Climate Change Advocates Face 'Institutional Bias Toward Oversimplification'

Wall Street Journal:

A months-long crisis at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has upended the world's perception of global warming, after hacked emails and other disclosures revealed deep divisions among scientists working with the United Nation-sponsored group. That has raised questions about the panel's objectivity in assessing one of today's most hotly debated scientific fields.

The problem stems from the IPCC's thorny mission: Take sophisticated and sometimes inconclusive science, and boil it down to usable advice for lawmakers. To meet that goal, scientists working with the IPCC say they sometimes faced institutional bias toward oversimplification, a Wall Street Journal examination shows.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[Rooster Coburn]

03:49 PM on 02/26/2010

"Climate Change Belief Hinges On One's Cultural Views, Not Facts, Social Scientists Say"

Social scientist's beliefs hinge on their liberal political bias and not facts, conservatives say.

[DocSkull]

03:05 PM on 02/27/2010

What about all the data? What makes nearly every scientist a liberal?

[AlwaysCivil]

02:13 PM on 02/26/2010

"Take sophisticated and sometimes inconclusive science"

What? Did I hear that right? "Sometimes inconclusive" does not sounds anything like "settled".

Is the science no longer "settled"? If not, why has the media not pointed this out? For years now we have heard that the science was settled, and that skeptics were akin to holocaust deniers in refusing to embrace global warming theory.

"Inconclusive"?

[ReedYoung]

02:49 PM on 02/26/2010

"Sometimes inconclusive" means some other times, conclusive.

Some studies are not conclusive, but the body of evidence is.

[AlwaysCivil]

03:44 PM on 02/26/2010

That's some impressive spin. I think I'd be dizzy.

[DocSkull]

03:07 PM on 02/27/2010

Some things are settled and some things are not. The fact that the globe is warming and that humans are significantly contributing is settled. The rate at which glaciers will disappear or the effects of global warming on tropical storms is less well understood.

[Rooster Coburn]

12:29 PM on 02/26/2010

Here in NYC the city has been plowing the "Global Warming" off the streets for the last 24 hours.

[Gasparilla]

12:35 PM on 02/26/2010

Key word "global". The northwest US had a warm winter. It doesn't mean it will never snow again.

[ReedYoung]

01:13 PM on 02/26/2010

Coburn exemplifies the corporatist media's preference for oversimplification, to which the IPCC must bend somewhat to get any publicity for THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEM FACING US.

In fact, it's probably too late now.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/24/836672/-Methane-time-bomb-may-be-about-to-go-off-

[ReedYoung]

01:10 PM on 02/26/2010

Stop being disingenuous and willfully ignorant. Warmer sea water, resulting from an unusually warm El Niño, resulting in turn from global warming, means more moisture in the atmosphere, which is ALWAYS cold in the winter, particularly at high altitude, and "what goes up must come down."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/dylan-ratigan-responds-to_n_459206.html

[Rooster Coburn]

02:04 PM on 02/26/2010

"Global Warming", AKA "Global Whining", is a hoax intended to drive up profits for corporations and further erode individual liberties, national sovereignty and raise taxes to provide funds to international elitists for the purpose of controlling ordinary Americans everyday lives.

[DocSkull]

10:11 AM on 02/26/2010

I'm not surprised that Ruppert Murdoch's newspaper takes a similar line as his phony news channel, but it is utterly false to conclude that healthy disagreement within the IPCC represents a "deep divisions." The agreement concerning humans' contribution to global warming is nearly universal and the points of disagreement are rather peripheral. The fact that some areas of improvement come to light in the three years after the publishing of a report is very much par for the course. None of them are particularly important issues and can be solved by dropping one source and clarifying a source of flooding.

[fumes]

09:59 AM on 02/26/2010

''So the scientists put numbers into the 2007 study, along with a big caveat—what Mr. Alley calls a "punt." The study took into account things like glacier melt in most of the world, but it noted that it excluded what's happening in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which "we can't predict," Mr. Alley said.

Inevitably, Mr. Alley said, some people have cited the numbers without that caveat.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Gore said he understands the uncertainties, and that he pointed out in statements "that there was essentially an asterisk" on the 2007 report's sea-level projections. "As he understands the situation from the ice-science community, the uncertainty in sea level applies in both directions," meaning sea-level rise could be greater or smaller than projected, her statement said.''

well there you go!

[Gasparilla]

10:15 AM on 02/26/2010

But sea levels will rise.

[DocSkull]

10:31 AM on 02/26/2010

"well there you go!"

There what goes?

[Wahchintonka]

09:22 AM on 02/26/2010

Yawn.
So, if Al Gore's Theory of Man-made Global Warming (his words, not mine) is true, why is it that these pollution moguls (politicians included), who have children and grand-children, are not concerned about their fate? Do they have a special place on the planet to survive and live happily-ever-after with their mega-bucks once this "so called" apocalypse occurs?

