How the Popular Press Writes a Science Report

I love Martin Robbins

~Rhaco

The "unrelated story" link at the was actually remarkably informative.

In this paragraph I will applaud the writer's efforts and wish that journalism classes provided such astute examples.

PZ Myers already commented on this in Pharyngula:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/the_science_media_make_my_head.php

Lots of good comments. Check them out.

bookmarked for future reference.

next time I get a journalist wanting to interview me about shark behavior, I'll tell them I'm not saying a word until they read that first.

"If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public "controversy" exists."

Perfect description of IDiots...

GvlGeologist, FCD said: PZ Myers already commented on this in Pharyngula: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/the_science_media_make_my_head.php Lots of good comments. Check them out.

Apparently there are multiple motivations for this general practice:

1) The publication doesn't want to become controversial or the target of a lawsuit.

2) The journalist has unreasonably short deadlines and no real grasp of the science. Nobody else working at the publication understands the science either.

3) Both writers and editors have been following this formula on most news stories their whole careers; it's all they know.

Obviously we would wish to impose a new set of policies:

1) Hire someone who has deep knowledge of every scientific field, along with the ability to write about it clearly and cogently.

2) Give that person as much time or as many column inches as it takes to educate the typical viewer or reader to the point where he CAN make sense of the science.

3) Let the story mature for as long as it takes to get several rounds of responses to prior comments by all scientists involved. But don't let the initial story go stale in the process.

4) Have each science story vetted by at least one respectable specialist in that area.

THEN we'd have the best of all possible worlds, right? Right?

Flint said: Apparently there are multiple motivations for this general practice: 1) The publication doesn't want to become controversial or the target of a lawsuit. 2) The journalist has unreasonably short deadlines and no real grasp of the science. Nobody else working at the publication understands the science either. 3) Both writers and editors have been following this formula on most news stories their whole careers; it's all they know. Obviously we would wish to impose a new set of policies: 1) Hire someone who has deep knowledge of every scientific field, along with the ability to write about it clearly and cogently. 2) Give that person as much time or as many column inches as it takes to educate the typical viewer or reader to the point where he CAN make sense of the science. 3) Let the story mature for as long as it takes to get several rounds of responses to prior comments by all scientists involved. But don't let the initial story go stale in the process. 4) Have each science story vetted by at least one respectable specialist in that area. THEN we'd have the best of all possible worlds, right? Right?

I'd be very interested in a middle ground. The basic problem seems to be twofold: the lack of knowledge of the subject matter on the part of the journalist, and a pervasive "find two sides and portray them as balanced" philosophy on the part of the publications.

I think distinctly different cures are called for. I can see the "force the story to fit this formula now matter how inappropriate" organizational practice forcing knowledgeable reporters into other jobs, so I think that must be fixed first. But I can also understand a time-tested (but stupid for science articles) formula being followed mindlessly as "safe" when nobody in the organization understands the subject or has the background to understand anyone who does understand it.

Flint, interesting take. Tell me, do you think similar standards would be acceptable in sports or arts reporting?

Science reporting is generally much better when written by a specialised science reporter than someone randomly assigned from the newsroom roster. You don't need to be a specialist in every field of science, you just need a working knowledge of scientific methods, the major scientific theories, the key pieces of evidence for each theory, and develop some reliable contacts to deal with those times you *don't* know enough about the subject at hand. This is hard work, but there are many professional science journalists today who show it's achievable.

As per Mike Kelly, you wouldn't see a sports reporter write a story about a famous baseball pitcher and provide "balance" by quoting someone who denied the existence of curveballs.

With the exception of (3), Flint's suggestions are simply not going to happen in a contemporary mainstream newspaper - it's way too expensive given current editorial budgets and frankly 99% of editors don't really care about science unless there's some sexy health angle, and even then they don't actually care about the science. As to (3), the Guardian itself ran an interesting experiment along those lines a while back. The initial news story would be followed up with blog coverage, feedback from the researchers and other scientists, links to contextual information and so on. Unfortunately they seem to have dropped it, but it struck me as by far the best attempt to do in depth science reporting I've seen in a British paper.

Science reporting is generally much better when written by a specialised science reporter than someone randomly assigned from the newsroom roster. You don’t need to be a specialist in every field of science, you just need a working knowledge of scientific methods, the major scientific theories, the key pieces of evidence for each theory, and develop some reliable contacts to deal with those times you *don’t* know enough about the subject at hand. This is hard work, but there are many professional science journalists today who show it’s achievable.

