A balanced view does not reflect the scientific consensus on climate change.
Credit: iStockphoto
MELBOURNE: Airing the views of climate change sceptics in the media may only be serving to keep the global warming controversy boiling, argue scientists.
Leading climate change experts have warned the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia, that a balanced view does not always reflect the consensus of the research community.
Kevin Hennessy, a lead scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said yesterday that media attention on "the view of a handful of climate change sceptics" amplifies their opinions and "implies that there is little agreement about the basic facts of global warming".
Hennessy is also with the marine and atmospheric division of Australian government research body, CSIRO.
Speaking in a session about climate change reporting, he said editors and journalists have a duty to ensure that facts are presented in context. Balanced reporting, he said, "perpetuates the public's perception that scientists are in disarray, which is misleading in the case of climate change".
Geoff Love, secretary of the IPCC and former deputy director of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said that IPCC assessment reports from 1990 through to this year are strong evidence of "the coming together of the scientific community."
Emphasis on the sceptic view does not help public understanding of climate change, said Love.
Media coverage has not always reflected the consensus of the majority of the scientific community, said Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation a non-profit environment group. "That only makes the public and political discussion more difficult," he said.
The problem is compounded by a lack of reporting on climate change, according to Chris Mooney, a U.S.-based science journalist attending the conference. Although the 2006 hurricane season attracted a lot of media attention, Mooney presented statistics from the United States showing that climate change has never been a priority in the media.
The situation is similar in Africa, said Ochieng' Ogodoa a Kenyan correspondent for London, U.K.-based news web site SciDev.Net. Articles about deaths caused by floods or other natural disasters, and political scandals related to climate change tend to get precedence, he said.
The Dumb People Fallacy
I would address you directly, but you seem to lack either the courtesy or the courage to attach your name.
First, I would like you to name some of the positve feedbacks that drive earth's cycles--no computer models, real observations. Don't be afraid to be specific.
And, "Over the last 30 years Earth's average temperature has risen by around 0.2 degrees celsius per decade."
First of all, which temperature series are you referring to?
Second, way to cherry-pick! Choose the coolest period of the 20th and start there. Brilliant. I can do that too. Let's start in 1940 and go to 1970. Oh my goodness! We're entering an ice age!
Third, 0.2K/decade X 3 = 0.6K. This is the IPCC figure for the entire 150 ybp, and most of that occured prior to 1940, then a multi-decadal cooling while CO2 was booming. What's your point? Climate changes, film at 11:00!
A longer, more sober view suggests that nothing unusual is occurring.
You are making the usual error in assuming that humans are a bunch of dumb people at the mercy of their surroundings. It seems you are capable of ignoring several millennia of the demonstration of the human capacity to adapt and endure, and even to prosper.
The best way to insure habitability for humanity is to invigorate development, not to hamstring it with mindless, useless, wasteful measures such as the Kyoto Protocol.
If left alone, free of the restraints of impulsive interference, people tend to be pretty smart and can deal with a wide variety of adverse conditions. We'll be around to see it.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
The rantings of Mark Whitney from Utah
Hey Mark: we're all getting sick of your rantings. You're not a climate change skeptic, you're a climate change denier. You ain't gonna change your mind ever, because no evidence will
a) be considered by your or
b) ever be accepted.
Here's an an editorial in your own local paper, Salt Lake Tribune, debunking your views - and naming you personally. I'll let your home state newspaper speak for all of us.
Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Climate science a factual contrast to global warming 'skepticism'
The human species is at a crossroads. We can continue to ignore the rapidly increasing devastating impacts of our behavior. Or we can take responsibility for these impacts and start working together to solve the most pressing issue of our time, the warming of our planet, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels.
Despite the incredible challenges posed by global warming, which has the potential to destroy all life on Earth, some still seek to discredit, often on a purely partisan and ad hominem basis, the robust science that testifies to the reality of climate change.
Sandy resident Mark Whitney, for example, claims global warming science is merely an "unstable foundation underpinning the Gore-heads," and insinuates that scientists who are warning the public about the dangers of global warming are doing so merely to benefit from "the funding gravy train that has supported their flights of fancy" ("Alarmists losing ground," Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 21).
