The Anatomy of
Climate Science Hype
The manipulation behind Study of Ice Age Bolsters Carbon and Warming Link by Justin Gillis, New York Times, March 1,
2013
A NY Times science story (by Justin
Gillis, March 1) illustrates some interesting points about science journalism -
esp. in the contentious and politically charged issue of climate change. A
scientific journal, in this case the renowned Science magazine, wants to
gain publicity for its journal among the non-scientific readers of the NY
Times. So it sends out a press release about a scientific paper it plans to
publish. Of course, it has been 'peer-reviewed' to the satisfaction of the Science
editor, but it has not yet been vetted by the scientific community.
Journalists who receive the press release think
it will make an interesting story. It appears to involve some new features that
contradict what has been discussed up till now. And Science has a
generally good reputation. Specifically, the story claims that the deglaciation
of 12,000 years ago, the major temperature increase marking the end of the most
recent ice age and the beginning of the current warm Interglacial (termed The
Holocene), involves also a striking increase in the greenhouse (GH) gas carbon
dioxide. Investigators who wrote the paper seem to believe that the rise in
carbon dioxide is coincident with the rise in temperature, as shown by their
refined studies of ice cores from Antarctica.
This result has an important history. It starts
with Al Gore announcing a correlation of several sudden temperature rises and
carbon-dioxide increases during the recent ice age, as judged from
analysis of Antarctic ice cores. He of course declares that this proves that
CO2 has caused 20th-century warming. To his great embarrassment it was then
later discovered that the increase in carbon dioxide actually follows
the temperature increase by about 600-800 years. And even a non-scientist must
realize that the cause must always precede the effect: so the temperature
increase must be the cause of the carbon-dioxide increase -- and not the other
way round. The mechanism is really quite simple: When the ocean warms, it
releases much of its dissolved carbon dioxide -- similar to warming soda pop or
champagne releasing CO2 bubbles. So suddenly, the 'smoking gun' that Al Gore
has relied on collapses in a heap.
This makes the new result interesting. The
authors actually suggest that the carbon dioxide increase played a large role
in the temperature increase terminating the last ice age. All of this sounds
very good to the journalist who thinks he has a scoop -- and to Science
magazine that can get its name before the public.
Of course, the NYT editor also plays an
important role. He realizes the political implications: If the scientific paper
is correct, then perhaps Al Gore's claim is vindicated and Congressman Joe
Barton (R-TX), who had criticized Al Gore, is wrong. So the story is published
before anyone has a chance to see the actual scientific paper and to know what
the authors have discovered.
Please note that I'm not suggesting that any of
the actual measurements are wrong. As reported, the work was done by a very
competent group (in Grenoble, France), which has an excellent reputation on
ice-core measurements. It is the interpretation of their findings that can be
questioned. And beyond this, it illustrates how science can be used or misused
in subtle ways to influence public opinion in directions governed by editorial
policy.
Note also that the paper has certainly been
"peer reviewed" by Science before being accepted for
publication. But all this means is that the journal editor sent it to someone
he chose and who will remain anonymous; and that this 'someone' gave him a
favorable report. If the editor had wanted to, he could have sent the paper to
another reviewer, perhaps to someone who would have been critical about the
paper's conclusions. The public seems not to realize this discretionary power
of a journal editor, and how little the label "peer review" really
means.
It is customary in stories like this one for
reporters to get the views of other experts, especially those who might
disagree. There is no indication that this happened in this particular case. If
Justin Gillis had phoned me for my reaction, I would have asked first of all to
see the paper before giving an opinion. But even without seeing the paper, I
would ask: Do the authors list the work of the Norwegian geologist Tom Segalstad,
who described some problems in dating carbon dioxide found in ice cores. He and
his co-author, the late Polish scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski, showed that the
errors can be quite large. I would also have asked whether the authors list the
relevant work of another Norwegian, Gunnar Myhre, who showed the 'logarithmic'
greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide: i.e., rather than proportional, the
incremental effect diminishes as the amount of CO2 increases. This may mean
that even if CO2 was responsible to some extent in aiding the ancient warming,
the rapid deglaciation at the end of the last ice age, its effect may not be
relevant to today's situation, where the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is more
than double the level during the last ice age.
Finally, I would ask the journalist whether he
shouldn't have mentioned the very pertinent fact that there hasn't been any
global warming for at least a decade, while carbon dioxide has been increasing
rapidly -- in large part because of the construction of so many coal-fired
power plants in China.
What I'm suggesting therefore is that the story
is unbalanced, one-sided, and should have been edited more severely. By the
time the ice-core paper appears in Science magazine, all these concerns
will have been forgotten -- although as the scientific community studies the
published work in detail, other problems may pop up.
Just to give one example: Could the Arctic have
commenced the process of deglaciation a little ahead of the Antarctic? Might
that account for a slightly earlier release of CO2 from a warming ocean? It's a
'chicken-and- egg' situation that needs to be looked at more carefully before
jumping to facile conclusions. But for the NYT, politics trumps science.
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia
and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty
is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites,
he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and,
more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans
& Atmosphere. He is a Senior Fellow of the Heartland Institute and the
Independent Institute. He co-authored the NY Times best-seller
"Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years." In 2007, he founded
and has since chaired the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate
Change), which has released several scientific reports [See
www.NIPCCreport.org]. For recent writings see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and also Google Scholar.
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