Michael Duffy has run a second climate change show on Counterpoint, responding to critics of his SMH column and earlier show. His guest was Bob Carter, whom he described in his SMH column as an “environmental scientist”. The ABC site description is “Research Professor of Geology … geologist and environmental scientist, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, and he specialises in climate change.” which is still an inaccurate description, as you can see here[1]. It would be more accurate to describe Carter as a prominent research geologist with a personal interest in the issue of climate change, and a strongly-held view that Kyoto is a bad idea.
As regards the major issues, I see little evidence to suggest that Carter is any better informed than I am. He claims, presumably relying on the increasingly absurd McKitrick and McIntyre, that “the hockey stick [showing rapidly rising temperatures over the last 100 years] is broken”, and then goes on to recycle long-exploded claims about urban heat islands and satellite data, all of which have been addressed in detail on this blog .
Duffy’s performance on this issue has been disgraceful. If he did the same thing pushing creationism[2] he would surely have been sacked, or at least pressured to put on some real experts.
fn1. A few of the papers listed for Carter are relevant to paleo-climate issues, and he’s well qualified to make the point, as he does in the show, that climate has varied over time. But since that’s not in dispute, it can only be used (as it is by Duffy) as a straw man to attack unnamed critics of his previous shows.
fn2. Fun Factoid: As I’ll argue in a bit more detail later on, the great majority of climate change sceptics, globally speaking, are also creationists – why doesn’t Duffy give them a go on his program?. Feel free to supply your own examples, counterexamples and statistical arguments in the meantime.
John Quiggin 
I am stunned, John, by your statement that the majority of climate change sceptics are creationists. This is something I had never considered before, but I have no reason not to believe it. What both groups apparently share is a refusal to change their opinions in the light of evidence. It is odd to think that people who believe the earth was created only a few thousand years ago could also believe that it will go on just as it has for thousands of years more, without change.
I wonder if most creationists are also believers in predeterminism. If so, then this would give them a theological basis for not worrying about climate change — whatever man does, the outcome has already been decided by God.
— Peter
I cannot disprove your claim that climate change sceptics are creationsists – my contribution to the statistics is that I am one of the former and not one of the latter. However, I think that the onus is firmly on Prof Q to prove his hypothesis. Put up or shut up.
My impression of the climate change skeptics/creationist nexus is only anecdotal but I haven’t seen alot of it. Most of the time creationist whack climate change as a footnote to their main game. OTOH, I know many prominent folks on the mainstream Skeptic side who have a curiously kneejerk reaction to this issue. There was some discussion on Deltoid a while back about Penn and Teller, who do excellent work debunking pseudoscience, quakery and the paranormal in their Bullsh!t programme but also have a climate change skepticism straight out of the cato Institute playbook. Also, Ian Plimer, hard to imagine a greater scourge of creationists, also loathes Greenpeace and all who sail with them. From my involvement with the Aust Skeptics, there are alot of people there too who think the climate change threat is either nonexistent or way overblown. Incorrectly, in my view, but its a common attitude. I think at least some of the opposition comes from a general suspicion of doomsday scenarios and the more hysterical claims and activities of some green groups but I see far worse excesses on the other side these days. ie Stephen Milloy etc.
Confirmation Bias Confirmation Bias Confirmation Bias…………………….
While I think both creationists and anti-environmentalists –which would include most GW sceptics- I think both have a severe case of confirmation bias but I would be surprised if most GW sceptics are also creationists. If you just look at the group that includes GW sceptics with some science backgrounds very few would be creationists. The last major study –sorry don’t have link- found most practicing scientists in the study didn’t believe in a personal ‘God’ with the least number being in the biological sciences.
I would guess for the most consistently extreme cases, that they are predominately conservative, value business over the environment and if examined not very critical when it comes to examining their own views, the sources of their information or their biases.
But having said at least the less extreme anti-environmental sceptics use similar reasons I use when making judgments on disciplines they have no qualifications or have all the current information to make an informed judgment when it goes against some of my foundational attitudes. When comparing them they are eerily similar.