My suggestions were not intended as a serious prescription, but rather intended to show the impractical expense and other organizational difficulties of covering science as a news story.

I don't think the problem is particularly intractable. Just assign someone who understands science generally and has some intelligence, hand him the Robbins piece as an example of how NOT to cover a science story, tell him to check his facts and presentation with the scientists in the story before submitting it, and publish it that way.

And I understand that the guy writing the piece has to know how much time or space he has, and needs to understand that some arbitrary and unpredictable amount of material will get chopped off the end of the story to make time/room for ads.

That was fun. Thanks for the link.

In the US, journalism is under a number of constraints that make good science reporting more difficult -

1) Journalists today are the product or journalism degrees. I have known some good people to do such programs, but there is a tendency for the degree to be chosen by those who may have resentment toward fields that are perceived as academically more challenging.

2) Paradoxically, journalism is still something of a "glamor" job - a journalist is the lowest form of celebrity, but still potentially a celebrity. Often, a degree from a fancy private college and a fair amount of unpaid intern work is needed before a job at anything resembling a major media organ can be obtained. Entry jobs may pay very little even so. Newer journalists thus tend to be from affluent backgrounds by definition. The relative requirement for personal affluence to even get in the field may complicate efforts to attract talent in a meritocratic way.

3) With a few low-traffic exceptions, there are two types of media outlets in the US. Those that generate right wing/Republican propaganda 24/7/365.25, and those that merely insist on "balance", permitting a few non-conservative journalists, but always coddling right wing ideas with "balance" and employing token right wing columnists. And the second type are a distinct minority, and are constantly under vicious attack for "leftism" by the undiluted right wing, despite their constant efforts to conciliate and coddle (sounds kind of like the Democratic party, too, I guess).

Whether journalists "believe" right wing ideas or not (and they are of a demographic - affluent but only modestly educated whites - who are likely to be conservative), they are implicitly required by their employers to either always produce right wing propaganda, or, with a few aging exceptions, to show it exaggerated deference and always refer to any conflict between the far right and everyone else as a "controversy" or "debate". Much as media outlets that coddle far right ideas, but not quite universally enough, are reviled for "leftism" (in fact it's even common to hear claims that the New York Times is "Marxist" and so on), US journalists, who are overall clearly a conservative group, are reviled as "liberals", despite evidence to the contrary http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2447.

The logical conclusion for any career-minded journalist is that there is grave danger in even trivially challenging right wing ideas.

But what should this have to do with science reporting? Isn't science politically neutral? Unfortunately in the current milieu, hard core political science denial - human contribution to climate change denial, evolution denial, tobacco/health denial, HIV denial, and increasingly, vaccine denial - is associated with the political right and the Republican party. And that is a FACT of public record. Of my list, you can examine denialist legislation or public denialist statements by political figures, and you will find this to be true, except that vaccine denialism has only recently been adopted by the far right, and may show a more diverse demographic.

4) There is also a tendency for US media outlets to be somewhat scornful of their consumers, and to emphasize keeping things simplified.

So a US journalist is someone who may resent science or jeer at it as an occupation for "nerds" to begin with, may hold right wing science denial views to begin with, and is often implicitly required to refer to outright reality-denying positions as sources of "controversy" or "debate" if they want to stay employed at any rate.

If they do a bunch of grunt work and try to come up with a good rather than glib article, they're more likely to be punished than rewarded for it.

It's pretty clear that this situation isn't going to lead to a lot of well written science articles. What amazes me is that there are any at all.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/30/steele.objective.journalism/index.html?hpt=C1

I have long been cynical/sceptical about science articles in the press (British for me)

Both last year and 10years ago scientist friends of mine had met with science journalists and of both occasions the journalists said that they altered the story to make good reading

Sadly that happens too often and many feeble-minded followers of science (especially creationists) don't look carefully at the story or check out sources

Almost without exception, my colleagues and I in research dreaded any kind of interview with any kind of journalist. We were never surprised when the result came out wrong in the media.

Most of the time we felt as though we were being interviewed by children who didn’t have a big enough vocabulary to even be asking questions let alone be taking down our responses.

