Global Warming Denial
Best of the Blogs: Climate bill news out of Washington, DC
Published June 18, 2009 @ 01:23PM PT
I've been in Boston since Monday, at the Kavli Science Journalism Workshop on Nanotechnology, held at MIT (part of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships Program). So of course it's been a crazy busy week for global warming and related news out of Washington DC (as well as "news" by self-aggrandizing legislators). I've barely been able to keep up with what's happening, never mind blogging it up.
Since I'm soon to be in transit home, out of range of any internet connection for the rest of my cognitive peak hours, here's a 'best of the blogs' roundup to keep you busy for today:
Peterson Denies Global Warming Hurts Agriculture: ‘My Farmers Are Going To Say That’s A Good Thing’: House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) is emerging as a significant power player in the progress of the House energy and climate bill...some would say, a significant impediment. (Check out this four-page spread about the congressman on June 17.) He's "dismissed a White House report [which I blogged a couple days ago] on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture...[and] similarly discounted scientific analyses of the effects of biofuel production while demanding the House leadership make concessions to industrial agriculture in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454)." (Wonk Room)
Big Coal Using Climate Change Bill To Roll Back Clean Air Act: "A climate change compromise that erodes provisions of the Clean Air Act has supporters worried Democrats are being too generous to coal companies and undermining their chance to make a real dent in carbon emissions. The compromise is causing a rift between House Democrats and progressive activists and weakening support for climate change legislation just as it enters a crucial stretch -- perhaps a week away from a vote on the House floor." (The Huffington Post)
Myth: Waxman-Markey gives away 85 percent of allowances to polluters: "As the Waxman-Markey climate/energy bill nears a make-or-break vote in the House, those who work to improve it need more than ever to understand it first. Smart strategy is based on sound information. On that note: one of the central critiques of the bill is a red herring at best and at worst simply false. Here’s the critique, which should sound familiar from endless media repetition: Waxman-Markey gives away 85% of emission allowances to polluters, instead of auctioning them like Obama wanted.
..Two problems with the critique: it asks the wrong question and offers the wrong answer." (Grist)
Congressmen Reminisces Of *Last* Year’s Iranian Techno-Revolution, When House Republicans Whined About Offshore Drilling During Recess: "Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra’s hiding under his desk in the dark, smoky House chamber, chewing on some rocks. It’s 2008. The boys are locked in, demanding their freedom, their birthright, to pass insane offshore drilling legislation during a Congressional vacation. Mean old Nancy Pelosi and a few other Democrat Socialists hover overhead in pods, firing mortars and dropping paint cans of napalm, everywhere, to suppress the revolt…" (Wonkette)
Related: House Republicans: Iranian Bloggers Are Just Like Us, We’re Both An ‘Oppressed Minority’: "In comparing themselves to the Iranian dissidents, Dreier, Culberson, and Hoekstra offensively discount the great personal risk many Iranians are taking by continuing to blog, Twitter, and protest." (ThinkProgress)
Inhofe Watch: Stall climate action "until we get a new president"
Published June 04, 2009 @ 06:51PM PT
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) played to an appreciative crowd this week at a conference organized by the Heartland Institute, a bastion of global warming skepticism. His approach to legislating on the fate of the nation's energy policy? Create gridlock:
The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president—that shouldn’t be a problem.
(Hat tip to Kate Sheppard at Grist)
Cherry-picking vs. the Scientific Method
Published June 02, 2009 @ 11:11AM PT
Good science is about asking questions, and then gathering and analyzing information in order to find the most plausible answers to those questions.
And then doing it all over again in as many different ways as possible.
Here's what's involved in this process, termed the scientific method:
- Ask a question based on observed phenomena.
In climate research, the questions initially were variations on, "Why is the Earth's surface temperature increasing at an unusual rate relative to time? What is causing the accelerated rate of change?" Lately they've included more focused inquiries as well, such as "Why is the pH level of the ocean becoming more acidic? How is this affecting ocean life?" or "What impacts do warmer ocean temperatures have on the severity of hurricanes and typhoons?" - Do background research. This includes knowing how to build on the past work of others, and avoid repeating their mistakes
- Construct a hypothesis, in a way that you can measure the results, and answer your question.
