The answer to your question is in your article.
Guest opinion by David Hoffer
Carol, in your recent CNN opinion piece, the headline was “Why are we still debating climate change?”. The very first statement in the article that followed was “There is no debate”.
The answer to your question is actually right in your own article. I’ll get to that in a bit, please bear with me. I wanted to touch on your claim that there is no debate first. I’d like you to consider the following statement, which I provide with no intent of malice whatsoever, only as a means of making a point.
Carol Costello is stupid. There is no debate.
Now what would you think if you saw this in print, followed by a long explanation as to what is wrong with people who don’t agree, and a refusal to examine any facts related to the accusation? I imagine you’d be miffed. I imagine also that any examination of the facts would prove me wrong, I seriously doubt that such a statement would stand up to any fair debate of the matter. Which brings me to a question Carol:
If the facts supporting Climate Change are so obvious, should not debating the facts of the matter strengthen those facts? Just as you would be eager to prove that you are not, in fact, stupid, should you not be equally as eager to prove your opinion by engaging in factual debate?
While you ponder that, and keeping in mind that I did say the answer to your question is in your article and I would get to that, let’s examine the only fact upon which your argument rests, which is that there is a consensus among 97% of scientists. Well Carol, I read that study. Did you? I’m guessing not.
Carol, that study was done by Margaret Zimerman, who sent the survey to 10,257 Earth Scientists. Of those, 3,146 responded. Of those, Ms. Zimmerman excluded all but 77. That fact alone should have your journalistic instincts on high alert. But it gets worse. The two questions which lead to the 97% finding were:
Q1: “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 76 of 79 (96.2%) answered “risen.”
Q2: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” 75 of 77 (97.4%) answered “yes.”
The problem here Carol is that they should have gotten 100% to both questions. The earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age which was 400 years ago. So obviously the answer to the first question would be “risen” even if human influence was zero. As for the second question, you may be surprised to learn that all but a tiny fraction of skeptics agree that rising temperatures are, in part, due to human activity. You see Carol, the debate about climate change is not a simple matter of “yes” or “no”. It is much more nuanced than that. There are questions relating to order of magnitude of change, endangerment related to any change that does occur, and in regard to strategies of mitigation versus adaptation. That study did nothing to determine consensus opinion on any of the central matters of the climate debate. It is not only contrived, but nearly meaningless. But I digress.
You go on to quote studies categorizing the population. I said I’d show you the answer to your headline question in your own article. Well, here it is. Your article goes on to quote results from Anthony Leiserowitz, who categorizes the population as follows:
- Alarmed (16%)
- Concerned (27%)
- Cautious (23%)
- Disengaged (5%)
- Doubtful (12%)
- Dismissive (15%)
Well that hardly seems like a consensus. In fact you go on to claim that the Dismissives are a powerful, well funded, well organized lobby group who are muddying the debate. Well Carol, if the facts are so powerfully on one side of the debate, why begin your opinion piece by categorically insisting that there is no debate? If there is no debate, how is it that only 16% of the citizenry are alarmed? Why, by the definitions in your own article, do 82% of the people think that climate change is something that won’t, for various reasons, have a direct effect on their lives?
But most importantly Carol, if you want to change their minds, would not an open and honest debate of the facts be your most powerful weapon? Are you going to let me accuse you of being stupid, or would you like to prove me wrong?
Lastly Carol, you sum up your article on this statement:
“The good news is, those uninformed minority voices are being quieted by nature and by those who have powerful voices.”
Well Carol, on that second point, I will allow that you are correct. Powerful voices (like yours) are eager to stifle the debate. Oddly, your own article points out the importance of having one if you want the facts as you see them to prevail. Will you use your powerful voice to that end? Or shall we call you stupid, insist there is no debating the matter, and call it a day?
But more importantly Carol, the first part of your statement is wrong. It is a simple matter to see that when one looks at the data, all the predictions of the “consensus” science have failed. Arctic ice retreat has stopped, and Antarctic ice has hit record levels. On a global basis, hurricanes and tornadoes have declined in both frequency and severity. According to the temperature records kept by the “consensus” scientist themselves, the earth hasn’t warmed in close to two decades, despite ever rising levels of CO2. Nature in fact is taking sides in this debate, and not the side you seem to think.
Even the United Nations IPCC, which is consensus climate science central for the world, now admits in their recent report (IPCC AR5) that the climate models themselves are wrong. It is their expert opinion that sensitivity to CO2 lies well below the model estimates. What are the models based upon Carol, if not the science? And if the best scientists in the world, in their capacity as advisors to the United Nations and world governments alike, are collectively stating that the models and the science the models are built on are in doubt, does that not deserve public debate?
Even among the “consensus” scientists themselves Carol, there is now considerable doubt about the science. Does that not give you pause to reconsider your position?
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Can someone comment on the validity of the SKS survey of scientists?
How much money went to all of those peer reviewed studies mentioned and where did the bulk of the funding come from?
What is the real story behind the Drexel study?
Nice rebuttal , shame the gal lacks the attention span to read it.
Maybe the tech crew at the station, assuming CNN still has any, could post your letter on the teleprompter.
