I fully agree that reversing the slide into the New Dark Ages is a worthy preoccupation – but, it’s worth asking, – Bill Nye getting better at this? I’m not so sure – getting sucked into “the debate” on a venue that has criminally ignored the issue for years, except to perpetuate the idea that there is a “debate” among people who actually know stuff –
he gives yet another opportunity for Marsha Blackburn (think Sara Palin without the charm) to spout science denialist talking points.
First, some context: TV news shows almost never cover climate change, which ought to be one of the most aggressively-reported issues around, given that, y’know, it’s a dire threat to the planet and everyone on it. A recent study from Media Matters found that the Sunday shows on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox spent a combined 27 minutes on the topic in the whole of 2013. Meet the Press was singled out as “failing to offer a single substantial mention of climate change” for the entire year.
I cringed when he held up a picture of the arctic and said “antactic”. I wish he’d bluntly said “climate change is manmade”, “humans are the cause, humans are the solution”, and “we can’t prove any single event was caused by global warming” with “we can’t prove any single home run was caused by steroids — but we *can* prove there wouldn’t have been as many”.
He does not yet know how to cut to the heart of an argument. Some points for continuing to show up.
What made a difference in this presentation was David Gregory’s continued reminders to climate denier Marsha Blackburn that blatant denial was not an option, the consensus was clear. Points for him on that, but deducts for scheduling Nye and Blackburn in the first place. Should have been leading scientists with expertise, and policy maker who is serious about solutions.
Fact Checking below.
Here’s an example of how this will work. The segment, which you can watch here, begins inauspiciously, with a quote from NBC weatherguy Al Roker.
Al Roker:
Is it a natural cycle? Is it — is it due to human interference or human conditions that we have created? That remains open to debate. But there is no doubt the climate is changing.
Rating: False
What Roker’s doing here is what you might call skepticism-once-removed. He’s too smart and too prominent to deny that climate change exists, but he also doesn’t want to get nasty emails from people who hate the idea that anyone would say climate change exists. (I, however, welcome such emails!) So he walks a wishy-washy and incorrect middle road: climate change is real, but is it humanity’s fault?It is humanity’s fault, at least according to the same scientists that say it is happening, which is nearly every climate scientist with only a few isolated exceptions. A survey of climate studies completed last year found that 97 percent of 4,000 studies blamed human activity for warmer temperatures — more greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-burning leading to more heat trapped in the atmosphere. Roker is wrong.
Blackburn:
And when you look at the fact that we have gone from 320 parts per million 0.032, to 0.040 four hundred parts per million, what you do is realize it’s very slight.
Rating: False
Blackburn tries to downplay the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by talking about the amounts in very, very small decimals. Which they are: If I took $400 versus $320 out of your million dollars, you wouldn’t be terribly upset.But that’s intentionally misleading. The difference between the two is an increase of 25 percent over the past 50 years — after thousands and thousands of years of it being lower. Last year, The New York Times explained that the level of carbon dioxide now in our atmosphere is a “concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.” And at that point, “the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.”
Why hasn’t that happened now? Because “it takes a long time to melt ice,” as one scientist told the Times. But we’re getting there.
Blackburn:
[T]here is not consensus [on climate change] and you can look at the latest IPCC Report and look at Doctor Lindzen from MIT. His rejection of that or Judith Curry … from Georgia Tech. There is not consensus there.
Rating: False
This is just cherry-picking. Finding two people who disagree with the thousands of other scientists doesn’t constitute debate any more than scoring a field goal when you’re down 70 points makes the game a tie.What’s more, as MSNBC’s Ned Resnikoff points out, Blackburn didn’t even pick very good cherries.
Blackburn cited two climate scientists to make her point: One who has been “wrong about nearly every major climate argument he’s made over the past two decades,” according to fellow environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli, and another who recently said, “it’s clear that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the planet.”
Blackburn:
[E]ven Director McCarthy from the EPA in answering questions from Congressman Pompeo before our committee, said reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally.
Rating: Mostly true
During the discussion between Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo and EPA administrator Gina McCarthy (which can be seen here), McCarthy did say that the 26 steps the EPA would like to adopt to scale back America’s greenhouse gas pollution wouldn’t, in themselves, solve climate change. That’s because other countries — like China — wouldn’t be affected and would continue to pump out carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.But that doesn’t mean that there would be no impact. If the American example of fighting emissions could serve as a model for other countries, it would have broader value. Fighting climate change is not something we can win by ourselves.
