I am interested to see the comments about this article in Newsweek regading the political considerations of legislation that addresses global warming.
go ahead you first!
Thats a lot of pages, is there anything new in there?
The article elaborates on a topic familiar to science people. Science people do science with little fanfare, generating their data, with the information being disseminated to colleagues through peer review and journals. Scientists are both politically indifferent and naive. When information is published that may affect public policy the adversely impacted parties present segments of the research to a scientifically illiterate society and confound the issue. A few individuals with questionable credentials become experts hired by industry through front organizations to question conclusions of the scientific community; enough to impose doubt on the need to act on the information. Legislators and administrations beholden to those industries subscribe to the revised interpretation. In this circumstance the administration hired representatives from the petroleum industry to alter reports coming from federal agencies performing climate research. They created their own reality within Federal agencies by displacing the science with ideology. The article describes the similarities to the activities of the tobacco industry when the safety of smoking was questioned.
“Scientists are both politically indifferent and naive.”
Scientists from what planet fit this description? Certainly not planet Earth. I guess you think all those grants just chase scientists and not the other way around.
I only got about two pages into the article. Did Newsweek rerun their old global cooling article at the same time?
Within their organizations, scientists are very political. This does in part set the agenda for research priorities within funding agencies. Grantsmanship is the word for that.
As far as national or international policy development, they (we) are conspicuously absent. There is a huge gap, especially in disciplines that have major economic ramification, between what gets studied and what gets done. Issue like heart disease, diabetes, cancer therapy have a short closed loop. New guidelines to treat these conditions come out weekly. Issues like malaria control, clean water, mercury pollution and birth defects, acid rain, sewage control and public health, birth control and population issues,; the stuff that is pretty obvious and costs a lot becomes issues for ideological obfuscation and interminable debate.
I spent a lot of my years in the research end of things; cancer, endocrine, as well as ecology related topics. At times politicos involved with policy would seek out someone and ask questions; but in all of my years, I rarely saw the reverse process. Speaking out is like being a whistle-blower. The guy in Tianamen Square who stood in front of the tanks is my hero. We don’t see many even a little bit like him.
I am now an MD in private practice. I gave a talk to the Chamber of Commerce about ecology issues in our county rather than my scheduled topic of health care economics. I told the group in 5 minutes what they needed to know about that moving target. I told them if present trends continue, anything else I tell them about medical economics was moot as long as we keep dumping sewage and gasoline into the aquifer. Boy, did I cross the line with the director, never to be invited again. After the talk many individuals told me it was the only lecture of their series where they learned anything. Before the talk I asked the director if they had any lectures on the local ecology. She told me that someone came and told them what a wonderful place it was to live. My point: I think members of the scientific community should emerge from their cocoon and help quide some of the public agenda, which has to a certain extent been hijacked by people who carefully control their sources of information either though ignorance of ideology. Intellectual curiosity needs to be revived. That brings us to another topic, education.
whew
I enjoy this forum, as I do triathlons, because it is populated with smart educated people who can make a difference. A very privileged place to be.
Some history on the “global cooling” thing, in case you are interesting.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
I only got about two pages into the article. Did Newsweek rerun their old global cooling article at the same time?
You are correct about the politically indifferent, especially with an eye on grant money.
But the naive part is VERY true. Professors live in their own universe and they have very little comprehension of what and how things work outside of academia.
Thanks for the link. I was able to drill down to get to the article. I am guessing the answer is no, they didn’t rerun this article as a companion to the original link then.
Then:
“The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
“Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”
“Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”
Art,
Might I assume that the point you are trying to make is that scientists don't know anything, they are always wrong, we shouldn't ever listen to them?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we discover that there was, in fact, a cooling trend and that a major source of it was aerosols? Now we have discovered a warming trend. We can either
A) ignore it.
B) allow those with a vested interest convince the public that its a bunch of BS
C) invest in research to discover the accuracy of the hypothesis and/or discover a solution
“didn’t we discover that there was, in fact, a cooling trend and that a major source of it was aerosols?”
That is the first I have heard about that theory. Have aerosols been proposed as a solution to global warming? Didn’t think so. We know that particulate pollution contributes to global cooling. Is Al Gore promoting particulate pollution? Are diesel trucks the key to the salvation of mankind?
I would hope what we had learned was that we didn’t know squat then, despite “massive evidence,” and we don’t know much more now. A little humility and admission of ignorance is called for, but our “nonpolitical and naive” scientists are political and sophisticated enough to know that they won’t get grant money admitting to that.
How did that grant application do that stated we don’t know squat about climate forecasting now, and, after I finish my study, I expect to provide more evidence that we don’t know squat? I am guessing not so well.
Can I safely assume that you are neither a scientist nor do you work in research.
