Science is Hard
Your liberal media:
Both sides claim science. Will this article tell us if both sides have anything to back up their claims?
Any guesses?
Here’s the article’s examination of scientific evidence from those who believe in climate change:
The scientists themselves, when given the rare opportunity to speak, tried to steer clear of policy matters and stick to their scientific expertise. One witness, Christopher B. Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, piqued the interest of members on both sides of the aisle by detailing new research on the adverse effects of rising temperatures on agriculture. Dr. Field said crops had certain temperature thresholds above which yields dropped sharply. For corn, he said, that temperature is 84 degrees, and a single day of 104 degrees causes a 7 percent drop in yield.Dr. Field said that extreme warming could reduce crop yields by more than 60 percent. “This new information is quite striking,” he said. “Major food crops and cotton show little sensitivity to rising temperatures until you reach a threshold. That’s why people are generally not aware of these sensitivities.”
Here’s a partial list of Dr. Field’s recent work, here is but one example detailing the historic effects of precipitation and temperature on crop yields.
Here is how the NY Times article treats the “science” from the other side of the debate:
Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia, a freshman Republican and an avowed skeptic on climate change, noted that ancient temperature records indicate periods of warming during the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations and again during the rise of the Vikings, and wanted the scientists to explain just how warm it got during those eras.Mr. Griffith also wanted to know why the ice caps on Mars were melting and why he had been taught 40 years ago in middle school that Earth was entering a cooling period.
“What is the optimum temperature for man?” he asked. “Have we looked at that? These are questions that, believe it or not, I lay awake at night trying to figure out.”
The scientists promised to provide written answers.
That’s a list of nonsense that has already been dealt with and debunked a bazillion times- so many times that here is a complete resource for answering just those sorts of idiotic, mouth-breathing questions. John M. Broder could have found this list, and many others like it, if he had taken .16 second to go the great gizoogle:
But there you have it- both sides do it! Both sides claim to have science! Why should we tell you that one of them is full of shit? It’s not the job of a science writer in the Environment section of the NY Times to inform you…
We are doomed.
They don’t really want answers. They just want to keep changing the questions so nothing ever gets done. And it works.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
“ice caps on Mars were melting”
Because Mars is fucking tilted and has seasons just like Earth?
My mother-in-law asks this of me. She doesn’t like my answer.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
For the record: I am not related to Rep. Morgan Griffith.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Oy:David Broder is dead.
Seeking bi-partisan consensus between God and Satan as to his eternal resting place, Broder has agreed to spend eternity in Purgatory.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
usually, feelings are for hippies. but feelings on science trump science. ‘cause shut up, that’s why.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Believing in climate change makes Prosperity Baby Jesus cry.
In other news, Gingrich is a serial adulterer because he loves America.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Same old talking points, god I am sick of the same damn talking points. I just want to shake these denier idiots and scream “You fucking idiots, I want to be WRONG! Give me one bit of real science that shows the consensus on climate change is wrong. Please!”
Doomed indeed.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
David Broder dead at 81.
Let us praise the man, but let us hope High Broderism goes with him.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
let us speak no more of David Broder.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
DAVID BRODER DEAD.
This “article” was written by John Broder.
It seems that overly simplistic mendacity follows in families.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Politico reporting that David Broder is dead. Time for John to issue a scolding to the commentariat; only respectful comments until the body is cold.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
@soonergrunt: Were it limited to a few families! Sadly, it’s much more prevalent than can be explained by genetics.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
That was probably several decades ago. Let the bipartisan barbs begin.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
BTW, all of the good Broder lines were made in the last post. Don’t make everybody repeat them here.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Experts differ earth’s shape: spherical vs. cubical.
In other news, if evolution is true, why are there still apes? Why didn’t they all evolve into people?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Perfect timing..erm…
March 9th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
If the Times said the denier’s claims were horseshit then there would be a mighty uprising among the hoodwinked mouthbreathers about the Times suppressing free speech, where somehow it is the Times’ obligation to publish anything anybody wants to believe. Maybe we can get them to give equal attention to the fact that the FSM controls global climate and is punishing humanity for creating gluten-free macaroni products.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
The one thing that gives me hope is that the scientists were able to gain congressional attention to the effects of climate change on crop yields.
