BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias 678
Amtiskaw writes "Discussion of climate change is rife with claims and counter-claims of partisanship and bias. Some of the most serious of which being that the scientific community is smothering more skeptical research in the field. Now the BBC is asking for evidence of this self-censorship. From the article:
'Journals are meant to publish the best research irrespective of whether it accepts that the sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ... So the accusations that all is not well at the heart of climate science, and that censorship is rife in organisations which award research grants, the editorial boards of journals and the committees of the IPCC, should be examined seriously.
Readers are asked to submit evidence of bias, which the the BBC will then investigate.'" Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
Global climate has never been static (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/ [ncpa.org]
Re:Journalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Peer-reviewed literature on global warming/climate (Score:4, Informative)
"Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686/ [sciencemag.org]
Wrong about Lomborg (Score:4, Informative)
At least, that's what he said in the Skeptical Environmentalist. He may have changed his mind since then.
Lomborg (Score:5, Informative)
* The level of anthropogenic heating is unclear.
* Climate predictions routinely exaggerate changes or use worst case scenarios
* Cost calculations of warming frequently omit: benefits of warming (fewer people dying of cold weather, better crop yields), technological improvements, and behavior adaptation
* Given that the mechanisms driving warming (and there for the effectiveness of proposed solutions) is unclear, and the cost usually exagerated, it would be unwise to devote huge sums to this problem. Instead look for problems where the benefit is clear and a solution is available (such as providing clean water to the worlds poor) to spend this money on.
Anyone who is interested in this and other environmental issues must read his book. He set out years ago to debunk the claims of Julian Simon, and found himself changing his mind the more statistics he researched.
He does claim that everything is hunky dorry, or that there are no problems. What he advocates is a rational examination of problems and their costs so that we can evaluate the best course of action.
Climate change is not disputed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The key problem (Score:3, Informative)
What will happen when the BBC discovers this? Will they loudly proclaim that there is no bias in climate science, and thus all the biased media misreporting of science must be true? Sadly, I suspect so.
Re:Journalism? (Score:5, Informative)
In his case the reaction to his work was unfavourable and he was censured initially by FUD and personal attacks. IPCC are responsible but he was vilified for pointing out WWF errors and inaccuracy.
How can you make correct policy decisions if the information you are getting has been deliberately distorted? It's the same problem whether it's environmentalists or Big Energy.
If they're both allowed to fire lies at each other then the debate is stifled and confusing as people can't trust either side. By separating what he calls the Litany which is pseudoscience apart from credible peer reviewed science he's done a service to the global warming debate.
Lomborg set out an economic case based on the costs of mitigation that showed that flaws in the way Kyoto work will make it very ineffective and excessively expensive.
Kyoto has damaged the environment by diverting resources and mindshare away from efforts which would have been more effective at reducing global warming.
Even the Stern report contains such admissions. Certain mitigation strategies (carbon sequestration in biomass) will not be discussed for years because they are not covered within the scope of Kyoto and the barriers against implementing them were primarily political and not technical.
By that I mean that more effort to save rainforests wasn't made despite interest in the method because participants in the treaty couldn't agree on how to count the reduction and who should get credit for it.
Meaning of "censorship" (Score:3, Informative)
"Censorship" means literally "evaluation"; Roman Censors [wikipedia.org] used to watch over the Republic's morals and had a few other duties (including the census). Of course we usually we refer to the case when speech, art or other forms of expression are evaluated and denied publication. This is bad as everybody has a right to speak, and evaluating cases in which this should not apply leads rapidly to those in charge abusing their power and silencing those who contest them.
However, in science there are serious evaluation guidelines. If claims are cooked up or not backed by data, they are just that. Can't take the heat, don't play the game.
As a side note, Lomborg is a cook [lomborg-errors.dk].
Re:The key problem (Score:4, Informative)
- If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?
