All you need is high school physics to know we are in deep trouble, according to Lawrence Krauss. This is difficult to watch, but important information for fending off the climate deniers.
A darling of many climate-change skeptics is a physicist who has done his own analysis and concluded:
The earth is indeed getting warmer. Global average land temperatures have risen 0.91 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years. This is "on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions." The rate of increase on land is accelerating. Warming for the entire 20th century clocks in at 0.73 degrees C per century. But over the most recent 40 years, the globe has warmed at a rate of 2.76 degrees C per century.
What if climate change is a big hoax? Indeed.
George Will's recent journalistic malpractice has inspired much discussion by many people concerned about climate change. It's a critically important issue given that 41% of Americans currently think that the threat of global warming is being exaggerated by the media. The intellectual energy runs even deeper than criticism of George Will, though, leading us to the fundamental issue of how journalists and readers can distinguish legitimate science from sham (or politicized) science. The Washington Post recently agreed to publish a precisely-worded response to Will by Christopher Mooney. Here's Mooney's opener:
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?
Mooney methodically takes Will to task on point after point. For instance, weather is not the same thing as the climate. The state of the art in 1970s climate science has been superseded by 2007 climate science. You can't determine long-term trends in Arctic ice by comparing ice thickness only on two strategically picked days. The bottom line is not surprising. If you want to do science well you have to do it with precision, measuring repeatedly, crunching the numbers every which way and then drawing your conclusions self-critically. What is not allowed is cherry picking.Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It's also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be -- now more than ever.
Mooney has given considerable thought to these topics. His byline indicates that he is the author of "The Republican War on Science" and co-author of the forthcoming "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." I would supplement Mooney's well-written points, borrowing from our federal courts. They have long been faced with the struggle to determine what is real science and what is junk science, and they have settled on what is now called the "Daubert" test, (named after the case first applying the test, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993)). The Daubert analysis is applied many times every day in all federal courts (and many state courts) all across America. The problem facing judges is that the parties to law suits often produce experts who express scientific theories and explanations that are never heard outside of courtrooms. This justifiably makes judges suspicious. Is the witness doing "real" science or his he/she doing sham science to further the interests of the party paying his/her bills? The Daubert test asks the judge to serve as gatekeeper, to make sure that only legitimate science sees the light of day in courtrooms. Here are the relevant factors:George Will has written an irresponsible article denying climate change (AKA global warming). Here’s the basic problem with George Will’s writing, as stated succinctly by The Wonk Room:
In “Dark Green Doomsayers,” Will attacked Secretary of Energy Steven Chu for discussing a worst-case scenario of California drought caused by the decimation of Sierra snowpack, falsely claiming Chu predicted this will come to pass “no later than 10 years away.” Will also incorrectly claimed that “global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979″ — based on a 45-day-old blog post by Daily Tech’s Michael Asher, one of Marc Morano’s climate denial jokers.
Will’s article is riddled with falsehoods. The radically untrue nature of Will’s article is beyond dispute. Confronted with Will’s cauldron of conservative climate denial propaganda, the Washington Post was faced with a stark choice. It could either A) confess that it failed to do any competent fact-checking or B) compound Will’s lies with its own by claiming that it did real fact-checking. It chose “B.”