In any any area of study within the natural sciences, there are usually data which may be contradictory and many times opinions regarding the meaning of data even when studies yield consistent data. So why do we not hear about conflicting data and opinions regarding the issue of global warming? Why has the information been so one sided? Are there not data and voices which do not support the concept of global warming? Why have we not heard the other side? I’ve posted before about this here and here and have recently come across some interesting information from the Cato Institute. Read the entire report. I’ve posted the Executive Summary here.
In the last two years, a remarkable amount of disturbing news has been published concerning global warming, largely concentrating on melting of polar ice, tropical storms and hurricanes, and mass extinctions. The sheer volume of these stories appears to be moving the American political process toward some type of policy restricting emissions of carbon dioxide. It is highly improbable, in a statistical sense, that new information added to any existing forecast is almost always “bad” or “good”; rather, each new finding has an equal probability of making a forecast worse or better. Consequently, the preponderance of bad news almost certainly means that something is missing, both in the process of science itself and in the reporting of science. This paper examines in detail both recent scientific reports on climate change and the communication of those reports.
Needless to say, the unreported information is usually counter to the bad news. Reports of rapid disintegration of Greenland’s ice ignore the fact that the region was warmer than it is now for several decades in the early 20th century, before humans could have had much influence on climate. Similar stories concerning Antarctica neglect the fact that the net temperature trend in recent decades is negative, or that warming the surrounding ocean can serve only to enhance snowfall, resulting in a gain in ice. Global warming affects hurricanes in both positive and negative fashions, and there is no relationship between the severity of storms and ocean-surface temperature, once a commonly exceeded threshold temperature is reached. Reports of massive species extinction also turn out to be impressively flawed.
This constellation of half-truths and misstatements is a predictable consequence of the way that science is now conducted, where issues compete with each other for public support. Unfortunately, this creates a culture of negativity that is reflected in the recent spate of global warming reports.
For goodness sake, I’m a bit disturbed that an issue as important to our economy has received so little honest debate. It seems that all the MSM, most of the liberal university types and even the President have not critically looked at the other side.
