[UPDATE, 7/23: The Gristmill blog – in what it says is probably the only compliment it will ever pay to Senator James Inhofe – gave his Web site the big thumbs up for clarity and transparency compared to those of a host of senators whose policies the Web site prefers.]
[UPDATE, 4/10: Leslie Kaufman has written a piece on Marc Morano’s metamorphosis from Senate staffer to full-time purveyor of information questioning global warming. Chris Mooney posted an interesting interview with filmmaker Randy Olson about Marc Morano’s influence and flaws. Thoughts?]
The perennial tug of war over what average people should think and do about human-caused global warming has just experienced another big yank, this time from those saying actions to cut greenhouse gases are a costly waste of time.
The office of Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report online today listing hundreds of scientists and links to peer-reviewed studies that it says challenge whether humans are dangerously influencing climate.
“This new ‘consensus busters’ report is poised to redefine the debate,” the news release said.
But when you sift through the studies, what emerges (to me at any rate) is not so much the shattering of a consensus as a portrait of one corner of the absolutely normal, and combative, arena in which scientific ideas emerge and either thrive or fade.
To many scientists and students of scientific history, there really is no such thing as a consensus. There is a preponderant view at any one point in time, but it is largely defined by disagreement, not agreement. Someone comes up with a new framing for how the world works and tests that conception (where possible) through experimentation, observation, analysis and (for complex phenomena without comparable control cases) simulation.
Peers challenge the finding like intellectual piranhas, nipping at faulty logic, flawed data or unsupported conclusions. Whatever remains is sturdy and powerful, until some new line of thinking and analysis uproots it.
The preparation of the basic scientific reports produced periodically by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which I have reported on since the panel was created in 1988, epitomizes this process, imperfections and all. Most of the charges of spin or alarmism or excessive caution relate to summary statements produced by small committees.
In science, what is more important than any individual study or collection of papers (particularly if assembled by someone with an agenda), is the trajectory of understanding. This is particularly true with a problem like the human-amplified greenhouse effect. Not only is it multidisciplinary; it is also not testable through experiments (we’re all in the test tube undergoing a one-time experiment).
On the basics, the trajectory of understanding is clear and has been building for more than 100 years: more carbon dioxide (and other heat-trapping gases) = warmer world = less ice = higher seas (and lots of shifting climate patterns). A solid review can be found in the online hypertext edition of “The Discovery of Global Warming,” a book by Spencer Weart of the American Institute of Physics.
At the same time, there are at least two areas of persistent, and legitimate, scientific debate left — more than enough to produce lists as long as the one published today by Senator Inhofe.
First, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the extent and pace of warming from a particular rise in concentrations of greenhouse gases, and about how fast and far seas will rise as a result. (It’s important to keep in mind that uncertainty could result in outcomes being much worse than the midrange outcome, or much less severe).
Second, there is a wider debate over what to do, or not do, about climate change, with peoples’ preferences (a carbon tax, a technology push, building dikes or parasols in space) not so much a function of science as values. And values are shaped by all manner of things, including how you were raised and where you live.
If you wonder why comments on this blog, the opinions of politicians and columnists, the views of neighbors and co-workers, are so diverse on climate, there’s another reason. A lot of us live in intellectual silos, it seems. A sobering survey of more than 1,700 voters, published by the Pew Research Center for the Public and the Press in January, found that more education, for example, does not shift attitudes, and instead actually hardens them.
In the survey, Republicans with a college degree were substantially more skeptical about global warming than Republicans without one. Democrats with a college degree were significantly more convinced global warming was a problem than were Democrats who didn’t go to college.
This is bad news for anyone commenting on Dot Earth who plans to try to win over readers with starkly different attitudes. My hope is that the interactions here will be a little bit like the scientific process, whittling away at unsupported arguments, building on areas of agreement and creating a trajectory toward understanding and meaningful action.
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