Don't shoot the messenger
Monday, December 7, marks the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. At that meeting, the leaders of the world will gather to negotiate an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The new agreement will be the world's road map for dealing with climate change, and the stakes are huge. It is fitting that the conference begins on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for the Copenhagen conference is sure to be an epic political battle. Indeed, the battle has already been underway for several weeks, with most of the action centering on a PR assault launched by the anti-CO2 regulation forces that sensationalized the contents of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia. The Wall Street Journal has long been at the forefront of the battle to discredit the science of climate change and the scientists involved, and last week they launched a major offensive, publishing multiple opinion pieces. I'll critique one of these, a December 1 editorial by Bret Stephens which accuses climate scientists of having a vested interest in promoting alarmist views of the climate in order to get research funding. "All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God", Stephens wrote.
Money
It's always wise to follow the money when analyzing the motivations of people. However, Ph.D. atmospheric scientists are less motivated by money than, say, the typical reader of the Wall Street Journal. I am an example of that. Nobody owns more shares of Wunderground.com than I do, yet here I am criticizing the Wall Street Journal and some of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet--hardly the sort of action that will generate more revenue for my company. Our top climate scientists are some of the most brilliant people on the planet. They could have easily made fortunes on Wall Street devising intricate schemes to hawk sub-prime mortgages or leverage obscure derivatives. Yet these people chose climate science as a career, out of a genuine curiosity about how the world works and desire to help find the truth of whether human-caused climate change poses a significant threat to humanity. The charges that these scientists are exaggerating the danger of human-caused global warming to get more funding is a personal attack on their integrity--a typical politician's ploy to avoid talking about the issues, when one has no valid arguments to bolster one's position. In my 29 years in the weather business, I've had the honor of working with many of the world's top weather and climate scientists. I can personally vouch for their integrity and commitment to pursue the scientific truth, no matter what that truth turns out to be. These are honest, incredibly hard-working public servants who are enduring a punishing assault on their integrity because they are the bearers of bad news. The Earth has plenty of pressing problems requiring the services of brilliant scientists; these public servants will always have a job, and have no need to exaggerate dangers or invent new threats in order to get more research funding. If one reads through the entire set of 3,000 emails hacked from the University of East Anglia--not just the choice few lines excerpted from chosen emails, and then spun by the anti-CO2 regulation lobby to make the scientists look bad--you will see that these scientists are the good guys. Never once is there a mention of fabricating data or fudging results to try to get more research funding. There is no conspiring to perpetate the massive "hoax" of human-caused global warming they have been accused of. Rather, we see a picture of some very smart, hardworking, and very human and imperfect scientists that are doing their best to learn the truth, and pass that information on to the rest of us. You don't get ahead in scince by fudging the data. It's publish or perish. While the peer-review system of publication is not perfect, it generally does an excellent job of rewarding those scientists who seek to publish the truth, and rejects those who do not. Published papers that turn out to be false will, in time, crumble under the weight of subsequent studies that do uncover the truth. Smart scientists tend to have big egos and hate being wrong, so there is additional motivation to publish truthful studies that will withstand the test of time and be validated by subsequent research.
Alarmism
Mr. Stephens uses the words "alarm" or "alarmist" four times in the editorial, and he is clearly trying to provoke an emotional reaction against those Chicken Littles guilty of raising the alarm. Speaking as an atmospheric scientist, I can tell you from long experience that we are not the wild-eyed, alarmist lot that the Wall Street Journal makes us out to be. This makes for some very dull parties (if you're not excited about discussing quasi-geostrophic theory), when we get together for a big bash. Very little alarming behavior takes place. (In fact, after I dragged my wife to three straight devastatingly dull departmental Christmas parties while I was in graduate school, she forbade me from ever requiring her to go to another.) Atmospheric scientists are not an alarmist lot--put us in quiet room with a window and give us a computer and pile of data to analyze, and we'll be as happy as a clam at high tide. The portrayal of climate scientists as alarmist, money-grubbing, dishonest hucksters out to destroy the economy to further their own selfish desires for money or fame is a common theme in climate change denial attacks, and is a very narrow-minded and ignorant one. It's more convenient to shoot the messenger than to acknowledge the truth of the bad news they're bringing.
