Fragilecologies

Tag: skeptics

  • “Global Warming ate my homework: In Defense of Legitimate Skepticism About Climate Change.” Mickey Glantz. June 30, 2010

    Poor “global warming.” It seems it is getting blamed for everything under the sun! It is blamed for droughts, floods, forest and bush fires, heat waves, disease outbreaks and the spreading of desert-like conditions. It is blamed for the illegal migration of people from one country to another, and so forth.

    When I was in middle school, teachers would give out homework assignments with instructions to turn in the homework the next day. One time I didn’t do it. When asked by the teacher why I didn’t give her my homework, I lied. I said, as did many other kids my age across America that “my dog Fido ate my homework.”dog_ate_my_homework

    Like Fido, the unruly dog, global warming gets blamed these days for everything unpleasant that happens. That is a disservice to Fido and it is clearly a disservice to the global warming issue. Some people argued that Hurricane Katrina, for example, was strengthen by global warming when in fact it was just a strong hurricane not an extraordinary one.

    Opinions about the possible impacts of global warming are rampant in the printed and electronic media and, in many instances, are not based on facts but on subjective opinions. Was this or that specific drought or flood or fire the result of natural variability in the climate system or was it the result of human induced warming of the global atmosphere? When will we be able to identify the actual impacts attributable to global warming: some say we can already see them while others say we’ll never be able to sort it out between what is the result of natural variability versus an actual warming of the global atmosphere.

    The media does not help. They tend to seek balance of opinions, even when balance is not really warranted. So, those who believe in global warming’s influence on intensifying hurricanes and in increasing their frequency will tend to state that perspective to the press. Even if a large majority believes it is so, the media still call for an opposing statement that rejects that perspective, seeking to ‘level the playing field’ when it does not need to be leveled. Fact and fiction are presented as are subjectively based wishful thinking and guesstimates.

    So, it is no wonder that the public remains confused about the science of global warming, about its real possible consequences. Global warming has become a business of sorts, an industry much like the drought industry (industria da seca) that exists to assess drought-plagued Northeast Brazil. The drought industry is made up of people who come from all social and economic sectors of society as well as from just about every academic discipline at a university. There is money to be made off of hazards. There’s money to be made: by researchers, by engineers, by technologists, by the news media, and especially by those who are savvy enough to capture the media’s attention to expose their views, opinions, whatever on climate change.

    We have to become more responsible about how we talk about the global warming issue. We have to reduce the hype, encourage solutions and educate individuals and policymakers about the issue and its relative priority to other pressing issues. We should openly and aggressively challenge knowingly false claims using sound reasoning.

    We quote polls and surveys which to me are interesting but relatively useless for action. I say this because accepting a poll’s findings requires trust and I for one have lost that trust for polls and interviews regarding beliefs about global warming. Though I might know better whom to believe or whose views to challenge, many people around the globe do not know how to calibrate the views of commentators about global warmingpollnumbers1250985368

    In the USA for example, a sizable portion of a survey’s respondents blamed the destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on God’s wrath because of the corrupt lifestyle of the city’s inhabitants! As another example, the UN Secretary General stated his belief that the violence in Darfur, western Sudan was the first global warming war! Comments like these must be challenged.

    Scientists, media, policy makers must be more responsible about attributing various climate-related impacts to global warming (or to denying such attributions). In truth anything that society does is happening under a changing climate; the climate is always changing. The contemporary concern is about the level to which it changes and the rate of that change.

    The UN has two definitions of how to look at adaptation as a response to climate change: (1) adaptation of society only to changes attributable directly to global warming and (2) any changes related to climate. The latter makes it easier to respond to climate impacts on the part of society. The former sets up an untenable situation in which human influence on climate must be unquestionably identified before action is to be taken, whereas the latter makes it easier for the researcher.

    My teacher knew right away that the homework had not been done and probably knew that I did not even have a dog. She was skeptical from the outset. I think that the attributions that are made by scientists, among others, require closer scrutiny than we have tended to do to date. Global warming like Fido should not be taking the blame for all our inconveniences. As research has shown time and again, the behavior of societies has a lot to do with the impacts of even normal weather. It may take decades before some of the occurrences in Nature can accurately be blamed on global warming.

  • “SKEPTICS, SHOW US YOUR EMAILS: ‘turn-about’ is fair play.” Mickey Glantz, DAY 4 at COP 15

    Let’s be honest. We have all said things on email ranging fro m serious to silly to stupid. We have all sent curt responses based on the fact that those receiving it understand the context of the abbreviated message. I am not condoning or excusing the sometimes dumb, sometimes uncaring and sometimes deceptive comments that have appeared in the so called “climategate” so called “scandal”. That situation will be sorted out by others, invesitgative committees most likely. Yes, the emails were illegally hacked. Nevertheless, they are now public. So, the public will read them and they have through the media. E-mailing has its consequences.

    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message
    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message

     

    There is no question in my mind that the integrity of both the scientists and of email security has been damaged. Others will assess that level of impact. But here i want to call for a level playing field. It’s a good faith challenge to the climate skeptics who are using climategate to discredit the science of climate change, though they cannot discredit impacts of a changing climate on people today and in the future.

