A climate of change

At TAM 2013 the last talk was by Peter Boghossian and it was on Authenticity. One of the take-away messages I got from that talk was that you should stand by your words and if someone is offended by them let them know that you're sorry that they were offended. But stand by what you said, if you really trust in it.

With that in mind I'm going to apologise in advance for those readers that are offended by the words that follow. I'm sorry that you feel offended, I really am. But I stand by the words I choose, and the order they are presented in.

After the 2013 NZ Skeptics Conference it was brought to my attention that there was an article in issue 108 of the NZ Skeptic magazine. A climate of hope was written by Barry Brill, Chairman of the Climate Science Coalition (CSC), a denialist organisation that has, in the past, been funded by the Heartland Institute1. The Heartland Institute is a US-based think tank that is actively funding climate denialism. Mentioning the Heartland link here is not to poison the well, but more to give context to the motives and position of the CSC.

The article itself2 was carefully written and, on the surface at least, sounds reasonable if you can get past the cherry-picking and well poisoning. However, if you follow through to the CSC site and read further their actual agenda is quite clear. My concern with this article is that it gives Brill and the CSC the ability to say that they've been published in the society's magazine, lending them unwarranted credibility and harming the reputation of the society in the process. I've already had this article quoted back at me once as evidence of the 'controversy' because of where it was published3.

There was also discussion about this in a private list that I'm in. There were a number posts that defended the decision to publish. One argument that was made was that of "Equal Time". I'll state here that I do not support the concept of equal time. If we're going to promote that then we should do the same for anti-vaxers and creationists. Instead I support, and would like to promote, the concept of proportional time here and in the media. The idea is that the time, word count, [insert your metric here], allotted to any point of view in any particular medium is rationed out based on the scientific consensus. The trick is finding a way to quantify the consensus.

In this case it's an easy one to do. "The Thin Red Wedge"4 is the outcome of a research paper that looked at the published literature on this topic. This gives us some reasonable numbers that we can work with. At this point there are eight articles/letters on climate in the NZ Skeptic with a total of 4368 words. The breakdown of this is two articles (one each way) and six letters (two for, four against.) I'm not so worried about the letters as conversation is encouraged and, if nothing else, can be an interesting case study into the mindset there. I will take into account the articles though, as these should represent the position of the society. This gives us 920 words pro science and 780 against the science. The ratio as determined by the graph is 13,950:24 which is 581:1. With 780 words against the science we have 543,180 available to the pro science side. Taking the current pro article into account this leaves us with 452,260 words. Or, roughly, 530(ish) articles that back a scientific position.

This is actual balance. If you think otherwise I'd love to hear your reasoning and if you think differently I'd love to know why.

Otherwise, to quote Dara O'Briain5; "Get in the fucking sack."

References

1. goo.gl/0rBYf4 (Hot Topic blog)
2. goo.gl/6Gb68Y (Issue 108, p 17, pdf link)
3. goo.gl/KLhBvn (Rob Julian, October 12, Meetup.com)
4. goo.gl/s1yTmP (James Powell (Recently updated, methodology available))
5. goo.gl/MmzrO2 (YouTube)

NZ Skeptic Editor David Riddell responds:

A while back there was a post on the New Zealand Skeptics Yahoo! mailing list which said: "The most amusing thing about this list is that we have short conversations about psychics and homeopathy with everyone agreeing. Then, about every 6 months, we have a huge heated debate about global warming where nobody changes their mind and everyone gets frustrated."

No topic divides skeptics quite so much as climate change. While many accept that anthropogenic climate change is both real and alarming, there are aspects of both sides of the climate debate which ring alarm bells for others, myself included.

I have no problem with the Position Statement at the top of the previous page. The physics of greenhouse gases have been well understood for more than a century, global temperatures have risen over that period, and it's hard to see how the concurrent rise in CO2 levels could not have played some role. There is indeed a scientific consensus on that, and I support it. The pie chart above captures this consensus well.

I do however take issue with the conflation of this consensus with views on the likely future extent and consequences of warming, and the measures that should be taken to reduce, mitigate or adapt to it. In particular I question the credibility of the more alarming of the projections we are bombarded with almost daily. Prophets of doom have a very long history, and a very poor track record.

Martin Bridgstock has a point that special interest groups have used their financial resources to further their own ends, and there is some genuinely bad material out there opposing the mainstream scientific view which doesn't deserve to be disseminated. But funding from Big Oil cannot explain all of the doubts about the seriousness of climate change. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is one climate scientist who has engaged with those who hold views outside the mainstream, and she has written about what this has cost her professionally:

"With regards to climate science, IMO the key issue regarding academic freedom is this: no scientist should have to fall on their sword to follow the science where they see it leading or to challenge the consensus. I've fallen on my dagger (not the full sword), in that my challenge to the consensus has precluded any further professional recognition and a career as a university administrator. That said, I have tenure, and am senior enough to be able retire if things genuinely were to get awful for me. I am very very worried about younger scientists, and I hear from a number of them that have these concerns."