Toleration of false alarms
It is possible that the alarms climate scientists are raising over climate change will turn out to be false. Environmental scientists have in the past issued false alarms over environmental problems that did not materialize as expected. However, we should expect and tolerate some degree of false alarms, given the uncertainty in forecasting these events. If our scientists never issue a false alarm, then the tolerance for issuing alarms is not correct. Would you criticize the National Weather Service for issuing a tornado warning when a possible tornado signature is spotted on Doppler radar, since less than half of these signatures result in in an actual tornado touchdown? Or the National Hurricane Center for issuing a hurricane warning, since only 25% of the warned coast receives hurricane-force winds, on average? No, some degree of false alarms must be tolerated. Our weather forecasters are dedicated public servants, doing their job of warning the public when their best scientific judgment indicates that there might be a significant threat. It is no different with our climate scientists. They are predicting that there is a greater than 90% chance that most of the observed global warming is due to human causes. Climate scientists are extremely concerned about what their scientific results are saying, and are doing their utmost to warn a public resistant to acknowledging the danger. This resistance runs very deep among conservatives. A 2008 Pew Center poll found that 75% of Democrats with a college education believed that humans were responsible for global warming, while only 19% of college educated Republicans believed that. Conservatives' core belief that a capitalist, free market economy with limited regulation is the best economic system in the world is challenged by acknowledging that human-caused global warming is real and a threat. I greatly respect conservatives who can objectively evaluate the validity of global warming science while holding that core belief, for it is difficult to accept that the best economic system in the world could spawn such a self-destructive force. But as I detailed in a post last week, corporations, by law, exist to make a profit. If scientific research shows that a corporation's products may be harmful to the public health, it the obligation of the company to its shareholders to employ whatever legal means possible to cast doubt on this science, in order to protect profits. The profits of the richest and most powerful industry the planet has ever seen--the fossil fuel industry--are currently so threatened. Thus, we are being subject to history's greatest campaign to deny science, and it is keeping us from much-needed action to curb the danger. These voices are telling us what we want to hear--the danger is not real, the scientists are corrupt and are falsifying their data, the uncertainties are great, and that we cannot afford to change. But the laws of physics don't care about ideology or free market economies or election cycles. The overwhelming majority of our top climate scientists are saying that the laws of physics dictate that massive amounts of greenhouse gases, when added to the atmosphere, will cause warming that will be very damaging to civilization. If we are to limit that damage, we must act soon, for the approaching storm will grow ever stronger the longer we wait. Don't shoot the messengers-- they are on your side.
Other posts in this series
Embattled UK climate scientist steps down
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
Next post
My timing of my next post will depend upon the weather.
Our Climate Change expert, Dr. Ricky Rood, is in Copenhagen for this week's crucial COP15 climate change treaty negotiations. Be sure to tune into his blog for updates on the talks. Wunderground has provided financial support for several University of Michigan students to attend the talks, and I may be featuring portions of their blogs over the coming weeks.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Always a good quote,..LOL
And that has to do with AGW, how?
Wasn't speaking to that. Want clean air and water, just like everyone. CO2 is irrelevant to that.
Mother Nature will make the temperature of the planet whatever she feels it should be. Not what man feels it should be. That's all.
Many other things that we could do with the $$$ spent on CO2 mitigation.
Hey, maybe that is why it is so wanted. So that we pay for cleaning up Beijing... which has nothing to do with CO2.
Want something for that stuff, IMF is there to facilitate it. Don't see why we should pay to clean up Beijing, but that's another discussion. They should pay for it themselves if they want clean air.