And trying to put answers into relatively colloquial language is extremely difficult to do; especially impromptu, and especially when the reporter asks a question that makes no sense. The reporter often answered his own nonsensical question with his own nonsensical answer because he didn’t understand our attempts to clarify.

Mike Elzinga said: Most of the time we felt as though we were being interviewed by children who didn’t have a big enough vocabulary to even be asking questions let alone be taking down our responses.

mrg said:

Mike Elzinga said: Most of the time we felt as though we were being interviewed by children who didn’t have a big enough vocabulary to even be asking questions let alone be taking down our responses.

There is the tale of a prominent physicist, don't remember the name, who was asked by a journalist if he could give a simple explanation of his work that could be understood by a nonscientific reader. The physicist thought it over for a moment and replied: "No."

If Dirac could have given a simple answer Moses would have explained it in his books:)

There is a partial description of the interview in Graham Farmelo’s book, “The Strangest Man,” on page 162.

The journalist was Joseph Coughlin, known as Roundy.

The report by Coughlin may be apocryphal, but it captures Dirac’s behavior so well that somehow it ought to be true.

Mike Elzinga said: That was P.A.M. Dirac.

mrg said:

Mike Elzinga said: That was P.A.M. Dirac.

No, somebody more recent. However, it fits Dirac, whose conversational vocabulary was said to consist of "yes", "no", and "I don't know." Eugene Wigner, who was Dirac's brother in law, once described Dick Feynmann as: "Like Dirac, only human."

Flint -

I am strongly in favor of objective journalism.

"Objective" doesn't mean "creating false equivalence". The objective response creationism is to point out that it is complete BS. The objective response to climate change denialism is to note that the evidence and the views of objective, qualified scientists without ties to the fuel petroleum industry are strongly in consensus. Also to point out that climate denialists often focus on fake, irrelevant "scandals", and contradict themselves ("there is no warming", "there is warming but there is no human contribution", "there is a human contribution but the warming is benign", "there is a human contribution and it isn't benign but it's too late to do anything now...")

If US journalism were objective with respect to science, you would see no more pro-creationism or pro-climatology-denial articles, than pro-astrology articles. Less, in fact, because, as I have repeatedly noted, astrology doesn't deny cosmology or astrophysics, it merely makes a bunch of unsupported ancillary claims about stars and planets.

Objective also doesn't mean having no opinion. It means identifying your opinion as an opinion, justifying it with logic and data, and being able and willing to respond to challenging feedback.

It would be hard for "progressives", at least if I am one, to be issuing a lot of anti-science propaganda, because refusal to be rational and/or efforts to deceive with propaganda are counter to the very ideals of the enlightenment (since expanded) that progressives are in favor of. If you're really in favor of freedom of expression in a meaningful way, and you're in favor of rational, skeptical thought, well, then, you're hard pressed to be anti-science.

However, if some barrage of anti-scientific propaganda were coming from a powerful political alliance on "the left", I would oppose it every bit as much as I oppose the current anti-science trend on the right.

Mike Elzinga said: I could never see Dirac on the Rogers commission investigating the Challenger disaster.

mrg said:

Mike Elzinga said: That was P.A.M. Dirac.

No, somebody more recent. However, it fits Dirac, whose conversational vocabulary was said to consist of "yes", "no", and "I don't know." Eugene Wigner, who was Dirac's brother in law, once described Dick Feynmann as: "Like Dirac, only human."

harold said: Flint - I am strongly in favor of objective journalism. "Objective" doesn't mean "creating false equivalence". The objective response creationism is to point out that it is complete BS. The objective response to climate change denialism is to note that the evidence and the views of objective, qualified scientists without ties to the fuel petroleum industry are strongly in consensus. Also to point out that climate denialists often focus on fake, irrelevant "scandals", and contradict themselves ("there is no warming", "there is warming but there is no human contribution", "there is a human contribution but the warming is benign", "there is a human contribution and it isn't benign but it's too late to do anything now...") If US journalism were objective with respect to science, you would see no more pro-creationism or pro-climatology-denial articles, than pro-astrology articles. Less, in fact, because, as I have repeatedly noted, astrology doesn't deny cosmology or astrophysics, it merely makes a bunch of unsupported ancillary claims about stars and planets. Objective also doesn't mean having no opinion. It means identifying your opinion as an opinion, justifying it with logic and data, and being able and willing to respond to challenging feedback. It would be hard for "progressives", at least if I am one, to be issuing a lot of anti-science propaganda, because refusal to be rational and/or efforts to deceive with propaganda are counter to the very ideals of the enlightenment (since expanded) that progressives are in favor of. If you're really in favor of freedom of expression in a meaningful way, and you're in favor of rational, skeptical thought, well, then, you're hard pressed to be anti-science. However, if some barrage of anti-scientific propaganda were coming from a powerful political alliance on "the left", I would oppose it every bit as much as I oppose the current anti-science trend on the right.