We didn’t win World War II by ourselves either. It took multiple countries coming together to defeat the Axis threat. What McCarthy, the head of our environmental military, suggests is that we get on a war footing.
Blackburn:
Now, you know, when you look at the social cost of carbon, and there is a lot of ambiguity around that, what you also need to be doing is looking at the benefits of carbon and what that has on increased agriculture production.
Rating: False
Blackburn’s main point — in fact, the main point of he Republican colleagues and of the fossil fuel industry at large — is that stopping climate change would be expensive. Which is largely true: It means that coal plants and heavy industry wouldn’t be able to release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere for free where the long-term costs would be borne by other people in the form of increased floods or droughts.ThinkProgress did a good job rebutting the “CO2 is good for plants” schtick. While small amounts of the gas are critical for plants to grow, it points out that the California drought, almost certainly exacerbated by if not entirely due to climate change, has hardly been a boon for the state’s agricultural centers.
The site also explains a bit more about the “social cost of carbon.” That cost “is the formula used by federal regulators to calculate how carbon pollution harms public health, the environment, property value, and other issues” — and could be as much as $129 per ton by 2020 under some emissions scenarios.
Again, Blackburn claims there’s ambiguity to the figure. In part that’s because the cost varies depending on how much we keep emitting. If Blackburn and her colleagues accept a value for that “social cost,” her cost-benefit analysis starts to work against polluters. After all, any cost to prevent the emission of carbon dioxide that’s less than $129 a ton (or whatever the final figure) becomes preferable under any cost-benefit analysis, even if it mandates regulation of the industry. And polluters and their advocates don’t want to incur any additional cost, because it’s bad for profits.
–David Gregory:
This debate goes on.
Rating: False
The debate is over. If Meet the Press covered the topic more — in 2013, according to Media Matters, it failed “to offer a single substantial mention of climate change” — Gregory might know that.
Fresh off a mega-debate that embarrassed Young Earth creationists and led to none other than Pat Robertson denouncing their views, Nye appeared on Meet the Press today to debate Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a global warming “skeptic.”
On the air, Blackburn, who is vice-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, denied that there is a scientific consensus on climate change and argued that “you don’t make good laws, sustainable laws, when you’re making them on hypotheses, or theories, or unproven sciences.” (There is indeed such a scientific consensus; at one moment, host David Gregory had to correct Blackburn on this point.)
But Nye rebutted her with some simple science lessons that made a lot of sense—noting that going from 320 to 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, something Blackburn called “very slight,” is actually a very big change in percentage terms (Nye said 30 percent; it is actually a 25 percent increase). At the same time, Nye also hammered home a compelling message centered on patriotism. “As a guy who grew up in the US,” he said, “I want the US to lead the world in this….The more we mess around with this denial, the less we’re going to get done.”
The key gotcha moment in the debate came when Nye called out Blackburn for failing to lead on the climate issue. “You are our leader,” he said to Blackburn. “We need you to change things, not deny what’s happening.”
“Neither he nor I are a climate scientist,” Blackburn noted during the debate. But as Nye observed, only one of them is a politician, whose job is to use the best information that we have at our disposal to make the world work better.
Problem here isn’t just a conspiracy of Corporate America against the truth. The problem is how media corporations actually see the news. It isn’t about “news”. It’s about “entertainment”. In order to entertain, the news has to be compartmentalized and dumbed down. And it goes well beyond climate issues.
Climate is complicated. So dumbed down arguments get the press. Hey, CO2 isn’t “poison”. Plants need it to survive. So that argument beats out anything about greenhouse effects that are a lot more complex.
You want to know why The Daily Show gets better grades by viewers than the mainstream media? They’re a comedy program, but they have to actually cover the news in order to turn it into jokes.
Blackburn is a joke, but really, really, really, there is too much Nye – now making a fool of himself with ‘Antarctic’. Hope he knows how to spell overespo…overxpos…overexpori..overexposure…
O-Log actually made me smile with that one. It is both funny and rather more perceptive than his usual—-is all our “guidance” helping his thinking and his sense of humor?
