Global Warming: Truth, Junk Science or a Media Heyday
Another great blurb from the good folks at the FRC:
Today’s Washington Post provides us a textbook case of the politicization of science and the bias of reporting. “More Frequent Heat Waves Linked to Global Warming,” blares the scary headline splashed across page A3, the day after D.C. temperatures peaked at 101. Sounds menacing. Pay no attention to those little kids pictured frolicking in the famed Trocadero Fountains in front of the Eiffel Tower. They just don’t realize how grim their future is going to be. But those merry munchkins shouldn’t even be alive! They were supposed to have been killed off in the worldwide famine and food riots confidently predicted by Dr. Paul Ehrlich back in the 1970s. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and other scary books cleverly disguised as scientific works. Contrast the drastic warming warning with this: On page A6, in a little three column-inch squib, today’s Post tells us that there may be fewer hurricanes this year. The reason? Scientists say that surface ocean temperatures are cooler in the Atlantic this year. Thus, they’ve reduced from nine to seven their expected number of hurricanes and from five to three their predictions for intense storms – but no mention of global climate issues. We sympathize with The Post’s spooked editors. After all, it’s hard to think clearly when it’s 101 . But is it too much to ask that they read their own newspaper and avoid the constant drumbeat of doom-saying?
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Hey, I used to be skeptical about this but the global warming stuff is real — not in a ‘we are going to die tomorrow’ way but over the next 100 years it is going to get hotter because of human activity. How much hotter depends on how quickly we get our act together.
Don’t look to the popular press for issues involving science — they write stories that they think will sell. Instead, check out the guys who are spending their lives figuring this stuff out. And I don’t mean Al Gore…
I suggest starting with Real Climate’s discussion of the ice core data, water vapor forcing, the newer satellite data, and the hockey stick study. Pay particular attention to the detailed back-and-forth on the validity of the hockey studies. These guys have a pretty good handle on what they know and don’t know. What you can see is that the ENTIRE active research community shifted from uncertain to certain based on the evidence gathered in the last 5-10 years.
It comes pretty clear the climate scientists who are arguing that we are making the planet warmer have (a) a lot of evidence and (b) are not alarmists. They are the same caliber of thinkers as the biologists who worked out DNA, the astronomers as who figured out the Big Bang, and the physicists who explained quantum mechanics.
If you don’t want to look at the evidence yourself (or you don’t trust yourself to understand it), look at it this way. There is one group of people on the planet who subject themselves to rigorous peer review, who retracts and corrects mistakes when they are found, and who form theories based on their predictive ability. They tell us that we are going to have fewer hurricanes this year because of surface temperatures AND that global warming is a reality but that it takes 50 to 100 years for the effects of CO2 emissions today to be reflected in the global temperature. If you want to believe this based on an authority, then believe the scientists, not the press.
http://www.realclimate.org
I appreciate everything you wrote but here are the points where I’m concerned:
1) We only have true data for the past 100 or 200 years. Other “data” is projected backwards from very small numbers into very large one. In the full course of Earth’s history, we’re taking a minute sample and basing future predictions on it. I just don’t believe that kind of math is very accurate.
2) I’m constantly frustrated by scientists saying “X Is True” only to hear other scientists at a later date saying, “X Isn’t True, Y Is True.” Maybe it’s my anger at the dishonest evolutionists who promote their Theory as fact to our impressionable youth, but when a scientist says something is Truth, even tougher, something that is off in the future, I have a truly difficult time accepting it. Call it a theory, a supposition or something else, but when scientists become dogmatic about the future, they cease to become objective, IMO.
All that to say, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear ‘experts’ 5 years from now say that El Niño and La Niña are bringing about “A New Cosmic Chilling Phenomenon” and we should all move towards the equator.