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  • From: Tony Spencer <tony AT tonyspencer.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Junk science
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 23:14:06 -0400

Purely coincidence that the title of this piece is the same as my response
to Scott :)
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597

Geoff, I'm curious. Did you consider what the motivation would be for Gore
to create this movie? Did you consider what NASA's motivation for
originating the global warming theory? (an idea: budget cuts?) :)

On 7/8/06 3:21 PM, "Geoff Davis" <geoff AT geoffdavis.net> wrote:

> I have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" and thought it was very well done.
> I think Gore does a nice job of making the highlights of the current
> understanding of climate change both accessible and interesting; the
> film also provides a compelling look at Gore's own background and
> reasons for being passionate about the issue. It would make a good
> group activity -- certainly it would lead to some interesting
> discussions.
>
> Out of curiosity, I decided to read the junkscience link that was sent
> out earlier. It's a a pretty interesting study in propaganda.
>
> Some background: I have a PhD in applied math and taught math/stats as a
> professor for a few years. My graduate coursework included a lot of
> work on numerical simulations of physical systems, including a semester
> doing weather modeling, so I have some appreciation for the tremendous
> amount of effort that has gone into current climate models; I also have
> an appreciation for the difficulties involved in getting things right.
>
>> From my experience, the scientific community is full of smart, dedicated
> people with tremendous integrity who are devoted first and foremost to
> seeking out the truth. People do make mistakes, and there is occasional
> fraud and misconduct, but the system is effective at correcting itself
> over time. The current understanding of climate change involves the
> work of many, many people in many different fields. There is very
> little incentive to support the idea of global warming for any reason
> other than the fact that the data points that way; there are plenty of
> financial reasons to oppose it (a few major corporations have been very
> generous to skeptics). In spite of this, there is a strong consensus
> that global warming is real.
>
> Suppose I wanted to discredit some scientific finding. I'd have two key
> tasks: I would have to establish myself as an authority on the subject,
> and I would have to discredit existing authorities. I'd have to be
> careful not to include anything obviously false so that I could not be
> refuted easily. A few techniques I could use to accomplish these
> things:
> * Focus on things that are true but irrelevant
> * Drop a few names here and there so it sounds like I'm quoting
> authorities, but use no real bibliographic references so it's difficult
> to verify any claims I make
> * Pull materials out of context
> * Make no distinction between questionable sources and authoritative
> ones
>
> Before digging in, I thought it would be important to get a sense of
> what kind of motivations the author of a piece like this might have. Is
> he somebody knowledgeable? Does he have any kind of agenda? A bit of
> googling on Steven Milloy turns up this (and a lot of similar things):
> http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steve_Milloy
> In short, the author has spent a good chunk of his career working for
> Philip-Morris trying to discredit research on the dangers of second-hand
> smoke. I place a lot more trust real scientists
> (http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/06/27/involuntary.smoking.ap/index.html )
> than
> in tobacco lobbyists, but others may differ. More recently, he has
> received a
> lot of funding from Exxon-Mobil, a corporation that presumably perceives
> that
> political action on global warming will hurt its bottom line.
>
> A read through the article shows a lot of the techniques outlined above.
>
> * Greenhouse gases don't turn the atmosphere into a literal greenhouse!!
> These gases don't form a literal blanket!! [true but irrelevant]
>
> * Some of the warming effects of C02 are good! [true but irrelevant --
> too much of a good thing, etc]
>
> * Don't forget convection!! [true but irrelevant; also jargon
> establishing authority]
>
> * Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas! [true but irrelevant; see
> http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/qa/09.html ]
>
> * Humans aren't the only source of CO2 [true but irrelevant -- we're the
> main source of the current increase]
>
> * Plants need CO2! [true but irrelevant -- too much of a good thing]
>
> * Temperature changes are small compared to measurement errors [possibly
> true but irrelevant] Milloy's statements along these lines are what
> convince me that he is being willfully misleading. Elementary
> statistics teaches you how to detect small changes from a large pool of
> measurements even when there is a lot of variation in individual
> measurements. Milloy has a master's in biostatistics so he knows this.
>
> And on and on. Throughout Milloy kicks around author names to suggest
> he's citing real literature, but he provides few complete references so
> that it's a pain for anyone to follow up and verify anything he says.
>
> His main take-home is that warming of 1 degree Celsius is no big deal
> and that larger estimates are bogus because of uncertainties in the
> models.
>
> 1 C certainly doesn't sound like much. After all, the planet has
> already warmed by 0.6 C since 1850. (By the way, 1 C is a lowball
> figure for projected warming over the next century -- according to
> wikipedia, the currently accepted range is 1.4 C to 4.5 C). Even so,
> how much could that matter?
>
> The 0.6 C increase since 1850 has already caused noticeable effects.
> Because of the way heat is transported across the planet, warming is
> non-uniform. The poles heat up faster than the equator, and we have
> seen pretty substantial glacier melts in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
> The film shows lots of examples.
>
> As Milloy notes, temperatures have changed by a 1 C or so at various
> points in the past. From the planet's point of view, it's no big deal.
> However, to put this in human perspective, a series of temperature drops
> between the 13th-19th centuries of less than 1 C is called the Little
> Ice Age. The drops led to the extinction of the Norwegian settlers in
> Greenland and to the Great Famine of 1315-1317 that killed millions in
> Europe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_ice_age ). Other
> relatively modest climactic variations are thought to have been major
> contributors to the collapse of the Mayan civilization and of the
> Anasazi. Imagine what might happen if the high-end warming predictions
> come to pass.
>
> While there are surely uncertainties and errors in current climate
> models, they represent the best scientific estimate of what greenhouse
> gases will do. Ignoring the models amounts to a belief in an implicit
> model of one's own: that nothing will change. I personally prefer to
> put my belief in models based on science, no matter how appealing the
> corporate-funded alternative.
>
> Whenever science and policy intersect, there is the potential for
> similar kinds of push-back. There are still people who don't believe
> that HIV causes AIDS, for instance, and their influence has led to
> disastrous public health policies in South Africa. Let's hope that
> science fares a bit better in the case of global climate change.
> Teaching basic media literacy so that people are more able to recognize
> this kind of propaganda would be a good start.
>
> In any case, do see the film -- it's sobering but guardedly optimistic.
>
> Geoff
>
> ---
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