On ‘Real Time’ Friday night, Bill Maher sat down with former Pennsylvania senator and current presidential hopeful Rick Santorum for a discussion that quickly devolved into yet another reminder of why this man will never hold the highest office in the land.
On the subject of anthropogenic climate change, for example, Santorum quoted a study in which 57 percent of 1,800 scientists allegedly claimed that human activity isn’t responsible for fundamentally altering the world’s weather patterns.
‘I don’t know what ass you’re pulling that out of,’ a bemused Maher replied. ‘But that is not — you know that is not true.’
‘I’ll send you the survery!’ Santorum replied. He then proceeded to ‘debunk’ the claim that 97 percent of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change, saying that that number was ‘pulled out of thin air,’ and that not even 97 scientists responded to the survey from which that conclusion was drawn. Because, of course, it didn’t occur to Santorum that sequentially claiming that a statistic was invented and following it with a complaint about the sample size used to derive is a good way to win an argument.
I watched this and was kind of infuriated. Santorum's claims are hardly original or new. First off, the 97% number is from this study Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. "We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'."
"Among [the ~34% of] abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming." In a second phase of the study, "Among [the ~65% of] self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus." And "Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research."
James Powell did a similar search in 2012, Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility - In One Pie Chart. "I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles...By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17% or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming."
See more here, The 97% consensus on global warming. Here's a recent denier commentary published on FoxNews against this study, Climate change: Mr. Obama, 97 percent of experts is a bogus number. It's just FUD. Wikipedia has a good article on the Scientific opinion on climate change.
On Santorum's study of 1800 scientists, I couldn't find what he's talking about. The closest I came to such a study was this, Survey confirms scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. "A survey among more than 1800 climate scientists confirms that there is widespread agreement that global warming is predominantly caused by human greenhouse gases."
PolitiFact (not always my favorite) looked into Santorum's claim and concludes Santorum cites flawed climate change figure, and misquotes it.
So here's the thing, by now anyone interviewing a climate denialist (or any Republican) on the subject has to be able to cite a few key numbers and studies by heart. When you say 97% of scientists agree, you have to expect them to say that's false and you have to be able to cite the study and the supporting numbers. And then you have to ask them to do the same. And you should know the standard crap numbers they usually cite and be able to dispute them. Or you know what, have someone bring out a laptop, on the spot and google it in front of their faces and make them respond.
Of course I don't think that would do much good, other than to make an enemy and give one more reason for Republicans to not go on any show that's not on Fox. Here's another route to rationality. Ask them how they form their opinions. What sources do they look at? When they see conflicting information, how do they sort through it? This is the whole basis for the scientific method, it's the best that humanity has come with to solve this problem. In fact I agree it's probably The one scientific statement to reboot civilization.
I wonder what someone like Santorum would say? Would he bail and say he trusts the Bible? I'd ask him how that would help him understand the germ theory of disease? Would he say he looks at the sources and determines if he can trust them? I'd respond how do know if you can trust the source? If that fails I'd cite a bunch of old wives tales about how to ensure a child is a boy by using various sexual positions. At some point you have to come up with experiments and data to test hypotheses. From there you get to publishing and then what's apparently the hard part, listening to the published and repeatable data.
2 comments:
I'm not sure it is possible to convince people about climate change by rational argument. I had two different discussions with strangers about climate change that both started with casual comments about how hot it was that day. The first was in Florida over the winter. I had just eaten outside a waterfront sandwich place and started talking with the owner. He was an old (looked over 80) style Flordian conservative. We had a lively but friendly argument about climate change. I think he just enjoyed arguing with a liberal (by his standards) Mass resident. His main argument was the no consensus amoung experts argument. The second discussion was in Maine this summer with an older (than me) woman renting the vacation house next door. Her argument was that most glaciers aren't receding. I told her I didn't think so and what little I knew about it said that the opposite was true and that most glaciers are receding. She cited the experts disagree argument as well. I told her I didn't think that was true either. She said that we must be reading different sources (clearly true).
My conclusion: it is not longer safe to bring up the weather in casual conversation; along with politics and religion.
You're probably right about convincing most people. I do think it would be interesting to put politicians on the spot. :)
To your encounters I probably would be a stickler and say most *experts* do agree, it's the non-experts who don't. In fact 97% of them agree. In fact the world-wide panel of experts says man-made climate change is over 95% likely and NASA has determined that 3 feet of ocean rise is happening regardless of what we do at this point. And insurance companies are already dealing with it. And if that's not good enough the Pentagon considers climate change as a threat to national security, you support the military don't you??!?
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