1. First distrust the intellectual/critical thinking honesty capacity of the other side esp their media
2. That they suffer individual confirmation bias stemming from psychological attitudinal stances, such as business shouldn’t be interfered with vs the environment is more important than people or anti-capitalist so even with qualification there authority can be dismissed.
3. That they are social/institutionally biased through common ideological attitudes or that they are so bound up in their discipline that they don’t see the forest for the trees, or with personal benefits that it helps their career
GW science funding vs energy/business lobby money, leftie scientists vs hard right pro-business conservatives
4.Or that institutions and society have had social/institutional bias in the past therefore it is possible that they are doing the same now. So even if you are in the extreme minority and seen to be in the wrong by the rest of society and mainstream institutions you could still end up being right!
Do we all use bounded rationality and it is a hit or miss affair whether you foundational attitudes by chance put you on the side that ends up correct?
BTW I have actually changed my mind on foundation attitudes and stances on things due to evidence in the past and given that I’m fully aware of confirmation bias is that enough to trust my judgment? I’m still not sure; how would one know that ones is under a confirmation bias or cognitive dissonance?
The search of the Right Wing Phillip Adams continues.
Michael Duffy is the clown who wants to play Hamlet: a thinker who is so unfortunate as to be intelligent enough to recognise his own mediocrity.
Is Duffy another example of Left-Wing bias at the ABC?
I would be less irritated by the prominence given by the media to global warming sceptics and spoilers if the same indulgence were also extended to economists who contest the orthodox economic modellers’ predictions of economic doom and gloom from greenhouse response policies, and to economists and social scientists who contest the general mythology of “jobs versus environment” and “economic growth (at least in the short to medium term) versus the environment”.
To open another window on the problem, if we assume that greenhouse response measures sufficient to stabilise the climate will have at least some costs for at least some people, there is an interesting task for our moral philosophers in debating the ethics of policies which certainly impose some short- to medium-term costs, the scale and distribution of which can be known with reasonable confidence, in order to avert medium- to long-term negative consequences which are probable but not certain, and whose scale, nature and distribution are even less certain but have a non-trivial probability of entailing far more severe costs than would be imposed by such preventative measures.
On the few occasions I listened to Counterpoint, I found it very different in approach from LNL. Adams doesn’t conceal his opinions, and the ratio of left to right wing guests is about two to one. But he listens to the latter with respect; his questions reflect an appreciation of, if not agreement with, their arguments; and he certainly lets them make their case. Duffy by contrast presents himself as a voice of calm independence and balance (Tim Blair comes across just the same way on radio). His parade of right wing guests are all presented as interesting characters with a fresh take on their particular speciality. One by one, they all just happen to come down on the right side of the issues in question. An uninitiated listener would figure out in half an hour where Adams was coming from, wheras with Duffy it might take four or five programs.
Adams is hosting a public forum on ABC bias next month, in beautiful Parramatta. Duffy will be there, and David Marr too as I recall.
I think Amanda has hit the nail on the head. A good deal of scepticism about greenhouse (including mine) has been driven by irritation with the constant end of the world is nigh/stop consuming you will go blind religious stye evangelism of most greenies. This includes many prominent academics (who along with Marxists and some free market economists and all post-modernists, etc, seem to think that professional responsibilities go out the window where environmental issues are concerned.
I’ve never heard before the correlation between being a climate change skeptic and creationists. As Amanda points out, stalwart foes of creationist chicanery are also manning the intellectual battlements against climate-change.
Given that positions on climate change have tended to split down the usual left v right political divide there may be a loose connection between being a creationist and climate change skeptic. Creationists have always tended to be from the relgious right but the opposition came from all different fronts. Howver I’m not convinced that being a climate change skeptic means that the person is likely to be or have creationist sympathies.
