I have been criticizing some of the strategies and excesses of climate science. Now, I want to focus my criticism on those non-scientists who are certain that climate change is a hoax.
One of the most obvious signs of conservative disdain shows up every time it snows; the blogosphere, Fox News, and talk radio just explode. Surely, the existence of snowfall proves that the earth is not warming, they insist. What could be more obvious?
Well, three things. First (and I’ll try to say this without being condescending), snow does not indicate coldness in the air. Snow is simply precipitation when the air temperature is 32 degree or less. So, let’s say that it snowed when it was 30 degree on February 1, 2011, but didn’t snow when it was 29 degrees on February 1, 2010. That means that it was warmer on that day in 2011 than 2010, even though it snowed in 2011 and not 2010. Got it?
Second, the worst fears of climate scientists are that the global temperature will rise 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. What does this mean? Certainly it means that you can’t go outside and predict whether the planet is warming based on how the temperature feels to you. This is change we’re not going to feel.
Finally, and most importantly, the theory is called global warming and not local warming. That is to say, no scientist is predicting how the temperature will change in your little city or neighborhood or area of the country. Rather, they are talking about global temperature rise. So, for you climate deniers, you can’t say, ‘Oh, look, it’s colder this January than last January in my state. Therefore the world is getting colder, not warmer. On the contrary, since we are talking about global warming, you must factor in the warming temperature of say, the Arctic, before drawing any conclusions about temperature change.
My point is this: no rational person should make judgments about climate change if those judgments are based primarily on their personal observations of local temperatures. And for the love, snowfall doesn’t tell us anything.
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
4.18.2011
3.23.2011
Climate Change, Part Two
Last week I described a substantial problem I had with climate science. This week, I want to focus on a complaint I have about the way in which climate science is presented – i.e., the style, not the substance.
It seems that conservatives in general think that the theory of global warming is some kind of hoax. This allows them to say that we don’t need a big, world-wide government solution (because there is no problem), and government should relax their environmental rules, so that the free market can operate unimpeded. So, what possible evidence will it take to change their minds?
For the optimistic liberal, I have some bad news for you: there is no such evidence. The idea that the free market doesn’t need any guidance from government is fundamental to their belief system, and it is very, very, difficult to get someone to admit that a fundamental belief that they have is wrong. The scientific community doesn’t seem to understand this. They just keep doing research, publishing articles, etc, hoping that some evidence that they produce will finally get the conservatives to admit that they were wrong about global warming.
This will never happen. So instead of wasting time trying to produce new evidence in hopes that some of that evidence will be convincing, we need to shift the environmental conversation to other, less controversial issues. For instance, our oceans are in big trouble, we are running out of room to store our trash safely, our aquifers are being depleted by our desire for meat, the world is running out of arable land, and, as we learned last week, nuclear energy needs greater security. These are just a few of the dozens of issues confronting our generation as the world’s population continues to rise with no end in sight.
What these problems have in common is that they are not really controversial. But since conservative believe that climate science is ‘junk science,’ and scientists and the media associate environmental concerns with global warming, the result is that conservatives are hostile to any environmental concerns. This is why the conversation about the environment has to start with concerns that are not controversial – such as dirty air, toxic pollution, etc. Even conservatives will have to admit that we need laws to prevent such things. These should be ‘common ground’ issues.
It seems that conservatives in general think that the theory of global warming is some kind of hoax. This allows them to say that we don’t need a big, world-wide government solution (because there is no problem), and government should relax their environmental rules, so that the free market can operate unimpeded. So, what possible evidence will it take to change their minds?
For the optimistic liberal, I have some bad news for you: there is no such evidence. The idea that the free market doesn’t need any guidance from government is fundamental to their belief system, and it is very, very, difficult to get someone to admit that a fundamental belief that they have is wrong. The scientific community doesn’t seem to understand this. They just keep doing research, publishing articles, etc, hoping that some evidence that they produce will finally get the conservatives to admit that they were wrong about global warming.
This will never happen. So instead of wasting time trying to produce new evidence in hopes that some of that evidence will be convincing, we need to shift the environmental conversation to other, less controversial issues. For instance, our oceans are in big trouble, we are running out of room to store our trash safely, our aquifers are being depleted by our desire for meat, the world is running out of arable land, and, as we learned last week, nuclear energy needs greater security. These are just a few of the dozens of issues confronting our generation as the world’s population continues to rise with no end in sight.
