Scientific debate still alive and well?

The day after Plimer’s book was released, The Australian published an article weighing up his argument with a  response from a colleague at Adelaide University:

THERE’S nothing like healthy academic combat. In the corridors of Adelaide University, two respected professors on opposite sides of the climate change debate are pushing their theories on the subject, sparked by a new book that has sceptics rubbing their hands with glee.

Outspoken academic geologist Ian Plimer yesterday launched Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science, concluding that scientific modelling had placed too much emphasis on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming should not be blamed on increased human activity.

…Defending climatologists and thousands of other scientists, Barry Brook, who heads Adelaide University’s Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, poured cold water on Professor Plimer’s book and said his colleague had only used “selective evidence” when quoting more than 200 scientists and from peer-reviewed papers.

…With the international debate on climate change raging, Professor Plimer yesterday said people were embracing his book because they were frustrated with the one-sided debate on global warming.

It reminded me of something that Eric Pooley wrote in his critique of climate change journalism (see below):

Though journalism often fails to convey the urgency and enormity of this challenge, it now generally articulates the basic consensus without feeling honour-bound to hunt down opposing views for reasons of putative balance. That’s progress.

It would seem then that climate change reporting has regressed somewhat in Australia, at least in its coverage of Plimer’s book. Certainly after reading that article you would be left with the strong impression that the scientific jury is still out on climate change.

Peter Garrett’s Gaff

It was also interesting to note The Australian taking a decidedly sceptical angle in reporting on Peter Garratt’s factual error in relation to predicted sea level rise on Lateline earlier in the month (‘Peter Garrett shifts from claim of 6m rise in sea levels’).

Mr Garrett has also been forced to qualify his suggestion that ice across the whole of the Antarctic continent is melting.

He made the claims while being interviewed by the ABC’s Lateline program on April 6 about the reported break-up of parts of the Wilkins ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The Weekend Australian reported that while some ice-shelf melting is under way on the peninsula and in other parts of west Antarctica that may be related to global warming, ice shelves in east Antarctica remain intact.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica.

At the same time, the area of sea ice around the continent is expanding, with sea ice growth in east Antarctica and the Ross Sea more than compensating for losses in west Antarctica. Contrary to public perceptions, parts of Antarctica have been cooling.

The article focuses on specific information (eg. antarctic cooling and ice expansion) and frames it in a way that seems to downplay the urgency of climate change (eg. ‘may be related to global warming’, as well as pointing out that east Antarctica is four times larger- the implication being that ice breakup in west Antarctica is of relatively small consequence). It draws on the IPPC’s scientifically conservative (though admittedly official) sea-rise estimates, although there are other scientists who have suggested far higher estimates based on different models and more recent research . Finally it only quotes sources who are sympathetic to sceptical climate change positions (with the exception of Garrett himself):

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said Mr Garrett had been alarmist. “There is a need to take practical action to tackle global warming, but using alarmist and patently wrong information to back his case will do nothing to instil confidence in his arguments,” he said.

“If Mr Garrett is going to get it so wrong on sea-level rises, how can people have confidence in comments he makes on glacier melts?”

James Cook University geophysicist Bob Carter said Mr Garrett’s claims were typical of the political misinformation surrounding the global warming debate. “Like Al Gore and the other dark greens that they seek to mollify, politicians completely fail to comprehend that we live on a dynamic planet Earth,” Professor Carter said.

No doubt, Garrett made a factual error and the media was right to pull him up. Interesting though to note the timing of the article, right as Plimer and his book are making their splash.

Heaven and Earth

Pouring hot cold water on the case for global warming? Illustration: Simon Bosch

There has been an influx of articles in the Australian media lately undermining the scientific consensus  on anthropogenic climate change. It begun with Peter Sheehan’s column in The Sydney Morning Herald on the 13 April (‘Beware the climate of conformity’). In it Sheehan reviews a book recently released by Australian geologist, Ian Plimer titled ‘Heaven and Earth’ questioning the scientific methods of climate scientists and concluding that dangerous warming is not occurring.

This generated a flurry of comments and inquiry, notably in The Australian, which published an article tracking Sheehan’s change of heart from 2006 to present. The first extract is taken from a column Sheehan wrote in September 2006; the second from his latest column.

(1)

DO yourself a favour. Go to see An Inconvenient Truth.

The story-line is as simple as it is stark: the Earth is in an intricately balanced equilibrium of temperature, ocean currents and weather patterns, and this equilibrium is being distorted. Massive disruption is going to occur without major corrective measures.

(2)

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.

What this indicates, other than Sheehan’s impressionability, is the complexity of the debate and the fallibility of journalists in reporting scientific findings. Obviously the media has a role to play in voicing dissident opinions, but for the most part they have obscured rather than clarified the various positions on global warming.In attempting to honour journalistic objectivity by presenting ‘both sides’ of the story, the media has often given equal and unwarranted weight to the sceptic camp.

Not long after Sheehan’s column was published, The Australian reported on data indicating that parts of the Antarctic ice are growing (‘Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking’) generating further scepticism in the editorial pages:

DELIGHTED doomsayers who applauded the announcement last week that an ice sheet on the west Antarctic cost was collapsing should leave the champagne on ice. Because, as Greg Roberts reports in The Weekend Australian, it appears everything is icier in most of Antarctica.

At the same time Miranda Devine was arguing in a similar vein under the headline: ‘Planet doomsayers need a cold shower’:

It seems that when it comes to convincing the Government to take drastic, jobs-killing, economy-crushing and ultimately futile unilateral action on climate change, the ends justify the means. “How we get there matters much less than the fact that [emissions] are very low by 2050,” CSIRO’s Dr Michael Raupach, told the inquiry.

The purpose here is not to take sides, but rather to highlight the confusing and often contradictory message emerging from these headlines. What is the public supposed to make of Devine’s article balanced against Garnaut’s call for urgent climate action? I would argue that there is a need for a more critical press in climate change issues; more investigative features to balance out the disproportionate number of opinion pieces in this highly technical and nuanced area.  Without this I fear that the public will become -are already becoming- increasingly confused and often cynical about the entire climate change debate.

Advertising scepticism

The Australian published a story today with the headline: ‘Digging 100,00 years to find how the ice sheet will melt’. The article takes for granted, as is the norm in mainstream journalism, that climate change is real and that it is human-induced.

With temperatures forecast to rise by up to 7C in the next 100 years, ice more than 2400m below the surface is thought to hold valuable clues to how much of the ice sheet will melt.

Drilling will start in Greenland during the northern summer in an international project involving researchers from 18 countries to extract ice cores covering the Eemian Period.

The Eemian began 130,00 years ago, ending 15,000 years later, and is the most recent time in the Earth’s past when temperatures resembled those that could be expected if greenhouse gas emissions are not controlled.

What I found interesting was that underneath the article there was a Google add with a link to a webpage titled: ‘Climate Crisis or Hype? The one minute case against global warming alarmism’. The page briefly outlines some of the arguments commonly employed to dispute anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change remains a contentious issue because most people do not have adequate access to or understanding of its scientific basis. Therefore it is easy to confuse and mislead and the media has been instrumental in this. Indeed while climate scepticism has been largely discredited in scientific circles, it continues to be remarkably influential in the public sphere.

Climate scepticism is on the wane and it is uncommon these days to find an article that outright supports this position, though occasionally it is implied. It is therefore interesting to note the insidious ways that scepticism continues to infiltrate the media and influence public opinion.