A Caveat on Climate Change Posts

The discussion about climate change would be aided, I think, by some clarity in the form of delineation between “top scientists” (whoever they are), actual experts in the field, science education types (some being scientists speaking outside their field, others being enthusiastic amateurs), climate activists (who are more likely to be the source of erroneous and/or misleading claims), reporters (who could be divided into a number of categories, some of whom would be more reliable than others) and pundits (ie people more focused on opinion than data, who only use data [selectively] to support a pre-existing opinion).

I agree that hysteria about climate change is counterproductive, but complacence is hardly helpful – particularly if there truly is a “tipping point” and that term is more than just an alarmist buzzword.  What we do know is that systems have equilibria, and it is possible for systems to lurch from one equilibrium to another.  We have examples of large-scale climate change in the past that were entirely natural and had significant impact on human civilisations – for example Rome’s expansion may well have been assisted by a warmer than normal period.  But we aren’t in an entirely natural period, and it is far from inconceivable that a global civilisation such as ours might affect the climate in some way – it’s rather ridiculous (and naïve) to think that the entire scope of human activity has no significant impact on our environment whatsoever.  What remains in question is the extent and nature of the impact that we are having.

I’m not sure what political goals some denialists think are being pursued via “irrational and unscientific discussion” on the part of “top scientists” and I don’t know how discussions by scientists are supposed to be curtailed (who is currently allowing these discussions to go on and, presumably, has to power to stop them?)  I certainly agree that some, if not quite all news outlets will publish sensational stories because it helps either their bottom line or the political party that they are aligned with (while others will publish different sensational stories about how the sensational stories from their competitors are no more than scaremongering, because it helps their own bottom line or their own allied political party).  I also understand that some people who are actual scientists will sometimes talk publicly in a more political capacity, but if they aren’t discussing the data or the models associated with climate change research then they aren’t speaking in their capacity as a scientist working in a climate change related field.

Which brings me to data, data can be contaminated (thinking more here about data that is collected badly, rather than false data), data can be misinterpreted, and it can be misreported.  Models can be wrong (and misinterpreted, and misreported).  They can be wrong for honest reasons, because the science is not well understood, and they can be wrong for nefarious reasons, for example if someone wants to push a barrow.  Sometimes the same model can be interpreted to predict (or project) either imminent disaster or continuing rainbows and unicorns for the foreseeable future, all dependent on what the modeller wants to see (or can accept).  However, climate change data and models are looked at by many people (including top scientists, presumably), and problems in the source data and the models can be, and are, identified and then these problems are resolved. 

For a layman, it can be quite confusing because scientists working in climate change related areas do disagree with each other on both significant and esoteric details in data sets and models.  But, if, out of the noise, the layman were to pick one particular story and run with it, while ignoring the rest, well … that would lead to either misinterpretation or misreporting.  And if the layman in question had an agenda while picking one story out of the noise, then she would be quite likely to bias her selection.

On terminology, I will use (where appropriate) the terms “climate denial”, “climate denialist” and “climate denialism”.  Occasionally, I may use the terms “climate alarmist” and “climate alarmism”, usually in an ironic sense.  If I mean that a person is overstating the climate change argument, I’ll probably use “climate activist” or “climate extremist”.  On the climate denialist side, I’ll be more likely to use “hard (climate) denialist”.

If I use the term “climate denier”, I will be referring to an ignorant person who just denies the existence of climate change (to some extent) based on information taken on face value that was originally sourced from a climate denialist.  A climate denialist is someone who has taken the time to review at least some of the available climate change data and, for whatever reason, rejects enough of it reach a position that climate change is not real, or is not anthropogenic, or is not as serious as it’s being made out to be.

If we get to the point where we can identify those who have issued death threats against climate change researchers, I imagine that I will call them “extremist deniers” because it seems a rather ignorant position to have taken.

I won’t be using the terms suggested to me (“climate alertist” and “climate naysayer”) because both of these positions are pretty central and would have to be tinged with enough doubt to not qualify as the more extreme “climate denier/denialist” or what I will call “climate aware”.  A climate aware person is generally plagued with both an abiding concern and a feeling of helplessness.  They are aware that climate change is a problem, but they aren’t quite motivated enough to become an activist.  They might get into minor arguments with climate deniers (and denialists) but that’s about as far as it goes.  They will recycle, put solar panels on their roof, try to minimise their carbon footprint, all the while knowing that it all makes little difference in the grand scheme of things, but they will generally be quiet about it, unless they are virtue signalling to their ingroup.  From time to time, they will dive into the literature to the level of their personal comfort, but at the end of the day, they won’t obsess about it all (oh alright, maybe they might obsess about it a little bit).

UPDATE (20100122): I won't be getting into conspiracy theory except where it's explicitly raised by denialists.  In other words, I am taking the data issued publicly by organisations such as NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, IPCC, UK Met, BOM (Australia) and other similar organisations as reliable.  I will give data reported in peer reviewed papers priority over Wikipedia, news reporting, activist proclamations, opinion pieces and (with cognisance of the inherent irony) blog posts by people who are not scientists working in a climate related field.  

That's not to say, however, that I will necessarily avoid using references that seem reasonable, even if they aren't peer reviewed.  Wikipedia, for example, for all its faults, is peer reviewed in the sense that anyone can get on there and fix errors - but if I do use Wikipedia it will be as a compilation of useful background sources, which I will usually check.

I find Skeptical Science and RealClimate quite valuable (climate denialists might be hissing in disgust now, since their archenemy Michael Mann posts at RealClimate).

There are quite a few websites dedicated to combating climate denialism which can be useful to get a fix on a new name that comes across my radar.  For example, Tony Heller was a new name to me about a year ago, but it didn't take long to see him being discussed at length on such sites as ClimateFeedback, Desmog and SourceWatch (where he is referred to by his other name, Stephen Goddard).  It might be worth noting that RealClimateScience is Tony Heller's site.

Usually, when my interlocutor on climate change, JP, says something like "look, X said Y about climate change", I'll do two things.  I'll look up X to see whether X is already pegged as a climate denialist because, honestly, it saves time.  But I won't just dismiss X out of hand, because JP has been impressed by what Y was.  I'll then look up details about Y, try to find where it was reported, what was the context, etc etc.  And because there's no point reinventing the wheel, I will of course check whether the claim inherent in Y has already been debunked (and so far in my experience, when a claim has already been debunked, it has been debunked numerous times).