If opinions on the shape of the earth did differ would it be the place of journalists to choose a side? What if they chose the wrong side? What if they ended up supporting a war over non-existent weapons of mass destruction? Is that a possibility that should concern us?
Derek Thompson posts this chart
and then says
As James Fallows pointed out here during the climate scientists’ email scandal, the New York Times treated global warming as a problem, and the Washington Post treated it more like a debate. This is silly. Global warming isn’t a debate. (and it’s alarming to watch the Washington Post sacrifice its integrity for some editorial hot air.)
Really? Are we to believe that the nearly 50-50 split among the American public is solely over the discount rate that we should use? 42 per cent says a Stern-like .01% , while the rest want to use the government’s long term average cost of funds?
I tend to think that there is genuine disagreement over the causes and consequences of global warming itself. This disagreement leads to differing assessments of what we should do to tackle the problem.
Now, Thompson might think that the 51% are tragically misinformed and that anyone who knows anything, knows that major action is needed now. Perhaps, he is even correct. However, that doesn’t make it “not a debate.”
According, to Greg Mankiw 93% of economists believe that raising tariffs decreases the general welfare. I am betting that most economic journalists believe the same thing. Promoting protectionism is a surefire way of getting yourself labeled an economic bumpkin.
However, it would be madness to suggest that there is not a debate over protectionism in the United States. That well meaning people do not advocate for limits on what is imported in this country. Nor is it clear that if it was put to a vote, that broad free trade agreements would win.
17 comments
Comments feed for this article
Monday ~ December 14th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
dWj
I think your average economist, at least in the company of other economists, would answer, “of course it depends the amount of environmental destruction being traded for the amount of economic growth”. And if you’re looking for a substitution effect and diminishing returns, note that the environment loses support as the economy does poorly (superimposed on the general downward trend).
As to your general point, you’re absolutely right, and dismissing the other side of an argument is one of the debating tactics that most irks me.
Tuesday ~ December 15th, 2009 at 12:48 am
RickRussellTX
Should the *science* be an issue of debate? No, it should stand on its own with the tested methods of scientific consensus, and journalism should (if it were working correctly, anyway) reflect that consensus.
But should the *policy* be an issue of debate? Inevitable, I think. I’m one of those boring ultra-realists that has actually studied and understands climatology, and it’s abundantly clear to me that the science is well-supported. I’m also one of those boring ultra-realists who see that the government almost never does the right thing, especially when it comes to poorly implemented, regressive and ineffective environmental legislation.
Wednesday ~ December 16th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Apex
I am very impressed by the reasonableness of this post.
To RickRussell:
How many parts of science are considered totally settled. While very few scientists dispute gravity exists, there is not consensus on how or why it occurs. We have known about gravity and its affects for centuries. It’s not as complex a system as a climate system yet we aren’t entirely sure exactly what mechanism causes the attraction. Yet in a few decades of climate research we have settled both the issue of if it happens, how it happens, the mechanisms by which it happens and the end of effects of its happening? Perhaps these climatologist should work on gravity after we solve global warming because they appear to be quite good compared to the gravity scientists.
Name one item of reasonably settled science that has as many scientists who are either unsure or in outright dispute of the current scientificly accepted view as those on climate change.
It’s quite dangerous for a scientist to dismiss disent and especially from a not insignificant body of fellow scientists, even if you are entirely convinced they are wrong.
First is precludes the chance of finding if you are in error by ignoring disent.
Second it threatens your authority by appearing to be willing to defend your view.
Third if you are in truly correct, the more times you prove it effectively, the more minds you will change, both scientist and citizen.
If you don’t win the hearts and minds, you are on a lost cause anyway.
So yes, question the science. Always question the science. That is the nature of science …. question, hypothesis, test, repeat.
Wednesday ~ December 16th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
RickRussellTX
To paraphrase myself, ” should stand on its own with the tested methods of scientific consensus, and journalism ”
I’m not sure what you’re actually replying to. The methods of scientific consensus are well-understood by scientists, and nothing that you posted has anything to do with scientific consensus. Scientific consensus is not established by polls, by petitions, or by majorities. It does not imply a lack of dissent, nor does it imply that we know everything about something, it does not imply that everything is settled, nor does it suggest that we can’t question the conclusions.
Whatever you are talking about has nothing to do with science.
Scientific consensus simply requires that a body of observations of natural phenomena supports similar hypotheses and theories that are based on natural epistemology (as opposed to, for example, supernatural or fantastical explanations). When that condition is met, we consider those hypotheses and theories to be true, in a scientific sense, pending the discovery of a better explanation that is supported by the body of observations, or the development of a better or more complete body of observations that suggest a different hypothesis or theory.