Punching enviro-hippies is fun, but when the bottom line is threatened, the senators and representatives from ADM will pay attention.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
So the science side had scientists and the other side has…
March 9th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
@gypsy howell: I believe the proper place for Broder is limbo, not purgatory. Purgatory is for people in need of a little correction before they go to heaven, limbo is forever, the eternal home for those souls who lacked the conviction to pick a side, any side.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
First they came for the grammar and I did nothing…
March 9th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
So, I got to the end of the Morgan Griffith section and thought, okay, now we get to the scientists on the right. I haven’t read the article yet but I am assuming you picked that paragraph for a reason. Are you fucking kidding me?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
@Bulworth: Griffith was a drunk driving lawyer before he was elected.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
...ancient temperature records indicate periods of warming during the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations and again during the rise of the Vikings
So government policy will be set based on what this guy saw on The History Channel between Pawn Stars and Ancient Aliens?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
@danimal:
You can bet your bottom dollar that ADM is very plugged into the science of global warming, because mucho mucho money is riding on how they prepare for it.
Without looking* I predict that ADM is funding lots of research on developing a genetically modified heat-tolerant strain of corn.
*—Not that it would be public knowledge anyway.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
@beltane:
Thank you for that correction. Limbo it is, then.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Climate-change deniers are the worst winners in the world.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Speak no ill of the dead? Seriously? But that’s the best time to do it!!
March 9th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
@danimal:
I see a future for corn, soy and wheat genetically modified to withstand heat…
March 9th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Hmmmm…. is any of his election literature titled “To Serve Man”? We’d better check the fine print.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I think Broder is giving the “science” of the denialists short shrift, no?
In any case, Griffith’s idiocy is not presented as one “side” of the science. It was in fact the “two scientific witnesses” Republicans dragged up—one even admitting the rise in global surface temperatures and the other one making an idiotic argument about DDT.
The Times has been guilty been of false equivalences in climate reportage before, but this isn’t a case of it. And it’s true that both sides claim science, but Broder obviously thinks the denialists are full of shit.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
@Poopyman: But the Matt Damon-ADM dude’s distracted inner monologue in The Informant! was pretty funny.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
@mws: is that like how the best time to add insult to injury is when you’re signing a cast?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
@Poopyman: My thoughts exactly. Someone is paying the GOP representation well to be so fucking stupid! Someone wants us to burn up because they’re cooking up the future in their labs – then thoughts of Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World and We ran through my head.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
130º
.
.
.
.
Medium rare.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
@Poopyman: @jibeaux: I wish I had a retort to your cynicism. Y’all are probably right, rather than address climate change, they’ll just find ways to mitigate the effects of heat on crops and let the earth bake.
Anyone in the market for Hudson Bay agricultural properties?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
In related news about wingtard “scientists”, Art Robinson cranks up the crazy.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
John Broder’s an established hack.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Because it’s really the southern Mars ice cap that’s melting, due to inherent instability, and besides, Mars’ climate is much more responsive to things like global dust storms, as well as having completely different orbital dynamics?
Because either a) your teacher was full of shit, or b) you are?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Momentarily putting aside the volumes of single-pane editorial comics which could be drawn from this…
...it is just a wonderful example of the idiocy of our public discourse that a question like “What is the optimum temperature for man?” is treated like serious policy discussion rather than a discussion overheard from the corner of a bar.
There is the shocking ignorance of asking about an “optimum temperature” for humans (why, it’s 70 degrees F exactly, pardner! committee closed!).
There is the suggestion that the debate is on where to plant humans with what amount of sunlight and what amount of water and at what time of year to get optimal blooms or fruit or whatever.
And there is of course the continual game that increased planetary energy budgets would have to mean that all life will die.
What’s the optimum area Americans need in order to continue to live? Why don’t we shrink the American territory to three or four states, since most states have huge areas with low population density.
What’s the optimum color?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
These people have been doing this for decades, using the “fairness doctrine” from broadcast to force media to report “both sides of the stories”. They have won many a battle using the same tactics.
I am currently reading the book “Merchants of Doubt”, which is telling stories about businesses used “science” to fight regulations and is quite an eye opener for me.
