Epstein is a rightish clone of the people I am always griping about - Millenial wannabe journalists who should have stayed the course in their science and or journalism classes. Epsteins sin here is by ridiculing the Cook paper and the 97% malarkey he tries to leverage that into disbelief of the whole global warming phenomenon. Those arguments can doubtless be made and perhaps he should give it a stab but he has not said enough here to discredit global warming. What he does is quite rightly make his compatriots look like fools (not that hard actually). I have also been researching the history of the 97% figure. Anyone remotely familiar with scientific literature knows that it is nonsense. I do think most scientists accept CO2 increase a significant or major human role and that given the physical properties of CO2 and of our atmosphere warming or at the very least climate change are extremely likely under the circumstances. I dont know or care whether 100 or 100,000 scientists think so or not. I did the math on this one. Most of you could too if you had the spare time and inclination. But it is not an election. It is just the contemporary science. Most climate scientists are not researching that question. They have gone on to more esoteric questions like how, and how much and is there a feedback effect and what external factors may change models and etc etc... So if I (and Epstein) say the 97 percent figure is a fraud and (at least) I say but global warming is for real then what is the big deal? Epstein nails it (Oh God I am getting infected with millenialspeak) with his two questions. I do not care for his sneaky implied black white fallacy or his picking on Obama and Kerry (they are not a problem in this debate. In fact Obama has done more -even if it is by just letting them go their way but trust me it is a lot more than that- for the US petroleum industry than all the Republican presidents in history combined. I dont know how liberals can sleep at night.) but his two questions are the point. It is in a way a sneaky rhetorical trick - write in a goofy millenial way so people will think you are real but in fact have your article vetted by some very takented and focused people. I have been working on a note (paper) on the 97% for some time. I would be a lot more neutral and I would make sure my readers knew that judging the farcial 97% soundbite is a very different issue from judging whether (1) the scientific community is worried about climate change (there are better and more reliable ways to demonstrate this. Read the position of the major scientific societies for example) and (2) I am not interested in pointing a finger a this or that political figure. That is again, a different debate. Since Epstein was so clear I thought I might just drop it but on reflection, I think I can be a good deal more neutral than he is and provide soberer and more specific support. Still verbum sat sapiente and I think the wise for all the defects in Epsteins presentation will get the point after having read him without having buy into every single thing he says or having to wait for my more ponderous if soberer treatment. forbes/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/2/
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 01:20:05 +0000
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