I agree that Nye is not doing the cause much good, and have long relied on Jon Stewart for better news reporting than David Gregory.
Omno’s coming along nicely. Shall we ask him to join our next regular meeting with Dear Leader, Algore?
Let’s not rush things. O-Log hasn’t come THAT far.
careful, if Dear Leader finds out, we’ll all be fed to the dogs.
There are 3 fundamental issues with Warmism.
1. Inhumanity vs fellow humans
2. Obsession with skeptics
3. Inability to further the debate
On the last point I’d have expected by now some arguing around what exactly to do given all mitigation efforts have failed and international negotiations are a farce. Somehow instead we get people convinced it’s 48-1 for them but still time to throw toys out of the pram because of the 1.
Re: “The difference between the two is an increase of 25 percent over the past 50 years — after thousands and thousands of years of it being lower.”
Right, so far.
Re: [when CO2 levels were last this high] “the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.”
Right again.
Re: “Why hasn’t that happened now? Because “it takes a long time to melt ice,” as one scientist told the Times.”
Half right. It does take a long time to melt ice. But the “because” part is wrong. Thus far our currently elevated CO2 level has not increased the net rate of ice melt at all. If it had, then sea-level rise would have accelerated, which hasn’t happened.
Re: “But we’re getting there.”
Wrong. We’re not “getting there,” and we never will.
There’s probably a net grounded ice melt (that is, melt, less ice & snow accumulation) of at least 100 cubic miles per year (probably closer to 150), between glaciers, ice sheets, and mountain snow pack. That sounds like a lot, but it’s minuscule compared to the volume of the oceans. That post-LIA melting has been going on for over 80 years with no increase in rate, and that rate is barely raising sea-level at all.
100 cubic miles of ice sounds like a lot, and it is. But it’s only enough to raise global sea-level by a little over 1 mm. If 100 cubic miles of ice melted every year from the Greenland ice sheet, it would take about 7000 years before it was all gone.
Even if CO2-driven warming were sufficient to detectably increase the rate of ice melt, which hasn’t happened yet, a mere few-hundred year blip in CO2 levels would be insufficient to make much difference, and it’s doubtful that we can maintain current rates of CO2 production for even the next one hundred years.
Before this century is done, if mankind is still around, we’d better hope that reliance on fossil fuels will be declining, and reliance on longer-term energy sources, such as thorium, will be increasing. There’s simply not enough fossil fuel in existence to run civilization forever.
The long term “CO2 problem” isn’t going to be global warming due to too much CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s going to be diminishing agricultural productivity due to declining CO2 levels, as the Earth’s flora consume and sequester it, after mankind ceases burning it, and relies, instead, on other forms of energy.
Remember that blog you did on trolls? Yep, this guy is a troll.
Yep, he is perhaps the best (worst) example of a troll on Crock, and this comment just gives more evidence of that. Some of it is copied word-for-word from comments he has made on other threads (dave is a lazy troll), and the last paragraph is one of the more outlandish and intelligence-insulting things he has ever said. The second and third paragraphs from last are “winners” also—much misdirection and obfuscation there, including the statement that “it’s doubtful that we can maintain current rates of CO2 production for even the next one hundred years”. I have asked Dave several times to explain that—he refuses.
looks like my comments are never moderated
Get in line. I sleep sometimes.
still waiting
Yes the earth’s flora (trees=wood) is being a great sequester, but you forget something the trees=wood is what? Oh yes it is stored energy, which can be burnt just like coal and so the Carbon Cycle continues. So you will forever have the energy.
Not a problem. If 2,000 ppm isn’t enough CO2, then people can start burning the vast amount of flora that will surely exist in such a nutrient rich atmosphere.
I wish just ONE scientist in these public debates would remind people that Earth is unique among planets in having an atmosphere which is almost devoid of greenhouse gases. Neither molecular oxygen, molecular nitrogen, nor argon (which together make up more than 99% of our atmosphere) have electric diplole moments and therefore are very inefficient at absorbing IR radiation. Therefore, even a little GHG addition makes a BIG difference to the atmosphere. 30% rise in CO2 is indeed a big deal. It’s like saying that my stealing $100,000 from you is inconsequential in light of the $100 trillion floating around in the US economy, so quit yer complaining.
