Sorry, but this may require a bit of reading and critical thought, if you’re interested today.
The other day George Will (one of the columnists I respect the most) wrote an editorial on climate change. Some folks disliked what they read and countered his arguments. It is a fascinating process to follow, as people are willing to take things out of context, rewrite what someone wrote to meet their opinion, change numbers, and opine about the motivations of others. This happens on both sides of the argument. To be clear, I’m generally going to go with someone who provides a several paragraph quote of something that gives context, rather than snipping three words out of something and asserting information.
Anyway, the best way to review this is to follow the post on Climate Debate Daily on the “Dissenting Voices” side dealing with George Will. Make sure to read the article, the two ripostes, and the counter-riposte.
The link to the second riposte seems to be broken. Any chance you could cut-n-paste a direct link from your browser?
So, the defenders of Will’s piece claim the net amount of Arctic sea ice is essentially unchanged since 1980. Has that been verified or refuted by any credible source?
“So, the defenders of Will’s piece claim the net amount of Arctic sea ice is essentially unchanged since 1980. Has that been verified or refuted by any credible source?”
I don’t know. Somebody will probably come up with a counter-counter-riposte. When I review sea-ice reports, they regularly talk about normal oscillations of sea ice amounts. Picking out a couple of years and comparing them, rather than looking at long-term trends, is where you can get in trouble (or intentional dishonesty). Unfortunately, with sea ice, we really don’t have that long of a record to deal with, so using that item should only be one fairly small data point in the full argument.
interesting. I’ll put my money on George Will’s side. The guy has no inherent conflict of interest so he is just reporting. Whereas many people struggle when all the so called global waring experts whose entire careers have been based on proving the existence of one thing and both their salarries and funding is based on that same outcome. It really discredits what “research” they produce.
George Will may have no conflict of interest but the things he are saying do not make sense when checked with reality. Whether this is due to his lack of expertise or lack of good research, I cannot say.
Basically in that article he is stating the there is a lot of ice in the arctic right now (yes, its winter, and it was a cold winter this year) and that various experts on various topics have been wrong over time (yes, obviously true)
He also restates the mostly untrue myth that climatologists were predicting an ice age in the 1970s.
None of this in any way indicates that global warming is junk science, or that it isn’t happening.
Trying to discern truth by guessing at the motivations or bias of the people telling you their story is not going to work. You can’t know for sure and everyone has a bias. What you want to know is are they right or wrong. Harder to find out if you don’t care to learn enough about a topic, which is why we tend to trust the experts. What are climatologists telling you?
Why would George Will know better?
Geroge Will may have no conflict of interest, but he
interesting. I’ll put my money on George Will’s side. The guy has no inherent conflict of interest so he is just reporting. Whereas many people struggle when all the so called global waring experts whose entire careers have been based on proving the existence of one thing and both their salarries and funding is based on that same outcome. It really discredits what “research” they produce.
“whose entire careers have been based on proving the existence of one thing and both their salarries and funding is based on that same outcome. It really discredits what “research” they produce.”
I don’t think this is the case. Your typical atmospheric scientist at some university is supposed to crunch data and numbers and tell it like it is. I would like to think most scientists do honest work. And most who study this phenomenon agree that increased crap in the atmosphere is more likely than not to produce some sort of climate change. When? How drastic? God only knows.
A lot of the naysayers are educated but are not in the same line of work as climatologists and guys who study the atmosphere. Their degrees are often in a different scientific field.
Then there are the scientists and others funded by the multi-$trillion oil, gas & coal companies …
