Comments on: Apocalypse Now

By: Anna Haynes

Anna Haynes — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:30:11 +0000

I strongly doubt that anyone reads newspaper comments sections – even the NYT – except the commenters themselves.

“one partisan can tie up a whole company of the enemy’s troops by sniping from good cover and forcing them to pay attention to him, while maneuvers are going on elsewhere.”

Don’t let them waste your time.

By: Susan

Susan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:29:13 +0000

Thanks, great stuff. Very timely. If any of you are inclined to waste some time, DotEarth has been kidnapped by a small cadre of expert disinformationalists who have succeeded in kidnapping Andy Revkin’s excellent article, and are now claiming that the bulk of their comments “prove” that they represent real science. (dhogaza, thanks for weighing in, right on!)

I stole some wholesale quotes from an excellent article by one Ken Edelstein which some of you may enjoy; right on topic:
http://www.mnn.com/ earth-matters/ climate-change/ stories/ media-mayhem-my-last-apocalypse-now-headline

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:03:47 +0000

This reminds me of when I was very young and the theory of plate tectonics had just been introduced, and was being taught in my college freshman geology class. The presentation came with a lot of caveats about how it hadn’t been proved yet, which struck me at the time as utterly ridiculous, because of the irrefutable evidence such as volcano chains, the lifting of mountains with slanted layers of sediment, and the way the continents fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

That’s the way scientific inquiry operates. But the AGW needs more than that.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:56:23 +0000

Excellent. Trackback isn’t working, but I have linked to this and written it up over at http://heresysnowboarding.blogspot.com/ 2009/ 02/ climate-change-is-here-now-what-will.html.

By: hapa

hapa — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:03:45 +0000

“WORLD’S WHEELS FALLING OFF,” STUDY SAYS

…

Representive I.B.A. Shill from Kentucky said concerns remain about the science. “This is a gross misrepresentation of how we know the planet works. Americans know that while Earth follows a fixed track around the sun, it’s not a train. It has no wheels. And they know that the rattle and clack of a train is a sound they can trust, it’s not the sound of anything falling off.”

By: danl

danl — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:54:30 +0000

My apologies, i meant to write “snark” at the end of that post.

By: danl

danl — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:54:10 +0000

I thought the planet was cooling? It sure was cold this winter.

By: paulm

paulm — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:12:58 +0000

Some times the scientist just find it hard to believe what the facts indicate, or don’t realize outside there tightly scoped world the real implication of what they mean.

By: Philip H.

Philip H. — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:13:19 +0000

Which is why the loss of good science journalists at CNN and many major daily newspapers is such a problem. If there is no one who can take what amounts to scientific certainty and present it coherently in the media, then no one in the general public will be swayed to do anything.

We’ve seen this play out for over three decades in American commercial fisheries management.

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:26:39 +0000

Here’s a perfect example of why there is a such a disconnect between what is happening and how it is perceived:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45802

This report repeatedly qualifies the notion that climate change caused the unprecedented severity of the fires with language such as:

not been quantified at this stage

uncertainty remains

relative importance of which is still to be determined

This is what scientists are trained to do. They won’t state unequivocally that climate change caused the fire even though it’s perfectly obvious that it did. They will say that increased heat, dryness, and wind are predicted by the models of AGW, but not flat-out that AGW caused the fire.

So that gives the media, the professional deniers, and the public plenty of wiggle room to avoid taking action.

It’s the same as the “theory” of evolution. The average person doesn’t understand the way that scientists use the term.