And just what properties does H2O have?
What property does Water in the vapor state have?
What property does water in the liquid state have?
What property does water in the liquid state (in the atmosphere) have?
What property does water in the solid state (in the atmosphere) have?
What is the average percentage of water, in each of these various states, in the atmosphere?
If you can not definitively answer these questions, then you don’t know jack about “greenhouse gases.” PERIOD
Simply because of the fact that the atmosphere is in contact with the ocean over 75% of the earth and the polar ice caps add about 10 % more area where the Atmosphere can absorb water the atmosphere will always have a higher concentration that 0.1%. Probably on the order of 1%. and in some areas as high as 4%. Lets use a unrealistically low value of just 1% for the average.
Now, how does changing a gas that is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere when there is more than 25 times as much water, which between 75 and 100 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So why, WHY are we worried about a 25% change in a gas that is swamped out by a gas that easily has 100 times the effect and more than 1,000 times factoring in the relative amounts?
And do not tell me “Water does not stay in the atmosphere long enough.” “I rains out and has no effect.” That is pure stupidity. And shows complete lack of knowledge or logic. As water changes phases from solid to liquid to gas and is carried around in rivers in the atmosphere, each carrying more water than the Amazon river caries, and then changes from gas to liquid and rains or from liquid to solid and snows. Energy is being transported around the world in these rivers. And there is not just one of these rivers of water vapor in the atmosphere, there are hundreds of them. And the AGW group says this had no effect on atmospheric temperature or the ocean temperature? My answer is B/S.
The science is NOT settled they don’t even know what the science is.
damn. did my blog show up on some troll radar somewhere?
Talk about stupidity and lack of knowledge and logic. unsurebrain goes on at length about water-water this-water that, when water has been part of the equation for hundreds of millions of years, and it’s behavior is pretty well understood. He doesn’t seem to recognize that the concern is the recent and rapid rise in CO2 concentration caused by man’s activities, and the concurrent rise in global temperature that has led us to what we call AGW, and all the effects we are seeing pile up ever more rapidly. Although the science will never be “settled” enough for trolls and deniers like him, it all points in the same disturbing direction for the rest of us. Maybe he will understand that HIS position is what is BS when the SHTF and denialism becomes impossible.
If we don’t tell you that “Water does not stay in the atmosphere long enough.” or that “I rains out and has no effect.”, will you reveal the definitive properties of all three H2O phases?
Hmm. Why is Europa a frozen ball of water, if WATER is the primary driver of climate? Wouldn’t it have significant amounts of water in its atmosphere? Wouldn’t Europa be a WET moon?
Here’s another question for you. What physical property most affects the atmospheric concentration of water? What happens to the atmospheric content of water during an ice age?
Third question. Which scientists claim water has no effect on temperature?
You are not understanding the difference between a driver and a feedback. Being a feedback doesn’t mean it has no effect on temperature. It means that it can’t itself be what STARTS the process. Water isn’t sentient. It doesn’t just one day wake up and decide, “You know what? I feel like going outside today, think I’ll take a trip around the atmosphere,” and magically there’s higher humidity that day.
Here’s a proposal for making the whole thing entertaining (think, ad $$$) and yet more useful. Turn it into a game show, and award real points and real deductions, lit up in real light bulbs in front of the debater’s pulpit. Then have a REAL scientist call out the points and deductions (I suppose someone entertaining – maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson?). Have an overhead bucket of cold water come down on the loser (Blackburn)at the end of the show – would be a nice finale.
Certainly was cute of David Gregory to give Blackburn the last word before signing off, too.
I got the impression watching the segment that Bill Nye the Science Guy is TOO nice a guy — probably laboring under his mother’s prohibition against ever hitting a lady.
Agreeing to debate a denialist on the reality of anthropogenic global warming itself sends a message that there IS a debate over the reality of AGW. If you are going to put yourself in that position, need to resolve to be brutal, to go for the throat. Should have ewxposed and shamed Blackburn as a hopeless fossil fuel industry shill. When one finds oneself in the presence of what is contemptible, the only right response is to treat it with contempt.
As Voltaire put it, “Ecraze l’infame!”
Well said. One has to be careful when dealing with females because of what certain “mothers” may have said, (and that may be why she was put out there), but one can “go for the throat” and speak truth without alienating anyone but those who are already alienated (from the truth).