JMO.
Well, Monday is a new day! Like the old song Monday, Monday!!
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, ugh me like fire, but it burn me, ugh...
Sounds expensive.
Off the skyway?
“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN secretary-general Ban Ki- moon
Ok, thanks!! I hope so. Glad to have the opinion of one of the WU experts!!
That's all people...but especially men! I'm going to put "you have to be clear with him and tell him what you need and want" on an audio loop. If I charged for it, I might get rich. Mostly it would just be so I could get off the phone with gal pals.
Personally, I really dislike when others stamp their own understanding on what I say by doing that and putting words in my mouth that I did not say.
I wouldn't dare, because I don't understand so much of what you say when you start doing that science thing you do oh-so-handsomely!
No way could you convince me that your mind doesn't play a role in doing that nor that it does not have the potential to influence the outcome...
I would never want to convince you of that!!! But that would infer that I (or we) have the power to do so, which you would have granted!
But I'm sure your wife appreciates the balance of power, LOL. BTW, I think you two must be doing a great job if your 5-yr. old has loved Tchaikovsky for a couple years now! I remember having a child's version of Peter & the Wolf at a very young age...
Hahahaha! I saw a guy jump off the skyway once.
No, blog jumpers. I was talking about Grother leaving.
People threaten leaving all the time, and most come back.
Saw!!! You PUSHED me!!!!!
05:46 PM GMT del 07 Dicembre 2009
Climate scientists of all stripes agree that emergence from the Ice Age was triggered by variations in Earth's orbit that allowed more sunlight to fall in the Arctic in summer. As Earth started to warm, CO2 began getting released from oceans and swamps, resulting in a positive feedback, which further amplified the warming.
Jeff Masters
You make it seem reasonable. i doubt that heavy, mass production of LEDs is even possible. I'd much rather that we were installing LEDs and not these mercury-tainted CFLs, but I'm not the one making the decisions. And I'm not so sure LEDs could compete at this scale, yet. This idea is similar to Microsoft. Lots of people like to complain about them, to deride them, to insult them. But, what other examples do we have of a company that has unlocked computer access to vast areas of the planet on scales hard to imagine? There're not many examples of this!
I saw it from a boat, so it would've been hard for me to do the pushing!
If he leaves NRAAmy and I will make his life a living hell.
We have the power to do so! (j/k, maybe, you men will never know for sure...:) )
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.
By the article it looks like the 1st step to cap & trade.. I still can't believe the 3 billion of tax payer money to Exxon. Like some kinds pay off to even step up to the Copenhagen table..
Wow, thank you for the response! Was it a pole shift?
I enjoyed his posts. Loosing one from the wrong side.
oh, i was really wrong. lol
Bada Bing.!!!.the Dr. knocked that one outta da park!
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made
Insane.
So then what triggered the Little Ice Age, then?
And I really thought Press's discovery of fire post might have some validity...
You will be missed by me! You are correct, this blog forum is turning into a "mosh pit"! I thought this was a place to learn, make friends and expand our horizons.
The Earth will warm and cool. Is it the normal variations in the Sun's output? Or is it mankind wasting and burning through all of natural resources with reckless abandon? I truthfully think it may be a combination of them both.
How may little kids around Africa have to swim, bathe and drink polluted water? How many children in China, Mexico and India have to live with chronic bronchitis from breathing polluted air? How many native tribes in Brazil and Indonesia have to face total extinction, some "grandpa Joe' can have that Mahogany Gun Case? How many pine forests have to disappear in Germany, Sweden, Finland and the US? Does my great-great grandson have to see pictures in a book, instead of seeing the trees in person? What do the world's children have to look forward too, in 50 years, when the world is a freaking mess? How many untold arguments are we going to have?
The Earth's environment is being exploited. Mother Nature one day will get even! God has built a balancing effect into our Eco-systems. No worries, nature will one day balance things out! The question I have is this, "How many of us polluting humans will be left?
