The world is heating up, we’re causing it, and life as we know it is coming to an end…Not! Why would so many scientists blatantly disregard known facts and overstate a problem to mislead the general public? Why would so many reputable magazines and newspapers publish the bad and ignore the good? Why would so many politicians let this continue? It’s quite simple: money and power. Increasingly there are voices of reason in this storm of controversy.
Crisis Science
The global warming “crisis” is simply another example of “crisis” science. Remember in the ’70s when genetic manipulation of bacteria was going to kill us all? Don’t know about you, but I’m still here. Remember how irradiating food was mysteriously going to damage us? I haven’t read of any problems with this. More recently the genetic modification of our tomatoes and our breakfast cereals has caused a renewed backlash against gene splicing but, here again, the potential problems have been greatly overstated.
In an era of limited funding for research, scientists respond to what they observe to work for others. When they see that their peers who predict doom and death receive grants, they will tend to act in a similar manner. In the Internet age, newspapers and magazines are under increasing pressure from declining subscriptions and the resulting loss of advertising revenue. Politicians need a cause to bolster their ratings and increase their campaign contributions.
It’s no big conspiracy, just a lot of people acting in their own self interest. In a climate such as this, is it possible to determine what is true?
Thankfully there are still scientists with integrity who are willing to publish unpopular facts. In some cases this leads to censure or dismissal, but they continue in spite of this. One recent example is the book Climate of Extremes by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr.
In a comprehensive and reasoned look at the facts behind the news, they bring a refreshing breath of air that is long overdue. Some of the topics they cover include the following.
- The world is getting warmer, but not unusually so,
- There have been millenia with warmer temps, and the world survived,
- Ocean levels are rising at most 1.5 inches a decade,
- No one mentions the benefits of global warming
- - people in warmer climates live longer
- - plants, including food crops, thrive with more carbon dioxide
- Things go up and down, but correlation does not equal causation
- At least half of 20th century warming occurred before 1945 (which is before the production of most greenhouse gasses)
- Warming correlates with changes other than greenhouse gas (for example, population centers are warmer than rural areas)
- Greenland and Antarctic ice is not melting away
- Southern California wildfires are not due to global warming
- Atlantic hurricanes are not bigger or stronger than normal
- When science predicts a possible range of increase (as in temperature or sea level), only the worst possible values are used as examples
- People are resilient and adapt to climate changes
Cherry Picking Data
The book is filled with graphs that demonstrate how the “cherry picking” of historical data can dramatically alter the appearance of the “facts.” For example, the following graph shows two lines indicating average global temperatures. The top line is based on a 600-year average, while the bottom line is based on a 78-year average and shows a recent and dramatic increase in world temperatures.
Same data, but drastically different results. The bottom version has been used in a prominent and widely cited report (the “Third Assessment Report” on climate change, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001), and has since become a “poster child” for global warming enthusiasts.
Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished. Author Michaels, who was the State Climatologist for the Commonwealth of Virginia, was censured by Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine, and told not to speak as State Climatologist when it came to global warming. This was as a direct result of his consulting for the “wrong” agency (a small electric utility) but also, in part, because of Michaels tendency to speak to major news outlets.
Others have also suffered similar consequences for speaking out. Both George Taylor, State Climatologist for Oregon, and David Legates, State Climatologist for Delaware, were told by their respective Governors to cease and desist speaking about global warming. In addition, Mark Albrihgt, Assistant State Climatologist for Washington, was fired because he refused to stop criticizing “cherry picked” data regarding Washington State snowfall records.
“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”
—Ellen Goodman, columnist, The Boston Globe
Michaels and Balling do not deny global warming. They completely agree this is happening. They just say it is neither unusual nor alarming. So what’s the solution? Michaels and Balling recommend opening the scientific peer review process. If the major journals posted all submitted articles and peer reviews to the Internet, along with all of the author’s names, it would go a long way toward preventing exaggerated claims.
We’ll Get What We Allow
It occurs to me that this is only one part of the solution, and the rest is up to each of us. There still remain the problems of news media and politicians who abuse science to inflate and conflate issues, and the public’s willing acceptance of misleading information disguised as fact.
The truth was so inconvenient for Al Gore that he ignored it completely. For this he received a Nobel Prize and an Oscar! Why do we continue to let him get away with this?
In the Internet age, it up to each of us to discriminate between fact and fiction. If we, at the community and national levels, refuse to support politicians that use negative campaign tactics and stick to this, within two or three election cycles things would begin to change. In addition, if we stopped supporting publications and television stations that misrepresent the facts, eventually they would change their tune. Until we can begin to do this consistently, we will continue to be subjected to the whims of manipulators.
