hrynyshyn | March 3, 2009My first take on Andy Revkin's odd little story effectively equating the climate change "hyperbole" generated by Al Gore and George F. Will was a quick shrug. Now I am not so sure.
While making such a comparison is clearly out of line, it seemed to me that anyone reading the story would come away more impressed by the differences between how Gore and Will handled their errors, rather than any implied similarities. Gore immediately withdrew a problematic sequence from his slide show when it was pointed out that the described trend in weather-related damages was not linked exclusively to…
hrynyshyn | March 2, 2009Last week we learned from the Washington Post's ombudsman that George F. Will had supplied a list of 20ish internet references to Post editors in support of his much-criticized Feb. 15 column. That column repeated his long-standing belief that the world is not warming according to the prevailing consensus of the world's climatologists. Now, Will claims to be on sound scientific footing and refuses to admit to the many errors that his critics say he keeps making. So it should not be surprising that the list of verifying sources that purport to support his arguments is of great interest to the…
hrynyshyn | February 28, 2009Like Carl Zimmer, I can't get past the George F. Will/WaPo climate change denial scandal. Carl's latest piece delves deeper into the nature of journalism and fact-checking at the Post, and I'm going to weigh in with my observations of working at newspapers off and on for the past 22 years.
First, contrary to what many non-journalists seem to believe, George F. Will is a journalist. Just because he gets to add interpretation and value judgment to the factual material that serves as his raw material doesn't mean he gets to flout the ethical parameters of the business. In other words, he is…
hrynyshyn | February 27, 2009How do I put this politely?
It is not possible for a reasonable person equipped with a secondary education to read the material George F. Will cites in his columns arguing against the scientific evidence for global warming and come to the conclusions that Will reaches.
It's been less than a day, but already the mountain of criticism written in response to a new column, leaked yesterday and published today in the Washington Post, in which American's leading conservative columns defends his previous column on the subject, is astounding. Carl Zimmer's is among the best, as usual. There's also…
hrynyshyn | February 26, 2009I owe author Eric Roston a book review. He was kind enough to send me a copy of The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat late last year. It took me a while to get around to it, and I regret not reading it earlier.
The Carbon Age is not the best piece of science writing I've ever had the pleasure of devouring. It could have used another edit, for starters, to ensure that new ideas and terms are explained at first occurence rather than several pages later. And I'm not sure that a biography of carbon is enough to tie together disparate chapters on stellar…
hrynyshyn | February 25, 2009My apologies if you're weary of posts revolving around George F. Will and his inability to accept responsibility for getting climate science completely wrong. But the contrast between that sorry episode in one non-scientist's efforts to communicate science with those of Al Gore's is too stark to pass up.
This week Al Gore accepted that it had been a mistake to include a series of animated slides in the latest version of his climate change presentation. The images accurately record a dramatic spike in weather-related damages around the world in recent years, with the U.S. suffering more than…
hrynyshyn | February 23, 2009I just returned from delivering an hour-long presentation on climate change to the local chapter of American Association of University Women. It was one of the most intelligent and educated audiences I've had the pleasure to appear before. Followup questions were poignant and well-considered. But then someone piped up with:
"This is all makes a lot of sense. But last weekend I was reading a column by George Will...."
Sigh. The gentleman who had come across Will's error-laden Feb. 15 column, "Dark Green Doomsayers," was sincerely puzzled, I think. He seemed like a reasonable fellow who just…
hrynyshyn | February 20, 2009The focus has shifted from George F. Will's refusal to accept the science of climate change to the Washington Post's refusal to accept responsibility for Will's breach of journalism's most sacred tenets. I don't have more to say, but Carl Zimmer's second analysis of the problem is bang on. There's also Joe Romm (again) and Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly.
The bottom line is, Will was caught misrepresenting the science, and when the errors were brought to his editors' attention, in no uncertain terms, they refused to acknowledge any had been made. It's one thing to make a sloppy mistake,…
hrynyshyn | February 19, 2009Barack Obama and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, just wrapped up a joint press conference. Of course, no one said anything particularly newsworthy, but a few comments are worth mentioning.
First, Harper said his approach to climate change, an approach that favors Bush-style emissions intensity (relative to economic output) is no different from Obama's preferred absolute reductions. Here's the rough transcript:
Harper: WHEN I LOOK AT THE PRESIDENT'S PLATFORM, THE KIND OF TARGETS HIS ADMINISTRATION HAS LAID OUT FOR THE REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES ARE VERY SIMILAR TO OURS. YOU SAY WE…
hrynyshyn | February 19, 2009I'm dwelling on George F. Will's latest violation of journalistic ethics because it seems to have hit a nerve. Journalists ordinarily too polite to attack another journalist for fear of appearing biased and unprofessional have broken with their habits to call Will on his misrepresentation of the mythical "global cooling" consensus of the 1970s.