DeSmogBlog notes2 Curry's company has received funding for short-term hurricane forecasting from an oil company since 2007, but I can find no indication she has received funding to spread doubt about global warming - if there was any, I suspect DeSmogBlog would have found it.

Why does this topic attract so much vitriol? Probably because of the perception that the fate of the world is at stake. Anyone who questions the model projections is delaying implementation of policies which are vitally necessary to stave off apocalypse. Better to accept that we're headed for catastrophe if we don't mend our ways, because the consequences flowing from that view, even if it turns out to be wrong, are far better than those deriving from the assumption that climate change is a minor issue, should that view prove incorrect.

This has always struck me as a version of Pascal's Wager3, which I've never found persuasive as a reason for belief in God; I don't find it a persuasive argument for belief in climate catastrophe either. The case for catastrophic climate change must be made on its scientific merits, and for that to happen the normal application of scientific scepticism must operate as it does elsewhere, without descent to name-calling and insult.

Nor is the promotion of belief in climate catastrophe free of all downsides. An acquaintance who worked at one of Auckland's largest secondary schools once told me many of the students there were in a state of despair, because the message they were getting was that climate change would destroy the world within their lifetimes. What this does for youth suicide rates is anybody's guess, but those studying the psychology of climate change appear to think such an attitude is only right and proper, and see lack of concern ("denial") as the problem to be addressed4.

Policies implemented in the rush to "fight climate change" can have unintended consequences. A classic example is the clearance of rainforest for palm oil plantations, encouraged by subsidies intended to reduce reliance on petrochemicals. Apart from the other effects of this, the net result is to increase carbon emissions5.

Another issue is that many governments find it easier to attribute their environmental problems to climate change, rather than their own stewardship practices. Coral reefs, for example, are under huge pressure6 from everything from over-fishing to deforestation (sediment and fluctuating salinity from land run-off are very bad for corals), but climate change often gets the blame for reef decline. This is despite corals being at their most prolific around the equator, and limited by cold rather than warmth.

As a skeptic, my biggest concern about over-egging the climate pudding is what it may do to the credibility of the scientific enterprise. In a recent article6 Garth Paltridge, Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies, wrote:

"[W]e have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem - or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem - in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavour."

There are, then, many reasons to be sceptical of the more extreme claims made about climate change. But I reiterate that the basic science is sound, and I agree with Gold that an article arguing that there is no link between CO2 and global temperature would have no place in this magazine (a couple of issues back I received, and rejected, just such an item). To date, there have been no such articles published. Barry Brill's A climate of hope was about indications that Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) may be lower than previously thought, as noted in the latest IPCC Assessment Report7. Implicit in the notion of ECS is the idea that climate is indeed sensitive to carbon. We can still argue about just how sensitive.

I should also draw readers' attention to the statement at the bottom left of Page 2, namely:

Opinions expressed in the New Zealand Skeptic are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of NZ Skeptics (Inc.) or its officers.

Publication in this magazine should not be taken to imply endorsement by the society of the article's contents, or indeed the views of its author. And it certainly should not be taken as an endorsement of any organisation to which an author may belong, or anything that any persons affiliated with that author may have written somewhere else.

The NZ Skeptic receives all manner of submissions, written from a broad range of perspectives. I don't agree with everything that gets published (that should be particularly obvious in this issue!), but I see the task of this publication as being to encourage its readers to think, rather than telling them what to think. Feel free to disagree with everything I've written, or with anything in any of the other articles or letters in this issue. One of the traditional strengths of the NZ Skeptics has been the breadth of views that its disparate members have held; long may that continue.

There have been a few climate-related articles come in recently, and I've put them all out in one batch, in the hope that we can now move on to other topics. If you want to continue the discussion in this magazine that's what the Forum is for; I'll keep it open for letters on climate for at least a couple more issues. But please play nicely, and keep it short.

References

1. judithcurry.com/2014/02/22/steyn-et-al-versus-mann/
2. desmogblog.com/judith-curry
3. plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
4. Swim, J., Clayton, S., Doherty, T., Gifford, R., Howard, G., Reser, J., Stern, P., Weber, E. 2009. Psychology and Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges. A Report by the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change.
5. www.postcarbon.org/article/1964306-how-palm-oil-in-everything-from
6. Pandolfi JM, Bradbury RH, Sala E, Hughes TP, Bjorndal KA, Cooke RG, McArdle D, McClenachan L, Newman MJ, Paredes G, Warner RR, Jackson JB. 2003. Science 301(5635):955-8.
7. judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/