James,
Much of the criticism of the ABC is, of course, hypocritical given the right wing bias elsewhere in the media. However, while Phillip Adams is certainly often a terrific interviewer in that he allows everyone to put their views without interjections, he is getting more and more ridiculously anti-American in his old age. More generally, bias elsewhere does not excuse the ABC for their all too apparent soft-left biases (re the liberation of Iraq, etc). The ABC has also become a very conservative organisation in that it never tries anything new or radical – How about a play for example highlighting the hypocrisy of social progressives who criticise Christian fundamentalists and other aspects of their culture but stay silent when it comes to the failings of non-Anglo Saxon cultures. It did not surprise that the ABC refused to purchase the fantastic British series Shameless and left that to SBS.
“Fun Factoid: As I’ll argue in a bit more detail later on, the great majority of climate change sceptics, globally speaking, are also creationists”
That is sensationalist nonsense. Its like arguing all people who beleive in ‘greenhouse’ are pantheists!
I’m a sceptic, and not a creationist. Happy to be proven wrong by argument, but not by this sort of bigoted nonsense.
I’ll be interested to see what evidence John puts forward for his claim that most greenhouse sceptics are creationists.
For me, the main reason why this is not an unreasonable proposition is that the geographical and demographic centre of gravity of both groups of people is amongst US citizens of right-of-centre leanings and associations. I suspect that the association between the two might become weaker as one travels further from the US.
Whilst this geo-demographic overlap may exist, it is questionable whether it shows a logical or psychological relationship between greenhouse scepticism and creationism. I think what may be at work is something similar to the 1970s phenomena (at least in Australia) whereby strong support for gay and lesbian rights was concentrated in political parties and factions of the left (ALP Socialist Left, Communist and Trotskyist parties, anarchist collectives, the Australian Union of Students, etc.) which were also the home of left-wing anti-zionism and support for maximalist Palestinian nationalism (i.e. which wanted a Palestinian state replacing Israel, rather than alongside it). As a result it may have been true that in the 1970s a majority of gay and lesbian rights supporters were also pro-PLO and anti-Israel. However it would not have followed that there was any necessary logical or psychological relationship between the two positions.
Talk about soccer, Michael. Your ideas on that are interesting and subtle.
Quiggin didn’t say “the vast majority of publicly vocal c.c. skeptics are creationists”.
“Globally speaking” the population stats are bound to be laid out that way, credulous easily-duped frightened people – believing whatever their “leaders” tell them – being unaccountably numerous these days. Say, you don’t suppose it has something to do with their being easily-led, do you?
My guess is the publicly vocal skeptics are less stacked toward the creationist end of the graph,as it requires at least a better-than room-temperature IQ to take and maintain a position like that in public.
What staggers the imagination is that this horseshit is still being discussed seriously by anyone.
Wow, greenhouse sceptics are also creationists! Those fundamentalist Christians again. Just like this guy –
“James Watt, a former American secretary of the interior, told the US Congress: “After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”
Looking forward to your further amazing revelations of the conspiracy John.
“A good deal of scepticism about greenhouse (including mine) has been driven by irritation. . .”
In other words, by emotion rather than reason.
What do Greenhouse deniers get out of their denial? If I dont believe in it its not true?!
“The ABC has also become a very conservative organisation in that it never tries anything new or radical”
What about that anti-abortion doco they showed last year?
Paul, I am quite willing to concede that my past scepticism (I am not sure about my present position) was driven by emotion rather than reason. However, it does illustrate how extremists undermine the causes they seek to represent by alienating large sections of the public with their silliness – and when it comes to environmental issues the majority of environmentalists do hold some fairly extreme views. Tim Flannery, for example, is one of the most heralded environmental scientists in Australia yet he moronically argued that Australia could not support more than 10 million people. And, don’t start me on these very affluent environmentalists who like to lecture the average persons struggling to pay bills on the evils of consumerism.
