Listen carefully.
The media, and in turn the scientific community, seem to be creating this specious battle between Global Warming Supporters and the group known as Denialists.
The real jackasses are a tiny portion found on both sides. On the GW side, there exists a vociferous minority who want to associated
anyone not 100% sold on this stuff as mouth-foaming fascists too busy squishing their own feces together in hopes of making fire. Similarly, on the Denialist side, there are some pretty obnoxious folks mockingly burning down research stations simply because someone said it snowed in Buffalo in January.
Fortunately, there are plenty of more rational, good people on both sides who do not automatically dismiss the other side’s sanity. This post is dedicated to them.
Indeed, this essay is intended to address something rarely seen or heard: why do the denialists deny? More specifically, what is it they are denying?
A lot of the pro-GW literature—particularly on the scientific blogs—seems to dwell on a couple of things, both of which are wrongly bigoted. The first is the oft-repeated phrase “A trick to hide the decline.” The second is basic politics.
The first famous phrase is often held up by Denialists as something demanding explanation. Know what? It
does demand explanation, and frankly the scientific world has bent way over backwards trying to rationalize it. Look, it would be a lot simpler if scientists agreed to say “Hey,
one scientist said that, not all of us. We think he was wrong to say what he said in that email. Now let us move on.” Instead, most of the science blogs keep trying to define the word “trick.” See, they say, people in science use math a lot, and math relies on a lot of tricks! What he said was not so bad. We all use tricks in math all the time.
Here is your first news flash. We know this. Carrying the one is a trick we all know. Accountants use tricks all the time—if two identical columns of numbers do not add up to the same totals, you subtract the smaller number from the larger. If the result is evenly divisible by nine, the cause of the imbalance is that a number was keyed in backward (84, instead of 48) in one of the columns when adding. That is a trick. It is perfectly legitimate.
But the objection the Denialists have is on the phrase “hide the decline.” We have yet to hear a clear explanation for (a) why there is a decline in temperatures and (b) why we need to hide it. We care little for what the trick was to hide a decline in temperatures; rather, this is all about why we need a trick at all. Should the facts not be what they are?
Second, we know that a lot of the support for GW is basic politics. And we do not like it. Scientists are much, much better at pure research than the average American. But—brace for it—when it comes to politics, the average American is vastly better than scientists. Most scientists come off (genuinely or wrongly) as looking like academia-centric liberal weenies. Not all: there are some strongly conservative scientists who are well-respected (de Grasse Tyson, most notably). But follow us closely here: when a scientist openly cops an attitude along the lines of “Bush was the worst president imaginable because I am a scientist and am smart enough to know this better than you,” (and come on, scientific bloggers—you
are sounding like this and you know it), you reveal that your statement is both visceral and liberal. It has nothing to do with science, and discredits you faster than anything else.
Therefore, comments that dismiss Denialists as vapid, under-developed Republicans who want to force your kids to become Pentecostal toungue-speakers and eliminate Darwinism from schools tend to reveal that your own opinions on GW are not motivated by calm reason and acceptance of inquiries, but pure hatred of the other side. Our website here, for one, has done an excellent job of blowing apart the myth that Republicans hate science and Democrats love it more. The reality is far scarier than you dare admit.
One big hurdle the Denialists have never seen crossed is the accuracy of the data source. This is, ironically, the result of good scientific education. If there is one thing the Denialists know all to well, is that
science is never settled until it is a Law.
F=ma, absolutely, but remember that Newtonian mechanics is not a complete description. It is a theory. You did a very good job in educating us that simply declaring something to be so, without it fulfilling the basics of a Law or even a good Theory, is usually a sign of pure bunk.
So how about it? Why does GW theory fail to provide accurate models? We know that weather and climate depends on models, and models are great. Models held explain Relativity. But a model must be able to explain past events as well as predict future events. Most climatological models we see are less than 20 years old; they have not survived the test of time. And when one model states that we should expect severe hurricanes in 2008, we notice when that fails to happen. When the same model predicted even more disastrous hurricanes in 2009, we are not morons to suggest, respectfully, that your models may be incorrect.
Likewise, when similar models suffer simple refutation, such as glacier melt, accelerated desertification, polar bear extinction, and so on, we begin to ask even harder questions. One of the hardest questions asked was
can we see the data? This is how Pons and Fleischmann were discredited: they shared their data and results could not be replicated. Wakefield was another who shared his data and underwent excoriation when his source data was shown to be manipulated as well as flawed.
So what does it say when the original data—the data upon which so many subsequent studies, confirmations, and consensus were built—is hidden from view? And then declared lost? And then emails are uncovered which reveal the data corrupt, wrong, destroyed, and tampered? Does this
build confidence in your theory, or
destroy it?