I think it is quite important for all of us to read it to help understand these people’s tricks and learn how to fight them.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
At House Hearing, One Side Tells Truth
.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Also, too, about that “Co2 is plant food!” meme:
http://www.laboratoryequipment.....30411.aspx
March 9th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I love how deniers speak so confidently about temperature trends on other planets—for which we have extremely sketchy observations—while simultaneously denying that we know anything at all about earth’s temperature trends.
Can we deport these people to South Waziristan yet?
March 9th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
@Meg:
FUD is a classic technique for generating sales.
Microsoft borrowed it from IBM, who borrowed it from someone else.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Mr. Griffith also wanted to know why some other things he learned as a 12-year-old, 40 years ago, were also not true. X-ray glasses, for example. How do they work?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@Meg: Huh? There’s been no fairness doctrine for almost 30 years.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@RSA:
It’s the 21st Century. Where the hell is my fucking flying car?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
@El Cid:
If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
That’s rich. What’s the price of tea in China? If atoms are like tiny little solar systems, do little people live in my fingernail? How can we ever understand mankind without understanding “mank” or “ind”?
Hell, why don’t we stop funding science altogether, and just pay a bunch of information-deprived hicks to pontificate on the mysteries of the fucking universe?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
@Citizen_X: Forty years ago, when I was in 4th grade, my teacher insisted the South Pole was warm because, you know, it was in the South.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
@jrg:
Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are standing by to fulfill this request!
March 9th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
@Tonal Crow:
Why do you hate the South Waziristanis?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
@RSA:
Shouldn’t a testifying scientist be allowed, during such thunderously stupid questioning, to dangle a shiny object in their face in lieu of answering?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
The way that headline reads, it reminds me of the South Park episode where Science becomes an abstract replacement deity and not a foundation of knowledge built upon rational observation.
Science, damn it!
March 9th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
“What is the optimum temperature for man?” he asked. “Have we looked at that?.”
72 degrees Fahrenheit, with a light, balmy offshore breeze.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Oh, oh, oh, oh, I know, I know! Pick me, pick me!...
Because whoever taught you was a credulous, ignorant fool who believed whatever they read in a poorly researched nontechnical popular book and some lazy magazine articles that regurgitated it.
See, that was easy. I expect that Griffiths will stop asking that question now….
March 9th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
@Hunter Gathers:
Dang, how come Bubba never thought of that one?
March 9th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
This is probably a minor quibble in the larger scheme of things, but I hate the use of the word “believe” when it comes to scientific matters. I don’t believe in evolution and I don’t believe in climate change. I understand them to some degree, but belief doesn’t play a part in it. Belief generally requires some sort of faith, and not even religious faith—I can believe my students understand the essays we talk about in class before I talk to them and discover they don’t, for example. But climate change is happening whether we believe in it or not.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
@Citizen_X:
To be fair, I do remember hearing that back in the 1970s, and there was at least some support for the idea.
But, um…so what? That was 30-40 years ago. A long, long time in science/tech.
Never understood the “you said something differentz in the past
” attack from the rightwingers. Science changes over time, and that’s a feature, not a bug.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Why isn’t Greenland green?
Why is the sky blue?
I lie awake at nigh pondering these questions.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
@RSA: Some things will never be explained.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:34 pm
@ppcli: because you weren’t taught that 40 years ago, would not have remembered that even if you had been, and are a big fat liar.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
@Villago Delenda Est:
Cool! I knew there was a good reason I picked it for grad school.
Robinson is living proof that being batshit insane is not always a detriment to getting a PhD.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
I’m about ready to give up. Between BS like this and the stuff that the god-botherers do every day in the Arkansas State House, it seems like the scales are tipped against rational humans. Did any one see Rachel’s segment with Naomi Klein last night? I just caught it and I think things are as rotten in Michigan as they are in Wisconsin.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#41979558
March 9th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
@jrg:
Speaking of the House budget plan …
March 9th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): Milankovitch cycles are still considered a valid idea. However, here is a peer-reviewed paper (pdf link) that looks at the “global cooling” idea of the 70’s, in both the scientific literature and the popular press. There was absolutely no hint of a scientific consensus—popularly believed or otherwise—that we were headed towards global cooling, despite the myth.
(And that may not have been exactly what you were arguing, but I did want to get that source out there. Their results show that it’s not even close.)
