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Palin, the Post, and Climate Change; What All Americans Should Know – Part VI, and Conclusion

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Part VI, and the Conclusion, of this six part series, are below.  For the full series, click:

Part VI – The Hacked E-Mail “Scandal” Scandal, and the Real Issues:  Palin’s assertions, the Post’s Misleading Promotion of her as an Expert and Leader in our Discussions, and the Ensuing Misinformation Driving Our National Debate

Palin implicitly bases most of her otherwise unconnected conclusions upon a “scandal” arising from the obsessive scanning and cherry picking of select quotes out of thousands of private and illegally hacked emails (and driven by apparent wide spread zealotry) of a very few select scientists; and rather incredibly, impugns almost the entire world wide scientific community by association.

The scandal involved a very questionable intemperance to perceived ideological or industry influence driven “analyses” papers that these scientists thought were not science based.  Right or wrong, this is a common practice outside of the world of science, and yes, occasionally, sometimes within it.  And it is essentially irrelevant to the broader underlying issue at hand. (As are the apparent attempts, based upon these private but illegally hacked emails, of a few scientists to “trick” or “hide” data – which in scientific terms don’t mean anything close to what they mean in modern, everyday usage.)

Additionally, the science that Copenhagen is based upon is the composite work of thousands of scientists, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, NASA, NOAA – and the basic science covered in Part’s II and III of this series.  But consider even the specific authors of the Copenhagen report. Only one of the twenty-six is overly implicated in the hacked email scandal. (And even his contributions are still relevant, take a look.)

But more importantly, the scandal is not relevant to the underlying reasons for the world to address this issue in the first place, and that the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — which Palin impaled with implicit charges of “fraudulent science” — was based upon.

What about the fact that Palin linked to a Washington Post article for the assertion in her piece regarding “consensus”? (I.e., “the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd.”)  That Post article makes the email scandal out to be a much bigger thing than it is. Yet it still says nothing of the sort that Palin attributes to it.

The closest specific thing it does say, incredibly, is that one Kevin Trenberth; “wrote it was a ‘travesty’ that models could not explain why the Earth hadn’t warmed more.”  One scientist getting into the detailing and limitations of complex and probably overemphasized climate modeling is not lack of consensus among the world thousands of leading scientists on whether or not our atmospheric forcing is likely to unduly affect the climate.

Trenberth himself also notes that his email “says we don’t have an observing system adequate to track it.” Moreover, his own article – that he also refers to in that very same email — did not need to be illegally hacked into.  And it says essentially the same thing, along with the fact that global warming is continuing.

Trenberth’s concern over modeling has nothing to do with the reasons to address climate change in the first place. These are physics driven, not data driven. Moreover, the Bali Climate Declaration, to which he is also a signatory, asserts that scientists are at least 90% certain that at least most of the warming that we have observed is due to human activities, and states that the goal of the next treaty must be to limit any further warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius total.  (Note also that even if one ascribed a lower probability here, this would not mean that one necessarily disagrees with the fact that increasing atmospheric heat trapping gas levels are going to ultimately and significantly effect climate — see endnote at bottom.)

We disagree with the Declaration. It tries to specifically target what can not be precisely measured or predicted — regarding what is almost assuredly going to be a greatly lagging [i], erratic, and non linear effect — rather than the cause itself.   But the underlying point is the same.  There is no controversy over the underlying science and probabilities, just over the limitations of modeling and short term predictability.

Yet Palin took the latter, falsely, to somehow indicate the former.

This is either a lie, or simply represents a lack of any relevant knowledge in the subject area.  So how did it get past the Post factcheckers?

Palin also starts off her piece writing about these “damaging emails” (as, opposed, again, to widely available scientific articles by the same person saying essentially the same thing),  creating a “tipping point,” as referenced above.  Yes, these emails are damaging: Because those that have non science based ideological or political opposition to the notion that mankind could possibly alter climate, have made a non-stop federal case out of them, and have turned them into something they are not, as noted above (and which the Post here further promoted, as well).

MIT professor and science author Chris Mooney further explains:

“Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that all of the worst and most damning interpretations of these exposed emails are accurate. I don’t think this is remotely true, but let’s assume it.

