One final point: why does the “Green Room” never give space to articles from “global warming sceptics”? Where is the platform for these views on the BBC? The odd reader’s comment sneaked at the bottom of the usual “warmist” article is not enough. Wang, brussels, belgium

Exactly.

And another question for the Donkeys at the BBC. is this: When are you going to give space to articles from those skeptical that those running the BBC aren’t really Australian Giraffes posing as news reporters. How come you never give space to this?

What are you, biased?

And what about the idea that the earth is really a vanilla fudge pudding cake deep inside it’s core (which we should definitely be harvesting right now to end starvation throughout the world).

Oh, those that think this is sarcasm are thinking: But climate change is different. We don’t really know.

True. We don’t. Here is what we do know, however, with almost the same level of certainty as that we know that the core of the earth is not vanilla fudge pudding, or that the B.B.C. is not run from robotoids from an alien planet, or by the secret Australian Giraffe society. In blockquote form not because it is a quote, but for emphasis:

Heat drives climate ultimately, Oceans drive climate more directly. Heat warms oceans. It takes years and years, if not many decades, to change oceans from an external climate forcing such as volcanic aerosols, solar flareups, or increased heat trapping gases in the atmosphere.

There is a lot of carbon trapped in the ocean bottoms and in what is right now frozen (but increasingly melting) permafrost. There is enough ice at the poles to raise oceans hundreds of feet, our recent theories as to how long it would take for these to melt have been obliterated in the last ten years as we learn more about how feedback effects lead to increasingly higher levels of melting and heat absorption, and most of the actual observed warming so far has unfortunately taken place at the poles.

We know as a matter of physics that greenhouses gases trap heat, and that their presence in the first place makes life on earth as we know it possible. Our current levels of the two most important heat trapping gases, CO2 and CH4, are significantly higher than at any point in the past three quarters of a million years. We don’t know this with absolute certainty but we do know that this is what the frozen ice core record tells us, and that no one has yet been able to come up with a reason as to why frozen samples of the atmosphere dating back hundreds of thousands of years somehow froze the wrong atmospheres.

We also know that these increases are directly tied to very specific anthropomorphic activities. We also know that climate is not monotonic, and that what happens from one year to the next, or even over several years, is close to irrelevant in terms of what our ultimate effect upon long term climate conditions is going to be as a result of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from increased net emissions and other activities.

We know significant melting is currently underway in the Arctic, that it is accelerating, and that we are very slowly starting to see early signs of the same types of significant changes in the far more stable, larger, colder (and right now, due to increased evaporation and precipitation, increasing) Antarctica. We know, even though shorter term trends are of little significance, that 2009 is likely to come in as the second warmest year on record, and that four of the five warmest years on record will have occurred this (past) decade.  The fifth one in the group (and the warmest on record according to the WMO, the second warmest according to NASA) was 12 years ago, in 1998.

Now, half of what you just read you probably just learned for the first time, right? (And are probably programmed to be skeptical about, from all the misinformation out there, so do some research from pure scientific, non ideological, non political, non industry tied, sources. We left out most of the links here for that reason. We are not trying to convince you of anything.  Do the research.)  So how can this country have an intelligent conversation on the topic if even the basic facts are not known, or repeatedly misconstrued or misrperesented?

We can’t. And we are not. Instead we are getting inanity like this. From arguably the third most influential commentator in America. (Take a look at number two on that list, and ponder how much accurate information on climate change and science that person is dispensing.)  And one of the nation’s most influential newspapers,according to Washington insiders and politicians.

So what is “climate skepticism”?  It is slang for those who don’t want to think we can affect the physical world around us in this way and so have taken confusion over what we don’t know, and uncertainty over what we can not know with certainty, as a substitute for what we do.  That is not point counterpoint. That is science and anti science.  And it is what is happening right now in our debate today.

Part of the problem is lack of clarity on the issue itself, as the scientist writing in the BBC article from which the quote above was taken, points out. But it’s not just scientists faults (their job is to study science, not sell it to people.) It is the media’s fault.  And this idea, popularized by such ideas that “balance” means simply taking a view that people want to represent regardless of the facts, and turning it into some sort of coequal side to a reasonable debate, along with quite possibly the idea that the media doesn’t really understand the issue, that is causing this. Here is another example, where one of the country’s leading media sources apparently couldn’t even step up to the plate and back up which “unnamed” scientists they relied upon for their rather misleading, “false balance” assertions.

The media has been doing this here in America for over ten years now. And worse on other issues. Climate change, ultimately, is pure science.  Also, while it involves large uncertainties, and a very unrecognized and large lag between most causes and effects, it also involves objective versus subjective analysis. And the media has even been botching this also, in the name of “false balance.”

Propagated further by the boilerplate idea of “climate skepticism” as opposed to the very sound idea of scientific challenge to widespread scientific presumption, on scientific, non ideological grounds. The latter is always healthy.  The former, driven my ideological motivations, fervent, non science beliefs, and riddled with misinformation and half truths, does nothing to further debate, but only serves to undermine it, if anything.