Ben Webster in The Times writes:
Alarmist claims about the impact of global warming are contributing to a loss of trust in climate scientists, an inquiry has found.
Apocalyptic language has been used about greenhouse gas emissions as “a deliberate strategy by some to engage public interest”. However, trying to make people reduce emissions by frightening them has “harmful consequences” because they often respond suspiciously or decide the issue is “too scary to think about”.
The inquiry, by a team of senior scientists from a range of disciplines, was commissioned by University College London to find better ways of informing the public about climate science.
Public interest in climate change has fallen sharply in the past few years, according to a survey last month which found the number of Google searches for the phrase “global warming” had fallen by 84 per cent since the peak in 2007.
Confidence in climate science was undermined in 2010 by the revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN scientific body which advises governments, had falsely claimed that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.
Scientists have also been accused of exaggerating the rate of loss of Arctic sea ice by claiming the North Pole could be ice-free in summer by 2020. Other scientists say this is unlikely before 2050.
Claims were made a decade ago, and later retracted, that the snows of Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, could disappear by 2015.
The inquiry, led by Professor Chris Rapley, former director of the Science Museum, concludes: “Alarmist messages that fail to materialise contribute to the loss of trust in the science community.”
The report says climate scientists have difficulty “delivering messages that are alarming without slipping into alarmism”.
It says the media is partly to blame for seeking “a striking headline”.
However, the report says there was also a “preconception that communicating threatening information is a necessary and effective catalyst for individual behaviour change”.
It says the “climate science community” is quick to challenge those who downplay climate change but less willing to question “alarmist misrepresentations” of climate research.
Doom-laden reports may make people feel anxious but their concern does not last.
“Over time this worry changes to numbness, desensitisation and disengagement from the issue altogether.
“The failure of specific predictions of climate change to materialise creates the impression that the climate science community as a whole resorts to raising false alarms. When apparent failures are not adequately explained, future threats become less believable.”
The report says the 30,000 climate scientists worldwide are at the centre of an intense public debate about key questions, such as how we should obtain our energy, but are “ill-prepared” to engage in it.
It adds that this difficulty in communicating their work is “proving unhelpful to evidence-based policy formulation, and is damaging their public standing”.
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‘The inquiry, … commissioned by University College London to find better ways of informing the public about climate science.’
Sorry guys, there is no better way to communicate it. The answer why is perhaps too obvious for these academics to see so let’s do a thought experiment to illustrate the inherent, and insoluble problem.
Let us consider a televised, somber, assemblage of top tier medical professionals gathered to educate the public about the dangerous health ramifications from cigarette smoking. The presentation begins as a renowned cardiologist ambles up to the podium to begin his speech. Sure, he’s a bit overweight but what the heck. He softly taps the microphone to test it then reaches under his suit into his shirt pocket and a familiar pocket-sized rectangular package emerges in his hand. Deftly, as if he’s done it a million times before, he raps the opened end of the package against his other hand causing a couple of white tubes with sand colored ends to slide partway out. In one fluid motion he brings the package with the tubes up to his mouth, pulling one out, sandy colored end first, with his lips. It’s a cigarette, of course. And he’s quite familiar with the ritual. He returns the package to his pocket, pats around his coat, searching. Ah, he forgot his lighter, but like any experienced smoker he has a pack of backup matches. Utilizing only one hand – he’s a pro – he fires one up, brings it to the cigarette, and takes a deep satisfying inhale as if he’s been waiting for this moment, and lights it up.
Now his presentation begins. The cigarette remains, ever present, lovingly nestled between his middle and index fingers, and at the ready. It doesn’t find it’s way into the ashtray on the podium – he’s going to smoke this baby! And, as any smoker can tell, he’s genuinely smoking it – deep drags straight into the lungs. The doctor’s speech, depicting the deleterious effects of nicotine on the functioning of the heart, is interrupted numerous times as he takes one drag, and another. He smokes the cigarette right down to the filter, right down to the quick, tamps it out, and voila, out comes another one as he continues his explanation.
Seated in rows to either side of the podium are other renowned doctors, thoracic surgeons, pulmanologists, other cardiologists, each waiting to deliver their own presentations on the health hazards of smoking. During the most noteworthy aspects of the first cardiologist’s talk they erupt in moments of applause, but first they have to put the cigarettes they themselves are smoking into their mouths so as to free up their hands to clap them together.
Now, we all know that the foregoing description exists as a thought experiment and a thought experiment only for the obvious reason that we’d never really see the foregoing presentation populated by doctors smoking like chimneys. And, if we did, we’d be justified in not believing that smoking is truly dangerous to one’s health. But we know that cigarette smoking is unhealthful because the doctors who tell us so would never be caught in public anymore than they’d be caught in private smoking.