Contrary to Whitney's claims, scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is occurring - and at a rapidly accelerating pace. Since its formation in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest worldwide scientific collaboration in history, has "assessed and scrutinized the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced global warming."
The IPCC concluded that the Earth's climate is warming and that all signs point primarily to the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas.
The National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science also agree that global warming pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities. They also agree that this accumulation has resulted in a dangerous increase in surface air temperatures.
Even President Bush joined the other heads of state at the 2005 G8 Summit in recognizing the reality of global warming and the role of fossil fuel emissions in rapid global temperature increases.
Unfortunately, it has become easier than ever to disseminate misleading and inaccurate information about global warming. Those skeptical about the reality of global warming frequently cite a petition circulated in 1998 by The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Jim Elwell, for example, cited this petition when he criticized The Tribune for asserting that global warming is occurring ("Tribune ignores scientists," Aug. 9).
The petition offered on OISM's Web site provides a long list of signatures by "scientific experts" who contend global warming is nothing more than a myth. However, OISM provides no means to authenticate the names or verify their academic credentials. The site seems to permit anyone with a mouse and a keyboard the chance to weigh in, whether they have any relevant expertise or not.
Furthermore, the National Academies of Science has determined the scientific study attached to the petition is a sham, created by a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology. OISM has repeatedly declined to reveal the funding sources for the petition campaign, merely acknowledging that "industry" groups have been the main sources of funding.
This sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, by industry cronies and lobbyists who stand to gain financially from disputing global warming, undermines scientific work and obstructs the pursuit of solutions to the most urgent challenge facing our world.
Fringe "experts" and fraudulent advocacy campaigns are not the only beneficiaries of scientific chicanery. Many leaders in government have been hoodwinked into a head-in-the-sand policy of ignorance, sometimes even relying on works of fiction, rather than science, to justify their dangerous apathy.
Global warming is real and poses enormous risks to humanity and all life on Earth. Our obligations to future generations compel us to stop quibbling about whether global warming is occurring and start acting. The future will be determined by what each of us does now, at all levels of government, in business and in our individual lives.
Firstly, degrees Kelvin is
Firstly, degrees Kelvin is different to degrees Celcius (which I quoted).
Secondly, positive feedback systems?
1. Population growth. Simple. As a population increases the number of breeding individuals increases, increasing the number of births, which increases the population size....and so on. Look at human population size for a pefect real world example.
2. Contractions in child birth. Contractions cause the body to release oxytocin, which causes the body to have more contractions, which releases more oxytocin. Both of these get checked at some point by various mechanisms (as all feedback system do). But there you go, maybe you need to go back and do some basic high school science.
Thirdly, it's obvious you are a nut case, so I won't waste any more time on you.
Carbon dioxode lags doesn't lead
While that is seen in historical records, the temperature changes measured cannot be fully accounted for without the effects of this increase in CO2.
So, without this CO2 release, the temperatures wouldn't have risen as high as they did through the initiating factor alone.
So, this raises two points.
1. CO2 does have a warming effect on global temperature.
2. If global temperatures increase then more CO2 will be released (as you have pointed out, natural CO2 increases lag temperature rises).
What is different in the anthropogenic case is that the inital driver of temperature increase has been CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases such as methane).
So, we get the double whammy. Anthropogenic CO2 increase leads to temperature increase which leads to greater natural CO2 release to add to the anthropogenic releases.
Reporting Should Be Weighted In Favour of the Consensus.
Absolutely! Giving equal weight to both sides of the issue is misleading if the scientific community is heavily skewed to one side.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud of you
It doesn't matter if there is a consensus, which there isn't. Science doesn't work by popular vote. That kind of "science" led to Bruno's burning and Galileo's imprisonment because they dared to go against the consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. You would stifle valid skepticism and contrary evidence because some bureaucrats masquerading as scientists have declared the impending doom of the world due to a trace gas, a gas that is not a pollutant but is essential to life!