Source [epa.gov]- If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
Source [epa.gov]- If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
- If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
See these pages:Re:Journalism? (Score:2, Informative)
It's just odd how eager they are to carry Al Gore's message to the masses, seemingly without question. They put out the word "consensus" while ignoring guys like the lead hurricane scientist in the U.S. (yes, Hemos, there are many high-profile scientists who don't buy the global warming alarmism).
Worst of all, the media ignores the financial angle. Haven't you wondered why so many of the same scientists get quoted over and over in newspaper articles? These guys are looking for federal funding for their research. Global warming alarmism has a huge monetary motive that the media completely ignores. Same thing with embryonic stem cell research, which has yielded no results compared to adult and cord cells--two types of stem cell research that have gained private investors. In other words, the reason you see so much outcry from certain scientists over embryonic stem cell research is because they can't get any private investors due to lack of results, and so they're seeking to get money from the government. And so it is with many global warming scientists seeking funding.
In 10 years when the environment is just fine and we're onto the next trend in the media, people will look back on this year's alarmism and laugh in the same way we laugh at the global cooling alarmism of the 1970s.
Re:Journalism? (Score:4, Informative)
That is really interesting. In which field did you work? In my field (theoretical condensed matter physics) claims that something is not so important are very hard to judge. It tends to be either testable via an experiment (and therefore right or wrong, in which case the importance is obvious), or untestable, in which case the importance is indeterminate but needs to be judged on its theoretical usefulness.
But I can imagine that a field of researchers, as a collective group, would be rather hostile to a claim that their entire field of study is not important. If you have built your career on a particular study, and it turns out that that study doesn't mean what you originally thought it did, then it is a life-changing moment. Did you plan for it? ie. were you planning to then move into some related (or unrelated) field? If not, how were you going to avoid going down with the sinking ship?
I know that there have been many examples of this in the past, but I am struggling to remember even a single instance just now: science is very harsh in that research that does not end up forming the body of work upon which future research depends, is very quickly forgotten.
There is of course a very large potential catastrophe looming, if it turns out in the end that string theory is a dead end. That would account for almost an entire generation of particle physicists!
Re:Journalism? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Of course Scientists are biased (Score:3, Informative)
Or were you saying that people in Academia are more likely to be Democrats and thus you have an irrational belief that their science is wrong and biased?
In modern politics "Conservative" and "Liberal" have very little to do with the beliefs of the parties which claim those names (or are associated with those views). I can't speak about American politics but in most countries the Conservative Party holds views that were traditionally associated with Liberals, and the Liberal Party holds very traditional Socialist Views.
Outside of practical fields of study (Buisness, Engineering, and Computer Science), and Ecconomics, most Academics have an anti-corporate outlook largely because they're sheltered from buisness; even in Computer Science there are lots of professors who think OSS is morally good whereas For-Profit software is evil. This slant is what is typically refered to as the "liberal-bias".
The problem isn't that the science being done is "liberal" or "conservative", but that there is an unchecked bias which may impact results which exists at (pretty much) every major university.
Re:Journalism? (Score:3, Informative)
I wish I could laugh when I see statements like this: "X has proven that Y will cause Z" when Y and Z are an incredibly complex solution and a poorly understood problem, respectively. The world is just a hell of a lot less controallable and predictable than we would like, but a willingness to experiment with imperfect solutions is one of the best ways toward improving them.
Lomborg has at best shown that there are plausible arguments against the effectiveness of Kyoto. It is good for such critics to be engaged, and we would all do well to listen to them. Their voices need to be heard and heeded in the globa climate change debate. But to suggest that anyone is in a position to know at a level beyond guesswork that one solution or another will or will not work is naive.
Kyoto is a flawed attempt to address the problem, but it is for the moment all we've got. It may work better than anyone ever expected. No one has a crystal ball to give them 20/20 foresight. Anyone who has ever solved a novel technical problem is aware that the first solution is rarely the best and frequently not even a solution at all. But they also know that it is better to start working with the solution you have, and thus better understand the problem, than to do nothing until you have a solution that satisfies everyone.
