If the media distorts climate science so greatly...?

Question

... then how can we blame the deniers for falling for the media hype accurately relaying scientific findings?

we all remember the hype in the 1970s about global cooling. in fact, some people still think the earth is cooling. this theory, however, is not accepted in the scientific community because of the evidence saying otherwise. in the 1970s, the general concern about the climate was that it was warming and not cooling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Then you see climate denial proponents like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who are not scientists, giving their thoughts and opinions which are unfounded in science. yet people believe them because they make sense to people (unless of course they've read the scientific literature on global warming)

So I ask these questions:

-On a private and/or governmental level, what can be done about the damage the media has done to actual scientific findings?

-Is there hope for people to become more educated on the science as well as economics and government in the U.S.? (other, higher educated countries, seem to get it)

-is the problem that in order to read the scientific literature, one must put in a little extra effort to find and understand the articles?

-Is the problem that most people just aren't educated enough to understand the science behind global warming?

Or should we just remind people of this: Don't believe everything you see on TV or hear on the radio. Check the story's sources. Find out what the experts say on the matter and not the reporters interpretations. and most importantly, stay skeptical and educate yourself as best as you can.

Thanks and peace!

Answer 1

You know, this question can have a double edge, you say: “Then how can we blame the deniers for falling for the media hype accurately relaying scientific findings?”



I can say: Then how can we blame the general public and especially the alarmists for falling for the media hype accurately relaying scientific findings which they do not understand?”

Bare with me on this one. Before jumping to conclusions, as it seems to be the case with many alarmists on this site...(not targetting you, I dont know you)



You people like links, I’ll give you a few links.



Take this example of well meaning people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw

If you count these people as so called “climate realists” take note of their scientific literacy...



How about this prediction:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1



Did it come about in 2010?

Well? Did it or did it not come about in 2010?



You ask "Is the problem that in order to read the scientific literature, one must put in a little extra effort to find and understand the articles?"



I have come across much rubbish from some answerers in this site, one that actually said “pumping CO2 into our paper thin atmosphere”, PAPER THIN, WTF?? Yes this so called “climate realist said “paper thin”...I felt the urge offer him to put his astronaut suit on and crawl to the surface of the earth to fly a kite!



I have seen people leave the sun “out of the equation”, recall that without sunlight to hit the earth surface, there is no BBR and GHG would be ineffective if you turn out the sun...This is extremely basic, and I am sure everyone knows it, however I have seen quite a few alarmists here so fixated on "CO2 only" that they seem to make abstraction of the sun, seriously, I have seen someone get TDs for saying "start with the sun".



Only a hand-full of people on this forum understand properties of GHG at a deeper level and the mechanics by which absorption/emission of IR photons happens and the laws of thermodynamics.

Most of the other ones just keep barking like mad dogs, claiming that they understand science and that all sceptics do not. The irony is that this majority of self proclaimed scientists never answer when a question deals with “real physics”.



I will not name names, but they know who they are =)

Answer 2

It's about damned time. A PR campaign is precisely what they need. They are sitting there passively watching an enormous campaign by right wing think tanks to obscure and distort public perception. Scientists have trouble understanding that there are people out there who simply have no interest in objective reality. They lie knowingly day in and day out on talk radio and cable news. Academics have the perception that the evidence speaks for itself. But when you have a science illiterate public who believe that whatever is continuously said in the media must in some way be valid just because it's said again and again, whoever gets the message out sounds the most persuasive.