Yes, let's censor science to fit a misanthropic agenda. Let's condemn billions in the developing countries to poverty and death rather than "permit" them to burn that nasty carboniferous fuel. Let's torpedo our own economies by blindly casting ourselves into the pit of privation because of a slight possibility that CO2 has had a minor positve effect on temperature. As Joe Goebbels opined, if you tell a lie often enough and loud enough the masses of sheep will be convinced it is true. Al Gore has learned that lesson well.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
Actually there is a consensus
When it comes to climate change, there IS a consensus among climate scientists ... but not between climate scientists and butchers, brain surgeons, politicians, mechanics or geneticists. By consensus, I mean more than 99% of climate scientists. There are a handful who challenge it, but there are also a handful of sceintists who challenge that HIV causes AIDS, that the Big Bang ever happened, or that Einstein's relativity is a real phenomenon.
You nutjobs seem keen to quote Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus. But these guys lived in the age before science was respected, and before the scientific method we use today was accepted. The people who persecuted them were the Church, not other scientists. A consensus odf other naturalists (as scientists were known then) DID support them. A minority did not.
Almost all scientists who work in this field (and know something about it) do agree that climate change is real, and that industrial carbon emissions are exacerbating. It's you people who challenge them without knowing s&*t from shinola who wanna burn them at the stake ... as you would have burned Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus.
But nothing can convince your crowd. Not until the seas rise and cities start collapsing like New Orleans will you sad sacks of s&*t ever realise there might just be something to this climate change stuff.
Unfortunately, climate change is gonna kill millions of innocent people, not just your sorry asses. On the other hand, if you represent the majority of humanity, then perhaps it's best humans say bye bye to this planet.
William Wood
Get the point
Mr. Wood
Hyperbole is the essence of warming alarmism.
"Unfortunately, climate change is gonna kill millions of innocent people, not just your sorry asses. On the other hand, if you represent the majority of humanity, then perhaps it's best humans say bye bye to this planet."
Prove it! And don't give me video games. There has been no significant tropospheric warming in the last ten years! Get a clue, the facts don't fit the hypothesis. The only consensus is the simple fact that we don't know very much about the subject, but the little we do know suggests that climate change, from whatever source, will be positive for some regions and negative for others. That will always be the case. Warming in the past has generally been associated with progress and plenty, while cooling has presented some of the most trying times.
I suppose the most disturbing aspect of the discussion is the religious fervor with which your message is delivered. Rather than rational discussion, which you are apparently capable of, you descend to vulgarity, personal attacks, and Al Gore sound bites. That is the classic recourse for someone who has no rational argument.
It is rather childish, as well, to entertain the "bye bye to this planet" mentality. It displays a profound ignorance of the history of the resilience of this magnificent orb, and of its dominant species of which I am a proud member.
I hope I do represent the majority of humanity. I insist on an honest appraisal without histrionics and exaggeration. I require that science be divorced from political mechanics. And I demand a discussion devoid of the constraints of some imagined consensus. As Einstein answered a political "consensus", it only takes one scientist to prove a hypothesis wrong. The alarmists have yet to meet that burden of proof.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
The rantings of Mark Whitney from Utah
Hey Mark: we're all getting sick of your rantings. You're not a climate change skeptic, you're a climate change denier. You ain't gonna change your mind ever, because no evidence will
a) be considered by your or
b) ever be accepted.
Here's an an editorial in your own local paper, Salt Lake Tribune, debunking your views - and naming you personally. I'll let your home state newspaper speak for all of us.
Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Climate science a factual contrast to global warming 'skepticism'
The human species is at a crossroads. We can continue to ignore the rapidly increasing devastating impacts of our behavior. Or we can take responsibility for these impacts and start working together to solve the most pressing issue of our time, the warming of our planet, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels.
Despite the incredible challenges posed by global warming, which has the potential to destroy all life on Earth, some still seek to discredit, often on a purely partisan and ad hominem basis, the robust science that testifies to the reality of climate change.