I read the article and it is alarming that things have chaged that much in so few years. What I thought was more interesting was an add at the bottom about dry ice cleaning which as we all know is frozen CO2.
The humor is seeping back in,
And Amy's having weather! Can't WAIT to see those posts... the twins are cold...
(I'm really trying here, folks, and putting myself at MAJOR risk!)
the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human
action. I would also argue that—should it occur—a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial.
This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is political. Because of the
mistaken idea that governments can and must do something about climate, pressures are building that
have the potential of distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national economies,
decrease standards of living, and increase poverty. This misdirection of resources will adversely affect
human health and welfare in industrialized nations, and even more in developing nations. Thus it
could well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between them.
If not for this economic and political damage, one might consider the present concern about
climate change nothing more than just another environmentalist fad, like the Alar apple scare
or the global cooling fears of the 1970s.
Accidental release of toxic chemicals, polluted water by local plants cited in report
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune
December 07, 2009, 3:13AM
Frequent accidents at 10 of the state's biggest refineries resulted in the release of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air and millions of gallons of polluted water into state water courses between 2005 and 2008, according to a report to be released this morning by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
Almost a third of the 2,116 accidents at the 10 plants in four years occurred as the result of hurricanes or other bad weather events, according to the report.
Have you noticed that AGW proponents increasingly mix pollution control with CO2 control as a means to denigrate AGW opponents? Not exactly a rigorous scientific approach. China could install scrubbers to deal to get their particulate pollution down to the levels of US coal-fired plants, for example. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more emphasis on this country on dealing with nutrient pollution and raw sewage spills from rainwater overflows with old sewage systems.
LOL! actually I just got back from class, woke up to an inch of snow this morning, but the temperature has warmed to 36 now, so most of it has melted. But on wednesday, I imagine I will get some more significant snow
"The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC."
Saudi Arabia's top climate negotiator told the conference that trust in climate science had been "shaken" by the leaked emails.
"The level of trust is definitely shaken, especially now that we are about to conclude an agreement that ... is going to mean sacrifices for our economies," Mohammed al-Sabban told delegates.
Sabban, whose country is oil cartel OPEC's leading producer and exporter, called for an "independent" international investigation, adding that the UN climate science body was unqualified to carry it out.
But Pachauri proudly defended the IPCC's reputation as an arena for weighing evidence fairly and said: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal."
um...
I knooooooooow, won't he have some fun! Better him than me!
B., please don't make me cry again...your grandkids are just too cute (mine, too)! We can fix this; or adapt... even if we have to become floating heads...sure will miss the rest of the body, though, except for the arthritis in my shoulder that is acting up because I'm on this blog too darn much!
Best case scenario, the mitigation measures we put into play will have benefits outside of climate mitigation. For example, better flood protection is one benefit, but it also mitigates sea-level increases.
Worse case scenario, a business stops emitting CO2, and instead decides to emit something much worse, but fortunately, it's not a GHG! Oh wait... did I say "something much worse"?
+1
Your gonna get hammered, uour gonna get hammered, your gonna get hammered with a whole bunch of snow!! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!
There going to build a large bubble and suck all the global warming away from earth. Then shot the bubble to mars to help its atmosphere form. Now I feel better about the GW blog, I've added my crack pot idea. lol =)
Iran can help with that possibly.
hahahaha I hope, but what are you seeing that says this? lol
Pfftt..4 Nukes at best.
USA/Russia Combined arsenal of Nukes,30,000 Plus.
Not hard math.
um...
Hi, T-Dude...SNOW!
Say, where did that original quote come from? Because I missed it.
I hope that is just really bad reporting, and I think it must be. That is just plain hubris.
SO, it just so happens that earlier I was talking about "Rule of Law" vs. "Rule of Man"...never mind the Rule of Mother Nature!
No one Administration can contain HER!
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