The objective response to climate change denialism is to note that the evidence and the views of objective, qualified scientists without ties to the fuel petroleum industry are strongly in consensus.

Dale -

Those are incredibly great examples of what I am talking about.

But my understanding is, there is global warming and people are doing things that surely contribute some component(s) of this trend.

However, there are highly questionable data being collected for a wide variety of reasons varying from where measurements are taken, to how many, to what devices are used and how they are configured (i.e., one of the most common thermometer configurations has the sensor right next to the power supply), to conflicts among climate models as to which data OUGHT to be collected and how meaningful ours are. Should we be emphasizing surface temperature as much as we do, or should we have more underwater sensors, more stratospheric sensors, etc? How should we reconcile the conflicting interpretations various models impose on the same data? How long IS a reasonable baseline of readings once we think we’re taking enough of the right kind of readings?

All of these issues and many more CAN be used to create the impression that we don’t know anything, our data are hopelessly compromised, our models are constructed of assumptions pulled straight out of confirmation bias, and so on.

Certainly a responsible article should emphasize the size of the error bars over everything in the entire enterprise, and that even the most general conclusions are tentative.

And all of this (the science end) is compounded by the political end, which is a very real part of the issue.

While we can’t say without much more basis than hope that some action MIGHT reduce our exposure to warming, we CAN say that any effective action will be enormously expensive

- and gore someone’s ox in the process.

A responsible article should at least identify WHO would have to pay how much more taxes, and whose job would be lost, to implement any given proposal.

And of course, there remains the global rising demand for energy, now that we’ve eaten all the low hanging fruit.

Which means green technologies are going to cost us more,

and the higher cost will not be borne equally by any means.

Or should that part be omitted?

How about this Hawking radiation report for an example of reporting that brings up the fear of miniature black holes?

And moving to Alabama is not one of my planned strategies. I’m in Houston right now, but for work. I actually kind of like the Gulf Coast, blue-stater though I am. I’ll be sorry to see it go.

Your goal here is to create an insurmountable barrier to prevent reporting of climate change.

The logic is not entirely dissimilar to that employed by the “tell me every mutation that every occurred in the history of life” type of creationist.

This article was funny. Yes criticism of science reporters is okay. They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal.

Robert Byers said: This article was funny. Yes criticism of science reporters is okay. They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal.

Karen S. said: Someone like Carl Zimmer?

Actually, I have just checked Zimmer's bio and there is no indication that he is a working scientist after all -- in which case he is an excellent example of what I was talking about.

Robert Byers said: This article was funny. Yes criticism of science reporters is okay. They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal.

Flint said: And here is where the politics unfortunately can't help but enter the reporting. So some scientist says "activity X is contributing Y tons of carbon to the atmosphere, give or take 30% due to insufficient data to get closer." Should that statistic end the article?

Without such analysis, the statistic is pretty meaningless.

But you can ask 10 climatologists the same question and get 12 different projections. And no matter which one you ask, you're getting his political opinion embedded in his professional opinion. The two can simply no longer be decoupled.

Flint: Maybe my understanding has fallen victim to bad reporting?

"They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal."

Sport, I would like nothing better than that they should print your comments absolutely verbatim.

Robert Byers said: This article was funny. Yes criticism of science reporters is okay. They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal.

Evolutionary biology and climatology are both broad areas of science. Both are under attack from sources not pleased with scientific findings. Can PT deal with climate? Who knows? There are plenty of climate blogs, and they don't take on evo-creo. But here is some general background:

1. Denialism, the blog. Especially the Denialist's Deck of Cards. Denialism is a recognizable set of tactics. It does not require literal total denial of the target. Note that what is being denied is often scientific, but the tactics are often business related.

2. Doubt mongering. Start with Doubt is Our Product. This leads to another type of origins question: where do think tanks come from?