Re:The key problem (Score:4, Informative)
It is real. Nothing is permanent. It is not due to solar forcing.
If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
The primary forcing is greenhouse gas emissions, notably CO2 but also methane. Water vapor provides the strongest greenhouse forcing - and a warmer atmosphere will have more water vapor, which will lead to a warmer earth due to its greenhouse forcing, rinse, lather, repeat. This is known as a positive feedback. If it was the only game in town (it is not) we would probably end up like Venus.
Deforesteation and other messing with the carbon cycle may play a role which may go in either direction. One must look at the albedo effect as well.
Do not - ever - talk about ozone depletion and global warming in the same sentence. They are entirely unrelated. Thank you.
If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
"Business as usual" will lead to a much different world in 100-200 years.
You can't just "grow more forests" to take up the extra CO2. Does not work that way. Even if it did: trees decompose. Guess what a product of decomposition is?
Some people are beginning to seriously consider carbon sequestering. This is a horrible situation we have set up for ourselves. I wonder where the energy is going to come from to power this sequestering technology? Fossil fuels?
And just wait until a reservoir of CO2 that didn't manage to form other compounds when you sequestered it manages to burp itself into the lower troposphere and suffocate life in low-lying areas.
I repeat: business as usual will lead to extremely different conditions across the planet in a couple hundred years.
Earth's climate system is nonlinear. This means a focring of A does not necessarily lead to a response of some fraction of A. If you push the climate system far enough it may (and indeed has in the past) flip into another very different regime. Once you reach this so-called tipping point you cannot get back to the original state.
If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
Transition out of fossil fuel dependence. Pure and simple. Even then we may reach the tipping point. But it is thought we can turn things around if we begin to act now.
Seriously folks - educate yourselves. Learn some physics, raditive transfer, etc. Get an introductory meteorology textbook at the very least. This is about science, pure and simple, and in order to be taken seriously in this discussion you need to understand the science beneath it. Armchair climatologists are a dime a dozen and are mostly making fools of themselves simply because they don't understand the basic fundamentals. Unfortunately most people are not educated enough to realize this and think there is some sort of big debate on the causes of recent climate change. There isn't. It's all about how much, and when.
Attention metamoderators (Score:3, Informative)
Lindzen, by the way, is a climate scientist who thinks that negative feedback loops will win, so it's not just Lomborg and Gray.
Re:Journalism? (Score:3, Informative)
Fabricated? Show proof (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I find unsubstantiated is your assertion that the facts were fabricated. Accusing Prof Rowland and Molina of using fabricated evidence is a serious charge that must be backed up by solid evidence.
Otherwise, I will assume that you are engaged in politically motivated slander.
Re:Institutional Bias (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think we should classify the IPCC's (or others) results as evidence from conducted experiments, nor conclusions developed from sound mathematical and scientific theory. Indeed, the overwhelming bulk of conclusions have been drawn from regressions and computer models. As a fellow /.er I tend to put a great deal of faith in these methods, but the level of uncertainty surrounding the parameters used in these models and regressions is staggering. For example, until recently the use of aerosols was believed to contribute to the greenhouse effect, however it has now been shown that, as they reflect a great deal of incoming solar radiation, aerosols actually have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. Simply put, there is a great deal of assumption in these models, much of which has little, if any, scientific foundation.
Case in point is the infamous "hockey stick" produced by Mann for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). While this graph seems to conclusively show a global warming trend, the structure of the model used to create this "scientific result" is fundamentally flawed. For example, when fed random data the model tends to produce hockey-stick-shaped results, and the strongest weighted (by far) parameters were tree ring thicknesses, a measurement that has been shown to depend greatly on CO2 levels (which all agree have increased) and not just temperature. Mann does not correct for this. See McIntyre and McKitrick [uoguelph.ca] (note: not Lomborg and still significant counter-claimists) for more information.