“it does illustrate how extremists undermine the causes they seek to represent by alienating large sections of the public with their silliness”
Michael, aren’t you being a bit presumptuous by assuming that how you feel about things is how “large sections of the public” feel? For all you know, you could be in a minority of one.
“majority of environmentalists do hold some fairly extreme views.”
The key words here are “majority” and “extreme.”. Any evidence for this?
My inclination is that even if the science is “inconclusive”, the basics strike me that its more of a risk not to do anything than to go with Kyoto. Culture wars won’t stop carbon dioxide being carbon dioxide.
Any idea that climate change skeptics are creationists would only be coincedental. I have seen some stories on extreme Christian groups that believe in the ‘Rapture’ that are totally indifferent to saving the environment as they think that they are going to get a new Earth when the ‘Rapture’ occurs. This however is the view of an extremest Christian sect and not the view of most creationists or indeed most Christians.
Most creationists I have talked to really believe what they are saying and that is great. Faith in a higher power does not mean that you are deluded or easily lead therefore you will be a climate change skeptic. I am not against creationism as long as it is taught as a religion not as a science. Creationism has no place in science.
I think what is a more likely scenerio is that the hard core of paid skeptics recruit and teach in areas that they know can be manipulated by unscrupulous religious leaders that paint environmentalists as lefty godless greenies. So therefore environmentalism is equated with godlessness so the claims of environmentalists, global warming etc, are also against the teachings of god and are therefore false. The main people that these paid Global Warming skeptics, Singer et al, have targeted are the right wing, usually religious, people that lefty bashing strikes a chord with. The fact that some or all of these people also believe in creation is coincedental.
I agree that some ‘Greenies’ over emphasise the disaster views. The result of Global Warming could range from nothing to significant climate change. No-one can predict what will happen. Greenies such as myself need to emphasise that climate change will more likely affect crop yields, housing design, energy uses and food and land availabilty rather than a super storm that will devour all that is before it. In short the effects of Climate Change will more likely to be a whimper rather than a bang.
Paul Norton gets the prize for anticipating my argument. The centre of GW scepticism is the US, and scepticism is concentrated among Republicans, most of whom hold a similar position on evolution/creation – ranging from outright creationism to a ‘sceptical’ line that evolution is only a theory and other views should be given equal time.
Of course, if you confine attention to scientists qualified in the relevant fields, we are talking about tiny minorities in both cases, and there isn’t much overlap. But the whole point of the Duffy position on climate science and the creationist position in evolution is that we shouldn’t pay attention to any notion of scientific consensus.
Ah, you might euqually have said that most global warming sceptics drive utes.
John, you get the prize for the best unfounded assumption / generalisation, for this –
“The centre of GW scepticism is the US, and scepticism is concentrated among Republicans, most of whom hold a similar position on evolution/creation.”
Dave,
Are you serious when you ask where is the evidence that the majority of greenies hold extreme views. Well look at the books that sell David Suzuki, Paul Ehrlich etc. The left in general (as broadly defined) has got to get over its strong tendency towards extremism. I was just reading an article on French left intellectual Andre Glucksman. In the 1960s and later he was derided by the vast majority of the left for singing the praises of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. Several years prior to the mass murders by Serbs in Bosnia, he was again derided by the majority of the left for calling for intervention against the Serbs. In both cases he was right and the majority were wrong. Ditto his views on the liberation of Iraq. As for the greenhouse issue, the fact that many are sceptical of environmentalists current claims has a lot to do with the extremism of their past views and general silliness. They might turn out to be right on this issue just as Bush is on Iraq (albeit not necessarily for the right reasons.
Simon how about we use our last initials so no one will confuse our posts?
BTW Simon?? which side of US politics is pushing for equal time for creation science in class room and GW scepticism?
MB, who are the “vast majority of the left who opposed intervention against the Serbs”. This was an issue that cut across party lines. In particular, in the US, Republicans were either opposed or lukewarm regarding Clinton’s intervention
“As for the greenhouse issue, the fact that many are sceptical of environmentalists current claims. . .”