Answer 3

Hi Edward If you look up the word DEMOCRACY ( I use the Australian Oxford ) It give all sorts of meanings mainly based around to GOVERN The number 1 meaning for govern is to RULE or CONTROL That's why if you look at the Greek meaning for the word DEMOCRACY at the bottom of all other meanings it defines it as RULE OF THE PEOPLE then if you care to look up the word RULE it means CONTROL So what Democracy really means is CONTROL of THE PEOPLE So to answer your question on why some question with links are not allowed it's because they may be to informative and go against governments policies that are put in place to CONTROL the media. Yahoo is a media based web site and is funded by advertisers One of the big problems is when governments control the media through policies they cripple their FREEDOM of SPEECH which turn information we get into PROPAGANDA ( organized propagation of a doctrine, religion, cause,ETC,by the use of publicity) This stuff is straight out of the Oxford dictionary so I'm not just making it up that's how it IS. By taking the freedom of speech away from the media to report on the truth destroys the power of freedom and all we end up with is controlled information or propaganda Have you ever ask why the first thing they do after invading another nation is to BURN all the books in their libraries It's so the invaders can replace it with their on propaganda The way to CONTROL a nation is to control the information America has already stated the internet IS their biggest threat to national security So don't be surprised if it crashes in the near future There's a lot of stuff going around stating that 2011/12 the sun is going to knock out or communications network could this be the propaganda machine at work so we will blame the pore old sun for doing it when in fact they have the power and the equipment to carry it out right now Next time an election comes around I suggest you don't vote for either parties just wright NO CONFIDENCE in big letters across you ballet paper because the whole system has been CORRUPTED by power profit and control I think there are many here that are trying to inform the people of what's going on but they are block by the yahoo trolls and Q&A's are either deleted or their hidden from view by the thumbs down brigade Cheers and have a great day.

Answer 4

You're right, children should be taught the scientific method and critical thinking and not "The Story of Stuff" and "An Inconvenient Truth". At least that would be a step towards a brighter future and a more knowledgeable public.



Edit@pegminer: I don't need to know the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation to understand that one scientist denying data to another is wrong. Of course I am referring to Phil Jones responding to Warwick Hughes. This and a thousand other incidents just like it (or worse) which have nothing to do with heat transfer or the laws of thermodynamics yet are enough to raise some serious questions about this issue even without a deep understanding of climate science.



And you're implication of either you are a physicist or you should just shut the hell up is elitist (lots of other terms could apply as well). Freeman Dyson is a physicist, yet you probably discount his views on AGW. So really, you need to amend your view to include only physicists on your side of the issue. Well done.



Edit2@pegminer: Answer a direct question. Was it reasonable for Phil Jones to deny Warwick Hughes his data because "all you want to do is try to find something wrong with it"? Read all about it if you are unfamiliar with the subject: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3502.htm



And I love "the conditions I mentioned" comment. It's great that you can assign parameters for this issue. Again your elitist side shines through by basically tossing aside a world renowned physicist because he isn't a "climate specialist". I expect your next edit to state that you know more about climate science than he does.

Answer 5

It's a problem no one person can solve, in fact the only solution that would work would be to remove everyone who doesn't believe in global warming from the media. People do need to do research on their own and not trust everything they hear, but this won't happen because too many people are too stupid and lazy.

Answer 6

Dent



"How fast should the Earth be exiting the Little Ice Age?"



It shouldn't. It should be cooling at a rate of 0.01C per century. It is supposed to cool by 10C over the next 100 thousand years and warm back up to where it was 6000 years ago in the 10 thousand years after that. That is what the Earth has been doing over the last 2.5 million years.

Answer 7

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FireAndIce.pdf

I don't know what we can do about the media sensationalizing AGW... Here's one hundred years of chicken little squawking about climate change.



0.74 ± 0.18 °C That's over 120 years. Why does the media leave this seemingly important number out of their "news" reports? Why doesn't the media tell us useful information, like how warm the Earth should be? Why do they never ask the hard questions? Like, "So tell me Dr. How fast should the Earth be exiting the Little Ice Age?"



http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/Moberg_HadCRUT3NH.png Why do they omit important information, like the rate of warming from recent measurements, to proxies from the MWP?



Why did the media gloss over or ignore Mike Mann's hockey stick fraud?



Why does the media breathlessly report scientists claiming more snow? http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=3h&oq=global+&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS331US332&q=global+warming+more+snow Then the very next season they claim scientists have always said less snow? http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=3h&oq=global+&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS331US332&q=global+warming+more+snow#q=global+warming+less+snow&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=ca98a1d5c2c741bd&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS331US332 It's as if they have some agenda...



