More junk science from the same United Nations crowd that promises global warming will kill us all. Former U.N. boss Kofi Annan now leads the Global Humanitarian Forum. And a new report makes the outrageous claim that global warming is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and $125 billion in economic losses. But a leading scholar calls the study "a methodological embarrassment." Need we say more?Actually yes they do need to say more.
But since they won't, I will.
Once you see where the phrase comes from you'll see that the Trib has a "methodological embarrassment" of its own. The New York Times writes:
Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that “climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention.” But the report, he said, “will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.”Note the last sentence. Pielke asserts that climate change is a problem and yet the Trib's using his assessment of the report as part of a denial of something Pielke supports.
Indeed, Pielke explains himself here. In an e-mail to the Times regarding the initial article, Pielke writes:
Let me say first that human-caused climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention. Second, the effects of disasters, particularly in poorer countries, is also an important problem that to some degree has been overlooked, as I have argued for many years.And yet to the Trib, it's all "junk science."
However, I cannot express how strongly I feel that this report has done a disservice to both issues. It is a methodological embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics. The report will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.
It will give ammunition to those opposed to action and divert attention away from the people who actually need help in the face of disasters, yet through this report have been reduced to a bloodless statistic for use in the promotional battle over climate policies. The report is worse than fiction, it is a lie. These are strong words I know.[emphasis added.]
How's that for a methodological embarrassment?
Vaclav Havel once told the Czech legislature that Communism was wrong. The West cheered, yet apparently he was referring to a technical point in Communist theory, not the system as whole.
ReplyDeleteOr at least so I read once.
Climate change and AGW are problematic, for me, because I am not a ... well, whatever sort of scientist that actually understands this stuff. I have to rely on people smarter than me, and I have to try to sort out whether there is genuine disagreement about climate change, or so much smoke and mirrors. Not that it matters what I figure out, but I actually do want to have an idea of where the truth lies. This should be science, but we are talking about a very complex system (the planet), and looking at a series of snapshots of particular places may not be enough.
My sense is that Pielke’s criticism of the Global Humanitarian Forum’s report is of the Havel sort, a criticism of them for reaching conclusions not supported by what we are able to discern right now. If so, fair enough, since if the developed nations suddenly were to give trillions of dollars to developing nations and also ceased all carbon emissions, there would be no way to that the 300,000 people who weren’t killed were saved because of the effect on green house gases. In other words, don’t claim something you can’t back up.
Yet I am not sure about Mr. Pielke, and I am sure that more entities like the Trib will pick up his criticism as proof the climate change science is junk science. Thinking about it, though, I have come to see it as similar to Pascal’s Wager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_wager).After all, burning gas and coal not only contributes to greenhouse gases, it also runs through finite resources. Curbing those emissions also pushes us towards the use of renewable resources (Solar, wind) which our grandchildren and their grandchildren can use without any (known) harmful effects on the environment. So even if AGW turns out to be false, working to curb it should produce desirable effects.