Journalism has very different rules. Journalism tries to present a balanced view, making sure that a range of views are represented (even those of a supernatural or fantastical nature), and establishing confirmation by testimony from multiple sources. Journalism is a worthwhile and meritorious activity, but it is not designed to expose the truth of natural phenomena. It is intended to accurately report what is believed by the persons who provide testimony to the journalist.
My point is that journalism should defer to scientific conclusions when reporting information about the natural world, because neither the tools nor process of journalism are designed to evaluate the objectively real phenomena of the natural world.
Wednesday ~ December 16th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
RickRussellTX
Sorry about that. The first line of my post should have read:
To paraphrase myself, ”[science] should stand on its own with the tested methods of scientific consensus, and journalism [should follow suit]”
The blog ate my delimiters.
Thursday ~ December 17th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Apex
“Scientific consensus simply requires that a body of observations of natural phenomena supports similar hypotheses and theories that are based on natural epistemology”
There seems to be some debate in the scientific community whether that condition has been met on anthropogenic global warming.
Thursday ~ December 17th, 2009 at 2:11 am
RickRussellTX
Apex,
I would suggest that the presence of debate is inadequate basis to claim lack of scientific consensus.
Debate is not required. What is required is for someone to put forth an *alternate hypothesis* that explains the evidence (e.g. warming is caused by something else, not by CO2, or that CO2 is caused by something else, not by man), and support that claim with a parsimonious, clearly articulated naturalistic theory.
Alternately, someone could find *new evidence* that fails to support existing theory (e.g., temperature data that clearly indicates cooling in the last 160 years, atmospheric data that indicates CO2 measurements have been wrong), and then it becomes a discussion of the quality of data. If the data indicating cooling is found to be higher in quality, more readily reproducible, etc, then that throws support for enhanced greenhouse effect into question.
This is a rare method for overturning existing theory, since generally speaking the universe doesn’t get evidence wrong. But sometimes scientists get it wrong; look at the history of the study of peptic ulcers.
For climate change, neither scenario has happened. The mechanism by which CO2 causes warming is well understood (indeed, it’s a laboratory result, not an environmental one), and thus far the evidence appears to support the claim that enhanced CO2 is anthropogenic. If there is an evidence-supported alternate theory for the increasing fraction of atmospheric CO2, I haven’t heard it. If there is an evidence-supported alternate theory for increased warming, I haven’t heard it.
I suppose that, if one want to deny climate change, there are two avenues to trod at this stage. One avenue is to attack the evidence-gatherers, and assert that they have manipulated the evidence to their own ends. I would suggest that, if evidence has been tampered with, that’s doesn’t verify the legitimacy of any specific alternate claim. In other words, just because a tamperer says that phenomenon Z is true, the presence of tampering alone does not lend weight to phenomenon Y. Claim Y still has to stand on its own merit. If it doesn’t, then the best we can say is that neither claims Z or Y are very meritorious.
So, if particular evidence from dendrochronology is discredited, then claims based on it are made weaker. But claims based on bubbles in Antarctic ice are not based on dendrochronology; they are not the fruit of the poisonous tree (ah, I slay myself).
The other way to go is to say, “the evidence is correct [there is warming, there is enhanced CO2], but it doesn’t mean what scientific consensus claims it means. It actually means… SOMETHING ELSE.”
What something else is that? Again, I’m waiting for the punchline. Some people have said, “it must be natural variation”. That’s fine, but “nature” is no more an explanation than “physics” or “chemistry”. If temperatures are indeed the result of natural variation, then where is the energy coming from? Where is the CO2 coming from? In order to overturn the existing claim, one must make a specific, clearly articulated counter-claim. I haven’t heard one.
Thursday ~ December 17th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Apex
I haven’t heard many claims that the current CO2 rise is not anthropogenic.
I have heard many counter claims to the idea that anthropogenic CO2 rise leads to significant global climate adjustments.
Some examples of counter-claims:
1. Alteration in sun cycles and sun output have far greater impact on long term climate than any current atmospheric gas affects.
2. Between water vapor, CO2, and methane, CO2 is the least impactful by magnitudes of any of these gases. And all the gases are constantly changing their ratios. And animal production is increasing methane gas as well so is CO2 really the major issue?
3. Historical evidence is that increases in CO2 trail rather than lead warming so while laboratory results may show a warming affect from CO2, why does the historical ice samples never show an example of CO2 leading warming? And when CO2 trails the warming in the ice core samples, why does it not feed on itself and collapse the system, instead eventually, the system self corrects and tempatures start to decrease even while CO2 is still rising.
