The politicisation of science
Last night’s Front Row on BBC Radio 4 had a fascinating interview with Michael Crichton (once I got over the shock at hearing his voice and wondering if he’d employed Donald Sutherland to take his place).
Mark Lawson introduced him as the best selling thriller writer with a knack for dealing in fiction items that soon become huge factual issues (Jurassic Park – cloning, Disclosure – sexual harrassment and so on), the “nostradamus of popular fiction”. But his new book, State of Fear, tackles global warming and the concern that the “global warming industry” might be international hysteria, “filling a fear gap that opened up when the cold war ended, [a fear] that decade by decade it has shifted to invisible things”.
I have to confess that I haven’t been entirely convinced these past years by the threat of global warming. If meteorologists can’t predict the weather correctly for the following day, how are we to believe their (and that of others in the scientific community) speculation on weather/climate changes two, ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line?
Do go and listen, it’s a thoght provoking interview.
And in other news, time to recycle possibly the best Christmas animation on the net.
December 10th, 2004 15:51
I think the point about why you should still trust predictions about global warming even though they said it wasn’t going to rain today but it did, is that it’s easier to predict a broad trend or pattern of events over a long period of time than it is to give accurate measures for what the state will be in a much shorter time period.
As I understand it, it’s largely to do with the number of sampling points we can feasily use — the data collection points are spaced over fairly large distances (for argument’s sake, say there is one every 100 miles over a large landmass). These are sufficient to give a good long-range, large-area forecast. However, for an accurate local forecast we’d need sampling points much closer together, resulting in much more data to crunch and there aren’t the resources or processing power to take on that much data for every locale and churn out the findings quickly enough. Because of this, it’s necessary to introduce a greater degree of human input, and that’s where things can go wrong.
At a seminar I attended recently we were told, as an aside, that at the Met Office there are about five people, one of whom is always on duty, deemed to have the knowledge and experience to override the computers’ predictions, but if they do this, they can be wrong — a famous example of this happening is the UK hurricane in ‘87.
I think I remember someone else telling me that in the global weather models, the English Channel doesn’t even exist because the data points are too widely spaced — so Great Britain appears to be part of mainland Europe. Now there’s something that’ll really get some people’s hackles up. ;)
December 10th, 2004 18:17
It’s a bit odd of him to pick on “global warming” as an instance of international hysteria, when many people in power are not particularly hysterical about it. For that matter, in the States, those in power couldn’t care less about it.
On the other hand, “the threat from global terrorism” seems like a much likelier candidate…
December 10th, 2004 20:09
I’ll refrain from commenting on the global warming front, but I’d just like to say that that animation has cheered me up from a right black and glowering mood.
Thanks!
December 11th, 2004 01:51
sometimes it’s a lot easier to predict broad patterns than specifics. take the stock market, for example. you don’t know whether your stocks will go up or down tomorrow, but everyone has a pretty good idea that it’ll grow in 10 years, because economies grow – if this wasn’t the case, no one would ever invest in anything. with weather, the evidence couldn’t be more compelling. http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/index.cfm
December 12th, 2004 20:54
Thank you David, that does make sense. I’d wondered about the huge sums paid by some companies for detailed long range forecasts – they must be fairly accurate or no-one would pay for them.
Richard, he wasn’t “picking an example of international hysteria” from one of many but describing the reactions of some to g/warning as hysteria.
Sorry to hear about the mood Stuart (but glad it helped).
Thanks for the link Isabelle. I think it’s important that we cooperate and do what we can to mitigate the impacts of global warming “just in case”.
As for releasing gases – can I apologise to the world right now for my dogs? ;-p
December 12th, 2004 21:41
Right, now I’ll contribute – and despite feeling pretty strongly about this issue, I’ll try and represent the situation fairly.
Records show that average temperatures in the last couple of hundred years – roughly since the dawn of the Industrial revolution, when we stopped burning fuels purely for heating and cooking and really opened up the field for resource use – have risen by what at first may not seem a particularly significant amount – about half a degree celsius.
Bear in mind that these are average temperatures – over all the seasons; indian summers and long winters, cold snaps and heat waves all over the world, and there is this rise since the early 19th century…and if the trend continues, we could be looking at a lot of changes.
People have pointed to the similarities in the rise in temperature on earth to the rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and there are great mathematical and statistical arguments which claim that the corroboration between the two is very significant – ie the most likely cause.
But, and this is the big one – earth has never had a stable temperature. Never. The period we’re in now, from the last ice age, has been a period of unprecedented stability with respect to global temperatures. We can tell this through looking at ice cores and other sources which allow us to attempt to evaluate the temperatures of the past.
However, in all of earth’s tumultuous past, never has a change of half a degree celsius occured in such a short space of time as two hundred years. It’s the geo-meteorological equivalent of a knee-jerk.
There are issues within issues here, but this is about as well as I can do within a comments box.
:-)