Bill Nye was nice because he had no answer’s to the Global Warming Scam.
AGW (human caused climate change) has never overcome the null hypothesis (a basic hypothesis test), that the warming is a natural fluctuation
Dear me. It’s like a kindergarten calling people names simply because they disagree with you. Grow up.
The Economist has turned up a new Republican turd. Or at least this is the sort of campaign trick the infamous Turd Blossom, aka Karl Rove, would have defecated upon the unwary:
“How to date a supermodel”
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21596550-curse-misleading-headlines-how-date-supermodel
In brief: “IF YOU bother to read this article, you will see it is clearly about politics. But if you just glance at the headline, you might form a different impression. The same is true of several campaign websites created by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).”
Republicans lying on purpose? Gosh, Marsha Blackburn fits right in.
Seriously, how could anyone watch that segment and not think we’re totally screwed?
Again, this is NBC – supposedly the liberal alternative to Fox News. The important thing to remember is that there are a lot of decisions that take place behind the camera, before the news ever goes on the air. The people making these decisions are not stupid people – most of them are well above the average in our society. They know that putting one person vs. one person in a debate is just a formula for continuing debate – and yet they do it over and over again. They also choose WHO goes on the air to represent the differing sides.
David Gregory ends the segment with, “This debate goes on.” That’s the final word, and the true intention of the newsmakers behind it.
It can be STRONGLY argued that as a society we don’t care enough to resolve the issue and meaningfully search for solutions (see the chart placing global warming #19 on the list of priorities – http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-points/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/ ), but when our main source of information is actively playing a role in confusing and stalling the issue, then how is our society going to reach any sort of consensus?
On ‘cost-benefit analysis’, which will likely be used as an epithet for future generations when describing ours, see:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Policy/PolicyImplications.html
Well said:
1)’The Debate’? There’s been no debate, among those trained to debate this topic, for 30 years now. 2)A trained Mechanical Engineer who worked with Carl Sagan is given (slightly less than) equal time with a Home Economics major? Granted, she can memorize a Heartland Institute talking point, but ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ as they say in computer programming. She hasn’t been trained to think, independently, about Physics, so she’s the perfect vehicle to spout Heritage Foundation talking points.
3)She dutifully trots out two Climate Scientists who take issue with the consensus opinion. In FAIRNESS, with an eye for BALANCE, is he then allowed the time to trot out FORTY Climate Scientists who agree with that consensus opinion? And, if not, WHY NOT??? WHERE did ‘fairness’ go in this supposed bastion of the Mainstream Liberal Media?
And we’re all here, wonderfully grateful, that they even bothered to mention ‘Climate Change’ at all. It’s a complete FARCE. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ was supposed to be a cautionary warning. I guess we’re all going to find out for ourselves.
I agree that jimbills said it well.
The denialists and the mainstream media pander to the agenda of those who own them—-both the denialists and the mainstream media are “owned” by “the forces of evil”. They dearly love their definition of “fair and balanced”, which, as you have pointed out, is really the logic fail called false equivalency. One does NOT always equal one.
And I think your math is off a bit if we accept the 97-98% consensus figure. To be “fair and balanced”, there should be ~49 climate scientists speaking for the consensus for every one who speaks against it—since she was given two shills, the other side should have gotten 98 truth-speakers. Or If it’s one-on-one, an alternate way to “balance” would be to allot ~49 minutes to the one speaking for the consensus for each minute given to the denier.
You have quite properly capitalized WHY NOT? and FARCE in your comment.
I like math. I’m surprisingly poor at it. Perhaps i’m like Bill Nye, and should stick to Science education!
Try Khan Academy – that guy is a master at teaching math. I’ve (re)learned the basics of Calc 1, 2 and 3 and Linear Algebra just from watching that dude on Youtube.
=And we’re all here, wonderfully grateful, that they even bothered to mention ‘Climate Change’ at all. It’s a complete FARCE.=
Reminds me of a novel series I’ve read, unofficially called the Aubrey-Maturin cannon by Patrick O’Brien about the royal navy during the Napoleonic Era. There are a few instances where Capt. Aubrey is on the quarter deck of his ship willing the the wind the blow more proficiently into his sails by clenching his stomach muscles.