4. Historical evidence of higher CO2 levels than currently without higher temps and higher temps than currently without higher CO2 is proof that other factors are in play.
5. Constantly rising CO2 throughout the 20th century was accompanied by warming in the first 3rd, cooling in the second 3rd, and warming again in the final 3rd of the century. Proof again of other factors being in play.
While the current model can be used to explain much of current observed climate changes, it is not consisten with the much longer historical record. This suggests that while it may have validity it cannot be considered entirely accurate because there are counter examples and thus we know that we don’t know enough.
I would compare it to the idea that electrons orbited the nucleus of an atom like planets orbit the sun in the solar system. This view was the predominant view for a while in science. It could be used to explain a number of things. But it didn’t always explain things correctly. The now accepted view is that electrons reside in orbitals which don’t resemble a solar system at all and that the electrons don’t even move in a linear direction but that they are randomly moving about the orbitals and the best that you can do is to express the probability of finding one in any given area. Quite a different reality from what was the best model at the time even though the model which was wrong, could be used to correctly model a number of phenomenon.
To my way of thinking that is enough to prevent a declaration that the science is settled on climate change.
Thursday ~ December 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Rick Russell
> Alteration in sun cycles and sun output
Climate has been somewhat clock-locked to solar cycles in the paleoclimatic data, but we’ve had space-based instruments measuring solar irradiance for 30 years now, and land-based instruments before that.
How is the last half-century of warming explained by solar cycles when irradiance has not increased?
> Between water vapor, CO2, and methane, CO2 is the least
> impactful by magnitudes of any of these gases. And animal
> production is increasing methane gas as well so is CO2
> really the major issue?
Methane is a well-known and well-recognized component of enhanced greenhouse effect — it’s been mentioned in every IPCC report. The science seems pretty well established on this. It’s also anthropogenic (or meat-o-genic).
> Historical evidence is that increases in CO2 trail rather than lead warming
That is not a similar theory or hypothesis to the current theory or hypothesis.
Historically, there was no fossil fuel source of atmospheric CO2. Now there is. Hence CO2 is leading the changes rather than trailing. The evidence you cite supports the anthropogenic hypothesis.
> Historical evidence of higher CO2 levels than currently without
> higher temps and higher temps than currently without
> higher CO2 is proof that other factors are in play.
That’s not a competing theory. What are the other factors? What are their causes, and where is the supporting evidence that these factors are responsible for the *current* warming and *current* enhanced greenhouse gases over incredibly short climatologic time scales?
If your answer is, “it might be natural variation”, my response is, “We already have a clearly articulated, naturalistic and parsimonious theory to explain current conditions. When you have a better explanation, let me know.”
Let me repeat this point, as it doesn’t seem to be getting through. Suggesting that their *might* be other causes, other reasons, other theories is not enough. You have to *articulate* them and *support* them with observations to overturn the scientific consensus with a new scientific consensus.
> Constantly rising CO2 throughout the 20th century
> was accompanied by warming in the first 3rd, cooling in the
> second 3rd, and warming again in the final 3rd of
> the century.
Evidence? The data I’ve seen show nothing of the sort. While there are sources of noise — Mt. Pinatubo was an interesting case that depressed global temps for a couple of years — there’s certainly not been a 33-year period of cooling. The longest cooling in the last 100 years was perhaps a 12-13 year period between the early 40s and mid-50s, and that didn’t even drop the temps down to pre-20th-century levels.
Where is your evidence? I challenge you to find any reasonably representative global temperature dataset that supports this claim.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png
> To my way of thinking that is enough to prevent a
> declaration that the science is settled on climate change.
But there is plenty of evidence and supported theory to indicate that some hypotheses are better supported than others.
If you want to claim cooling, if you want to claim non-anthropogenic greenhouse gases, if you want to assert that CO2 can’t cause warming, then the solution is easy. Perform the measurements and show it happening in the atmosphere. Now. Right now.
OK, actually that solution is quite hard, as it turns out. I guess it’s easier to dress up doubt and speculation and pretend that it’s a competing theory.
RR
Friday ~ December 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Apex
I am not sure what you are talking about with respect to no cooling mid century.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
There is a clear 30 year cooling trend. Granted the cooling trend is not as pronounced as the warming trends but its pretty clear that the trend line is down for 30 years. The warnings in the media (I know media is not science) about an ice age in the early 70s was based on a few year blip?