Yes, we know that the common defense is that Denialists are merely cherry-picking our counter-evidence. “You can’t look at polar bears and say that their survival rates disprove the whole theory. You can’t say that a cold wave hitting Europe disproves the whole theory.” Look, we know how anomolies work. But cherry-picking exceptions is
completely identical to the pro-GW approach of using anecdotes to bolster the claim: polar ice is diminishing in Antarctica. Fish populations are dying. CO
2 levels are rising. These are all interesting and alarming events: but you have yet to convince us that they all mesh together perfectly and inter-connect flawlessly. No, do not bother saying this is too much to ask. Relativity, Plate Tectonics, QM, Evolution, Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, and on and on are all examples where discoveries, mathematics, and anecdotes all perfectly plug in and attach to a consistent and logical framework. GW seems to be a collection of...of stuff, with no rhyme or reason, with all sorts of things jumbled together and slapped into a horribly ungainly frame.
But meteorology is different? Not at all. The Czar, for one, has a formal background in many things, of which meteorology is a component. He knows the difference between climate and weather, for example. He knows that adiabatic lapse rates, for example, are logical and consistent and meet the criteria he describes above. Frontal formation and transitions, precipitation, hydrologic cycles—all form the core of meteorology and climatology, and all are perfectly consistent, simple, and elegant.
Further, when we hear outlandish statements that cold waves are the result of GW, and that heavy precipitation is the result of GW, and that record snowfall is the result of GW, we really question whether you are stopping to think before you speak to the press. Yeah, some science makes no sense
at first: all galaxies are moving away from the others, so that if you pick a random galaxy, every other galaxy appears to be moving away from it? But then you paint dots on a balloon and inflate the balloon...and suddenly the crazy concept is perfectly obvious. We are awaiting these analogies and demonstrations. Because until they arrive, you look foolish.
Maybe if your data checked out. But day after day comes another revelation of a flawed study, or that temperatures stopped increasing, or that something was incorrectly recorded. Maybe you should just stop and start over from scratch with a fresh approach. In football, this is called a punt. Science tries them all the time, but evidently only in other fields.
Hence, in a nutshell, here is what the average Denialist
actually believes (and get ready to be surprised at how off-base your assessment of our concerns could be):
Denialists believe that climate science is a new and emerging field, with new discoveries and realizations frequently changing basic assumptions. We understand that observations (in the water, on the ground, in the air) conflict and often indicate a fluid and changing nature. We fully accept that some temperatures may be increasing, that atmospheric composition could be affected by man, and that these have long-term effects which may be disastrous for millions of people.
But we do not believe that science remotely understands (yet) the degree to which any of this is the case. We encourage science to get this information. But with recent events calling into question the integrity of the data and people involved in foundational studies, we expect science to stop and start over with current technology, better tools, and smarter approaches than anything we have seen. In short, we do not believe you have the evidence you think you have simply because your models, methods, and mechanics are far too new. We want you to go back, as science is supposed to be willing to do, and start the data collection over.
We further strongly disbelieve (in increasing numbers) that world governments have information not available to science or the public which warrants specific actions and legislation involving the transfer of trillions of dollars between countries, from taxpayers to government coffers, and from public trading companies to privately held organizations. We are fully aware that some of politics’s largest vocal proponents for GW are financially dependent upon science proving a desired outcome and suppressing contrary evidence—whether or not you are personally doing this is immaterial. If you are not, congratulations for following proper scientific protocols; if you are, more alarmingly, we understand why you might do this: we also put our families’s needs first. We also do not understand why, regardless of your ethical stance, so many scientists would be willing to support or endorse such a government-led enterprise when government is in a less-qualified position to rule conclusively than you, yourselves, on the correct actions that follow a successful proof of GW.
And this is basically it. You may well think that your own position is stronger, and that the situation is far more complex that this position statement. But you might also notice that the summation above is simple, logical, and rational. Perhaps some of it has been disproven. Possibly
all of it has been refuted; but then you should pause and reflect on this sobering thought—why are we not hearing about this? Why do we keep noticing our questions being ignored? Why do we feel increasingly shut out or deceived? What can you, as pro-GW scientists, do to better inform us in an equally calm, logical, and rational way?
Here’s a quick thought. If, for a moment, you think the evidence is there but we are not smart enough to understand it, or if you think we are hearing it but just not comprehending it, or that you do not have time to reduce it down to our levels, than
you are the cause of our disbelief. If on the other hand you recognize that Americans, by and large, are smart enough to understand the facts, and that there are simple and reasonable explanations and answers to ease our concerns, please note that you need to start speaking up.
Even for scientists, if no one is buying your product, the smart management team never blames the consumer. And to be clear, very few people are buying the Global Warming product. Fewer each day.
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