What these problems have in common is that they are not really controversial. But since conservative believe that climate science is ‘junk science,’ and scientists and the media associate environmental concerns with global warming, the result is that conservatives are hostile to any environmental concerns. This is why the conversation about the environment has to start with concerns that are not controversial – such as dirty air, toxic pollution, etc. Even conservatives will have to admit that we need laws to prevent such things. These should be ‘common ground’ issues.
3.03.2011
Climate Change, Part One
Recent polls have shown that as many as 41% of Americans believe that global warming news is ‘exaggerated,’ which is probably a nice way to say that around 41% of Americans think that the theory of global warming is BS. Not surprisingly to any of my regular blog readers, I am not a climate change skeptic, although before I defend my position in the next weeks I want first to state my dissatisfaction with global warming science.
It doesn’t take a scientist to know that the weather on our planet is not the same as it has been in recent decades. You have only to look at photographs, graphs and tables of melting polar and glacier ice to realize that something is going on – but what? Scientific consensus is that the climate is changing because of greenhouse gas emission, and, as I will explain next week, this is a respectable theory.
But the word ‘because’ is an important word, and it makes all the difference. Philosophers know (and scientists are supposed to know), that cause and effect analyses are quite difficult, even when there is a large sample size. For example, the theory that smoking causes lung cancer was certainly a worthwhile theory when it was first proposed (whenever that was, exactly). But you can’t just conclude that smoking causes lung cancer from one dead smoker, for the simple reason that you must control for variables. For instance, does the brand of cigarette matter? Does the amount smoked per day matter? Does the number of years as a smoker matter? Does the age that the smoker started smoking matter? Does it matter that the smoker lived next to a factory with high vapor admissions? Does it matter whether the smoker also had asthma before he started smoking? And of course, I could go on.
Today we can safely say that we have controlled for a sufficient number of variables to infer that smoking is the cause of lung cancer. But what if our sample size is not millions of smokers, but one single earth? And what if the only member of our sample, the earth, is 4.5 billion years old (our best current estimate)? This wouldn’t be much of an issue, but human beings happen to live for only 80 years or so, making billion year estimates impossible. Scientists tell us that they do have temperature records embedded in ice, but the oldest glaciers are only 800,000 years old.
I think we have to at least admit that these two facts alone significantly complicate any cause/effect analysis, and I would respectfully request that scientists stop using the ‘k – word.’ We human beings know far less than we usually claim.
It doesn’t take a scientist to know that the weather on our planet is not the same as it has been in recent decades. You have only to look at photographs, graphs and tables of melting polar and glacier ice to realize that something is going on – but what? Scientific consensus is that the climate is changing because of greenhouse gas emission, and, as I will explain next week, this is a respectable theory.
But the word ‘because’ is an important word, and it makes all the difference. Philosophers know (and scientists are supposed to know), that cause and effect analyses are quite difficult, even when there is a large sample size. For example, the theory that smoking causes lung cancer was certainly a worthwhile theory when it was first proposed (whenever that was, exactly). But you can’t just conclude that smoking causes lung cancer from one dead smoker, for the simple reason that you must control for variables. For instance, does the brand of cigarette matter? Does the amount smoked per day matter? Does the number of years as a smoker matter? Does the age that the smoker started smoking matter? Does it matter that the smoker lived next to a factory with high vapor admissions? Does it matter whether the smoker also had asthma before he started smoking? And of course, I could go on.
Today we can safely say that we have controlled for a sufficient number of variables to infer that smoking is the cause of lung cancer. But what if our sample size is not millions of smokers, but one single earth? And what if the only member of our sample, the earth, is 4.5 billion years old (our best current estimate)? This wouldn’t be much of an issue, but human beings happen to live for only 80 years or so, making billion year estimates impossible. Scientists tell us that they do have temperature records embedded in ice, but the oldest glaciers are only 800,000 years old.
I think we have to at least admit that these two facts alone significantly complicate any cause/effect analysis, and I would respectfully request that scientists stop using the ‘k – word.’ We human beings know far less than we usually claim.
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