Yes, Ed looks at the issue too simply. The point was the video - unscientific reporter trying to muddy what someone with actual training with weather has to say.
Trying to? Why assume that? He's could be just "looking at the issue too simply", right?
I'm not sure if that was a slip up or an attempt to construct a strawman. I'm guessing this aside is because you thought I placed faith in Ed's analysis. My fault, I should have added that caveat.
I'm not sure if you're
genuinely not sure, or if you just like to let people know you think the person you're talking to might be
dishonest. Because really, how else could statements like that be interpreted? The aside is because your link contained an even more extreme example of the very phenomenon you were trying to point out. The fact that you posted it hoping to show the trend in the "opposition" gives the impression that you're less critical of your own side. I'm not
sure of that, naturally.
There are two problems with this line of thinking. One of them is that it buys into the illusion of science as an objective process pliable to cold, hard rationality. In many ways this is true, but in several others it is false. Grant money, personal credibility, and career opportunities are all priorities scientists juggle, and coincidentally all of them have come into the light over the last few months in the climate field. The emails revealed how bigwig scientists tried to nip dissent in the bud and how they pumped hot air into outrageous predictions in order to keep their millions in grant money.
The consensus on this could have evolved in any number of ways, but
this is where we are. Science is an objective process, for the most part. When there hundreds and thousands of people all around the world looking at the same data and collecting their own independently, frauds
will be found out. To suggest otherwise is to invoke a conspiracy theory. Of course, nothing like this can influence mere
opinion, right?
Pew did some interesting surveys last year. Here's a link:
http://people-press.org/report/528/
As we can see above, a mere 12% of scientists in general identified as Republican or leaning Republican.
Above, we see that at least 85% of the general population feels there is a global warming phenomenon versus at least 94% of scientists. Only 4% of scientists indicated that they felt the Earth was not getting warmer.
Finally, this shows us that of the breakdown by party affiliation of people in the general public who feel that the Earth is not getting warmer -- 24% for Republicans versus 4% for Democrats versus 9% for Independents.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough information here to determine what percentage of actual climate scientists who are active in climate research feel that the Earth isn't warming, although this article here...
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/
... suggests that 97% of them agree that
humans are causing it, thereby implying that only 3% of them are left to break down into categories of "the Earth isn't warming", "I don't know", and "piss off".
Want to guess what percentage of them are Republican? I wouldn't dare, but we can crunch some numbers to provide context. Let's assume that there is no bias at all. This is a laughable assumption (4% versus 24% in the general population, remember), but please bear with me. If 4% of scientists believe there is no global warming and 12% of scientists are Republican or lean Republican and there is no bias, that means fewer than 0.5% of Republican or Republican-leaning scientists think the Earth is not warming. Remember, this number would be even
lower among active climate scientists.
So, let's say you're one of the conservative media members of which the topic of this thread speaks of who are trying to deny that the Earth is warming by pointing out the recent blizzards. As part of your extensive research on the topic, you go to a science convention where there are
two hundred scientists in attendance and interview the scientists who agree with your opinion. There are
eight of them. You gather them them in a room and to break the ice you show them the Obama/Joker button you had made and quickly discover that only
one of them voted for McCain. One guy -- out of 200. Weird, huh? What are the chances that you've got the only eight guys at the convention who don't believe that global warming is a real phenomenon and seven of them voted Democrat? Pretty damned slim if you ask me.
Where I'm going with all this is that the primary forces acting against scientific objectivity are political and corporate -- not necessarily in that order, but certainly intertwined. In that CNN article above reporting on the 2008 survey of climate scientists, 82% of them thought that human activity contributed to global warming yet only 47% of petroleum industry scientists thought so, a difference of 35%! Bias? I think so. The academic and government world has no particular vested interest in helping to wreck the economy and put people out of jobs. But petroleum scientists are probably somewhat focused on theirs and like to sleep better at night. This kind of bias is far, far more powerful and evident than anything you mentioned.
Those "bigwig scientists" have many people working for them, peer review, and multiple institutional and governmental agencies actively working to keep them honest. There really isn't much incentive for them to lie and lose their careers because the institutions they represent don't have a vested interest in seeing them come up with one result or another. Even if we wanted to suggest that the US government -- where most of that sort of grant money comes from -- was pushing them for
particular results, consider that since 1980, 20 out of 28 years were under Republican administrations, and under the last one, scientists operating under government grants were actively discouraged from reporting results that
differed from the party line:
The other problem is that you are still trying to use suggestive language to position yourself. Everyone does this, of course, but in matters such as this it crops up more IMO.
And you're still trying suggest that I'm not honest and resort to rhetorical parlor tricks. I'm not using "suggestive language", I'm differentiating between political pundits wearing silly scientist costumes they bought at Toys-R-Us and
scientists with, like, degrees and stuff.
What do you mean by "real scientists?" Climate scientists, scientists in general, or engineers? Curiously, the current head of the IPCC is a
railway engineer. One of the major faces of the AGW PR in America is Bill Nye, a
mechanical engineer. Much of the IPCC's predictions now being torn apart were made by
advocacy groups like the WWF. This is a serious problem. Now on the other side, we have people like statistical mathematicians who try to tease out what they believe are tricks in the data. That's comparable to engineering. (Yes, we also have our pundits and pols.) But there are also people like
this guy. Yes, we have real scientists too.
Bill Nye's degree and early work experience doesn't quite define what he's gone on to do. He's a science educator, and does so on the gamut of science disciplines. As such, he's able to understand and interpret scientific papers -- something I defy the likes of Glen Beck to do. I also doubt seriously that the current head of the IPCC isn't science literate or uninformed as well. You'll recall a recent head of FEMA was a lawyer turned horse organization commissioner who is now a radio talk show host. That, of course, has nothing to do with anything, except to say that sometimes people are hired for their ability to administrate, not to do the work. No one expected old Brownie to get out and start slinging sand bags himself.
As for statistical tricks in the data, check out
this trick:
I mean, finding the trend there is like, impossible.
Look, I know you're (probably) not saying that there
is no global warming at all, just saying there are possibly legitimate reasons to question that the impact human activity is having on it. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing to question, if only because we need to understand it. I can't see how we're
not, collectively, what with our emissions, deforestation, run off, etc, but vagueness and assumption are bad science. We need to understand the specifics, even if those specifics tell us we can't impact nature. Of course, even if we can't, even lesser animals don't foul their own nests.
But the thread topic is about whether or not these TV and internet pundits are playing to the ignorant or actually ignorant. Says so right in the title.
Further, the topic isn't AGW, but just GW. Given the extreme paucity of scientists who don't believe that the Earth is getting warmer, these pundits that we're talking about are either desperately grasping at straws and reporting their doubts as fact, cynically plying their audiences with any old thing that will convince them to remain in-line with their party, or they're well, idiots. With the exception of a lot of bloggers, I tend to think that people savvy enough to become newscasters or get their own commentary show are at least capable of processing basic explanations, which again calls either their honesty or laziness into question -- or both.
Far from mindlessly sucking at the teat of mainstream science and hoping the glow will rub off on them, most journalists report that global warming is real because that's the only responsible thing to report. AGW might be a different thing, but it also a different topic and also really, if you study those Pew Poll results, not that different so far as consensus is concerned, even if the specifics are lacking. As the CNN article notes, the implications of these polls is the more scientists learn about global climate, the more convinced they are of it. By implying that mainstream journalists are remiss at reporting like they do, it is as if you're placing them at that conference with the 200 scientists and mocking them for siding with the 196 of them that agree.