March 9th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
The late, great, famously boneheaded Republican Senator Roman Hruska of Nebraska once suggested, with reference to the failed nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, that even mediocre people “are entitled to a little representation” by being elevated to the highest levels of government. Now this venerable Republican principle has been extended to embrace complete fucking imbeciles.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
@mds:
Cosmos for rednecks
March 9th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): The idea of a glaciation within some thousands of years was mentioned as a possibility in a few papers in the 1970s, based mostly upon the idea that our then-increasing emissions of chemicals (primarily sulfates) that create reflective aerosols would cool the climate more than our emissions of CO2 would heat it.
However, even at that time, the great majority of papers postulated that the effects of greenhouse emissions would outstrip those of reflective aerosols. Guess what? They were right.
See, e.g., http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ for more.
Why do Republicans hate science?
March 9th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
@Citizen_X:
I’m sorry, that paper was written by scientists and we all know they have the Leftist Agenda at the forefront, always. What does Rush have to say about it? He knows all that needs to be known about climate science.
March 9th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
@Brian S (formerly Incertus): Not a minor quibble at all. We should point this out every time expresses a “belief” or a “disbelief” in science. They are trying to make science tantamount to religion and it isn’t. You can reject global climate change and the theory of evolution, but that just means you are proclaiming you don’t care about how the world actually works; it doesn’t mean you get to make believe your own set of facts. Go ahead, aspire to the intellect of a medieval serf, but you don’t get your own “science.”
March 9th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
@John Cole:
” John M. Broder could have found this list, and many others like it, if he had taken .16 second to go the great gizoogle:”
So?
Broder’s job was to cover the hearing and report accurately on what happened. He did that. It’s someone else’s job to say that the “science” on which the climate denialists and skeptics rely is about as good as the “science” that the townspeople relied on to determine that Carol Cleveland was a witch in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
March 9th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
@burnspbesq: So the media reporting upon a meeting of Holocaust deniers should simply quote portions of what the deniers chose to say, quote similar-length portions of an interview with a Holocaust survivor or historian, and express no view on which “side” is correct?
March 9th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
@Tonal Crow: Not only that, but to the extent that aerosols have contributed to recent changes in the planetary energy budget, it has been to slow the rate of the slowing of Earth’s cooling emissions of longwave IR photons.
So, yes, a degree of the phenomena existed, and those mocking it should be thankful—as the effect had mitigated net heat increases.
And then we got better at controlling aerosol pollutions. And the helpful albedo effect then reduced again.
March 9th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
35 years ago I got kicked out of class for insisting that whales were mammals, whereas my 70 year old teacher insisted they were fish.
Why did the science lie to me?!q
March 9th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Of course, this isn’t the fault of the media at all, it’s “messaging”
right Nobody?
March 9th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
@El Cid:
More precisely, the aerosols have increased earth’s reflectivity (“albedo”), thus reducing the proportion of incoming shortwave radiation that the earth absorbs (and then re-emits as longwave IR). You got it right below, when you said, “And then we got better at controlling aerosol pollutions. And the helpful albedo effect then reduced again.”
Yes indeed. As has the effect of a slight decline in total solar output since ~1960, which might also be coming to an end.
March 9th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
I’m curious how many scientists (any discipline counts!) read and/or post on BJ. It seems like there must be quite a few. Show of hands?
March 9th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
excellent example of stenographer journalism
March 9th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
@Chemist: I was a Physics undergrad, and then got grad degrees in aerospace engineering. It gets called “rocket science”, but it isn’t science, really. So call me an engineering professional and a science fanboy.
March 9th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
And in the print edition of the NYT, just a couple of pages beyond that jaw-dropping lunacy, readers found the story of the NPR scandale including this graf:
At another point in the secretly recorded video, Mr. Schiller criticizes an “anti-intellectual move on the part of a significant part of the Republican Party” and says the pursuit of knowledge is “traditionally something that Democrats have funded and Republicans have not funded.”
So he tells the truth and loses his job. And America drowns in the stupid.
March 9th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
[...] understand the concept of providing balance in news coverage. I really do. But please point me to the liberal version of James O’Keefe. I [...]
March 13th, 2011 at 4:10 pm