Why does the media just shows us icebergs melting, polar bears drowning, and Dr. Big Al Gore's ugly mug? As if that is somehow proof of this quaint little theory.



I don't know... But I agree with you. The media has made AGW the Alpha and the Omega of all man's problems. They pin everything on AGW from too much weather, to too little weather.



Maybe the people are just sick of it. Maybe we remember all the failed predictions, all the tipping points that are annually pushed back another decade, all the hype surrounding the last great climate scare. Maybe we just aren't biting on Hanta virus, Ebola, killer bees, land sharks, et al. The mass media enjoys lower popularity numbers than Congress. Why would we trust anything that seems cooked up by politicians and forced fed by scare mongers?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/143267/distrust-media-edges-record-high.aspx



Really Peg, we need to study physics? I'm reminded of a clever quote from another physicists:

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Albert Einstein







Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein_4.html#ixzz1KCIEs54M





Well then jy...whatever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png Explain the constant up and down, of the past 12,000 years. I imagine you can cite numerous papers to back up such a novel claim. Something that easily dispels the theories of Bond Events and Daansgard-Oeschger cycles. But then, I guess, a 1470 ± 500 year climate cycle would all but kill this AGW stuff, wouldn't it? Is that why you people are so adamantly against Bond Events?



You people make it too easy...



And yes Ed, Peg and I are always sniping at each other. Even when we are concur, like here. Just in good fun, well for me anyway. I hope he doesn't take this farce seriously...

Answer 8

""Al Gore and his "scientists" all live in multi-million dollar mansions, driving their $100,000+ cars, and using electricity like it's going out of style.""



LOL!



I share a building with two of these scientists (assuming you're refering to the IPCC authors). While one of them is a pompous pain in the ***, they aren't quite living the life that you assume they are.

Answer 9

Can you calculate what the temperature of the earth with an atmosphere should be?

Are the feadbacks positive or negative?

Answer 10

I think people need to stop getting their "science" from the news media entirely. There are countless skeptics, deniers, contrarians, whatever you want to call them, that take news reports and try to use them to say that there are contradictions in climate science, or that the predictions are wrong. Usually if you carefully read the purportedly "contradictory" reports you'll find that they are talking about different things--like snow in Western North America versus snow in the Northeastern states--but a lot of times people won't even get past the headlines. It's ludicrous that people think that they have found some flaw in climate theory based on media reports, would they ever think such a ridiculous thing by reading two different articles about string theory, or algebraic topology, or any other abstruse subject? I don't think so, but everybody thinks they understand weather, so they all think they're smarter than people that have spent their lives studying it.



People would be better off learning some physics, you can't really understand global warming without knowing things like radiative transfer or the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation, but people think they do.



EDIT for Dent: Well that's a nice Einstein saying--and Rutherford thought a scientific theory should be explainable to a barmaid, and apparently he did a lot of that. But what's your point? YOU are the one that's claiming expert knowledge of climate science--you're making judgments about failed predictions, tipping points, etc. Could you please give references to actual papers with such predictions and then show exactly how they are in error? Because if you can't, you're just making the case that either your third-hand interpretation of scientific conclusions are in error or the second-hand conclusions of media writers are wrong--either way the problem does not fall with the scientists. I don't know how many times in here I hear people such as yourself saying "Scientists said B would happen, and it didn't," but they're always leaving off what the scientist said was "If A, then B" and A didn't come about.



That doesn't mean you're to blame for being confused about what actually has been predicted and what has come about--but you ARE to blame for reading news reports about global warming and confusing THAT with science--it's not.



EDIT for Ottawa Mike: Is it elitist to think that people that do something for a living, that have studied a subject for 10 years or more, may know a little more about a subject than those that haven't? Is it elitist to think that not everyone can be a theoretical physicist, a concert violinist, a professional football player, a prize-winning author? Perhaps you want to live in the world of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, where smart people have bells going off in their heads and athletes are weighted down, so all people are equal, even if not created that way--but that is not our present world. I am a great admirer of Freeman Dyson, he is a very interesting character and did great work in the field of quantum electrodynamics. I would definitely defer to Dyson for a question about something in QED, but since he has done virtually no work in climate and seems to have a very simplistic picture of the world, I'll take my chances with the scientists that have studied the Earth. I will grant that Dyson satisfies the conditions I mentioned--but those are necessary, but not sufficient, if you know the difference.