Also concerning the trailing versus leading issue. I understand there was no anthropogenic CO2 then but the point I was trying to make (perhaps poorly) is that if CO2 increases causes global warming and the ice core samples show over and over that global warming increases CO2 then you have a self reinforcing system that should feed on itself. The CO2 increases from the past that trailed the warming should have fed the system causing even further warming which would cause more CO2 release and it should not correct itself. Granted there is a lot we don’t know about how that all worked and if there was a point at which the system could no longer feed on itself but that is also kind of my point. We know that the system in the past self corrected inspite of increasing levels of CO2 so the CO2 increases in the past did not lead to ever increasing global temps which would seem to imply that CO2 leading to global warming is not a straight forward result when discussing the global climate system, regardless of what models and lab tests show because we have data from the system that shows increases in CO2 that either did not feed the system or atleast that the system eventually self corrected and overcame. And this was reliably repeated in the historical data sets.
If you want to claim cooling …. I don’t.
if you want to claim non-anthropogenic greenhouse gases …. I don’t.
if you want to assert that CO2 can’t cause warming …. I don’t.
I want to claim that the third one is unclear on its long term affects in the overall system and I see enough other conflicting things to question the current hypothesis. It may fit to some current events although my understanding of it is that it has difficulty explaining some of the interim events. Extrapolating it to massive planetary extinction holds very little viability to me and I don’t need a competing theory to dismiss that nearly out of hand. Many scientist have the same view (even if they are in the minority).
Friday ~ December 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
RickRussellTX
“There is a clear 30 year cooling trend.”
It is unclear how you established this from the link you posted, or the link I posted.
Let me make sure we’re clear on terminology. Cooling means “decreasing temperature”, right? So, to define it formally, could we say that the coefficent of temperature with respect to time should be negative to the 95% confidence level?
So, let’s excise global annual means for 1934-1966 (the mathematical “middle of the century”, I don’t want to be accused of cherry-picking) from the GISTEMP dataset and see what we get:
Coefficient: -0.45 (deg C per calendar year)
P-value: 0.12
Lower 95%: -1.03
Upper 95%: 0.12
There is no significant correlation between annual mean temperature and time from 1934-1966 at the 95% confidence level.
On the other hand, let’s look at 1967-2000.
Coefficient: 1.47 (deg C per calendar year)
P-value: 3.66E-06
Lower 95%: 0.94
Upper 95%: 2.01
There is a very significant correlation between temperature and time at the 95% confidence level, ranging from 0.94 deg C per year to 2.01 deg C per year. P-value indicates that there is positive correlation to the 99.999634% confidence level.
Now, if by “cooling” you mean, “fairly flat”, then that statement could be supported.. But that’s not cooling by any typical conversational or scientific definition.
“The CO2 increases from the past that trailed the warming should have fed the system causing even further warming which would cause more CO2 release and it should not correct itself.”
CO2 outgassing did feed the system, and likely contributed to the climate’s sensitivity to minor solar irradiance changes. But nobody claims that CO2 outgassing was an inexhaustible source of additional CO2.
Unlike us, the cave men weren’t digging coal and oil out of the ground and burning it. We, on the other hand, must concern ourselves with the consequences of both industrial output *and* natural outgassing.
All these concerns were covered in the first IPCC report. Do you honestly expect any of these objections to be a surprise to climate scientists? They’ve been answering these objections with theory supported by data for 20 years now.
Monday ~ December 21st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Apex
By third I didn’t mean the exact middle third by picking the years 34-66. The fact that you did that is hillarious and egregious at the same time.
Sometime in the 1940s until into the early 1970s is the period on the graph. You can see the rolling averages on the graph, they trend down. Pick the high point and the low point of the rolling averages. They are about 30 years apart and the trend line between them is down. Thats a cooling trend. Any chart technician can recognize the short term trend there. Even if the argument is made that it is a slight correction in a larger uptrend. That may be true, but that doesn’t negate the existence of the short term trend.
I don’t expect the scientists to be surprised by the counter arguments. I do think they should stop saying things like the science is settled and having people call for meteorologists and climateologists who question global warming to have their license revoked, and other acts intended to silence descent like this.
These are climate and weather scientists mind you. People educated and experienced in the science at hand who have doubts about the validity of the science and the response is to say that the science is over and to try to put gag orders on the descenters. It must be terribly mundane to actually defend the science. Easier to just marginalize the descenters as wackos who should be stripped of their credentials.
Monday ~ December 21st, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Rick Russell
I should apologize for an error earlier; the temp anomalies were in hundredths of degrees C. It doesn’t affect the significance analysis, but it affects the magnitude of the coefficients.
Sure, let’s play the game your way, since picking the middle of the century is so “egregious”.