[DocSkull]

10:37 AM on 02/26/2010

Al Gore has never referred to "Al Gore's Theory of Man-made Global Warming " and no one is foretelling an apocalypse.

[jsarets]

07:40 AM on 02/26/2010

Absolutely.

The greenhouse effect is scientific fact. It is predicted by theory and confirmed in controlled laboratory experiments. Nobody can deny that greenhouse gas concentration affects the radiative forcing of the atmosphere.

However, the greenhouse effect and radiative forcing are not the only factors affecting climate, and nor are they the only climatological or ecological effects of atmospheric CO2. There are also solar and geological processes the act on the climate, and there are other effects on atmospheric chemistry and the water cycle.

It's complicated -- at least when evaluated in terms of climate change.

But what's not complicated is atmospheric change: the composition of the atmosphere is changing, it's changing more rapidly than it ever has, and human industrialization is primarily responsible for the direction and magnitude of these changes.

How these changes will affect climate, various ecosystems, and our way of life is not entirely clear. We have theories grounding in facts, but the models are imperfect and incomplete. What is clear is that there will be changes, and these changes will have been caused in part by our civilization.

Many anthropologists now believe that the human species is adapted to climate change. That's what prompted our evolutionary divergence from apes, our bipedalism, our large brains, and our instinct to spread throughout the world in search of better conditions.

We'll adapt. It's what we do. I worry about the food chain atop which we sit.

[Gasparilla]

07:45 AM on 02/26/2010

It depends what you mean by "adapt". If half of Bangladesh is underwater where do a hundred million people go? How do low lying cities all over the world adapt. This is different than ten thousand years ago when you just picked up and moved.

[jsarets]

08:32 AM on 02/26/2010

It's no different than ten thousand years ago. Some people will stay and die. Others will pick up and move, many to refugee camps. Some of the refugees will die in the camps.

We're obviously way more mobile than we've ever been. We can move people to higher ground. It's not like the seas are going to rise overnight. On a geological timescale, the changes may be abrupt, but on a human timescale, it will be quite gradual.

There are times in human prehistory where we can perilously close to extinction. The genetic record suggests that about one thousand homo sapiens made the journey out of Africa to populate the rest of the world.

We adapt, but it's not a pleasant process, and not all of us make it through. Humans in southern India survived the eruption of the Lake Toba supervolcano 75,000 years ago. Over 30 feet of ash rained down on their settlements, but a some of them endured.

Climate change will change our civilization, perhaps even beyond recognition, but it will almost certainly not wipe us out. Not all of us, at least.

[RomeoMD25]

07:04 AM on 02/26/2010

While CO2 Continues Its Relentless Increase, The Great Barrier Reef's Health Improves Markedly

Contradicting all the global warming alarmist claims and predictions that coral reefs are being killed by human CO2, the world's largest reef is prospering under conditions of higher CO2. Why? First, human CO2 does not harm corals, nor does a slow rise in temperature as experienced by the world since the end of the Little Ice Age. Secondly, if non-fishing regulations are enforced in coral reef areas, the entire coral environment improves, dramatically - this has been known science for many years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/7290755/Fishing-ban-regenerates-Australias-Great-Barrier-Reef.html

[Gasparilla]

07:48 AM on 02/26/2010

Talk about compeletely misrepresenting the truth. It's prospering because of a ban on fishing, which is quite clear in your link. It also says it still faces a threat from climate change.

[DrTerwilliker]

06:58 AM on 02/26/2010

The worlds' perception of global warming hasnt been upended. The air conditioned editors of the WSJ never accepted any of the science anyway. No doubt scientists do feel pressure to communicate their findings to the public in clear, simplified language. Obviously it still isnt simple enough for the WSJ, teabaggers, Republicans, and the 'religious right'.

[padrushka]

06:57 AM on 02/26/2010

WE WORK IN THIS FIELD AND OVER SIMPLIFYING IS A HUGE PROBLEM ..WE NEED BALANCE AND WE NEED TO HAVE THE POLITICAL ASPECT GONE. HERE IS A GOOD EXAMPLE WHY..WE NEED REAL EXPERTS NOT POLITICALLY ANOINTED. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri I QUESTION HIS BIO.

[imfedup]

08:41 AM on 02/26/2010

Who is WE?

[denny8844]

08:46 AM on 02/26/2010

You said it well. The most anyone can say is that the preponderance of data infers a strong correlation between CO2 and climate change, Anything more definitive and certain is speculation

[OliverTwist]

06:24 AM on 02/26/2010

I don't get my climate science analysis from Ruppert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and neither should anyone else.

[imfedup]

08:37 AM on 02/26/2010

Thank you. My thoughts exactly.