There is no question that scientists, even those with advanced training, can be wrong--or even dishonest. You spend much of your time apparently trolling for articles that you believe show climate scientists as dishonest or presume to throw doubt on one aspect of the science or another. I wonder how much time you have spent looking into the likes of people like Fred Singer or Frederick Seitz to see just how honest those guys are--I'm thinking you've spent no time at all. After spending time with Singer, hearing him speak and reading things he's written, I would not trust a thing he says. I never see you asking pointed questions about his honesty though.



The idea that scientists are keeping all the data to themselves and hiding it from those that could show them wrong is preposterous. As I've said before, I've never seen a field with as much freely accessible data as climate and atmospheric science, it's there for the downloading. I've personally downloaded terabytes of it for my own studies. Download it yourself, do something with it, learn some science.

Answer 11

With all due respect for your clearly laudable intentions, Edward, and many fine previous posts, I'm afraid you are rather badly sidetracked on this one.



1. I DO remember the 1970s, in fact we had a subscription to Time Magazine in 1974, and I almost surely read that "new ice age" article. Such little speculative pieces were, and still are, common little occasional titillations in a whole bunch of fields, on a rotating basis. For example, some medical study shows a new therapy that increases reliably though not greatly, the survival rates of some forms of cancer, and the headline reads "Are we finally getting close to a cure for cancer?" Or a new radio-telescope is deployed that can read signals from twice as many light years away as before, and the article is captioned "What if we are not alone in the universe?". I can assure you there was no HYPE about "global cooling" in the 1970s, just as there was no great media hype about extraterrestrial life (despite "close encounters" being a popular, though not very good, movie), and the "war on cancer" never got as much hype as the "war on drugs" and only slightly more than the "war on cavities"



2. You ask one other answerer "which scientific paper you've read to come to the conclusion that the earth is cooling" I would ask them same thing: "which scientific paper" predicting cooling EVER (1970s, 1790s, etc.) came even remotely distant to IPCC-like forecasts of global warming that have been standard in the peer-reviewed literature for two decades.



3. Denialism is hundreds of times WORSE on the internet than in the mainstream press. Newspaper reporters are still typically listed by name, have to be accountable for what they write, and if they are later found to have made false claims, made up facts, plagiarized, etc. they are in big trouble, and some lose their jobs as a result.



4. The main deficiencies of the mainstream media are not that they're being mouthpieces for deniers -except sometimes on the op/ed pages- but rather (a) science illiteracy, (b) a tendency to sensationalize which means exaggerate which is not the same thing as lying, and (c) always looking for "two sides to the story" even if, as often, there really is no "fair and balanced" in-between view on whether, for example, the earth orbits the sun or the sun the earth.

Answer 12

What ever happened to the Ozone Hole? Does anyone talk about that anymore? Nope. People don't believe the Global Warming Hype because the people associated with it such as Al Gore and his "scientists" all live in multi-million dollar mansions, driving their $100,000+ cars, and using electricity like it's going out of style. Meanwhile, these same people tell all of us that we should conserve energy, live in small efficient housing, use Mercury laden "efficient" light bulbs, and drive goofy little Smart Cars. If Al Gore and his cronies are so concerned with the environment, maybe they should lead by example and move into 800 sq ft apartments, be more energy conscious. It's all about money. It's about putting more money in Al Gore's wallet and as long as there are people that fall for his fuzzy science, he'll be living it up while you pay top dollar making your tiny apartment "Eco-Friendly"

Answer 13

It's getting colder.



What more do you need to know.



You're a smart guy, Edward. Are we warmer or cooler than we were in the following times?



2008.

Late 1990's.

Mid 1930's.

Thirteenth Century.

First Century.



Google it. Sleuth it out. Get info from a couple of sources for each time.

Answer 14

Blaming the media is simply looking for cover for making bad predictions.



Try again.