The recent Lowy Institute poll on Australian’s perceptions of global threats would suggest that not many are sceptical at all. The poll revealed that 70% of Australians are worried about global warming, including 46% “very worried”. A further 24% are “somewhat worried” and only 6% are not worried. Only the possibility of an unfriendly state acquiring nuclear weapons was rated as a more serious concern.
Now the 6% who are “Not Worried” (i.e. sceptical) may be right, and they certainly have the right to their view, but they are not “many” when compared with the 94% who believe that global warming is something to be more or less worried about.
SimonJM –
Creationism – I think it’s really hard to make statements about what a huge section of the American population believes. For what it’s worth here is a poll that shows both Democrats and Republicans believe in Creationism, with the Republicans believing in it a bit more.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml
Greenhouse scepticism – Same caveat goes. Both Bush and Kerry rejected Kyoto.
Simon F, combine your poll showing most Republicans are creationists with this poll which shows that the great majority of those opposed to the McCain-Lieberman proposals for greenhouse mitigation are Republicans and my point is made.
If 60% of global warming sceptics are Republicans, and 60% of Republicans are creationists, then only 36% of global warming sceptics are Republican creationists. But it’s quite plausible that another 15% of global warming sceptics are non-Republican creationists. In any case, I think the original claim was intended more as poetry than as science.
SimonF noted one should be carefull of generalizations but it stills seems to hold up that you are more likely to believe CS and be a GW sceptic if you are Republican.
>60 percent of Americans who call themselves Evangelical Christians, however, favor replacing evolution with creationism in schools altogether, as do 50 percent of those who attend religious services every week.
Are Evangelicals now considered Republicans?
John
What the 2 polls show (if polls, particularly Zogby polls commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation, are to be believed) is that Democrats and Republicans both believe in creationism and both believe in the reduction of greenhouse gases. On the Zogby poll the US is hardly the world centre of GW scepticism.
I assume you mean Glucksman was right on Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Gulags, rather than on Solzhenitsyn’s advocacy of Moscow as the Third Rome, emphasis on Russian nationalism and moral supremacy, and all that other guff:
‘In presenting alternatives to the Soviet regime, Solzhenitsyn tended to reject Western emphases on democracy and individual freedom and instead favoured the formation of a benevolent authoritarian regime that would draw upon the resources of Russia’s traditional Christian values.’
http://www.almaz.com/nobel/literature/Solzhenitsyn.html
Still waiting for that stuff to come true; maybe then I will be able to get a decent job.
The relevant figures are that 80 per cent of sceptics are Republicans (you can get this by working back) and 70 per cent of Republicans are creationists, as are about 50 per cent of non-Republicans Americans. Assuming conditional independence [which is generous], this gives us that at least 66 per cent of American climate change sceptics are creationists. Since, as shown above, climate scepticism is very rare outside the US [even in the US its almost entirely confined to Republicans] we have a fun factoid.
Michael,
in the late 1960s Glucksmann was a Parisian Maoist. His support for Solzhenitsyn comes from his Nouvelle philosophe times, circa 1979, long after my parent’s got their copy of The First Circle from the book club.
John
I know it’s a “fun factoid” but I’m really not following your leaps of logic.
I may be blind but I can’t find the information that shows that climate scepticism is rare outside the US – what about China and India ?
Further you seem to be using the poll results to make broad generalisations about climate scepticism.
The Zogby poll doesn’t prove anything about climate scepticism. It asks “Do you support a decrease in greenhouse gases ?”. I’m a sceptic and I support a decrease. I don’t know whether the GH effect is true, it could be, and as the poll doesn’t refer to the cost of doing this, I assume there is none. So, sure I support it. The poll also asks whether you support a piece of legislation.People could support legislation for a million reasons.
You can cross correlate results from tinpot polls to come up with anything.
What is worse is making inferences from those correlations.