3. Note overlap of 1 & 2. For climate change denial or doubt mongering, the aim is delay. Delay the inevitable reduction in the profits of certain large corporations.

4. Note the money being used for climate change denial.

5. For all practical purposes, everyone has all the data. The big oil, coal and chemical corporations employ thousands of scientists. Why don't they just make their point in the scientific literature? Did the tobacco companies know all along they were selling cancer?

No, of course it isn’t. My goal is to try to show that some scientific matters are NOT cut-and-dried like creationism is. And that where there is genuine disagreement (and the consensus you cite papers over a great deal of serious disagreement), it’s not easy to write an objective and coherent article.

What? Everything I mentioned is both relevant and significant.

Or are you going to claim that because you do not understand the underlying climatology and the theory and data on which it rests, you somehow “know” that it’s all really simple,

just a matter of knowledgeable scientists being misrepresented by Fox News?

Make it too simple, and you’re only sloganeering - entirely political.

When you start asking sensible questions like how much human activity is contributing to the warming trend, and which activities are the most significant contributors, you run into big problems. Turns out the climate is somewhat chaotic, and somewhat regional, and there are unknown chain reactions of all sorts involved, and the relevant data ARE very incomplete and somewhat compromised and possibly largely irrelevant (depending on the model).

Certainly it promises to reward plenty of further study. I think of climatology as kind of like studying the brain. We know what it does, we know generally how it works. We can even model some aspects of it. But there’s a long way to go. You talk about an “expected value”, but we are nowhere near being able to narrow our expectations much beyond “reduce the carbon footprint and things will probably not be as bad.”

And here is where the politics unfortunately can’t help but enter the reporting. So some scientist says “activity X is contributing Y tons of carbon to the atmosphere, give or take 30% due to insufficient data to get closer.” Should that statistic end the article?

Or should someone be quoted as relating that to some sort of warming somewhere, of some amount, at some time in the future? Without such analysis, the statistic is pretty meaningless.

But you can ask 10 climatologists the same question and get 12 different projections. And no matter which one you ask, you’re getting his political opinion embedded in his professional opinion. The two can simply no longer be decoupled.

For the record, I only intended climate change as a blatant example of science that is misreported by the US media.

“If we do nothing, the oceans will rise X centimeters (+/- y error)” is a scientific observation.

But if you are saying “science reports must render some opinion on what to do about the data they present, or they are useless” that is absolutely untrue.

If, OTOH, you don’t insist every scientific report include political commentary about what we should do about the data, then you can decouple them quite easily

As others have now pointed out as well, you continue to try to argue that the basic science must not be reported if the report is not accompanied by massive amounts of policy discussion.

What I understand perfectly is that there is a consensus among objective climatologists that human activity is likely to be contributing to a warming trend, most likely largely due to re-atmospherization of a great deal of carbon in a short period of time.

I have not made a single specific political policy suggestion yet in this conversation.

You made the claim that doing something about climate change would be inordinately expensive. I questioned that prediciton about the cost of action.

Furthermore, you indulge in a very characteristic logical error. Since denial of the evidence for human contribution to climate change is based on short term economic and political self interest, you absurdly project that acceptance of the evidence is also somehow so motivated.

You spend a great deal of time trying to convince yourself that climatologists cannot know anything.

My point, and it is a very general, but obvious one, is that even if the probabilty of such effect of human activity is not 100%, if it is also not 0%, efforts to modulate the effect may be justified.

With statements like this, you massively reduce your own credibility.

Flint said: I said that a well-written science article must do more than give the statistical data. It must address the question "so what?"

A responsible article should at least identify WHO would have to pay how much more taxes, and whose job would be lost, to implement any given proposal.

Robert Byers said: This article was funny. Yes criticism of science reporters is okay. They screw up the creationist ideas, motives, and general contentions a great deal.

I’m not talking about specific political policy suggestions. When you say that “we all know people are causing global warming, it’s obvious” you are taking a political position whether you like it or not.

Wow, it’s not easy talking to fanatics. No, I didn’t make that claim.

Furthermore, you indulge in a very characteristic logical error. Since denial of the evidence for human contribution to climate change is based on short term economic and political self interest, you absurdly project that acceptance of the evidence is also somehow so motivated.

