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As has been noted in a previous diary of mine, climate change is a tough sell. One of the main reasons for this is the difficulty in understanding and explaining climate change. A recent flurry of posting and cross-postings makes the point far better than my mere scribblings ever could.
The first blow was struck in an article in the New York Times that reported on recent data showing that global warming had reached a plateau of sorts. The scientist reporting this data also noted that he fully expected the pattern of warming to resume after a decent interval.
It wasn't long before columnist George Will entered the fray with a column that "tsked tsked" its way to the eventual conclusion: global warming freaks are alarmists who are scaring us to death over nothing.
The other big hubbub is over tree rings. A fellow named James Delingpole wrote a blog about a guy named Steve McIntyre who questioned the methodology of an important study that came up with the hockey stick made famous by Al Gore. That elicited a response from the blog Real Climate (among others) in which Mr. McIntyre's work was thoroughly picked over and picked apart.
What are we mere laymen to make of all this? First, the data that supports the idea of climate change is drawn from a wide variety of sources, some of which infer a great deal of meaning from relatively small amounts of hard data that may have originally been collected for some altogether different purpose. This is much more common than you might think in scientific studies.
Second, there is still a lot of research going on that is defining the data in ever greater detail. Often these studies involve computer simulations and scenarios. Inevitably, the results of one study may conflict with another. When that happens, the authors of the respective studies will come out with swords drawn ready to defend there respective theories to the death.
In my earlier career I worked with scientists so none of this surprises me. Scientific progress is full of false starts and tedious gap filling, punctuated by the occasional brilliant insight which starts the whole process all over again. Scientists have just as much ego as anyone else, actually a whole lot more than most, so the occasional supernova of temperament is not unknown.
As a layman, I try to stick with the basics. One of the main reasons I began Planet Restart is to provide access for ordinary readersto the foundation sources so that you can form your own opinion. So far, I have yet to read anything that makes me doubt the essential truth of climate change. There truly is something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, yet. But I for one don't need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind is blowing.
This essay first appeared on PlanetRestart.org