Even if this is the case, it does not prove the following :

1) The scientists whose emails have been revealed are representative of or somehow a proxy for every other climate scientist on the planet.

2) The studies that have been called into questions based on the emails (e.g., that old chestnut the “hockey stick”) are somehow the foundations of our concern about global warming, and those concerns stand or fall based on those studies

Neither of which, or course, are true.”

Mooney is also the author of “The Republican War on Science.”  As this reviewer of Mooney’s book put it:

While the title may mislead you into thinking that this[is not] is a partisan book, Mooney’s dedication here is to the integrity of the scientific research process, and not at all to politics. Indeed, his argument is that the politicization of the scientific research process is bad no matter which party does it, but that the Bush Administration and the current incarnation of the Republican Party is particularly culpable of abusing science for partisan gain.

Or,  in the case of Palin, trashing science, misleading when it comes to science, asserting falsities that nevertheless managed to get by dozing editorial page factcheckers when it comes to science, accusing everything and everybody else, but not herself, of being “political,” when it comes to science, all while maintaining to readers that she is a believer in “sound science.

Conclusion

Whatever Palin’s motivations, be they deep ideological conflict, an innately gifted ability to wildly spin, and/or a profound lack of subject matter comprehension, these kinds of pieces –along with the presentation of people like Palin as leading “experts” regarding subject matters of which they clearly have no idea — being presented in our leading newspapers and media is part of what is contributing to the very much non-democratic dumbing down of our society, and is serving to further undermine the necessary information that serves as the lifeblood of our democracy.

Throughout this entire piece, Palin repeatedly mangles science and fact, makes repeated and wildly manipulative assertions along with implicit and startlingly false or wildly ignorant pronouncements, and even conflates a few scientists with the entire scientific community around the globe.  (She also conflates their private email desire to arm twist a little to include in some reports what they wanted with whole scale fraud, while even using the term “hide” the data in her op ed pejoratively, clearly having no clue what in science the term means.)

This is profoundly ignorant at best.  At not its best, it is outright deceitful.

________________________________________________________________
Notes
[i]  One reason for this is that while heat ultimately shapes climate, oceans more directly drive climate, and it takes an extremely long time for oceans to heat up or otherwise change.   Another reason is that the earth, with somewhat consistent (relative to current levels and projections) and very slowly fluctuating greenhouse gas levels, is in a state of relative stasis.  Or, rather, it was.  As a climate forcing — such as significantly increasing the amount of trapped atmospheric heat — is added to the system, it will, like any stasis,  start to change more rapidly with increasing input.  As noted in Part III, there are also numerous processes, or other “stasis” like conditions which invariably will start to feed upon themselves and accelerate — as we are seeing right now with the Arctic, and are even beginning to see with the Antarctic — and of course feed other effects, such as increased melting permafrost methane releases adding further atmospheric heat re-radiation and thus more melting, etc., , and melting glaciers decreasing the earth’s albedo,and thus increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed rather than radiated back into space.

What is also important to recognize is that while ultimately the planet will likely reach a new stasis (which does not mean that the weather therein is stable, by the way), there is absolutely no scientific reason to asssume that what we would like that new stasis to be, or what we would like the degree of change that will incur en route to it (namely, minimal), is what it will be.  Nor that what it will be, is not what we would consider horrific for us, our descendants, and a majority of the species on earth. That is, the planet does not care. Science acts as it acts, not because we “want it” to in a certain way;  or because, outside of the new and quite profound atmospheric forcing input that we are thrusting upon it, we have come to expect it to in a certain way.  Massive and rapid change is neither bad nor good in an abstract philosophical sense.   But it is almost assuredly bad to otherwise relatively stable biological and ecological conditions, including most other species and that of our own, having evolved and now built a world around — and, notably in the case of climate change, on — the present general state of conditions.

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Palin, the Post, and Climate Change; What All Americans Should Know – Part I

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Introduction and Part I of this six part series, are below.  For the full series, click:

The recent decision by the Washington Post to publish celebrity author and former politician Sarah Palin’s climate change piece in the name of “debate,” brings the issue of the paper’s seemingly lax editorial review and fact checking process into clear focus.  It also constitutes a stunning example of media promoted, misinformed celebrity pundit hood over substantive knowledge.