Very OT: Home schooling (Score:5, Informative)
This is just a pet peeve of mine, but fear of secular education isn't the only reason anybody home schools. That is, not all home schoolers are religious nuts trying to indoctrinate their children and keep them from some kind of "bad thoughts" out there. I was home taught for entirely different reasons (social troubles in big, lowest-common-denominator, shut-up-sit-still-and-memorize-this public schools, and the inability to pay for smaller, more progressive private schools that could cater to gifted students) and I'm about the most anti-dogmatic person I know. And I'm now almost through with university, with very good grades, so I can't complain about the quality of the education either.
That's all, just wanted to harp on that. Home school != religious indoctrination.
Re:Journalism? (Score:3, Informative)
Not really. Planck pointed out that the blackbody radiation law can be derived, on the assumption that the permissible energies of radiation are not continuous, but discrete. (if you have some basic math, the idea is to replace the integral, which diverges in the high frequency limit, with a discrete summation over integral multiples of the basic frequency unit (Planck's constant), and it no longer diverges). Although it was enough to get him a well-deserved Nobel prize, Planck didn't give any explanation for this phenomena, and as far as I know he didn't even believe in quantum mechanics and tried for the remainder of his life to somehow reconcile his discoveries with classical mechanics, which turned out to be impossible.
From your own Wikipedia link:
Lomborg is not a scientist (Score:3, Informative)
Others have pointed out that Lomborg isn't disputing global warming but have failed to point out why. He can't! He's not a scientist, well, at least not physical science.
As his bio [lomborg.com] points out, he is a political scientist. His area of expertise is public policy and since 1998 his major focus has been on public policy surrounding global warming. If it wasn't in the original post, I'd probably have modded (yes, I'm sitting on mod points but decided to respond directly) comments regarding Lomborg as off-topic; the BBC is looking for evidence of scientific bias not of political dissension.
Re:Of course Scientists are biased (Score:1, Informative)
You should stop by the last department where I worked -- it is an Aerospace Engineering department at a state university. I learned not to talk politics there, because I'd have a bunch of young-earth creationists and rabid Bushies jump on me whenever I'd say something that wasn't on their talking points. For the record, I tend toward Libertarian positions (socially liberal and fiscally very-very conservative), and I was WAY left-of-center for that group.
They were great people to work with -- just so long as you didn't criticize "the decider", or his little war, around the water cooler.
Re:Journalism? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about the rest of your post but this is definitely a lie [splcenter.org], Mr. Pot.
Re:Journalism? (Score:4, Informative)
He "concedes that he hasn't published [his theory of how thermohaline circulation has caused recent warming of the planet] in any peer-reviewed journal. He's working on it, he says."
The impression I get from RealClimate and the Washington Post is that Gray is not capable of doing numerical modeling, or even, necessarily, understanding the models which dominate the field.
About the only scientifically respectable semi-skeptic, Richard Lindzen, says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor, but he knows more about hurricanes than anyone in the world. I regard him in his own peculiar way as a national resource."
That's a very complimentary way of saying he should be put out to pasture.
See the following articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /04/gray-on-agw/ [realclimate.org]
You didn't read those articles, did you? (Score:3, Informative)
2. The second article is about evangelicals talking about how important it is to fight global warming. Yeah, they're real skeptics.
3. The website called "Answers in Genesis" does not represent the position of any church - which is what I specified, remember? In any case, it's an editorial complaining that Christianity Today - which does represent a national christian organization - wants Christians to do more to fight global warming.
4. An article in "Grist" - which turns out to be another editorial complaining about Christians, but not actually representing the position of any Christian organization.
5. You cite a blog about films!?! as evidence that Christians don't believe in global warming?
6. A timeline quoting headlines related to environmental news. Okay. Topics include Pat Robertson announcing that he believes in global-warming.
Holy Shit, dude. This is your evidence that mainstream Christian organizations don't believe in global warming?!?
Re:Journalism? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Institutional Bias (Score:1, Informative)