Now consider the 5 star beach resorts for IPCC meetings, the POTUS’s vacation trips on Air Force 1, the limousines brought into Copenhagen, Kerry’s 5 mansions, Antarctic ecotrips on diesel yachts…
On a related idea, has anyone else noticed that there seem to be an incredible number of severe weather alerts these days? And when I go to look at them, I wind up scratching my head and wondering so what wouldn’t constitute a reason to issue a sever weather alert? There must be an awful lot of wolves around for all the crying of “Wolf! Wolf!”
When there is a genuine emergency, we will have trained everybody to tune out.
It’s increasingly difficult for even ardent believers to continue their support of this farce when they are confronted with daily examples like the following:
Greenpeace executive flies 250 miles to work
Environmental group campaigns to curb growth in air travel but defends paying a senior executive to commute 250 miles to work by plane
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/10920198/Greenpeace-executive-flies-250-miles-to-work.html
My daddy used to say Your can put a fancy saddle on a jackass but you are still riding a jackass.
Headlines you will not see publicized by the administration’s ABCNNBCBS news media:
Today, 23-24 June 2014 – at the peak of the NH summer solstice, the “excess” Antarctic sea ice area of 1.78 million square kilometers exceeds the total area of Greenland’s 1.7 Mkm^2.
(Somewhat sarcastically, one could also ask how many “Manhattan-sized” icebergs that excess sea ice anomaly would equal ? )
Now, a couple of things reduce the impact of this near-record high sea ice. In the Antarctic winter, much of the Antarctic continental and permanent shelf ice is in the dark part of the day, and the entire region between 67.5 south and the pole is in the dark for varying times of the day between now and late July. BUT – the minimum yearly TOA radiation occurs July 5 at 1310 watts/m^2 (right when the hours-per-day of Arctic insolation is at its yearly maximum. Also, the “excess” Antarctic sea ice IS in the sunlight at 72-73 south latitude, so it IS reflecting solar energy more this year than in any years past. The reduced arctic sea ice is at its yearly low albedo of 0.45 due to melt water and soot and dirt, so the sea ice up north is absorbing nearly as much energy as the open ocean is at low angles of the sun half the day. Net effect? For a few weeks, the Arctic open ocean is absorbing energy, but not for many more weeks of the summer.
Analysis spreadsheet for the energy gained/reflected at each latitude at each day-of-year for each hour-of-day available for comment/criticism upon request.
The burnout is already here. The American public consistently ranks global warming/AGW at the bottom of their concerns. There are various reasons for this, including our lousy economy and lingering unemployment and the understanding that anti-AGW polices are job killers. The oversaturation of the doom-and-gloom with none of the predictions coming true is undoubtedly a considerable factor as well.
How about the AGW proponents have been shown to be con men, liars, scallywags, and scoundrels thus not to be believed or trusted in any way.
I guess it’s time to turn the effort over to the billionaire hedge fund climate scientists. Money talks
The failure of specific predictions of climate change to materialise creates the impression that the climate science community as a whole resorts to raising false alarms.
Yeah. And as damning is their explicit and repeated calls for dishonesty, for making up baseless “scary scenarios,” for flat out lying:
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Greenpeace
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing.” -leftist Senator Tim Wirth, 1993
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation… on how dangerous it is.” -Al Gore
“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” -Stephen Schneider, lead ipcc author, 1989
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first ipcc chair
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” -Daniel Botkin, ex Chair of Envinronmental Studies, UCSB
“Only sensational exaggeration. makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ attention… this is the only way to assure any political action and [get] more federal financing.” -Monika Kopacz, Atmospheric Scientist
Aphan says:
June 24, 2014 at 10:10 am
Udar,
The average person couldn’t name a Noble Prize winner, much less tell you who James Hansen is. I promise.
That is not what I was talking about – most people would know someone like Einstein, for example.
I was making a statement that average person would more likely to know name of climate activist such as Hansen, because media loves people who are “saving the planet”, rather than name of a Noble Prize winner in hard sciences.
Would that make Climate Cultists “petarded”?
Maybe they forgot about Climategate in 2009. These things happen.
There really is a communications problem I see. The North Pole being ice-free is nothing new or alarming. Polynas et al. Maybe they should get their act together before attempting to alarm.
People in Europe and USA were told to expect warmer winters. When that failed to materialize they were told that the Climastrologists were mistaken and that they had in fact meant freezing winters. Dr. Viner also told the children of the UK they would not know what snow is. 10 years later many could not go to school because of too much snow. The Scottish ski industry was said to be in terminal decline. Viner in fact said in 2004 “it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry.” The Cairngorns had to close down in 2010 because of too much snow.
