The Island of Doubt

"Balancing" climate education in South Dakota and elsewhere

Category: climate

Leslie Kaufman in the New York Times presents a disturbing tale of attempts by creationists to up their chances of slipping religion into science classrooms by piggy-backing it onto "balanced" instruction of climatology.

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Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:33 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The neverending hurricane-climate story

Category: climate

It's a sore spot for some climate change pseudoskeptics. Any time anyone makes any kind of claim about the effects of a warming planet on tropical storm activity, you can count on a deluge of rejoinders about how shaky the science on the subject really is.

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Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:01 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Who are the people in your denial neighborhood?

Category: climate

As regular readers will know, I prefer the term "pseudoskeptic" over "denier" when it comes to those who insist we needn't be worried about climate change. This is because the common denominator among any set of such characters tends to be a misapplication of the scientific method, a failure to apply rigorous skeptical analysis to the subject. Not all of these pseudoskeptics are deniers, as this list from Foreign Policy makes clear.

Indeed, the distinctions among the selected "Guide to Climate Skeptics" make it even more important to choose our descriptors carefully. I would argue that calling them "skeptics" is the authors' first mistake. But let's look at each one in turn as FP tries to "sort out the noise from the serious concerns."

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Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:51 AM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The funniest thing I've seen in ages

Category: humor

This has nothing to do with climatology, or science in general, but I can't resist sharing it with you. From the instructions to our new DTV antenna, which until the Great Ice Storm of 2010 damaged its transformer-coaxial connection, brought in more watchable channels than expanded basic cable or satellite:

For those that might have trouble reading the scanned text, which appears at the bottom of the instructions page in 6-point type, it says:

WARNING Do not attempt to install if drunk or pregnant or both. Do not throw antenna at spouse.

I do hope that no one at Antennas Direct gets in trouble for this.

Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:15 AM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Where's there's a Will, there's a way to obfuscate

Category: climate

It's hard to know just when George F. Will parted ways with reality. Some argue he abandoned respect for historical accuracy years ago. But it's only in the last year or so, thanks to a series of bafflingly misinformed column on climate change, that it became clear to all but his most loyal readers that he no longer cares about getting it right.

Still, you have to appreciate his way with words. In this past weekend's affront to the traditions of evidence-based commentary -- a column that has been eviscerated by most of the better science-oriented bloggers who pay attention to such things -- he assembles this marvelous string of English nouns, verbs and metaphors:

Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, a.k.a. the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.

Prophylactic statism. You have to admire the guy for coming up with that one. It sounds so creepy, evoking as it does the allure of the sex trade and fear of communism, and yet implying a degree of scientific precision. What could be more American?

Like Will's misleading reference to Phil Jones' much-misrepresented interview with the BBC, however, the phrase doesn't really mean what Will wants it to. Prophylaxis is all about preventing disease, which is a good thing. And who among us, besides Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, perhaps, has a problem with the state doing its bit to prevent disease? It's almost as if Will is trying to slip in a negative reference to current efforts to reform health insurance. Maybe that was a Freudian slip?

As Hendrick Hertzbert writes in the New Yorker blog:

It is true, however, that the global warming problem probably cannot be addressed (let alone solved) without vigorous action by governments, acting separately and together, to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that economists classify as externalities

This is axiomatic. And it's hard to believe that even Will would take issue with the notion that if anthropogenic climate change is real, there isn't a role for government in addressing the challenge. Indeed, it's precisely because the problem will require global cooperation among nations that Will has chosen to attack the scientific basis for the existence of the crisis.

Unfortunately for Will and his pseudoskeptical colleagues, one can't wish away a 150-year warming trend by dismissing arbitrary short-term periods as "statistically insignificant." Not and still make sense. The Will's editors at the Washington Post understand this.

So the question is, how long will the Post continue to pay Will to produce columns that are at variance with the basic principles of informed and thoughtful commentary? Is his indisputable way with words that much more valuable?

Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:23 AM • 50 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What is this "settled science" of which you speak?

Category: climate

In the past couple of days a pernicious little meme has appeared in two leading North American newspapers. I refer to the notion that there is such a thing as "settled science." First, on a column about climatology Monday the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente asked not-so-rhetorically "So much for the science being settled. Now what?" The following day the Wall Street Journal's editorial page weighed in with a review of "what used to be called the 'settled science' of global warming."

Both offerings betrayed a solid lack of understanding, not only of recent events involving recent allegations of errors in IPCC reports, but also of how science works, further reinforcing the thesis that journalists who write about science really should take a few courses in the subject first.

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Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:41 AM • 89 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Fixing journalism

Category: journalism

Covering climatology may not be the biggest challenge facing today's mainstream news outlets and the journalists they employ, but it certainly has exposed a serious weakness in conventional news reporting. That weakness, as I implied in my previous post, is a pathological fear of taking sides, even then the "sides" in question are reality and fantasy.

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Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:54 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What ails journalism

Category: climate • punditry

David Roberts at Grist, riffing on This American Life's Ira Glass, nails it on the head:

"...news reporting is declining in part because of just this phenomenon: reporters do not react like human beings. The audience doesn't see or hear themselves in most news reporting. When covering something amazing, reporters are not allowed express awe. When covering something unexpected, they're not allowed to express surprise. And when faced with conservatives celebrating and reinforcing one another's ignorance, they're not allowed to show gall or outrage. Or mock.

People reading these stories get "the facts," but facts without context or affect are inert. There are no cues about what the facts mean. The strongest cue is the presence of the story itself, which says, "These are legitimate participants in our political dialogue, with something to say worth repeating."

That's exactly how I feel. This is not something new, by the way, but a modus operandi that has been drilled into journalism students and cub reporters for decades. It simply doesn't work. There are days I feel betrayed by the professors who taught me the fundamentals and the editors who helped me hone my skills. But it's not really their fault. They were only passing on what was taught to them.

Perhaps this collapse of mainstream media we are seeing will result in something new in the way of a journalistic ethos: one that respects accuracy and evidence-based reportage, but isn't afraid to call a spade a spade.

Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 10:13 AM • 96 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

IPCC error rate: You were expecting something else?

Category: climate

Via the ever-vigilant Stoat, I draw your attention to a letter to the Netherlands parliament from by 55 Netherlands scientists. Along with the usual "the science remains sound" defense of our understanding of anthropogenic global warming, it provides some useful perspective:

The writing of IPCC reports and its quality control remains the work of humans. A guarantee for an error free report is an unachievable ideal, however much an error free report is highly desired

Just as a thousand private emails are bound to include a few intemperate remarks and elucidation of wishful thinking, the thousands of pages of reports that draw on 18,000 sources were bound include a few dubious references. Anyone who finds the current error rate (3 or 4, depending on who's counting) should read Stephen Schneider's Science as a Contact Sport for insight into just how incredible it is that the IPCC quality control process is a rigorous as it is.

Posted by James Hrynyshyn at 9:43 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks