thriving, temperatures have flatlined for over a decade and CAGWers are jumping over themselves trying to claim they predicted more precipitation…
I have gotten the most “mileage” in the shortest amount of time when discussing climate change with Warmists by 1) Showing Gore’s graph from “Inconveniant Truth” that displays ice core records with atmospheric Carbon over-layed with Global Temperature. This quickly shows that temp forces Carbon (not vice versa as Gore states). 2) The UK judges ruling showing 9 key points from Gore’s movie that are false and/or overstated to the point of being Propaganda, not based on Scientific evidence… and Ruling that “Incon Truth” is “inconsistent truth, lies and beliefs” and Cannot Be Shown in UK Schools! For your book club I would print a list of the $ amounts in grants that the Warmist Scientists are collecting (from WUWT last week) and show that the research cited in this book is a large part of the Climate Change Industry.
“Kolbert travels around the world where climate change is affecting the environment in significant ways.”
I suppose she doesn’t see any hypocrisy in that, either.
Dodgy Geezer makes an excellent point about the use of Zohnerism:
“For what it’s worth, I could point to a hundred examples similar to the ones in this book which indicate the opposite of what this book says.”
I don’t know how you’d possibly work it in but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of presenting the case for banning dihydrogen monoxide in small groups of people that aren’t very scientifically inclined. Once you’ve revealed the punch line, the way “facts” can be arranged to lead to a false conclusion is perfectly illustrated. Then it’s just a matter of revealing the Zohnerism in climate science with something like the Holocene temperature record that clearly shows the Little Ice Age was the coldest time since the last glacial period ended.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/b/bb/Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev.png
Being that it’s a book group that you know and a presenter of something you may not agree with, IMHO, you’re better off to keep it simple. These are probably people you respect and when it comes to this subject you need to tread lightly, confrontational arguments will cause emotions to override any valid point you might make.
Start with talking about your interest in reading the book, things that you all can agree with. Win them over first and people will listen. Don’t try to tackle the whole book, just pick a few of the simplest and non political areas you can get facts with real data. Better to take the scientific high road and stay away from the emotional sticking points of the book.
Your book club has a history and traditions, and there are expectations about the presentation. I don’t know what they are, so this is guesswork on my part. The functions of the presentation :
1. Summarize the book, so the folks that did not bother to read it can participate in the discussion.
2. Organize the discussion with a list of topics or questions.
The transition from 1 to 2 can be handled by “Like most books, not everyone agrees….” The list of topics or questions might follow the structure of the book. Some of the alarmist books I’ve read mix science, polls, attacks, attacks, evidence, politics, etc so thoroughly that it would be difficult to follow the structure of the book. The other approach to the list is structural. Start with the conclusion of the book. Maybe you can quote a paragraph or so from the book, or maybe you can collect quotes to form the message she wants to deliver. Then list the topics that would lead the reader to that conclusion. The list might start like this:
1. What is greenhouse gas theory?
2. How much CO2 is there in the atmosphere?
3. How much did we put there?
4. How have temperatures changed?
The list should be neutral or even biased in tone to the CAGW side.
Every alarmist book I’ve read has lots of claims that are outside the field of science. The book you are to present probably does too. If it does, be sure those topics are in your discussion list. Also, be sure the discussion allows things not in the book to be added. For example, record low temperatures will probably not be mentioned, and years between land-falling hurricanes will probably also escape notice. Save your arguments for the discussion.
Again, this is all guesswork. Please let us know what you do about the problem, and the results of the meeting.
I am by no means a scientist but I have been following the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming issue since the 1990’s. The one over riding point that must always be brought to the alarmist’s attention is that it is the increased temperature (heat) caused by the increase in human caused CO2 that is supposed to cause the increased droughts, floods, hurricanes, forest fires etc etc. The amount of CO2 that humans have put in the atmosphere has clearly gone up but the average global temperature has not followed suit. Why not? In addition just because we may have some hot days or weeks does not mean it is because of increased CO2 by mankind. For their hypothesis to be correct it must work along the lines of a three legged stool. Increased anthropogenic CO2 leads to increased average global climate temperatures leads to global catastrophe i.e. increased hurricanes, increased floods, increased droughts, less farm production and on and on. If any one of the three legs of the stool fails the hypothesis fails. The way I see it the only thing they can point to that has come true is that human CO2 has increased but everybody knew that was going to happen so they are left with a one legged stool there has been no significant warming and no catastrophe, they lose. The kicker is that even if we experience some erratic weather it can’t be due to CO2 because we didn’t have the extreme heat necessary to prove their hypothesis. They lose lose lose.
Start with the author’s scientifically worthless credentials,
Elizabeth Kolbert, B.A. Literature, Yale University (1983)
Stringer (freelance journalist), Travel Section, The New York Times (1983-1984)
Copygirl, Business Section, The New York Times (1984-1985)
Metro Desk, The New York Times (1985-1988)
Albany Bureau Chief, The New York Times (1988-1992)
National Desk, The New York Times (1992-1997)
“Metro Matters” Columnist, The New York Times, (1997-1999)
Staff Writer, The New Yorker, (1999-Present)
She is as educated as Steven Mosher (B.A. English/Literature) in science.