Yet they keep the jokes coming. Now Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University has predicted that the Arctic would become ice free in 2015 or 2016. I will end my cruelty for now.
The reason why their alarmism fails is because it was garbage and exaggerations from day one. It always was garbage and the chickens are coming home to roost. The jig will soon be over Warmies.
Every time the words “It’s worse than we thought” are used the models/theories/projections/possibilities/forecasts are proven wrong.
Yet, this never seems to get through their thick skulls and they continue to want us to believe that they have all of the answers, both to the theories of how climate works and the best methods to counteract it.
Surely Lew can find a few papers in studying this cognitive dissonance.
RACookPE1978 says:
June 24, 2014 at 11:50 am
Also point out the Record anomaly was 1.84 Mkm^2.on 20 dec 2007
The inquiry, led by Professor Chris Rapley, former director of the Science Museum, concludes: “Alarmist messages that fail to materialise contribute to the loss of trust in the science community.”
Well merited that loss of trust is too. Society in general seems to have scientists up on some kind of pedestal. A ridiculous view of self-sufficient, 19th century, gentlemen scientists just out for nothing but the simple kudos of a purely scientific discovering.
That ethic, if it ever really existed, probably died with Queen Victoria.
If climategate and the current fiasco that is calling itself “climate science” serves anything to society it will be to take the blinkers off and break the myth of how science works.
If other fields of science have remained curiously silent about the misdoings in climatology that impacts the image of all science, it’s because they fear criticising climatology risks turning the spotlight on their own field and shattering that pedestal too.
The sad reality is that as in all walks of life it’s he who pays the piper that calls the tune. Scientific “studies” function like opinion polls.you decide what result you want, then pay someone with a the appropriate letters after their name to prove it.
Greg:
Alarmists have, however, circumvented a loss of trust among the faithful from failure of their messages to materialise through failure to identify the events being predicted by these messages.
dipchip says: Also point out the Record anomaly was 1.84 Mkm^2.on 20 dec 2007
what’s a megakilometer ? Is that the same as a Gm^2 ? Stacking prefixes is not allowed, for the good reason that it becomes ambiguous.
Maybe you meant 1.84 x 10^6 km^2
Udar, : The average person couldn’t name a Noble Prize winner
Oh come on now, everyone knows Micheal Mann won a Noble [sic] Prize, he told us he did. Doesn’t a Mann’s word mean anything any more??
Greg:
When I was in school 60 years ago
1km= one kilometer
Km=1000 meters
1Mkm = 1 million kilometers
1 million kilometers = 1x 10^6 km
Perhaps I’m obsolete.
dipchip
Re 1.84 Mkm2
Do you mean 1.84 Tm^2?
“Only one prefix should be used in forming a multiple of an SI unit”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they get angry at you, then they lose interest, the they laugh with you, then they get angry with you, and THEN you win…” ~ Samurai
And so it begins.
More disturbing, more ominous, the Antarctic sea ice high was NEVER above 1.25 Mkm^2 before 2007, and “touched” 1.0 Mkm^2 (1.0 million km^2 for the purists above) 5 times since 1959. Now, since 2007, at the height of the global warming scare tactics about arctic sea ice, the antarctic sea ice extents anomaly CONTINUOUSLY exceeds 1.25 Mkm^2 for 3 years straight now, and is larger than 1.5 Mkm^2 so often for such long times that it is not even newsworthy on a skeptic site.
If we fail act now, to stop Run Away Man-Made GlobalWarmingClimateChange from Evil Man-Made CO2, then low-lieing areas could flood like they did before 1930:
http://www.stormsurge.noaa.gov/event_history_pre1930s.html
Wait, what! Before 1930!
Yes. The panic business just isn’t what it used to be.
Read what’s being said. “We’re losing credibility because our theory predicted things that did not come to pass.” At this point, they’ve reached a logical fork in the road:
1) Do we restore credibility by acknowledging that our theory has not withstood the test of time and promising to seek revisions to that theory that comport with demonstrable reality?
2) Do we save face by maintaining that this is all a big misunderstanding, promise to do a better job of “communicating” and reiterate that our theory is perfectly sound?
They’ve chosen fork number two. Good grief!
Claude Harvey:
You’ve neglected logical fork number three: Do we avoid losing credibility by making our claims non-falsifiable and cover up the pseudoscientific nature of our “science” via applications of the equivocation fallacy that rely upon the polysemic natures of terms such as “predict.” Until recently, they’ve chosen fork number three.