Archives par mot-clé : Debate

Reasons to avoid false balance and fake debates

by W. Baerbel and J. Cook, Sep 9, 2022 in SkepticalScience


False balance media reporting

One of the most insidious, albeit often inadvertent forms of climate misinformation is false-balance media  coverage, where contrarian voices are given equal coverage with climatescientists. This stems from the journalistic norm assuming there are always two sides to an issue, thus giving mainstream and contrarian voices equal representation. As a result, a few dissenting scientists are given similar attention to the 97% of scientists who are convinced that humans are causing global warming.

debate

Analysis of media coverage from 1988 to 2002 showed that newspapers often presented false balance media coverage of climate change [18]. While the situation has improved in prestige-press coverage [19], the tabloid press has shown no signs of improvement [20]. Similarly, 70% of U.S. TV coverage of climate change presents a false balance [21]. In short, much of what people learn about climate change from the media involves well-established scientific truth presented alongside groundless assertions.

To debate or not to debate

Debate is crucially important to climate science and in the case of human-caused climate change has already occurred over decades. The process of scientific debate is open to anyone—although it does require that participants subject their ideas to the scrutiny of the peer-review process, which is fundamental for the advancement of scientific knowledge [31]. However, contrarians refuse to participate in scientific debates: they do not present their views at scientific conferences, and have a negligible presence in the peer-reviewed literature. Instead, they demand special treatment by bypassing the usual scientific process and presenting unvetted ideas to the public.

How should one respond if invited to publicly debate mainstream climate science? Requests to “debate” climate science or the timing of climate impacts are for propaganda purposes and should be avoided.  Agreeing to participate in such debates run the risk of misinforming the public by conveying the false impression that the scientific community is undecided on basic facts like human-caused global warming.

In contrast, debates over solutions to climate change are worthwhile. One response to an invitation to debate is to inform the organisers of the danger of misinforming the public by debating established science, and that a more appropriate and constructive debate topic is climate solutions. If the organisers persist in hosting a problematic debate, a further option is to issue a public statement explaining that you had advised the organisers not to go ahead due to the problematic nature of the event, but they went ahead regardless.

Is the Man-Made Climate Change Debate Really Over?

by Dom Armentano, Oct 30, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Climate change enthusiasts are convinced that man-made global warming poses a near-term environmental disaster. Yet gloom-and-doom forecasts about the fate of the Earth are hardly new, and few have proven accurate.

In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Malthus predicted that mass starvation would strike England in the 19th century because population growth would inevitably overwhelm food production. It didn’t happen.

Or recall the dire predictions by experts in the 1970s that the world was running out of oil and that prices would skyrocket and stay high for decades.

These views were supported by analyses from the CIA and a boatload of geologists who believed in the so-called “peak oil” theory.

But the experts were wrong. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil today is cheaper than it was in 1980, which is arguably one of the most pro-consumer developments in recent economic history.

And now we are told that the world is on the brink of environmental disaster due to man-made global warming.

The conventional wisdom, repeated endlessly in the popular press, is that the Earth is heating dangerously because we burn fossil fuels and that this will generate devastating droughts, fires, floods, and rising ocean levels. (The oceans are currently rising by about one-eighth of an inch per year).

 

The perils of ‘near-tabloid science’

by Judith Curry, July 22, 2018 in ClimateEtc.


A remarkable essay by  esteemed oceanographer Carl Wunsch.

While doing a literature survey for my paper on Climate Uncertainty and Risk, I came across a remarkable paper published in 2010 by MIT oceanographer Carl Wunsch, entitled Towards Understanding the Paleocean.

The paper is remarkable for several reasons — not only  that it was published but that the paper was apparently invited by journal editor.

The paper is well worth reading in its entirety, for a fascinating perspective on paleo-oceanography and paleoclimatology.  Here I provide excerpts of relevance to the sociology of climate science:

 

‘WE WILL NOT DEBATE’ – HOW SCIENCE BECOMES DOGMA

by David Whitehouse,  August 30, 2018 in GWPF


Science is of course a human enterprise full of the imperfections of humanity. It’s more competitive than it’s ever been and there are more scientists than ever. So many want to communicate their science and this is wonderful. But the media, especially social media, can bring out a nasty streak in some especially when they take the moral high ground: ‘Some people should not be debated.’ ‘We are too right to be challenged.’ ‘Excommunicate!’