As one who DOES I can tell you for certainty that, no, we don’t know shit about what we are doing. That’s why we do it. If it was already known, then there wouldn’t be any point in researching it.
What I can tell you is that we know infitely more than you do in our field of study, and the most difficult part of our jobs is to convince people like you that what we are trying to learn is worth learning.
As for grants…keep in mind that if $$$ was the true motivator, every research scientist can make at least triple what they are currently making if they would move into industry. No, the motivation is knowledge and notariety through discovery of that knowledge. Why would they sit there and lie about their research when they have to compete with a field full of peers who simply can’t wait to jump on their research and expose it for being crap?
I’ll use a line from you Art - I’d like to think that you’d have a whole lot more respect for the people who have made your life possible ; ^ )
" Have aerosols been proposed as a solution to global warming? Didn’t think so. We know that particulate pollution contributes to global cooling. Is Al Gore promoting particulate pollution? Are diesel trucks the key to the salvation of mankind?
This has been discussed at length in climate science circles. There are proposals to pump particulates in to the atmospshere to create climate forcing in the cooling direction. Nevermind the respiratory problems, acidification of lakes, etc. Pollution from dirty power and industry has slowed the overall warming trend from C02.
Ironic isn’t it, that as we clean the air to address a problem, we increase the threat from another.
link to ipcc chart of radiative forcing components, including aerosols
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc2007_radforc.jpg
Interestingly enough, USAtoday ran this today:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-08-05-science-politics_N.htm
“Science vrs Politics gets Down and Dirty.”
According to some prick in the LR, if I don’t comment on my link the I am “laying a turd.” So…uh…its interesting and worth a read. It ties into the OP rather nicely. I give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stem cells!!
Ironic isn’t it, that as we clean the air to address a problem, we increase the threat from another.
I told my wife (a research chemist) about the aerosols and global cooling and she jokingly said, “lets pump more aerosols into the environment!!!”
On a related note, she was having a problem with her groin. She went to a doctor and he prescribed her drugs. My friend said, “Yeah…because that’s been her problem all along. She’s not eating enough pills.” We then went to a PT and his diagnosis was “lack of activity” (that’s a simplified answer…but sitting in a chair all day DOES tend to lead to tight and atrophied muscles).
The best answer is usually to stop putting harmful stuff into the environment, but people don’t like to hear that. No…they want to know that we can produce some other chemicals that will take care of the first set of chemicals.
It’s kind of like the children’s song of the old lady that swallowed the fly. She then swallowed a spider to eat the fly…then a bird…then a cat…etc, etc.
But hey…watch out for those greedy environmentalists who will do anything to get grant money.
AJ, didn’t you read the link I provided on the history of the “global cooling” issue?
“Then” there was not massive evidence, or agreement about global cooling, despite what that news article you quoted said.
All we can claim is that media sources are sometimes ignorant. At this point, we do have massive evidence, we do know much more now.
I read part of the global cooling stuff. It basically said we didn’t have the kind of sign in then for cooling that we have now for warming. So we were wrong then, but don’t hold that against us because we are much smarter now.
I will believe that when you show me the model run in 1999 that said temperatures would cool for nine years after 1998. I am guessing you can’t provide me that link.
aj, if we discount any science today, that was previously wrong about something, we are going to have to stop posting on Internet completely, stop driving cars, etc.
There are some facts that are clear in the global warming issue, regardless of how retarded Al Gore is, and how badly the media has represented, and regardless of 1970s climate understanding, and regardless of some model somebody ran in 1999:
- Co2 traps heat
- Mankind is caussing Co2 in the atmosphere to rise at an unprecedented rate
- Barring the intervention of some unknown deus ex machina, this will cause temperatures to rise a significant amount over the next 100 years
I say these things are clear from spending some time looking at real data, reading articles written by the climatologists themselves. realclimate.org is a good source.
What is not clear, to me anyway, is that this temperature rise will be a serious problem.
Art,
what level of science education do you have? I'm curious if there is something else driving your "impressions" of what scientists know and don't know other than it doesn't fit with your ideology of a pro-business, anti-environment governemnt. I'm just trying to figure out how you are so smart to know that global temperatures are naturally cyclical and that the current trend is not augmented through human involvement to the degree that could have significant consequences. I mean, which scientists do you listen to to get your information and then stop listening to when they give you additional information.
Are you suggesting that we put a stop to science all togther, or only when it conflicts with your previously conceived world view? Or is that they should only be given a certain amount of time to discover something and then put a stop to it?
What exactly is your ideology that drives your motives? Explain it so that I can make some sense of it. Right now all I can figure is that you have a disdain for environmentalists.
I think you are on pretty safe ground with both 1 and 2. I think item 3 is more likely true than not, but it is no slam dunk by any means and we can quibble about what the meaning of significant is.