    I call upon the climate change skeptics, political, scientific and media to share with the world a block of their unbroken years-long chain of emails about climate change . I am asking them to do this on a voluntary basis in order to show us that they are super human and do not share the  human frailty of ‘loose lips’ that the rest of humankind is subect to.

    Doing so would provide outsiders an even broader context in which we can evaluate the content of the emails that had been hacked and released from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia [and also at Penn State]. Let society be the judge about the words and motives of all involved in the climate change issue at the political, scientific and media levels, and let society be the judge on the merits of the finding and interpretation of the science of climate change.

    After all, isn’t turn about fair play? or what is good for the goose should be good for the gander as well, no?

  • Mickey Glantz, “Bloggin’ from Copenhagen: Day 1 at COP15”

    I am attending COP 15 and it is a foggy and cold day, not too windy but the wind chill is still significant. The chill though is way overshadowed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the people trying to get in to the Conference Center where the action is, at least for the non-governmental organizations NGOs). They had come from around the globe to attend this potentially historic event. Many of course were not used to the weather but stood in line for long periods of time anyway. they wanted to be a part of the process. Was COP 15 unprepared to help them? As far as registration procedureswere going, I’d have to say …yes.

    The commitment of the members of NGOs was quite clear outside the conference hall, as they had to stand outside in long lines waiting to register. There were groups along side the line acting out so to speak, trying to draw attention to their specific message; they chanted “stop the warming”, showed a video on climate change is ultimately about people, free coffee in support wind power,and greenpeace supporters mingling with the crowd.

    cop15: a 4 to 5 NGO hour line

    OOOPs. Apparently someone thought it was appropriate to postpone COP15 registrationfor NGOs until noon on the first morning of the first day. Not sure why, but the general feeling was that the organizers did not want any distractions from the opening ceremony for COP 15. I wonder if the hardy, used-to-the-cold-Danish-weather Danish COP 15 organizers gave any thought at all to the thousands of people from around the world who would have to stand outside and in a slow-moving line to register.

    The group I was to register with gave up trying to register today, when a policewoman informed us that the line would likely take us about 4-5 hours and we would likely not get into the Center because registration would close at 6pm. We decided to try again tomorrow.

    We went into the city center and we could see many huge posters supplied by the Danish or other governments, corporations, NGOs andcivil society that covered the sides of large buildings.

    posters to stop climate change in Copenhagen

    This gave us the feeling that many citizens, especially young people, were sincerely engaged in pursuing a voice in climate change policy making. Their collective actions throughout the city drowned out the words a Danish climate change skeptic, Bjorn Lomborg — at least for the next couple of weeks.

  • A message to climate scientists: Emails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus

    The following excerpt is from an editorial I wrote in 2002 called “E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus.” I believe it is relevant to the controversy swirling around the hacked files (emails and documents) of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Those emails expose a side of science that does not receive much attention, except from an occasional writer whose manuscript might have been rejected for publication. Perhaps some of those disappointed writers, rejected research manuscripts in hand, were right to complain. Their voice collectively is now being heard around the world.

    E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus
    Mickey Glantz

    Emails are impersonal. No matter how hard one tries, transmitting warm and emotional thoughts by way of email is a difficult task. The pressure of time, the need to spell check, the pressure to type in a correct representation of one’s thoughts, the pressure to answer other emails, typing with two or three fingers in front of a 15- or 17-inch monitor – all these factors lead to an impersonal communication. An email also lacks a personal signature.

    emails and Mars
    emails and Mars

    Letters, on the other hand, convey a much higher level of sincerity. There is little room for correction, unless a draft is first written and then a clean copy is made. People writing letters on paper must think through what they want to say, thought by thought, sentence by sentence, before it is written down. The letter-writer must go to the trouble of putting the letter in the mail. For centuries, writing on papyrus, animal skins, or parchment has been the preferred way to communicate. By analogy, writing on stone or clay tablets is, to me, more like writing down one’s thoughts in email.

    letters are from venus
    letters are from venus

    With written letters, there is a tendency to rethink what has been said and therefore there is a delay in sending them – a safety period, so to speak. With emails, the tendency is to fire them off, once they have been written. One may not actually want to take the time to modify (or mitigate) his or her first thoughts. And it is so easy to hit the “send” button. Not only that, but the sender does not have to wait several days before the recipient receive the message, and wait several more days for a reply. With emails, sending and receiving messages can take place in real time, and then often do. What was not clear in the first message can perhaps be cleared up on a second or third email.

    The writer of an email is also stripped of the trouble that the letter-writer must go through in order to mail a letter: address an envelope, find a stamp (remembering which is the latest stamp with the correct price on it – I don’t know what they currently cost), and then remember to get the letter into a mailbox.

    It is important to be aware of the differences between emails and hard-copy letters. They are not the same. While they do convey information from one person to another, they can be very different in the depth of thought that goes into them. The level of sensitivity varies, with email tending to be less sensitive, often incomplete thoughts that can mislead or provoke the recipient. I have actually witnessed a situation in which email correspondence between people in the same office went on a downward spiral, as one misleading statement led to an equally insensitive response, and so forth, until both parties ended up completely estranged, with no further communication possible between them.

    I suggest that, when writing an email, we take the time to go back and read it through and think about its content, and more importantly, its tone before sending. Try to put ourselves in the place of the recipient. This would lend a little “Venus” to our emails and mitigate their “Mars” aspect.