Look, I agree the globe is warming. I agree people are responsible for some proportion of this. Climatologists estimate the anthropogenic component at anywhere from 20% to 90%. It’s real.

Most likely if something is not done, we will all be worse off than if we do something. But also most likely there are things we could do that would massively derail many lives while having no measurable effect. So just doing “something” isn’t enough. We need to know what we’re doing. And quite frankly, our ability to predict the long-term effects of anything we do today is minimal. Will we get ocean current inversions? Nobody knows. If we do, will they change habitability patterns on the earth? Nobody knows. If those patterns change, how will they change? Now we’re getting to the Rube Goldberg level of “analysis”. Yet these are the questions that are important to you and me. And unfortunately, our models seem to agree that warming is cumulative and has a great deal of momentum. So even if all humans were to vanish overnight and all human activities were to stop instantly, what we’ve already done will continue to contribute to warming for decades to come. The implication is, to be at all effective in the long term, we must do something worthwhile NOW. But right now, the scientist aren’t able to say what we should do that would be best (beyond reducing carbon footprint), and the political will won’t exist until either any disaster has already happened, or somehow a PR campaign steamrolls political will into action even when the need is not yet obvious. But we should understand that it IS a PR campaign, or really two competing PR campaigns. And PLEASE don’t confuse PR with an attempt to sell snake oil. Even 100% good ideas require sales.

Why must it? If the science is providing us a best available picture of the physical world (past, current, and near future), its doing its job.

Those are absolutely not science questions. They are dependent on which solution we choose to implement and how we implement it.

I certainly want my economists and political scientists to read and consider the scientific data. But I don’t insist the climatologist perform the economic analysis before publishing his/her results. That’s just silly.

Why do you demand that of them, but not other fields?

Logically, that is not a political statement; it is merely a very slightly exaggerated statement about the physical world.

Falsely labeling me as a “fanatic” only makes you look like a correctly labeled sore loser. I have clearly not argued beyond the evidence, nor made any outrageous policy suggestions.

Luckily, though, although you didn’t have the decent to concede in a courteous way, you do end up agreeing with the mainstream view after all.

That’s quite some backpedaling from ‘When you say that “we all know people are causing global warming, it’s obvious” you are taking a political position whether you like it or not.’

What was the political component of the first statement supposed to be then? Is it neutral if I say that “the area of a square is the square of one of its sides”, but political if I say “we all know that the area of a square is the square of one of its sides, it’s obvious”?

If you agree with yourself here, then by logical extension, you agree that my original statement - most of the US media misreports climate science - is true.

If some physicist comes up with a new method for adiabatic expansion, I don’t insist they tell me how much this is going to increase/decrease the cost of my refrigerator as a precondition to getting published in Physical Review.

Yes, but WHY do you think most climate science is being misreported? Because science journalists should NOT make any attempt to attach meaning to the material they’re writing about? Sheesh, I think it’s pretty clear that the journalism about global warming is poor BECAUSE it’s so political. A responsible journalist is surely aware of this.

To clarify some of the above:
Climate is not weather, and not chaotic. Climate is the long term average (and other statistical aspects) of weather. Climatologists prefer a 30 year baseline, such as 1961 - 1990. Then temperatures and other factors can be compared to the average of the base period.

Climate is predictable. Climate change is predictable. Climatology is not nearly as primitive as some earlier comments suggest.

Factors that increase or decrease the amount of energy in earth's climate system are called forcings. Direct consequences of a forcing may also change the energy in the climate system. These are classified as feedbacks.

The forcings and feedbacks causing the warming in the recent period are much better understood than other comments indicate. The rise of CO2 from fossil fuels is the driver of the global warming that is now occurring.

This is not guesswork, and not "politics".

However, uninformed journalists and biased sources sometimes deny this. Can we agree to call such behavior “climate change denial”?

I suppose one can try to say that some outright science denial is more absurd than other outright science denial.

I noted “Isn’t science politically neutral? Unfortunately in the current milieu, hard core political science denial - human contribution to climate change denial, evolution denial, tobacco/health denial, HIV denial, and increasingly, vaccine denial - is associated with the political right and the Republican party.”

But I really don’t see where the disagreement is.

Climate is not weather, and not chaotic.

Climate is predictable. Climate change is predictable.

The forcings and feedbacks causing the warming in the recent period are much better understood than other comments indicate. The rise of CO2 from fossil fuels is the driver of the global warming that is now occurring.