Only way she will ever read it.
The Catastrophe theory or Doom by weather caused by the actions of evil men, is an old meme.
A tired scam, that has lost the attention of normal taxpayers.
The IPCC team “Communication failure”, is now to be compounded by banning dissent.
CAGW is an intelligence test.
Simple effective test.
The parasites who glom onto this bait, are now fully exposed.
Our governments are clearly full of fools and bandits.
Remember 50% of us are below average intelligence.
50% are more gullible than average.
50% are lazier than average.
Who staffs your government?
There should be a term for the easy media and political targets in society. It would include the easy targets like non-minorities of a certain gender and predominant religion, especially those with money and assets. But also extend to include other progressive and unverifiable positive claims as offsets like world peace and pollution free world as goals. Oh wait, this was a Sandra Bullock movie about likable airheads.
Marty;
Can someone comment on the validity of the SKS survey of scientists?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is just as contrived as the first survey. Actually worse, since they didn’t use responses from scientists, they read the scientists papers and deduced their opinions from there, frequently on very vague basis. All you need to is put terms like “SKS 97%” into the WUWT search boc and you’ll come up with a bunch of articles such as this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/20/the-97-consensus-myth-busted-by-a-real-survey/
Carol is a major reason why CNN numbers are tanking. Seems to be a nice person but has simply lost the plot when it comes to journalistic objectivity. Somewhere along the slippery slope of CNN style Scare Journalism, she has come to believe her personal beliefs and opinions trump facts.
She is well suited to such a trashy news organization as CNN. Because it is good journalism to go into “Hurricane Watch” each and every time there are back to back puffs of wind in the Atlantic ocean or report about the worst forest fires ever in the year that forest fires were at record lows.
Fear mongering . . . the new journalism.
That 97% explanation/summary is easy for a anyone to understand. Why can’t everyone else get it?
[snip – off topic, stupid, disruptive – Anthony]
Nice read! Thanks Hoff!!
For those suggesting that Carol Costello won’t respond, or even read this letter, I agree. That wasn’t its purpose, though if she does read and respond I’d be happy to engage in a dialogue with her.
The real purpose of the letter is to provide a counterpoint in a forum where it may get wider exposure. That forum is the internet. There would be no value in posting at CNN, it would be snipped or buried in thousands of responses that amount to nothing more than name calling rather than reasoned debate.
I just googled “Carol Costello Climate Chage”. Carol’s article is, unsurprisingly, number 1.
Guess what’s number 2?
@davidmhoffer – on Bing, you only come in at number 5. However she is only #3. The top 2 are Internet news sites laughing at her.
If Carol had read the latest IPCC report she would also know that there is no debate. The IPCC tells us in three separate sentences that that all its models and prognostications are rubbish. It seems strange to me that no one appears to have picked up on this.
The three sentences are: (not actual wording but meaning is the same)
1. That they cannot determine a value for the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 due to a disagreement among the scientists.
2. That this disagreement arises from the role of clouds.
3. That it is not possible to determine either the sign or the magnitude of cloud response to warming.
In other words they have no bloody idea what the climate will do and all their models are so much junk, – but then we all know that – the difference is that now it is the IPCC that is saying it
change not chage. My fingers hate me.
An excellent article! She should be asked if she wants CNN to be the last major network to grudgingly admit they were wrong 10 years from now, rather than being one of the first to see the light.
If there is no debate, how is it that only 16% of the citizenry are alarmed? Why, by the definitions in your own article, do 82% of
Did you mean 84%?
She has a B.A. in journalism and knows nothing about science. It’s a wonder to me that this country gives any credibility to anything these professional mouths without brains have to say.
wbrozek;
Did you mean 84%?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yeah, spotted that one right after it went up. With all the nitpicking about things like comma placement, I would have thought someone would have picked it up sooner. 10 points for Werner!
…The point is the control of censorship coming from MSM with the ultimate result. 🙂
[Bruce Cobb says:
I never said the effect was zero, just that the evidence for a human effect or the “human fingerprint” simply isn’t there. In other words if it does exist, it is too small to matter. One can talk about how there “should” be an effect all one wants to. But, if you can’t point to it, then it is simply conjecture.]
Understood, thanks. However, back to my two logic statements – wouldn’t someone have to either believe that:
1) Humans are not adding incremental C02 to the atmosphere
or
2) The greenhouse gas effect theory is wrong
to not believe humars are contributing incremental warmth?
That may be a more theoretical point. You are pointing to observational data and saying that if you can’t find an obvious human fingerprint during a certain time period of data then the human effect is trivial (which I don’t disagree with, just saying that our effect is non-zero but that can still be trivial).
Has this been discussed?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2027390
“If there is no debate…”
What about a simple question: Where has the climate changed?
Is the desert not a desert anymore? are the tropics not the tropics?Is record heat in the desert or record cold at the pole considered change.What climate has changed ,other than the social/political climate?IMHO,Maybe i’m wrong but a few degrees here and there is weather not climate change.
Thanks for the interesting opinions/articles and comments.
Carol has over 14,000 comments but they seem to come from a couple of hundred people.