- Test your hypothesis, by doing an experiment to gather data. Do the experiment more than once, and do it fairly (which means, change only one factor at a time and keep the rest constant).
- Analyze the data.
- Draw a conclusion.
You may find that your hypothesis was false. If so, construct a new hypothesis and start to examine it anew using the scientific method.
If you determine that your hypothesis is true, you may well want to test it again in a wholly different way, as well as compare it to the work of other researchers who have used other methods to test the same or similar hypotheses. - Communicate your results to other scientists.
Researchers present their results at professional conferences, and they submit their research to scientific journals to be published, often after a review by their scientific peers.
"Cherry-picking" means picking out the best, juciest, ripest facts to support a predetermined conclusion, from a whole bin of equally sweet, high-quality facts.
There's no test, no trial by peer review, and very seldom any admission that the hypothesis was false.
The cherry-picking phenomenon arises often in the realm of global warming skepticism. By and large -- as evidenced by the converations that take place on this blog -- skepticism involves accepting the data that support a pre-determined belief.
Usually that belief is that the earth's surface temperature is not increasing. A variant thread of belief is that global warming is happening, but isn't caused by human-propelled increases of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
To support the belief, deniers throw out the data that undercut these answers.
Throwing out good data because they contradict something one dearly wants to be true, regardless of whether it is or is not true, is cherry-picking.
Scientific facts are not about belief. They're our best, most informed, most tested explanations of what's actually happening to us, and around us.
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Image: Chart of the scientific method, via Science Buddies
"Global Warming Is Baloney" at Memphis Burger Kings
Published May 30, 2009 @ 10:17AM PT
Want fries with that flamebroiled planet? In Memphis, at least three Burger Kings have recently been sighted with the message "GLOBAL WARMING IS BALONEY" on their letterboards.
(But hey: "DRIVE THRU OPEN 24 HOURS." That's a relief.)
Contacted by a reporter for the Memphis Flyer, one Burger King's manager says the message reflected the views of Burger King corporate.
Contacted by ace public interest blog The Consumerist, however, the hamburger chain's HQ denied any such policy:
This statement does not reflect a Burger King Corp. (BKC) opinion or view. The two restaurants where these signs appeared are independently owned and operated and were not authorized to display this statement. The signs have since been removed.
Any SGW readers know what's up with these BK franchisees in Memphis? Seen something similar, in Memphis or elsewhere?
(Via Consumerist. Image via Memphis Flyer.)
Fatalistic Friday: Cherries and Canadian science at risk
Published May 22, 2009 @ 03:24PM PT
Make a Bet: The odds of much hotter temperatures by century's end are much better than the odds that we'll take the strong steps needed to stave them off, says peer-reviewed research out of MIT. (Science Centric; I wrote about this study a couple days ago.)
