Letters to the Editor
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Well, OK!
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"Has Al Gore vanquished the climate change skeptics?"
No.
They were pre-vanquished by the fact that they didn't do any science to back up their claims.
This whole idea that there is a "debate" between some disgruntled flat-earthers and an ex-Vice-President I just find tiresome...
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being lucky
Superb points about how lucky we've been. It's rare that I see anyone mention that Katrina did not, in fact, hit New Orleans directly. Between an eyewall replacement cycle, some dry air and a last-minute course change that took it about 30 miles east of N.O., the city got extremely lucky, compared to how much worse it could have been. All that massive storm surge in Miss. could have been in LA.
Eventually, our luck really will run out, and some big city will be hit dead on by a massive hurricane. Not a glancing blow that seems big (but isn't, comparatively speaking), but one right into the heart of the city.
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The buttocks are back!!!!!
(I hope that I am not the only person seeing them.)
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Old-school and new-school science
I thank Chris Mooney for bringing up this subtle point about modern-day science (and Katharine Mieskowski for drawing it out of him). The change from hypothesis-based science to model-based science has crept up around me in my 30 years of observing Earth science. Suddenly modeling seems like the default approach. The use of computer models has opened exciting, promising new areas of inquiry. But the older modes of research are not suddenly irrelevant, and Dr. Gray's warning not to lean our whole weight on model-based research is worth heeding. Maybe he's expressing himself in a cantankerous way, but his attitude is not the denialism of the industry-funded lobbyists but scientifically respectable skepticism.
The world corresponds with mathematics in profound and wonderful ways, but mathematics is a human invention and nature has tricks we haven't dreamed of yet.
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Maybe you ought to introduce Paglia to this guy
Better yet, just fire her.
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The border between science and sensationalism
Al Gore's movie is partly propaganda. It veers into speculation and sensationalism and imperfect metaphors at times.
Was it worth it to raise awareness of the issue?
I think so. However, in order for people to have a true understanding of the issue, they must have a rather deep grounding in climate science.
Most of us have to rely on science writers to translate for us. It is an incredibly important job. I cannot independently quantify the threat from climate change. I must rely on others.
Some of us are listening.
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Al Gore is not climate change...
...and climate change is not Al Gore. Just a reminder for all of us. He's done great work in publicising the issue, but identifying it too closely with him means that 'skeptics' can feel as though they've made a significant point about climate change when they point to Gore's heating bills. Climate change is much, much bigger than one ex-VP.
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More like a formula to get a gig on FOX News
Take an important issue on which there is a general consensus outside the crazies of the world.
Find a place where the liberals, correct on this issues, exaggerate, perhaps on the grounds of hyperbole, perhaps on the grounds of expediency and perhaps on the grounds that simplifying something for the general public will make the world a better place.
Talk up the one exaggeration.
Talk it up so that it fits into nice little soundbites.
Find yourself drinking coffee with Bill O'Reilly.
Here's my point: we're in a propaganda war. The other side is wrong, but very good at propaganda. Their wrongness can literally destroy the earth right now.
So when someone wants to make a name for himself by emphasizing the good-intentioned over-exaggeration of the left, I say, why?
When Katrina happened, a lot of people said a lot of silly things, but everyone basically new all the things Mooney is saying (and I assure you, Al Gore does, too). So what? Is it really better to give more ammo to the "heated scientific debates about global warming" (your sub-head, Salon, not mine) by talking about it? I say STFU.
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Instead of cutting CO2
Let's make everyone move inland!
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What's Right with Anecdotal Evgidence
Author Mooney reminds me of a high IQ duffer. High IQ sorts can locate an argument in outer space and, like a politician, give it super spin down here on earth so that the more gullible amongst us are totally taken in--or almost. I doubt many are buying Mooney's hype that hey, I wanna tell everyone that whatever seems right isn't, cause aren't i brilliant....
Sorry to be crude, but it really does boil down pretty much to that. Consider when folks were starting to put statistics to the death rate associated with smoking. As time went on the statistics grew grimmer and grimmer. But hey, way back when guys like Yule Brynner and Sammy Davis Jr. had it all pretty well figured out. Their message to all of us on Johnny Carson: DON'T SMOKE!!! They didn't need any more figures, they and their doctors had seen enough of the anecdotal evidence that scientists hate to hear about (not "scientific" enough for them even though such data can yield statistically significant results...duh). And that anecdotal evidence sounds a lot louder when YOU are the victim, let me assure you.
And so to New Orleans and Katrina. We have been hearing for a long while that the statistics grow grimmer and grimmer, and all the same, with all the anecdotal evidence of these hurricanes and weird seasons and all--we won't bother with melting ice caps--scientists like the good little Republican hurricane man at Colorado State continue to invent every argument that lets them seem like a genius crying out from the wilderness. Doesn't take a corporate type to fall into the trap. Academics are truly professionals at this gig.
Why be so surprised if a victim of Katrina has his or her attention so clearly focussed? Could it just be that he or she has got it right?? And why might that be? Well, look at those dumb statistics, man. Warmer waters, nastier storms, probably more of them, too. Makes a greater statistical probability for numbers of, and violence of, hurricanes. Ergo global warming increases the probability of these things happening. And the more you have, the greater the probability that one or more will find their way to the Gulf instead of elsewhere, and so on and so forth.
At some point probability is saying to us, well, this particular instance may very well be the case in point that happened owing to the growing increase in probability. So of course you can't prove the case like you prove a mathematical theorem, but that's the logic (the theorem logic) that the wacko scientists demand, the ones who can't understand that all so-called "scientific" data come initially from those horrid unscientific anecdotal occurrences. But those in the wake of Katrina have a more intelligent and up front perspective, given the wealth of factual background upon which the probabilities rest.
I wish clever writers and journalists could be as intellectually honest--and knowledgeable about what constitutes valid evidence--as they are good at concocting stories for why the results of probabilities aren't the results of probabilities. Oh, did I mention, Al Gore just might have a point?