The “investor class” tends to support the reduction of GH gases less than non-investors in the Zogby poll. You say that “Creationists” are GH sceptical.Therefore people with shares are more likely to be creationists.Those dividend receiving fools.
In any event, if the purpose of a fun factoid is simply to generate debate then you have accomplished that.
I< >
Michael, that really is an unfair stereotype of environmentalists.
The 1990’s was the decade that the environmentalist movement woke up to economic reality.
Take a look at the webpage of virtually any mainstream green group and their whole thrust is we can maintain the environment AND create more jobs AND improve living standards.
As an environmentalist and an economist, its really quite fascinating to explain environmental externalities and hidden subsidies to environmentally harmful industries to old-school greenies and watch the light-bulb suddeny pop on in their heads.
michael.burgess,
You wrote – The left in general (as broadly defined) has got to get over its strong tendency towards extremism.
Like the right has never held an extreme view? Not even once Michael? If Suzuki is an extremist, how do you categorise Bush? As a moderate?
Checking in with reality is always the first step in any rehabilitation program you may wish to consider.
David Suzuki is an extremist…I think I have heard it all now.
What are you waiting for Michael – quick go get Johnny to slap a ban on him ever entering this country again.
“What do Greenhouse deniers get out of their denial? If I dont believe in it its not true?”
The peace of mind that they can go on with their current lifestyle forever?
Actually I think many greenhouse skeptics are on the extreme libertarian right of politics. Rather than dmit there might be a problem out there which might not be soluble through unrestrained market capitalism, they prefer to simply deny its existence.
Simon F: “On the Zogby poll the US is hardly the world centre of GW scepticism.”
I don’t wish to get into the endless internet game of “Proveit” but I’d be surprised if the US WASN’T the centre of GW skepticism – after all it is one of only two developed countries which declined to ratify Kyoto.
MB, part of the problem with a lot of your analysis is that you rarely distinguish between the left, interpreted as “everyone to the left of the Liberal Party” and the left, interpeted as “followers of Noam Chomsky”. A lot of the time you impute to the first group views that might be held by the second, and derive false conclusions as a result.
Global warming sceptics are like creationists? Strange, I thought the same for GW doomsayers.
Remember the way the creationists ignored long established scientific evidence about the earth’s age and dinosour fossils and so on, and tried to prove that the Earth is a mere 6000 year old? Now it is the GW doomsayers that ignore similar geological evidence that show wild and mini climatic swings throughout the earth’s history. How about 4 degrees Celsius swing either way sound, if you thing 1 or 2 is too much?
There is another ironical twist here. It was another geologist, the indomitable Ian Plimer, who waged a scientific crusade against the “creation scientists”. Bob Carter reminds me of Ian Plimer a little in his doggedness. Good on him!
By the way, I really wonder what Ian Plimer thinks of all this.
Ian
I too am trying to get the WA Greens to realise that Green policies have to be costed and based on sound economic principles.
We still need an economy – a sustainable one.
Perhaps we can compare notes
John Quiggin Comment #23 14/4/2005 @ 12:16 pm
………
There is probably a systematic correlation between Greenhouse skepticism, Christian fideism and Republican partisanship. The common denominator is an ethico-logical (ie ideological or theological) attitude towards empirico-logical matters. Party solidarity trumps factual veracity.
Or, to put it in colloquial terms, the US Republican Party’s motto is now
Pas d’enemi vers la droit
Ian and JQ I once got into an argument with some atheist libertarians when they were outraged when I said that they had the same sort of confirmation bias regarding the environment as creation science advocates have with evolution. Many of these individual are happy to show their superiority in logical arguments and scientific evidence against CS but they turn around and deny the same scientific method and evidence when it comes to humans having an adverse impart on the environment. Rationalisation can take you anywhere if you let it.
But its just not about GW, the same people like Duffy or Lomborg deny that there is any such detrimental effect. I have no problem with healthy scepticism that is in fact a part of science but with cases like Duffy Andrew Bolt and Lomborg that if you examine their arguments and evidence, their objectivity, balance and honesty is called into question. Is the left guilty of intellectual fraud? On occasions probably, but in this case I know whose side mainstream science is on.