A Waste of Cherry: Northwest Michigan's $44 million cherry crop is in danger from rising temperatures. "...cherry blossoms now appear seven to ten days earlier than they did three decades ago, leaving them susceptible to potentially devastating spring frosts." (The Daily Climate)
Why There's No Sun Up in the Sky: Monsoons will become more difficult to predict as global warming advances, warn Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology researchers in a report published in Geophysical Research Letters last month. "The increased frequency and intensity of rainfall due to global warming will make the tropical atmosphere even more unstable and prediction more difficult in the future, they say," making it harder to give people a crucial 5-to-7-day warning in order to prepare for storms. (SciDev.net)
Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished: The state-run Weatherization Assistance Program for low-income families is at risk of being weakened. States trying to hustle economic stimulus monies into use want to give some of the money to other public agencies and private operators. The Weatherization Assistance Program has operated more or less the same for the past 35 years, and done a good job of it -- which is why it was particularly targeted to receive federal stim funds. (Stateline)
A Fishy Fish: Climate change is one of the top threats to the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of North America. Overly balkanized management of fishing and commercial shipping traffic are equally dire. (Science Daily)
Woe Canada: Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper has appointed two global warming deniers to posts with big impacts on scientific research. Mark Mullins of the right-wing Fraser Institute is now on the board of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. John Weissenberger, a former oil company geologist and Mr. Harper's former campaign manager, has been installed on the board of Canada Foundation for Innovation. University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver described the appointments as "very disturbing...What would the public think if we appointed outspoken proponents of the fallacy 'smoking doesn't cause cancer' as members of the boards funding medical and, in particular, cancer research?" (DeSmogBlog)
#Climatebill Update: House GOPers Mangle Facts on the Taxpayer's Dime
Published May 21, 2009 @ 10:31AM PT
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) (above) on how carbon dioxide is harmless because it's in cola...Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) echoing House colleague Michelle Bachmann's (R-Minn.) recent "harmless gas" routine by saying that CO2 just can't be bad because we breathe it out. Dave Roberts of Grist has compiled videos of these and other "vintage fruitloopery" coming from House GOP members during this week's energy-and-climate bill markup.
It strikes me as important to keep in mind that we are paying these elected officials as they take up everyone's time in the House and go before the media, with this stuff. It's not merely unscientific, but runs counter to this nation's best economic, environmental, and security interests, and too few of their colleagues, as well as mine, seem ready to call them on that.
[[Reps. Bachman and Shimkus could conduct some empirical research, by covering their heads with plastic bags, breathing in and out for a few minutes, and then getting back to the voting public on just how harmless carbon dioxide is.]]
Mainstream Press Falling for Spin on Greenhouse Gas Policy?
Published May 12, 2009 @ 01:42PM PT
The Obama administration is almost definitely not being riven from within by disagreements over how to handle global warming. But you wouldn't know that from how major news outlets broke a story today about the Environmental Protection Agency's endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.
David Roberts at Grist does a great job summarizing the situation, so I turn the baton over to him:
Today, Republican senators released a memo that had been submitted to the EPA’s docket by the Office of Management and Budget (the EPA is accepting comments on its “endangerment finding”). The memo is blisteringly critical of the EPA’s process, its science, and its proposed use of the Clean Air Act.
Republicans trumpeted this as official OMB—i.e., “Obama White House”—feedback.
But it’s not. When the EPA released its draft finding, the OMB undertook a standard process called Interagency Review. It sent the finding to every government department and agency (dozens), asking for feedback. It then collected all the comments it received and submitted them to the EPA, as required by law.
So the comments in the memo (and the other memos submitted today) could have come from anywhere within the federal bureaucracy.
And there’s more: typically during this process, the comments of various people within a dept. or agency are filtered up through the political appointee running the dept./agency. That appointee filters them, reconciles them, and sends them back to the reviewing agency. But this review process happened within Obama’s first 100 days. In many cases there is no political appointee running things yet; in other cases there’s an appointee frantically trying to get his or her sea legs, not paying much attention to things like interagency reviews.
Which means these comments could have come from just about any careerist in any of these agencies. In some cases—and having reviewed some of the crazy, old-school denier stuff in these memos, I strongly suspect this is true—career bureaucrats at the agency/dept. could have just dug up comments from the Bush administration era and forwarded them along.
AP, The New York Times., the Chicago Tribune, and ABC News, among others, also run variations on this story.
I don't tend to go for the media critique -- daily news reporting is hard work, and it's all too easy to miss the nuances or even get something wrong in the rush to make a series of daily deadlines. (Happily, AP already seems to be updating its reporting.) As Dave puts it, "This is one of those cases where it’s entirely possible to be semantically correct and leave a misleading impression."
But my profession needs to be careful that we've really left behind the bad old days of opting for a false balance over fair and accurate reporting -- when those seeking to protect fossil fuel interests successfully spun the press with misinformation about global warming.
