Back to education, there’s no guarantee that you will get the opportunity to correct your oversimplification with each class of children. There are other factors that frequently pull kids out of classes mid sequence. If kids grow into adults without access to a better view of science, it’s our fault for not providing them with a more useful set of tools for understanding current science and our current problems.

Here, kid. Read just a few paragraphs if you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing:

—- excerpt follows —–

“… Would you trust a scientist who advises his/her colleagues to use scary scenarios to get media attention and to shape public opinion by making intentionally dramatic, overblown statements? Would you have confidence in his or her statements if the scientist said that “each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest”? Understandably, you’d probably be suspicious and wonder what was being compromised.

I confess: those were SOME of my words, yet their meaning is completely distorted when viewed out of context like this. You will find hundreds of places — especially on the web sites of industrial or economic growth advocates opposed to global warming policies that might harm their or their clients’ interests — in which I am similarly (mis)quoted alongside a declaration that my environmental cronies and I should never be trusted.

I’ll spend a few paragraphs telling you what I really said and why, as I want to illustrate the sorts of pitfalls that will confront a scientist or other expert diving headlong into scientific popularization, media appearances, advocacy, or some combination of these. This example illustrates the risks of stepping from the academic cloister to the wide world out there. A scientist’s likelihood of having his/her meaning turned on its head is pretty high — especially with highly politicized topics such as global warming. ….”

——–end excerpt———-

Will we hear from someone who fell for one or more of the misrepresentations and has actually learned better by reading the original in context.

But you really have to look rather hard to actually find the context.

Here, a brief excerpt. You know how to find this. But I’ll give you the URL anyhow.
Save it for the next time some nitwit posts the same little fragment yet another time.

—–excerpt follows—–

“… I’m not accusing advocates of immorality; I’m just saying that standard advocacy (i.e., defining only one side of an issue) it is a poor way to give non-specialists “full disclosure” of complex, controversial topics.

But the problem is that scientists tend to think that advocacy based on a “win for the client” mentality that deliberately selects “facts” out of context is highly unethical. Unaware of how the advocacy game is played outside the cloister of the scientific peer review culture, some scientists stumble, perhaps naively, into the pitfall ….

The fundamental question related to climate change, then, is: how can we make, or at least encourage, advocates to convey a balanced perspective when the “judge” and “jury” are Congress or public opinion, and the polarized advocates get only twenty second sound bites each on the evening news or five minutes in front of a Congressional hearing to summarize a topic for which it would take hours just to outline the range of possible outcomes, much less convey the relative credibility of each claim and rebuttal? For over three decades, this has been my repeated frustration in dealing with the climate change debate, and it seems to be getting worse. ….”

—– end excerpt —–

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/MediarologyFrameset.html

You are not lying to me if you give me a simple answer getting me closer to truth, if you tell me it is a simplified answer. It is those on the other side of the argument that are lying, seeking deliberately to mislead.

Trouble is you are fighting fair. They are under no such restriction.

Thanks for clarifying.

But did you mean “weather-damaged” or “climate-damaged”?

And in looking at New Orleans, did you find it was the wealthy or the poor who had recovered better? What did you compare it to? Against what baseline did you measure it?

I think that given the number of media stories that had previously (and wrongly) made a connection, to juxtapose hurricane Katrina with a discussion of global warming in a film nominally about global warming makes the implication all on its own. It’s possible to use such an example as an *illustration* of what impacts might look like (or that even an affluent nation cannot recover instantaneously from a city-wide disaster), but it needs all sorts of caveats not to be misleading.

However, this runs counter to the purposes of the film, as it did for all those media stories that made the connection in the first place. They want drama, and ‘Signs of the coming Apocalypse’ are certainly dramatic – it spoils the effect to have to add “… but on the other hand, maybe not.” You obviously want people to care about global warming. To have to spend five precious minutes of your film explaining that New Orleans being such a disaster wasn’t because of global warming, it detracts.

If you actually did that, and the people I listened to *still* managed to misunderstand, then I apologise. But as a general illustration of the difference between simplification because it’s too hard (and too boring) to explain a complicated subject all at once, and simplification to makes sure it fits the ’story’, I still think it works. The scientific mission of helping people to *understand*, and the polemic mission of getting people to *believe* sometimes come into conflict. People shouldn’t use simplification in aid of one to justify the other.

Anyone who says the movie blames global warming for Katrina probably hasn’t seen it.

If we’re just teaching people about black holes or genetics or geology, I think it’s fine to get poetic and rely on metaphors, tell tales, and so forth. And I have no problem with science fiction abusing the science a bit to tell a good story. The latest Star Trek, with Spock watching the planet Vulcan implode in the sky from a planet light-years away is a good example. Atrocious astronomy but good storytelling.

But when we cross the line into politically sensitive material, I think it necessary to sacrifice impact for correctness. I was uncomfortable watching “An Inconvenient Truth”. Mr. Gore did simplify the science quite a bit, and a number of times he strayed over the line of what I consider to be appropriate simplification. Political activism is all well and good but this is a two-way street. If Mr. Gore can stretch the truth a little, then his opponents are justified in stretching the truth, too — and then what are the poor citizens to make of all this?

Many years ago, while still an undergraduate, I had a conversation with a physicist about the irrational panic that many people felt (and still feel) about radioactivity and nuclear power. He agree with me that there was a lot of irrationalism on the subject. However, when I ventured the suggestion that perhaps it was appropriate for us to lean a bit in the other direction, in order to correct the falsehoods, he jumped all over me. We tell the truth as best we can, and we never, ever stray from the truth except to make it clearer, he told me. I immediately felt shame at the stupidity of my thought. But I was young then, and youth is the time to think stupid thoughts.

If asked the melting point of water, the correct answer is that it depends on the circumstances, but in normal conditions it’s 0 C. You don’t need to say any more. Yes, that’s simplified and approximate, but it’s also clear to the listener that there’s more to be said.

It’s a different question, though, when the scientist replies that according to his measurements of Antarctic sea ice it has recently dropped to -2 C, because of global warming, and if you don’t stop using electricity *immediately* WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

A well-known quote of Steve Schneider’s is apposite here.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

I’m sure we all hope for that.

To take another example, Randy Olsen, the author of this book, also made the film ‘Sizzle’, in which to illustrate the human side of Global Warming Catastrophe he shows the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

Now of course a climate scientist will start up with a list of objections at this point – weather not climate, no connection can be shown with individual events, no statistically significant increase observed, computer models disagree, high level wind shear over the Atlantic, blah, blah, blah…

Wrong! That’s being *cerebral*, and drawing on your *brain*. If you want to use style to communicate your ’substance’, you have to stop being so literal-minded, be a good storyteller, and tell a good story. If you start up with the uncertainties you’ll a) bore the pants off your audience, and b) make them doubt the terrifying urgency of the situation.

“It’s time for the science community to realize they are getting out-communicated, and put more effort into understanding how today’s communication environment works. It’s not as simple as just spouting out the facts. There are effective ways to confront the skeptics, but you have to realize these guys are playing hardball. Good intentions count for nothing. This isn’t your father’s climate science world any longer.”

Hardball versus good intentions.
But you have to remember, Antarctic sea ice is melting away at -2 C now. That’s what this is all about.