Very nasty verbal intercourse.
Lots of propaganda very few references.
Very different from WUWT.
cn
Fred . . . says:
February 26, 2014 at 8:46 am
“Carol is a major reason why CNN numbers are tanking. Seems to be a nice person but has simply lost the plot when it comes to journalistic objectivity. Somewhere along the slippery slope of CNN style Scare Journalism, she has come to believe her personal beliefs and opinions trump facts.”
Quite the contrary, all the above would put her right in sinc with all the other propagandists on CNN so one cannot blame her for them tanking any more than all the others.
1. jdseanjd says: February 26, 2014 at 4:06 am
“…… An interesting parallel can be drawn with the stupidity of the Crusades,….”
*************************
A comment on the Crusades (I am not commenting on what you imply as the autocratic nature of the Catholic Church or, the venality and stupidity of Catholics).
After Muhammad came out of the desert (570 to 632 AD) his adherents invaded and crushed Christian countries all along North Africa (Byzantine Empire) and what we call Spain, Portugal, Greece, and all of the Slavic states. They also invaded Sicily and were as far north as Tours, France (732 AD) and Vienna, Austria (1529 through 1699).
A bit of trivia: Legends have it that the French Croissant (crescent) was developed to celebrate the victory of Christian forces over Islamic invaders at either the Battle of Tours in 732 or the siege of Vienna in 1683. It is banned today by some Islamic fundamentalists. More trivia: The Muslims invaded and crushed the last of the Christian Byzantine Empire, which included Greece, in 1453. The Acropolis in Athens was badly damaged in 1687 during a siege by the Christian Venetians when munitions storage blew up. Finally the Greeks, with support from other Christian countries, rebelled and took their country back in 1821-1832. The hatred that the Greeks still hold for the Turks is a residual from those years of oppression.
In addition, the Muslims were and still are the premier slave traders. They had a practice of “harvesting” Christian pilgrims as slaves, while on their way to Jerusalem. More trivia: The word slave also has as its root the word Slav, i.e. Christians from the Balkans. Same for the word for slave in Arabic. Also, the last Muslim slave harvesting trip to what is now Great Britain was in the 1600’s.)
Most people just don’t know much about history; it’s really not their fault. By way of illustration, there is more to the Crusades than what you will learn in public school or from CNN or from the History Channel (America: The Story of US). It was not unreasonable for Christians to call the crusades out of self-defense. You just have to wonder why nobody ever told you that stuff. By the way, I got the above from Wikipedia if you would like to check.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
I don’t think that Carol is stupid as such, she says what she is told to say. Her employers clearly favor this line of thinking and she happens to be the mouthpiece. Who knows what she really thinks, one thing is for sure she can never go public with her real opinion if that is any different.
In the end politicians, media presenters and the public at large will wash their hands off the whole issue with statements along the lines of “I trusted the scientists, we went on their advise”, “we always knew that human influence was minimal but better to be cautious just in case” and so on.
Science as a whole will be left to pick up the pieces and to rebuild public trust. A fair number of them will make statements like ” my line of study was more on the sidelines of it all, I trusted the work of my colleagues”. Sadly I can see it having a major negative impact on the number of people wanting to study those kind of subjects.
Politicians will do what they always do: find an excuse. In this case science. For most of them their political life is short anyway and their skin thick.
Media presenters will do as they are told and move on to the next calamity.
The rest of us will go on with our lives although the hard core warming activists will be public laughing stock for a while, the memory span of the population in general is fairly short.
There are many thoughts as to the origins of this whole issue and perhaps one day the real truth comes out as to how and why this all started. It has certainly gone on to live a life of its own now and I am not sure that that was the intention at the beginning, but that is democracy once a suitably scared cat is out of the bag it is hard to get it back in as too many interested parties start using the cat for their own purpose.
What I can’t get is that so many “scientists” sell themselves in favor of, what is now, an emotional cause. The very people that are trained to look at data only to verify a hypothesis.
We are all concerned about the planet and its wellbeing and no doubt certain disciplines see more of the effects of human activity then others but is that a reason to discard all principles science stands for and on which basis they earned their degree?
The longer this goes on the bigger the hole being dug by the “majority” of scientists.
( I do realize that money can buy just about everything, but still )
That’s a diversion–it in no way addresses the claim that “all but a tiny fraction of skeptics agree that rising temperatures are, in part, due to human activity.”
This (bold statement) is a sweeping over-generalization which skeptics should avoid. I don’t believe that human activity has affected modern temperatures. .
We have watched progressives misuse “pollution” enough to actually change its meaning to include CO2. Doesn’t make it true. Humans may have contributed significantly to pollution in various local ecosystems, but I doubt that we’ve changed temperatures one whit.
I hate to say this, but your systematic, factual destruction of her argument exposes her ignorance and gives rise to your first premise actually being something that cant be dismissed. Now I don’t wish to say it, but Forrest Gump did say Stupid is as Stupid does. And whether it was your intention or not, by laying out how shallow her position is…you then would conclude that Ms. Costello, on this matter is…..
Debate among yourselves