Sandy resident Mark Whitney, for example, claims global warming science is merely an "unstable foundation underpinning the Gore-heads," and insinuates that scientists who are warning the public about the dangers of global warming are doing so merely to benefit from "the funding gravy train that has supported their flights of fancy" ("Alarmists losing ground," Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 21).
Contrary to Whitney's claims, scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is occurring - and at a rapidly accelerating pace. Since its formation in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest worldwide scientific collaboration in history, has "assessed and scrutinized the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced global warming."
The IPCC concluded that the Earth's climate is warming and that all signs point primarily to the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas.
The National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science also agree that global warming pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities. They also agree that this accumulation has resulted in a dangerous increase in surface air temperatures.
Even President Bush joined the other heads of state at the 2005 G8 Summit in recognizing the reality of global warming and the role of fossil fuel emissions in rapid global temperature increases.
Unfortunately, it has become easier than ever to disseminate misleading and inaccurate information about global warming. Those skeptical about the reality of global warming frequently cite a petition circulated in 1998 by The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Jim Elwell, for example, cited this petition when he criticized The Tribune for asserting that global warming is occurring ("Tribune ignores scientists," Aug. 9).
The petition offered on OISM's Web site provides a long list of signatures by "scientific experts" who contend global warming is nothing more than a myth. However, OISM provides no means to authenticate the names or verify their academic credentials. The site seems to permit anyone with a mouse and a keyboard the chance to weigh in, whether they have any relevant expertise or not.
Furthermore, the National Academies of Science has determined the scientific study attached to the petition is a sham, created by a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology. OISM has repeatedly declined to reveal the funding sources for the petition campaign, merely acknowledging that "industry" groups have been the main sources of funding.
This sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, by industry cronies and lobbyists who stand to gain financially from disputing global warming, undermines scientific work and obstructs the pursuit of solutions to the most urgent challenge facing our world.
Fringe "experts" and fraudulent advocacy campaigns are not the only beneficiaries of scientific chicanery. Many leaders in government have been hoodwinked into a head-in-the-sand policy of ignorance, sometimes even relying on works of fiction, rather than science, to justify their dangerous apathy.
Global warming is real and poses enormous risks to humanity and all life on Earth. Our obligations to future generations compel us to stop quibbling about whether global warming is occurring and start acting. The future will be determined by what each of us does now, at all levels of government, in business and in our individual lives.
To Mr. Wood
At times such as this, it's all I can do to restrain myself from having an "Ann Coulter moment," but I digress....
Since it seems you are incapable of using the brain God gave you to think beyond the scope of your beloved "experts," let's try a different tactic.
Before coming home to raise my children, I was a medical researcher and patient care giver at the local university. This university includes a college of medicine, college of nursing, and bio-terrorism studies- it's a major university.
My area of expertise is Ophthalmology, and my studies involved HIV/ AIDS research. Although I have been in my field since 1988, I did not go into research until 1999, and that was my first and last time doing it.
I learned several important things while there:
1 - The university environment is completely politically motivated to the detriment of all involved in academia.
2 - The results of any given study can be manipulated to match what the dollar-givers want. It's all about keeping those grant dollars flowing in, results be damned.
3 - Points 1 and 2 led me to become very skeptical of all "consensus" science wherein the people making said-consensus have millions of dollars being pumped into their pockets. This is exactly what is happening with global warming, but far more sinister, since this is a political trojan horse being used to steal the people's liberty on a global scale.
All those skeptics (heretics) who are rising up to refute this scam are losing their jobs, friends, credibility, and standing in the scientific community. There's no stronger proof in my book that they are being honest, while the consensus is getting rich, and powerful.
No Mr. Wood, I'm not an "expert climatologist," but I know a scam when I see one.
You say, "You nutjobs seem keen to quote Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus. But these guys lived in the age before science was respected, and before the scientific method we use today was accepted."
Do tell, what new scientific method do we use today? Either a scientific fact can be irrefutably proven, or it can't, making it not a fact. That hasn't changed, and it never will.
Liza B.
USA