Prophecy & Disasters from the Right & the Left

If you have any doubts that right wingers can be contemptuous of science, allow Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann to put your mind at rest. From Religion News.com:

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians," the Minnesota Republican said Sunday (Aug. 28) at a campaign rally in Florida. "We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, `Are you going to start listening to me here?"'

As you would expect, the Press jumped on that. The Washington Post has a video clip of Bachmann making those remarks, under the heading "Bachmann: Hurricane is Message from God". The Backmann organization says she was just joking.

I watched the clip which was, amusingly, preceded by an energy industry ad promoting fracking. It didn't look like a joke, but it didn't look the least bit serious either. It was obvious rhetorical flourish.

Suppose she had been serious. Is it offensive to science to suggest that a natural disaster is part of God's plan and is a punishment or a warning? No. If there is any offense here, it is against religion for presuming that one knows the mind of God.

On the other hand, there is Billy McKibben. From his column in The Beast:

Irene's got a middle name, and it's Global Warming.

Just out of curiosity, what is Irene's last name?

Category 3 Storms have rarely hit Long Island since the 1800s; one was the great unnamed storm of 1938, which sent 15-foot storm waters surging through what are now multimillion-dollar seaside homes.

I admit to some curiosity about how rare Category 3 storms were before 1800, but the fact that a much worse storm hit in 1938 might mean something. What was that storm's middle name?

Critics of the climate change agenda have frequently argued that the agenda amounts to a pseudo-religion. Boy did McKibben step up to be the poster child. It is hard enough to mine decades of climate records for a coherent pattern. To claim that a single weather event is due to global warming is utterly unscientific. Maybe Irene was a harbinger of coming climate disasters. Maybe it is just the case that rare events happen rarely, but occasionally.

McKibben's pompous alarm is no more rational than Bachmann's Biblical rhetoric, but if Bachmann abuses religion, McKibben abuses science.

Comments

[Stan Gibilisco]

As a scientist (sort of), I'm offended by all the politicians and pundits and preachers who exploit people's fears to further their own agendas, and then say it's "scientific." As one of our more famous demagogues recently said, "Bulls##t."

I submit the following tenuous link to reality (but better than nothing):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_England_hurricanes

Any aging Yankees among us here remember names like Carol, Edna, Gloria, or Bob? The 1938 hurricane, worse than any of those four, had the middle name "Island" (as in "Long Island Express"). It caused wind gusts of over 120 mph (some people say up to 170 mph) and erosion along the shoreline so severe that analysts had to use aerial photos overlaid with telephone company gridlines in order to figure out where people's property lines had been.

In contrast, I could not find a single town where the winds from Irene reached hurricane force (a sustained blast of 74 mph or more, based on one-minute averages). The highest gust speed I could find, officially, was about 75 mph.

We can blame the population increase along the coasts for the exaggerated death toll taken by Irene. We can blame inflation when quoting dollar amounts for damage.

And, of course, if we're lefties, we can blame global warming for, say, the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. Didn't you know that global warming is so pervasive, so all-powerful, that it can create causal vectors that point against the theoretical flow of time?

Oh by the way, Katia is on the way. This old planet just keeps on heating up.

[George Mason]

The cult of global warming has hit the point of desperation as witnessed by Al Gore now calling his critics racists. When all else fails call them racists or religious nuts.

[Anthony Renli]

The problem with the Global Warming debate is that neither side of the political equation is listening to the actual Scientists.

Bill McKibben is a journalist(i.e.his first job was as a staff writer at The New Yorker), not a scientist. If you talk to any actual client scientist, they will tell you "Could Irene be caused by Global Warming? Sure. Could it have been caused by a butterfly in the exact wrong place beating it's wings together at the exact wrong moment? Sure." Both are possible. While Global Warming is more likely than a butterfly, that doesn't mean it wasn't the Butterfly.

The actual scientists tend to be very careful to admit that they don't know a darn thing for 100% sure about what is or will happen. They don't make bold, radical predictions. They will tell you that according to the best models and data we can look at right now, it appears that Global Climate Change is happening. That it does not match any climate change we have on record and to the best of our ability to identify. That it does not match what they can deduce from fossil or geological records. And that it appears that our actions might be contributing to this.

BUT that isn't sensational. That doesn't sell newspapers. That doesn't keep people glued to their seats. Therefore, the media doesn't talk to actual scientists. They talk to moderately informed (or moderately mis-informed) laypeople who look and talk better on TV and ask them for analysis.

[Donald Pay]

The models used to predict effects of global climate change are neither the type nor scale that can model particular weather events. At best the global climate change models coupled with a scientific understanding of how weather events are generated can predict that certain types of weather events will happen in greater or lesser frequency and with greater or lesser magnitude averaged over time. Some think the greater warming of waters in the temperate and arctic regions relative to tropical waters will change water and air mass flow and result in fewer hurricanes. It's very complex, and a lot depends on which regions and bodies of water heat up more.

The hurricane center has this post (last updated in 2007) regarding hurricanes and global warming. These scientists can't say that global warming is increasing the frequency of hurricanes. They do say, "It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures."

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/G3.html

[George Mason]

The problem with the cult of global warming is that they do not understand that comprehensive data for global climate/weather is only available for the last 50 years. No scientist is going to make Al Gore like claims with data so deficient over such a short time frame. Interdisciplinary study can provide evidence and clues for what has occurred in the past but very little that can be considered definitive. It is the lack of information that allows the rise of charlatans like Gore, and also eventually leads to their fall.

[Donald Pay]

Nonsense. There are many scientific methods and techniques to document climate and climate change going back millions of years. Such data may not be at a fine scale, but it can be very definitive. Cores of ice, cores of sedimentary rock, pollen deposition, study of bogs/lakes, studies of pollen and fossils, study of tree rings, radio-carbon and other dating techniques are among just a few ways to study past climate. The true charlatans are the climate change deniers. Oh, sorry, they are industry whores for the most part.

[George Mason]

The tree rings and ice samples are problematical in many ways not least of which is that there is little understanding of what may have caused the anomalies. As usual with the cult of global warming everything is caused by global warming. That aint science pal, and that is why there are critics. We get snowed with this anecdotal evidence, phony data and doctored pictures and told it is science. The models put together by the cult over the last 20 years have not proven out and yet they believe if they can put together more they can keep this ball rolling. What the collection of comprehensive data has demonstrated over the last few years is a cooling trend which is why the cry is now "climate change" and the buzz phrase is "weather is not climate." Until of course we go through another warming trend and then weather will be climate.

[Donald Pay]

Yeah, Georgie, go on thinking that the science you don't like is "problematical." It's problematical to you and your cult of deniers, and that's about as far as "problematical" goes.

[George Mason]

Ok you have an ice coring. Tell us what the barometric pressure was the day that ice was formed. What was the air temperature and the water temperature, at what depth was the ice formed was the sun shining, what was the location and what biological activity was occurring in the water around where that ice was formed. If you do not have that information all you have is a chunk of ice. Since you have chopped down a tree you claim to be able to look at a ring and provide proof positive of global warming. So tell us how many hours and days of sunlight occurred that year, what the total rainfall was and what the concentrations of nutrients were in the soil at that time. Without that you have a piece of wood. So we can be certain you and the other members of your cult can provide this. Science requires seeking truth. To find the truth you need all the data, without all the data you only have a theory or hypothesis. Without it of course you are just promoting more ignorance which has been your hallmark and what the cult of global warming depends upon..
That's a problem.

[Bill Fleming]

Sounds like it would take the invention of a time machine to convince George. He's not really into inductive reasoning it seems.