It's not surprising to come across sarcastic and caustic reviews in places like the Think Progress Wonk Room or TPM Muckraker. And I would have been shocked if Joe Romm hadn't blown another in his infinite supply of gaskets. But the opprobrium has…
hrynyshyn | February 18, 2009There's bound to be some fuss over a new film scheduled for release later this year. Creation follows Charles Darwin as he ponders whether to write On the Origin of Species. Sounds like a great subject, but there are some worrying signs. PZ Myers, for example, doesn't like the producers' decision to include the ghost of Darwin's daughter, unless it's just as a hallucination. I'm more concerned about the main theme, which, according to the film's Facebook page is:
What happens when a world-renowned scientist, crushed by the loss of his eldest daughter, conceives a book which will prove the non…
hrynyshyn | February 15, 2009George F. Will has once again waded, some might argue over his head, into the hazardous waters of climatology. His latest Washington Post column restates long-discredited arguments against anthropogenic global warming. Rather than waste an entire afternoon examining the flaws in Will's case -- if you're interested, Joe Romm has already performed that service -- I'm just going to draw your attention to one small reference in the column.
For anyone who has followed the efforts of climate change pseudoskeptics to keep alive the false claim that climatologists were once of the shared opinion that…
hrynyshyn | February 13, 2009A Reuters story about startling high levels of carbon dixoide in the air near the North Pole caught my eye this week.
Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, rose to 392 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere in Svalbard in December....
392?
That seems awfully high, seeing as we're used to reading about 385, or maybe 387 ppm for the last year or so. Should we be switching into panic mode? After all, if CO2 can rise at 8 ppm in one year, that would be a sure sign of a dramatic positive feedback mechanism. The answer is no, at least not because of this one…
hrynyshyn | February 12, 2009The British (including the Northern Irish) have all the fun. Guardian columnist George Monbiot has just launched the Christopher Booker prize, to be awarded to whoever "manages, in the course of 2009, to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change." It's named after a columnist at the competing Telegraph, a man who manages to get just about everything wrong, and not just about climate change.
Booker's most recent column, in fact, is a collection of misrepresentations on the subject of biological…
hrynyshyn | February 12, 2009I must confess to being pleasantly surprised by the amount of attention Charles Darwin is drawing on this, the 200th anniversary of his birth. And although anything I contribute is almost certain to be redundant, I feel obliged to chime in. So:
Yes, Darwin was brilliant. One of the top scientific minds of all time. A man with few peers. Someone everyone agrees belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Science along with Newton, Einstein and some fourth character (about whom there can be no agreement).
Was he a saint? No. But then, no one is a saint. Has popular culture unecessarily conflated…
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2009Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre, says scientists should be careful not to exaggerate the evidence for climate change:
The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off.
She cites the fuss over dwindling Arctic sea ice cover (or extent) as "just one example" of going beyond what the data really say:
Recent headlines…
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2009Start with An Inconvenient Truth, add some real actors and remove most of the scientific attribution. What would you get? If you believe the producers, you get "The Age of Stupid," which is scheduled for release in the US in April.
The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.
I think I'll ask the producers for a review copy.
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2009A member of the audience at one of my climate change slide shows asked me why I hadn't mentioned the benefits of switching to vegetarianism when it comes to things we can do to lower our carbon footprint. I replied that I thought eating less meat will be as much as consequence of our actions as a way to change them.
It's not that I disagreed with the premise that meat production consumes too much energy and water, resources that could be better used to grow more plants. That's inarguable. It's just that I see enormous resistance among North Americans and Europeans to the idea of voluntarily…
hrynyshyn | February 10, 2009Northern Ireland's Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson, has banned an advertising campaign promoting efficient use of electricity on the grounds that the central thesis of the campaign is "patent nonsense" and "insidious propaganda." Even if it were true, since when are either attributes grounds for censorship? What's the real problem?
From the BBC's coverage of the story:
Calling for his removal, the Green Party said Mr Wilson made "a laughing stock out of Northern Ireland."
Sammy Wilson argued that the Scottish executive had objected and stopped the adverts being broadcast. However, the…
hrynyshyn | February 9, 2009Not to diminish Charles Darwin's brillance in the slightest, but there's a nice little essay in the New York Times by Nicholas Wade that helps explain why the guy managed to get so much so right so long ago. The money quote:
One of Darwin's advantages was that he did not have to write grant proposals or publish 15 articles a year. He thought deeply about every detail of his theory for more than 20 years before publishing "The Origin of Species" in 1859, and for 12 years more before its sequel, "The Descent of Man," which explored how his theory applied to people.
So what need are more and…