I no longer listen to ‘greenie’ groups but go to mainstream science publications and broadcasting and the consistently reported stance is that humans are having an adverse impact on the environment. So when these sceptics call into question the ‘greenie’ claims it really not the ‘greenies’ they are questioning but a broad swathe of scientists and scientific disciplines.
Are we expected to believe that the scientists that make these claims are anti-capitalists or closet tree huggers or just do it to advance their careers? If sceptics think that then it would truly be a sad state of affairs and we might as well teach creationism in schools, because if our scientific institutions are so flawed it will do no harm for we are already truly stuffed.
Pathetic. Once again JQ brings out the school yard argument: “I know somebody who agrees with you, and they’re dumb, therefore you’re dumb/wrong”.
I remember debating the Iraq war with some right wingers a while ago and they rested their argument with “… but, but, but you agree with Philip Adams!”
The idea is that once something has been associated with Philip Adams/Creationists (pick your poison) then it is irrelevant.
Like I said — pathetic. Nearly as bad as the growing TimBlairesque JQ cheer squad. Put some of you people in a room together and you’ll have group-thinked the answer to everything. A less generous soul would draw an analogy with religious dogmatism…
SimonJM “the same people like Duffy or Lomborg deny that there is any such detrimental effect”
Lomborg doesn’t deny a detrimental effect from global warming. I guess nobody on the left cares about facts (intentional overstatement as parody of continues anti-right wing confirmation bias).
SimonJM: “Is the left guilty of intellectual fraud? On occasions probably…”
oh — you think? lol
Ejder Memis, a few years ago I heard an extended interview by Margaret Throsby with Ian Plimer on ABC FM.
Ian thinks that water and dust are the most significant variable climate change elements in the atmosphere and that human activity was irrelevant. Along with the sun, wobbles in the earth’s orbit etc.
That’s from memory, but I’m pretty sure that was the story.
I think that there is an inherent problem in this global climate change issue in that a range of disciplines are necessary to come to a final conclusion about it.
For example, James Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies is presumably an astrophysicist. But what worries him most is the degradation of ice-sheets, which he thinks has been underestimated. Yet he admits he is no glaciologist and the glaciologists have not done the work he needs. At least he knows what he doesn’t know.
I listened to Bob Carter with Michael Duffy. For a man who was casting doubt on scientists’ work he was very definite about things that turn out to be quite peripheral to his own work.
He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
I found a paper by Hans von Storch who hangs out at a Coastal studies institute on the coast in Germany. He works on climate change, and, like Hansen, strikes me as knowing what he doesn’t know. The media beat-ups upset him, but he expresses considerable distrust in the scenario-building of economists etc in forecasting how we are going to live, what technologies we are going to use and how extensive economic development is going to be. So he’s not sure, could never be sure, how the story is going to play out.
On human vs natural influence on the climate, he thinks we would need time to sort it out ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ (my term), a long time in fact and it’s time we don’t have. So he makes a judgement on the evidence available and on balance thinks it’s a problem on which we must act. His big thing is that we must concentrate on adaptation as well as mitigation. I thought he picked his way through the maze pretty well.
But there are some like Carter, who having through sweat and talent mounted the peaks of one field of knowledge (which they protect zealously) think it’s dead easy to leap onto the top of the next mountain and pronounce with authority. I’m sorry, but I suspect Ian Plimer is one of those.
We need a whole mountain range of mountains with gurus atop them (or at least competent and cooperative scientists) to find a path out of the fix we’ve landed ourselves in.
Actually, the Earth’s “natural” atmosphere is probably missing because of a freak occurrence during its formation. Without that it would all be more Venus-like. Perhaps we should all be congratulating the polluters for restoring the uninhabitable status quo ante, or is that too much like those ultra-greenies who favour humanity’s complete absence as a solution?