The Post also made the piece its feature op-ed, taking up more space on the online opinion home page than the other editorial lead-ins combined.  And for its lead page caption, the Post used a line that is wildly misleading, and, ultimately, flagrantly false.

Palin herself fed readers an astounding quantity of highly misleading and erroneous information.  How this adds to rather than subverts informed debate is hard to fathom: Let alone when it is promulgated by a leading national figure, in one of our nation’s leading newspapers.

Part I – Palin’s Assertions

Palin asserted that the United Nation’s climate change conference in Copenhagen was based upon “politics” and an “agenda” — without ever illustrating how or why.  She also essentially claimed that such efforts therein to address climate change were based upon “fraudulent science,” once again with no basis, save for an otherwise essentially irrelevant hacked email scandal (see Part VI).  And she implicitly impugned the vast majority of world scientists in essence as “frauds.”

On the other hand, in contrast to these science “frauds” concerned over lack of climate change redress, Palin asserts that she is a believer in “sound science,” not politics.  She does this, again, without attempting to show how Copenhagen – as opposed to everything with inevitable political repercussions – was based on “politics.” And she also does this without explaining what she means by “sound science.”

Perhaps by “sound” she means science not based on CRU “scandal” scientists, while maneuvering around making a direct, challengeable assertion to this effect. Thus, by her insinuation, either most scientists are “frauds” (an unfounded and wild accusation), or Copenhagen was based not upon an enormous worldwide consensus, but some potentially tweaked data by a handful of CRU related scientists (a profoundly misinformed assertion).

The only real hint we get of what Palin herself might, more relevantly, mean by “sound” science is when she notes that climate change is “real,” But asserts that the climate is “changing,” in essence, all due to natural variability. I.e, “We recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends.”  (We just don’t recognize our impact – that would be “fraudulent science.”)

Like a carefully trained witness once again deftly maneuvering around outright perjury or, in this case scientific absurdity, she essentially tells readers that this is only due to natural causes, without directly saying it is due only to natural causes.  And, as Palin pointed out just afterward on her Facebook page, climate “always has, and always will” change. Therefore, she actively asserts, since she recognizes that climate does change, she is not a climate change “denier”.

Though a reader obviously cannot see her expression, Palin presumably makes this assertion with a straight face (or perhaps with a wink, and a “you betcha”), as if climate change refers to the long understood scientific fact that climate changes, rather than the issue of man’s ultimate effect on it through enormous net emissions of long-lived heat trapping gases into the atmosphere.  This is something that in her op-ed Palin quite specifically does deny, while simultaneously claiming she is not denying it.  But then it was a noted conservative, Kathleen Parker of the Post, who first wrote that “If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street by herself.”

It gets worse: Palin — once again raising serious questions as to why she is “teaching” Americans on this same subject matter and why the Post is actively promoting and publishing this “teaching” – also asserted that man can’t change the weather. This is consistent with the “deny” part of her “I don’t deny climate change even though I do deny it” charade, as the entire basis of the climate change issue is not only that we can affect climate (and hence weather), but that we very likely are.

This is also not much different from asserting that the sun revolves around the earth, if less intuitive:  That is, mankind indisputably can and is altering greenhouse gas levels; greenhouse gases indisputably affect climate, which ultimately and indisputably drives weather. Thus her assertion that man can’t change the weather is flagrantly false.  (There are also numerous other ways we can more subtly change the weather, not otherwise relevant to this piece.) (also see here).

Palin even implicitly labeled efforts like Copenhagen — to address ongoing net anthropomorphic emissions of heat trapping gases –“radical environmentalism.” According to her logic, the vast majority of the world’s apolitical scientists are “radical environmentalists;” and sensibly addressing climate change by trying to reduce the emissions of the heat trapping gases that are likely leading to it, is “radical environmentalism.”

Blatant, ridiculous, and somewhat head in the sand political spinning aside, the far bigger problem with Palin’s piece is that it wildly misleads and promotes false information throughout, in order to try and support this.

Go to Part II

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