The highest temp anomaly in the 1940s GISTEMP dataset is 1944, at +0.2 deg C. The lowest in the 1970s is 1976, at -0.16 deg C.
The correlation analysis is…
Coefficient: -0.001427139 (deg C per calendar year)
P-value: 0.422701199
Lower 95% confidence: -0.005009505
Upper 95% confidence: 0.002155226
(I left those at native Excel precision, but you can round to 2 sig figs if you want.)
Because this sample has more noise than my choice (1934-67), the confidence intervals are actually worse and the P-value is even _higher_, indicating less significance in the result. There is no significant correlation between global mean temperature (as expressed in the GISTEMP data) and calendar year for the period from 1944-1976, in the 95% confidence range. Or even the 60% confidence range.
> Any chart technician can recognize the short term trend there.
Any chart technician (well, any *good* chart technician) would understand regression techniques and confidence intervals, and why noisy data means that a *visually apparent* trend may not be a *significant* trend. And if the noise overwhelms the signal *in the annual averages*, then you really have no signal.
I mean, this is statistics for business majors here. If you don’t get this, then you probably shouldn’t be looking at graphs in the first place. You can keep telling yourself that you SEE it, so it MUST be true no matter what the NUMBERS say.
But it might be worth your while to read (and really attempt to understand) the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect), and why that might apply to you. Implicitly, that’s why the value of scientific consensus is that it’s *not* a poll or petition — it’s a battle of ideas played out among specialists.
“I do think they should stop saying things like the science is settled and having people call for meteorologists and climateologists who question global warming to have their license revoked…”
I thought it was a mistake for the head of the Weather Channel to go that direction, precisely because it would provoke this kind of righteous indignation. Scientists are not politicians or natural leaders, and unfortunately this debate prodded them into some pretty bad psychological miscalculations.
I’ll turn in my climatology license as soon as they give me one
RR
Tuesday ~ December 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 am
Apex
You will have to explain the way you are doing your numbers to me.
You mention 1944 at +0.2 and 1976 at -0.16.
Are you calculating the change around the zero point to be the zero point on this chart or from the +0.2 in 1944. I really can’t tell based on what you said how you calculated it.
The change from 1944 – 1976 would need to use the value from 1944 as the zero point. Thus all the numbers for the data need to have 0.2 subtracted from them and the results go from 0.0 in 1944 to -0.36 in 1976 along with all the data points in between.
Given that 1934 starts much lower than 1944 and 1966 ends higher than 1976 I cannot see how the period from 1934-1966 can possibly have a higher uptrend correlation than the period from 1944-1976.
Granted I am not familiar with the business statistics formula you are using although I am well versed in mathematics. If the math truly shows a higher correlation from 1934 – 1966 than from 1944 – 1976 then I guess I am just wrong.
But please address my question from above. Because while I admit that I may not know enough about the correlation formula to say for sure that formula would show a correlation at the 95% interval, I can’t possibly see how the period from 1934 can show higher correlation than the period from 1944.
So please let me know if the zero point in your numbers is zero on the chart or uses 1944 as the zero point. Because to be accurate for the trend from 1944 forward, 1944 has to be the zero point.
If that was the zero point in your numbers and your math is correct then I guess I can’t read charts very well.
Thanks.
Tuesday ~ December 22nd, 2009 at 4:10 am
Apex
I am sorry, I used the word uptrend above when I meant downtrend. Maybe sub-consciously I actually do believe its an uptrend.
Tuesday ~ December 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
RickRussellTX
I’m using the NASA GISTEMP data, the ones used to produce the chart you cited (because you claimed that the trends where “obvious”):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
“The change from 1944 – 1976 would need to use the value from 1944 as the zero point. ”
No, it doesn’t. The rate of change is irrelevant to the “zero point”. For the GISTEMP data, the zero point is the average calculated from 1951-1980.
Look, this has become some kind of tragicomedy. I don’t have time to educate you in incredibly basic statistics; I don’t see how anybody well-versed in math can be unfamiliar with linear regression techniques. It’s *literally* statistics 101. I learned it in high school.
“business statistics formula”
It is taught in business statistics, but it’s not a business statistics formula. It’s a statistical test. I’m not going to explain how statistical tests work, as I feel it would be effort wasted at this point.
Look, I’m sorry that your eyes and brain see patterns that are not significant. That’s not my problem. If you don’t have training in the most rudimentary aspects of data analysis, maybe you need to just stay away from science, and look at the colored graphs.
I daresay, if scientists have to justify their work before critics like this, we are all doomed.
Tuesday ~ December 22nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Apex
Well this seems to have devolved.
Thoroughly a pleasure your preeminence.