David Schlom’s Climate Truth Blog

Just a few thoughts on last night’s Academy Awards. Great to see An Incovenient Truth win the oscar for best documentary. It really is an excellent film aside from the content (which is also quite good!). Also glad to see the song win. Unfortunately, the blogosphere will now be filled with rantings about Hollywood and Gore. In fact, if there is one quibble I have with the film and Mr. Gore it is that it tends to politicize the topic. I suppose this is unavoidable and the film has done a great deal to put GW up front and center in the public mind.

My point however is this — as long as we view issues as “liberals” or “conservatives” or even as Americans first rather than citizens of a planet in peril — we are doomed to inaction — paralyzed by our entrenched positions.

I promised last week to address the issue of controversy. Every day it seems that one of my colleagues asks a “what about this?” question based on something they heard (James Inhoff is always providing them with these) in the media. The impression amongst the general public is that there is a lot of debate on the science of global warming when in reality — there is not.

Why is this? Hate do do this but let’s blame the media! They are mostly responsible for the way Americans in particular get their information. Put the topic of global warming aside and look at the way the mainstream media presents any issue. They want to be “balanced” and so they trot out a person on one side of an issue and one on the other (or perhaps a “panel”). This is followed by a few minutes of both sides arguing back and forth and the viewer is left with… What? The sense that there are two sides to an issue and that both sides believe in what they say. You will tend to side with the person(s) that were already closest to your belief system and that is human nature. We want what we think to be true and so we look for reinforcement of our beliefs.

On the subject of climate change. This presents a very distorted picture. On one side, there are literally thousands of scientists. On the other, a handful. They become quite familiar to us (Richard Lindzen of MIT is a good example because he seems to be everywhere) precisely because there are so few of them. Dr. Lindzen is in a distinct minority on this issue. He is an accomplished scientist. I’m not qualified to argue with his points. All I can say is that for every Richard Lindzen (one!) there are literally HUNDREDS of scientists with a very different view. They represent a powerful thing in science: consensus. Their work has stood up to rigorous peer review and it is the BEST science that we can hope to have. Any reasonable person would have to side with the consensus view on this and yet not every one does. Why? Because rather than reading about this issue in scientific publications — we tend to form our opinions based on what we see in a quick report on TV. Not the best way to go about formulating an opinion based on facts.

The media thrives on the two sided controversy. It is boring to report that there is only one side to an issue. And it seems unfair. But instead of seeking fairness shouldn’t the media seek the truth — no matter how inconvenient that might be?

Dave

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 12:09 pm, and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.