This is not guesswork, and not “politics”.

Flint, please don't argue terms. I am, as is usual when explaining climate vs weather,talking about the situations of human experience. Climate is a long term average of weather and this average is not chaotic. This is standard stuff.

But the big things you are not hearing are: 1) Climatology is a far more mature science than you want to allow, at least in these comments, and 2) it is not "politics" although you can't seem to stop bring politics up. The latter may indicate you are not likely to admit the former.

Pete,

I don't understand your comment. You say climatology is a solid science, with principles well understood, irrespective of politics. But I asked you direct, very important questions. I DO wish to know what changes I might expect, and when, and what steps I can take today to do something about them. If climatology can answer these questions, great. I sincerely wish to have them answered. Should I relocate? When? To where? What do I face that would inconvenience me where I am, that I could avoid elsewhere? What might these things be, and when do I need to take action?

Can you tell me? Use all the solid, mature science you need.

And if you can NOT tell me, be large enough to admit it.

Maybe I need to be more to the point. Will my local climate get warmer or cooler? How much? By when? Will it become wetter or drier? Will I experience more or fewer storms, floods, tornados, etc? By what percentage compared to, say, the last century will any of these things change and by when? Would it help if I provided the latitude and longitude of a particular location, to address what will happen different there, and when these differences will become pronounced?

Please understand that these are important questions, whose answers might direct or influence the course of my life. I may or may not need to DO something, and I may need to start planning today. For what?

Please, mister scientist, help me in my time of need. Use, you know, nonpolitcal mature SCIENCE to generate useful information. I'm gladly willing to admit how mature your science is, provided (of course) that your predictions are accurate.

Flint said: Pete, I don't understand your comment. You say climatology is a solid science, with principles well understood, irrespective of politics. But I asked you direct, very important questions. I DO wish to know what changes I might expect, and when, and what steps I can take today to do something about them. If climatology can answer these questions, great. I sincerely wish to have them answered. Should I relocate? When? To where? What do I face that would inconvenience me where I am, that I could avoid elsewhere? What might these things be, and when do I need to take action? Can you tell me? Use all the solid, mature science you need. And if you can NOT tell me, be large enough to admit it. Maybe I need to be more to the point. Will my local climate get warmer or cooler? How much? By when? Will it become wetter or drier? Will I experience more or fewer storms, floods, tornados, etc? By what percentage compared to, say, the last century will any of these things change and by when? Would it help if I provided the latitude and longitude of a particular location, to address what will happen different there, and when these differences will become pronounced? Please understand that these are important questions, whose answers might direct or influence the course of my life. I may or may not need to DO something, and I may need to start planning today. For what? Please, mister scientist, help me in my time of need. Use, you know, nonpolitcal mature SCIENCE to generate useful information. I'm gladly willing to admit how mature your science is, provided (of course) that your predictions are accurate.

Flint said:

Why must it? If the science is providing us a best available picture of the physical world (past, current, and near future), its doing its job.

I agree. But that picture implies some interpretation. Read any article in Science News, and you'll see what I mean. The keyword is "news". We're talking here about writing news articles, not journal articles.

In more than 60 hours of non-stop torrential rainfall, the floods washed all that away. The north-west normally receives 500mm (20in) of rain in the month of July; over one five-day period 5,000mm fell.

Flint said: Pete, I don't understand your comment. You say climatology is a solid science, with principles well understood, irrespective of politics. But I asked you direct, very important questions. I DO wish to know what changes I might expect, and when, and what steps I can take today to do something about them. If climatology can answer these questions, great. I sincerely wish to have them answered. Should I relocate? When? To where? What do I face that would inconvenience me where I am, that I could avoid elsewhere? What might these things be, and when do I need to take action? Can you tell me? Use all the solid, mature science you need. And if you can NOT tell me, be large enough to admit it.

A little OT, but I thought you guys might enjoy this. It's the same idea as the original post, only it applies to the regular news...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4&feature=player_embedded

Yes I'm an HTML idiot and don't know how to use tags...

Cheers

Flint said: I agree. But that picture implies some interpretation. Read any article in Science News, and you'll see what I mean. The keyword is "news". We're talking here about writing news articles, not journal articles.

Writing for the Physical Review isn't at all the same as writing for the Guardian or the Washington Post.