As it happens, I read this book for a college course a few years ago. I seem to remember that the conclusions and assertions relied heavily on the idea that CO2 takes several decades to affect surface temperatures. There’s a lot of good advice already presented above, but I would perhaps focus on the fact that the book is now outdated, referencing more recent scientific papers such as the ones showing low climate sensitivity or assessing historical climate conditions. I’d also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that there has been no warming since 1997 or so (depending on the dataset you use). That completely negates Kolbert’s argument that the temperature increase from the 1970s to the 1990s was a result of the CO2 increase beginning in 1940. Since global CO2 concentrations have continually increased since the 1940s, there’s no explanation (based on the book’s assumptions) for the recent 15-year plateau in global temperatures.
I haven’t read the book, therefore please take my feedback with a grain of salt, it is a general feedback about the discussion.
There is a lot of good advice above, so you can filter and find out what best suits. I could add another point of view herewith:
During the 50s 60s last century there were huge efforts to combat/eliminate various sicknesses in the world. There was one success: pox which was eliminated – only some labor viruses exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
Similar case of polio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis
However it could not be yet eliminated, there are 3 countries where it is still endemic:
“As of 2012, polio remains endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan,[73][83] although it continues to cause epidemics in other nearby countries due to hidden or reestablished transmission.[84] For example, despite eradication ten years prior, an outbreak was confirmed in China in September 2011 involving a strain prevalent in neighboring Pakistan”
“In Northern Nigeria—a country which at that time was considered provisionally polio free—an Islamic Fatwah was issued declaring that the polio vaccine was a conspiracy by the United States and the United Nations against the Muslim faith, saying that the drops were designed to sterilize the true believers. Subsequently, polio reappeared in Nigeria and spread from there to several other countries.[88] Health workers administering polio vaccine have been targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano .[89]”
As you can see conspirancy theories, religious fanatics are the great road blocker to progress and elimination of such diseases.
A different interesting case is malaria:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria
” The World Health Organization has estimated that in 2010, there were 219 million documented cases of malaria. That year, between 660,000 and 1.2 million people died from the disease (roughly 2000–3000 per day)”
http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=2141&catid=57&subcatid=381
“Between the 1960s and 1990s, the number of cases of malaria in the Western hemisphere increased 13 times. During the same period the number of cases in India soared from 60,000 to 1.6 million. In Sri Lanka after the use of DDT stopped in the early 1960s, the number of cases increased from near zero to 1 million cases a year in 1970, just a few years later. By the time malaria began its comeback in the developing world it had essentially been eliminated from developed world and money and energy that had gone into combating and researching the disease had disappeared. ”
What I want to show here is that bigotism, religion fanatics of all kind as well a enviro fanaticism are real problems. Even in the case of chemicals like DDT very careful evaluation of benefits and loses needs to be done, one cannot look only on one side of the equation and draw his conclusions.
Not sure that environmentalism is always the white knight good:
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/2012/04/suzuki-foundation-funding.html
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/019946.html
In the case of CO2 which is a gas of life and stays at the basis of our food chain, fanaticism of any kind has no place in the discussion. This is why we need to make very sure to have the science right, to be very skeptical about data, data collection and analysis and see clearly and openly how the results have been achieved.
The idea is to get ideology out of the discussion and reflect on purely scientific data and make any possible effort to check and double check the data and the rationales.
Temperature:
What we see in the temperature is stagnation. In addition we see a discrepancy between the satellite data and the local measured data where the data is adjusted in unclear ways. Why?
Similar case of the ocean temperature and ARGO buoys.
It looks like the most precise the measurement, the less the measured increase is. The longer the time goes by, the bigger the misalignment with the models is.
It is a great probability that these are flawed, as skeptics point out, especially at modelling the clouds, but other issues have been found with the time (aerosols urban heat influencing the weather, soot, etc)
Sea level:
What we see at UC sea level data:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
is not the increase of the sea level against the shore lines . I do not know what they measure there, it is not clearly specified, but certainly not the increase versus the shores.
As a consequence, the data is useless for sea level increase versus shore prognosis and analysis.
The discrepancy between the average of the tide gauges and the adjusted satellite measurements is almost 2- 3 times the value?
http://www.sealevel.info/
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V8/N7/C1.php
If you take The Battery in New York measurement as was posted also here on WUWT you can have reliable data to estimate the increase for New York shore. If you take the UC data and try to fit on it you get some fictive numbers that do not match reality.
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/12.php
Miami:
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/363.php
San Francisco:
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/10.php
Seattle:
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/127.php
nowhere any fit to the UC numbers.
The “prevention argumentation” can be very wrong: If in history we would have given up vaccination , chemistry, insecticides, development of the technology, not burn any oil, coal etc to prevent for the possibility it could do harm, we would be in the middle ages and some would be still hunting witches for the crop failures.
Wish you well with the presentation!
After hurricane Betsy, in 1965, caused a storm surge in Lake Pontchartrain that over came the levees and flooded a part of New Orleans, the Corps of Engineers announced it would build a barrier system similar to that used by the Dutch to stop storm surges from the North Sea. Environmental groups successfully sued to stop the project. In Save Our Wetlands, Inc. vs. Early J Rush III, Federal Judge Charles Schwartz, Jr. ruled “it is the opinion of the Court that plaintiffs herein have demonstrated that they, and in fact all persons in this area, will be irreparably harmed if the barrier project . . . is allowed to continue.” (Emphasis added) The decision was proudly posted on the web site of Save Our Wetlands, Inc. until hurricane Katrina in 2005 flooded New Orleans in the same manner as Betsy, and then it quietly disappeared. Please see Article # 6 and articles under Climate Hysteria
http://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2011/TWTW%202011-1-15%20Revised.pdf
Jan 15, 2011